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Two Organizations Formed to Strengthen Portland's Police Review Board Pressure building from two police accountability campaigns seems to be making waves. The groups sprang out of efforts by members of the National Lawyers Guild and the NAACP to increase police oversight in Portland. Citizens for Police Accountability Campaign (CPAC) has grown into an educational organization, while Police Accountability Campaign 2000 (PAC-2000) is a political action committee pushing a city-wide initiative to strengthen the police review board in Portland.
Shortly after CPAC made its first public statements in late 1999, the Oregonian ran a large article on the Police Bureau's Internal Affairs Division called "Police take public's criticism seriously" (December 30, 1999). This puff piece outlined what Internal Affairs and the Police Internal Affairs Investigations Auditing Committee (PIIAC) do, but didn't interview any people who had actually tried to use the system or point out its flaws. There is a brief mention of a "backlog" leading to an average resolution time of 13 months. The official goal of Internal Affairs used to be 60 days; IAD Captain Bret Smith is quoted as saying his goal is to resolve the issues in 6 months. CPAC itself was featured in front-page stories in street roots and the Portland Alliance. Street roots, a monthly paper by and about Portland's homeless community, covered the group's discussions of racial profiling by police and of gentrification in Northeast Portland. National Lawyers Guild attorney and CPAC co-founder Alan Graf articulated the general problems of policing in Portland (and throughout the country): "The police have been given a tremendous amount of power by our current Supreme Court. It's very difficult to sue a cop, and if you win, the city pays." The Portland Alliance, a monthly paper covering social justice issues, explains that City Council is the actual police review board (PIIAC), but gives weight to the decisions of the 13 Citizen Advisors. However the Alliance notes that under the current structure, "the police chief may ignore PIIAC votes, in effect giving the police veto power over civilian authority." A February 2 Willamette Week article featured interviews with a number of people including PIIAC Citizen Advisor and Vice Chair Denise Stone. We couldn't have said it better than Stone: vesting authority in the police chief to ignore PIIAC and City Council's findings "takes all the damn steam out of the work [PIIAC does]." Another of CPAC's founders, radio personality and mayoral candidate Bruce Broussard, has gotten the local chapter of the NAACP to sign on to the four main points endorsed by CPAC.
On February 15, the general body of CPAC voted to file a ballot initiative based on these four points. In order to run an initiative campaign, PAC-2000 was formed as an independent organization. The proposed initiative would give PIIAC power to: 1) Have final say about the merits of allegations of police misconduct, and make recommendations for disciplinary action; 2) Take complaints directly from the public and investigate them, subpoena police and civilians as witnesses, and continue reviewing IAD appeals; 3) Review all police shootings and deaths in custody; and 4) Hold public hearings on police policy and mandate appropriate changes. In order to qualify for the November ballot, PAC-2000 must gather 25,000 signatures by July 7.
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April, 2000
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Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#20 Table of Contents
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