BY NOW, based on the wishful thinking of the past few months, Portland City Hall ought to have marked a pair of major and incredibly consequential police reform milestones.
A much-contested reform deal between the city, the Portland Police Association, and the US Department of Justice—calling for new training, tighter use-of-force policies, and speedier misconduct investigations—seemed destined to receive US District Court Judge Michael Simon’s approving signature back in April.
Which is about when the city had aimed to start vetting some of the (hopefully) highly accomplished applicants vying to do the difficult work of overseeing those reforms. The posting for the position—officially billed as a “compliance officer/community liaison” (COCL)—optimistically placed the job’s “anticipated start date” as sometime this month.
But actually, so far (and maybe unsurprisingly), neither of those things has been checked off the city’s list. As a result, one of the most important promises of federal police reform—real civilian oversight—remains unfulfilled and in a troubling state of limbo.
Simon was all set to approve the reform deal this spring, provided he got his way on one seemingly small point: the right to compel annual updates on the reforms in his courtroom.
But instead of cheerily saying yes, the city and its rank-and-file police union have refused Simon’s request. And, despite the weeks he gave them to bargain over a plausible alternative, they’ve been unable to strike a deal. Now Simon will decide next month whether to hold his nose and accept the deal anyway—or cast the whole thing down.
But that’s still better than the slow-going selection process for the COCL post. Despite plans to air three finalists way back in April, the city is still combing through applicants and doesn’t appear remotely close to reaching a list that small.
Sources say modest tensions, kept very quiet, have arisen between police accountability advocates.
Though the police reform deal emphasizes improving police treatment of Portlanders with mental illness, mental health advocates, so far, say the hiring process has favored advocates more interested in addressing racial profiling. Those complaints have convinced Commissioner Amanda Fritz to lengthen the vetting process.
“We’ve not had mental health communities at the table,” Fritz says. “We’re not going forward until they are.”
But maybe worse, sources say, is the caliber of the current applicants. They point to cities like Seattle, which hired a nationally respected police consultant to oversee its reform process, and they ruefully note that no one similarly decorated has applied in Portland. Sources also say the pool tilts more toward experience with racial issues than mental health.
Twelve résumés have been pulled for further screening. Fritz says she’s confident the city will cull that list down to three, and then one.
Mental health advocates appreciate Fritz’s efforts.
“Amanda is trying to find an easier path to make this work,” says Jason Renaud of the Mental Health Association of Portland.
But those advocates aren’t so sure it will work—they’re worried it’s going to be too little, too late.
If there is any damaged party from the City’s non-compliance, then the violated order would tend to support a law suit.
I have a sister with the signs and symptoms of schizophrenia, who refuses to take medication. She is quite delusional with her visual hallucinations, rituals, and grandiosity. Until she harms herself or others, I can do nothing to even get her to try medication. She’s not a harm to herself or others physically; and she has been tackled by police before, she says, “for throwing a flower at the American Flag”. Who knows?
Police need to learn to be kind to these individuals, and use less forceful procedures on them, than they do alleged criminals breaking some felony law. There is a MANDT and OIS, (I think it’s called) resource they need to learn to better function in their public capacity as they are here to serve “the people” developmentally disabled and all. Please get it together, my so-called Poetland…Oregon is better than that.
City Council balks at allowing Federal Judge Simon to hear – once a year – whether the City and DoJ are dragging their feet … an indication of two things. One, by excluding whatever input a seasoned jurist might bring, they don’t really want broad-based efforts to reform. A sincere strategy for eliminating illegal police conduct would bring all hands on deck. Two, the Agreement transfers $5,000,000 in new money annually to cops; without benchmarks or non-DoJ, Federal oversight, this funding can drag on for a decade before some other mechanism shows the net result for victims to have been nil, or has produced even more egregious civil rights violations, such as detention without trial.
The racial analysis gets interesting. Fritz oversaw Portland’s Human Rights Commission while their CPRC subcommittee did nothing to implement the City’s 2009 Police Plan to Address Racial Profiling. CPRC did not address plan elements for data collection on racial disparities in policing. Saying they didn’t have the data to make a case, DoJ Findings declared race outside the scope of an investigation that was called for by a faith community rooted in communities of color.
Fritz is now in the bully pulpit, saying of the hastily drafted Agreement: It’s “not about race; it’s about mental illness,” and trying to intellectually divide a victim population. Read our analysis here:
http://www.consulthardesty.com/observation…
It’s not about race OR mental illness, except as indicators: our focus must remain on illegal police conduct, and the failure of civil authority, ceremonially responsible for assuring ALL of our Constitutional protections.
The fact of the matter is that the city of Portland, and the OIR group who investigated the incidents, focused primarily on incidents involving people with mental health issues, or perceived mental health issues. The reality is that people of color are targeted at much higher rates in Portland. So when we focus only on mental illness without acknowledging a much bigger issue being suffered by the community, or the fact that these communities intersect, and the treatment by the PPB toward by people of color exacerbates mental illness, we are assuring that the brutality will only continue.
The city refuses to collect data that would bring this fact to light. Therefore, the city can justify ignoring racially motivated violence and harassment by cops YET AGAIN because the process was skewed to only look at mentally ill survivors and victims of police brutality. This color blindness has to end!
The fact that this city is still trying it’s best to keep the discussion of violence against people of color by public employees with guns off the table just confirms that we’re nowhere close to resolving this issue and assuring the safety of the community.
How many more Keaton Otis’s, Aaron Campbells and Kendra James’ are we going to bury?
I have to agree with other posters in this thread. I too watched the City give lip service to the Charter Review Committee, only to quash them as soon as they dared try to reign in police. I attend City Council and am continually appalled to watch the self-congratulatory double-speak that passes for public service. Police brutality here is swept under the rug, settlements are made to avoid judges litigating to limit police authority (see Gallagher Smith vs. PPB), and citizens are so disillusioned and disengaged only 30% turn out for local elections (which are won with slick campaigns and obvious last-minute lies). Judge Simons is right to distrust this Council! They have continued to harass and target the oppressed even while the case is being heard and have issued such offensive statements about the proceedings that Judge Simons responded, brusquely reminding them of the duties of their office. In practice, they are hardly peacekeepers. They are enforcers,escalators and bullies who exist outside the laws applied to citizens.
lock them all in a room together and don’t let nobody out till they have some results…like a reasonable oversight plan and perhaps a couple babies in some ovens