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Existing Oversight System Treading Water Awaiting Transition
Nominal Independence May Be Undercut by Tapping Police Commissioner's Office for Staff

IPR Keeps Churning Out Reports Which Don't Say Much

IPR is required by City Code to produce quarterly reports. Over the years, those eventually developed into four-page newsletters that included data on types of allegations and narratives of sample cases. In the last few years the two-page reports mostly focus on whether IPR is meeting its deadlines, how many overall complaints arrived, and noting any deadly force investigations.

IPR also presents regular reports to the CRC at its meetings; with CRC only having met six times this year they are no longer monthly. On the bright side, Portland Copwatch (PCW) was able to use one such report to confirm the name of one of the people shot by the Portland Police earlier this year (Aaron Stanton, PPR #87), but IPR has not been forthcoming in releasing the names of the officers involved in shootings despite their previous precedent of doing so (also see Shootings article).

CRC Hears IPR Annual Report, Holds No Work Group Meetings, Gets Yet Another New Member and Ponders Staffing Issues

At its September meeting, the CRC heard a brief presentation from IPR about their Annual Report (PPR #87). Because there was no public input allowed during the presentation, PCW was not, for instance, able to raise the question of why IPR has mis-reported on CRC's activities four years in a row.

Also at the September meeting, they introduced Chris Piekarski, a new member who took over the seat which had just been handed to Ginger Ruddell at their previous meeting; Ruddell resigned after moving out of Portland.

Regarding the staffing issue, IPR administrative staff Kelsey Lloyd told CRC at the November meeting that they were indeed in talks with CSD to ensure the Committee would have staff support. However, given the way the Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing had staff take over most of their decision-making starting in April, including CSD's involvement from July to November, this seems like a bad idea on top of the conflict of interest with the Police Commissioner overseeing it all.

At their November meeting, CRC talked about their work groups but acknowledged they weren't really holding any meetings at the present time. The Crowd Control Work Group, which presented a report to City Council in September 2021, seems unsure about pushing for its recommendations because they feel nobody will listen to them with the new oversight board on the horizon. There also seemed to be some confusion about the Recurring Audit Work Group, which has similarly been treading water for months, and whether meetings at which they do not review confidential files should be open to the public. Previous iterations of that group held public meetings. However, since the last time the Recurring Audit Work Group existed, most of the people on the staff and Committee have changed over and only long-timers like PCW members retain the institutional memory.

In what may also be a sign of the community waiting for the new system to be in place, CRC has not heard any appeals on misconduct cases since the case of the twerking protestor heard last year. So many people who complained about violence at the 2020 protests have not had their complaints sustained; one would think there would be a backlog of appeals rather than a roomful of crickets.

*- technically Prosper Portland is also independent of Council and the Auditor as well.
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January, 2023
Also in PPR #88

Portland Copwatch
PO Box 42456
Portland, OR 97242
(503) 236-3065/ Incident Report Line (503) 321-5120
e-mail: copwatch@portlandcopwatch.org

Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.

People's Police Report #88 Table of Contents
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