Sizer Presents Profiling Plan To Community

Police Chief Rosie Sizer was at the East Portland Community Center on SE 106th ave last night to present her racial profiling plan to the community and get feedback on it.

SIZER: TALKS TO KATU ABOUT THE PLAN…

“It really is not just building a relationship with the community but about building trust,” Sizer told reporters. “What we see on the ground is some really amazing things have taken place.”

I first met Chief Sizer at the very same community center almost three years ago, when she kicked off a series of “community listening sessions” on racial profiling, which led to the formation of a racial profiling committee under former Mayor Tom Potter, and its eventual dissolution under Mayor Sam Adams, after committee members grew increasingly frustrated and confrontational.

Having watched this process unfold, last night felt like stopping to reflect on a long journey on which Sizer must be commended for having shown some courage. But I couldn’t help feeling frustrated and a little cynical, seeing a new group of community members re-hashing some of the same concerns at last night’s feedback session that were gone over time and time again in the racial profiling committee.

For example: How can we build better relationships between the community and the police? East Precinct commander Mike Krebs suggested officers hand out popsicles in the park. “Write that down,” said Hector Lopez, from the city’s new committee on police/community relations. “Ice cream socials.”

It’s not that ice cream socials aren’t a good idea. It’s just that Portland’s police are currently presenting a very different racial profiling plan to the community on the streets, especially in NE Portland, where the recent anti-gang operation, Operation Cool Down, led to officers openly targeting African American youth in the name of controlling a “gang problem.”

“There’s a disconnect, there,” says Oregon Action Executive Director Jo Ann Bowman—who was involved in the racial profiling committee, but appears to this reporter to have been increasingly marginalized over recent months as the plan has taken shape without her. Bowman is disappointed that Sizer’s plan continues to resist identifying individual officers, for example.

Bowman was also disappointed by the most recent meeting of the police/community relations committee on March 18. “They are setting this committee up as a wall between the community and the police,” she says—raising concerns about a formal application process to sit on the committee. “They’re deciding who’s qualified and who’s not qualified to be concerned about the police.”

Bowman thinks that the goal of the committee is “to make the police as comfortable as possible.” “But this work is not about the comfort level of police officers. It’s about making sure that community members who have been brutalized by the police are represented.”

“In North and Northeast Portland, people between 12 and 24 are being stopped and searched daily,” says Bowman. “And when questions are asked, the police say ‘we’ve got a gang problem’.”

Operation Cool Down pulled from 62 arrests: 24grams of coke, 8grams of crack, 94grams of marijuana, 30grams of meth, 14 handguns, 3 knives, a switchblade, an ice pick, a butterfly knife and a hammer, and $5,820 in cash. There were 6 Gang Violence Task Force call outs.

“But how much did all this cost?” asks Bowman. “And I suspect that if you picked on the Southwest Hills and targeted every white kid between 12 and 24, they would find equal or more.”

I asked the Chief’s office, Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman’s office, the office of human relations and Commissioner Amanda Fritz—who runs the office of human relations, for a response to Bowman’s concerns about the police/community relations committee on March 20. Sizer’s office did not respond, nor did Saltzman’s.

Maria Lisa Johnson, who runs the office of human relations, writes: “Mayors Potter and Adams have entrusted both our Office and the Human Rights Commission to continue the work of the Racial Profiling Committee. The Community and Police Relations Committee of the Human Rights Commission are in the process of recruiting additional members to join the committee. I will make that announcement available to you. I will also forward you the minutes of our most recent meeting as soon as they are finalized. The issue you highlight below was discussed and will be discussed further as we seat the full committee. Let me know if you have additional questions.”

Commissioner Fritz writes: “The Community/Police Relations Committee is newly formed, and the Human Rights Commissioners are laying some needed groundwork to address the issues that concern us all. I too admire the wonderful work that Ms. Bowman has done with Oregon Action to address community/police issues. I am committed to working with community members, the police and Commissioner Saltzman, and the Office of Human Relations to create trust and mutual respect.”

Bowman says those are “pretty general responses” to pretty specific concerns. And three years into this process, I can’t help but share in some of her disappointment.

Still, this is a long journey. I just hope that on this new leg, some of the community’s frustration with the pace of the past process will be sincerely borne in mind.