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Copwatch's Critical Analysis Longer Than "Independent" On June 3, the "Independent" Police Review (IPR) released its 2020 Annual Report, a seven page document with six pages of appendices. About three weeks later Portland Copwatch released an 11 page analysis to examine places the IPR presented incomplete information or provided no information at all and fill in the gaps. In a year of unprecedented police violence at protests about racial injustice, this included poor reporting on use of force, no reporting on deadly force, and barely any mention of race. Moreover, while the IPR acknowledged they fell behind in complying with the 180 day deadline to finish investigations required by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) Settlement Agreement, they once again made no reference at all to police treatment of people with mental illness-- the main focus of the DOJ's investigation. The scant data IPR did include in the body of the report mostly focus on the protest-related complaints, saying how the cases were processed or dismissed, but not the outcomes. PCW feels a thorough analysis of complaints, outcomes and the overall process are crucial as a way to compare IPR to the soon-to-be-implemented oversight system placed into the City Charter by voters as measure 26-217 in November 2020 (see the CRC article in this issue). Some of the items PCW found: --there were zero officers found out of policy in 2020 for Use of Force allegations, despite the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) using force over 6000 times and over 222 Force misconduct allegations being filed. --the overall rate for sustaining Force allegations since IPR began in 2002 is 1.2%, with just 29 sustained findings out of 2495 allegations. --because IPR started breaking Force allegations into subcategories a few years ago, Force dropped out of the top five most common allegations. However, since it constitutes three of the top 10 categories, PCW listed Force as the #1 allegation type in 2020.
--for the fourth year running, IPR mis-reported on the appeals heard by the Citizen Review Committee, which IPR also administrates. --PCW had to visit IPR's online "dashboard" to learn that out of 335 complaints, only 152 people reported their race (just 45% of complainants). Of those, 34, or 22%, were Black in a City with a 6% African American population. --Surprisingly, civilian complaints investigated by the Bureau's Internal Affairs Division had a higher sustain rate than those investigated by IPR: 13.1% vs. 7.7%. --The second and third most common allegations were police failure to act and officer rudeness.
PCW analysis: portlandcopwatch.org/ipr_2020_analysis.html |
September, 2021
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Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#84 Table of Contents
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![[image of PCW's chart of analysis showing officer-
on-officer misconduct is more likely to be found out of policy]](https://www.pjw.info/copwatch/PPR84/IPRannual_byPCWedit.jpg)
--there were just two officer-
involved shootings in 2020, both nonfatal, and yet the average number
of deadly force incidents per year remains at five. IPR did not mention these incidents, nor did it
highlight the OIR Group's annual analysis of deadly force incidents (