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Portland City Council has hastily scheduled an executive session this afternoon, days after the US Department of Justice filed a long report [PDF] critical of some of the city's efforts to obey a settlement over police abuses of mentally ill citizens.

Executive sessions are hazy affairs. The city allows reporters to attend, so long as they don't publish anything that was said in the meeting. The general public is kept out.

But a notice of today's 2 pm session—sent out only yesterday—shows it'll touch on the city's ongoing settlement with a lawsuit filed by the federal government in December 2012. While no one's been able to comment to the Mercury about the reason for the meeting, it could have roots in the yearly report filed by DOJ officials earlier this week.

That report, a routine "compliance assessment" meant to update a federal judge on how well the city's doing, finds in part that Portland's made strides to abide by the lengthy court settlement. But the report is also sharply critical in a number of places.

For one, it lays bare the tremendous flaws in the COAB (community oversight advisory board)—a citizen group that was supposed to be the community's voice in how police reforms should move forward. The COAB was stung from the beginning by basic disagreements, as well as the city's failure to properly brief members to the specifics of the settlement agreement.

That weak start soon gave way to infighting, and meetings were repeatedly disrupted by activists in attendance. Following the resignation of Kathleen Saadat, who'd been leading the group, Mayor Charlie Hales in August put the COAB on a 60-day hiatus, scheduled to lapse tomorrow. A replacement for Saadat has yet to be chosen, and the board has numerous other vacancies to be filled.

"While the City diligently worked with the Parties and the community to establish a COAB, the City has been unable to create a sustainable platform for the COAB to carry out the functions required," by the settlement, the report reads.

It's been unclear for months whether the COAB will continue, or officials will seek to amend the settlement agreement, but a memo [PDF] filed by the city this week suggests a shake-up is now in the works.

"The City and the United States agree that the Settlement Agreement’s structure to support the COAB must be reconsidered," the memo says.

The report also lays into one of the Portland Police Bureau's more infamous employees: Captain Mark Kruger, who was found to have created memorials to "Nazi-era" German soldiers in a city park, but who still holds high rank on the city's payroll. (The DOJ report says that Kruger secured "unjustified expungement" for his Nazi shrines.)

In fact, Kruger's a key reason why DOJ officials say the city's not complying with a condition that the city prohibit "discouragement, intimidation, coercion, or adverse action, against any person who reports misconduct."

Kruger caused a dust-up earlier this year when he defended a drugs and vice cop, Scott Groshong, who went out of his way to harass a man filming him in 2015. The DOJ says that's evidence that the captain "continued to undercut accountability systems," and that Kruger "not only reached a finding contradicted by the plain evidence, but also explicitly discouraged the filing of the complaint in his findings."

More interesting, the report shows Kruger filed a "hostile-work-environment" complaint with the city's Independent Police Review (IPR), following an incident where an activist threw a cup of water on board member in a community meeting. Following that incident, police bureau members briefly refused to attend meetings of the IPR's Citizen Review Committee. No one ever mentioned that Kruger—a constant object of activist taunts and derision—had filed a complaint.

To the DOJ, it didn't make sense.

"The IPR Director did not throw the water. The water was not thrown at the Captain. Yet, the Captain continues to attack the very accountability systems deigned to build confidence in legitimate policing. Thus, the Captain continues to undermine public confidence in PPB and makes every officer’s job less safe."

Well, damn.

Lastly, the DOJ lays into Hales' response, when former Police Chief Larry O'Dea confessed to mistakenly shooting a friend while on a camping trip. [The Oregonian touched on this aspect of the report in a story yesterday.]

Rather than alerting the IPR and placing O'Dea on leave—as is common in all similar incidents we could find—Hales chose to keep the incident quiet. He has repeatedly scolded the news media for reporting on police documents that suggest O'Dea might have been drunk when the shooting occurred, and says the former chief will ultimately be cleared of wrongdoing. An investigation by the Oregon Department of Justice is ongoing.

"The Police Commissioner’s [Hales] and former Chief’s failure to act obstructed a 'fair and expeditious resolution' of the alleged misconduct," the report says, quoting from the settlement agreement "and failed to hold officers 'accountable pursuant to a disciplinary system that is fair and consistent.'"