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Police Oversight System Changes in Flux
Council Changes Police Review Board Despite "Stakeholder" Concerns; Recommendations
Roll In
Well, that didn't last long. The goodwill engendered by Portland City Council, Auditor Lavonne
Griffin-Valade, and Independent Police Review Division (IPR) Director Mary-Beth Baptista when
they introduced changes to the IPR and formally created the Police Review Board (PRB) in late
March went out the window in July. Billed as "housekeeping," Griffin-Valade, Baptista and
Commissioner Randy Leonard proposed changing the PRB's structure to allow the supervisor of an
officer under scrutiny to vote on the Board. The problem: that supervisor will have already made a
recommendation about whether the officer was in or out of policy and therefore, as noted by the
Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC) in 2003 and 2006, has a conflict of interest when
voting on the board.
In late May, Leonard convened the "Police Oversight Stakeholder Committee," some 32 people
including police, city staff, elected officials, and community leaders, to look at further revisions to
the IPR ordinance and other changes to promote accountability. The proposal to give the
commander a vote arose on a Friday, one day after the Stakeholder meeting, and three weeks before
they were set to meet again. After typographical errors and community concerns helped derail the
vote twice in June, the final vote was scheduled for July 14 to give the Stakeholders time to discuss
the issue. A vote was taken of 11-1 among community members and 1-6 among City staff to
disallow the commander from being a voting member in cases of shootings, deaths in custody, and
civilians hospitalized due to police action. Council took no testimony and passed the change 3-2,
with Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Dan Saltzman taking principled stands against. Adding
insult to injury, Leonard had promised to relay the Committee's concerns and vote results to
Council, yet only spoke to his own idea's merits.
Meanwhile, the Stakeholders have made some progress in developing recommendations for Council
to improve IPR, including changing the standard used by the Citizen Review Committee (CRC)
from the "reasonable person" standard to the "preponderance of evidence." The CRC itself released
its "IPR Structural Review Report" the same morning as the PRB vote, with several dozen
recommendations including the one about standard of proof. While many of CRC's ideas will
require City Council action, and may or may not make it through the Stakeholder process, some are
simply internal policy matters and IPR/CRC may implement them in the coming months.
CRC also released its review of the 2005 and 2006 PARC reports, focusing on the 26
recommendations made in those years, adding the 2003 idea (repeated in the 2005 report) that IPR
should provide civilian oversight in shootings/deaths cases. Unfortunately, CRC did not review all
of PARC's analysis of its 2003 recommendations, in which they repeated that an officer's
commander should not vote on the Review Board. The relatively new IPR Director and Auditor, not
knowing this history, led Council to believe that CRC's omission of this topic was an implied
acceptance of it.
CRC also repeated recommendations from PARC for the Bureau to change its medical aid policy to
render assistance "as soon as possible," for Council to fund scenario-based training, and require a
cover officer or supervisor to be present before extracting someone from a car.
The Stakeholder group is expected to meet one more time, on September 16 at 9:30 AM, nearly two
months past the 90-day deadline incorporated into the ordinance. It remains to be seen how many
of the several dozen recommendations will make their way to Council.
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September, 2010
Also in PPR #51
•
Portland Shootings on the Rise
• Oregon Shootings Double
• Chasse
Lawsuit Settled
•
Sit/Lie 4.0 update
• New Chief
Reese
•
Police Oversight System Changes
•
Civilian Review Board Update
• No Change In
Profiling Data
• Copwatching
On May Day 2010
•
Quick Flashes #51
• Pervocops Certifier is
Perv
• Legal Briefs 51
• Rapping Back 51
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