PORTLAND’S INDEPENDENT POLICE REVIEW (IPR) is a city-employed watchdog group with a serious job: taking citizen complaints about police misconduct and passing the most severe cases on to the police bureau. Sometimes, the bureau investigates—but many complaints never make it that far.
The police deal with 20 percent of all complaints as “Service Improvement Opportunities,” which require little more than an exchange of emails between an officer, their supervisor, and the complainant.
Critics like Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch call this “the dirty fork” decision: It’s about as effective as complaining about the flatware in a restaurant.
The decision to treat a case as a service complaint rather than an investigation is a judgment call made by IPR Director Mary-Beth Baptista and two assistant directors. Some allegations—discrimination, for example—can go either way.
City council heard a study of IPR methods relating to discrimination complaints on Wednesday, June 2. Ten allegations of racial profiling or discrimination were closed as service complaints in 2009. In contrast, only one allegation of bias in the past eight years led to the investigation and discipline of an officer, says Handelman.
For an example of how a complaint works through the system, look to the story of Stoop Nilsson. In March 2009, Nilsson says, she and a friend saw two police officers yelling at a black man for jaywalking in Old Town. When the women tried to intervene, Nilsson says the officers harassed them, pushed Nilsson’s friend, and refused to give her a business card as required by law. Later, both officers failed to appear in court.
Six months later, Nilsson filed a number of allegations with IPR. After a dismissal for untimely filing that Nilsson appealed, Baptista dismissed the allegations involving the two other people because they hadn’t filed their own reports.
Baptista issued service complaints for the officers’ failure to issue business cards and to show up in court. But Nilsson wanted an investigation.
“We don’t have any set criteria for deciding whether to investigate,” says Baptista. “It depends. If we have an officer who had, for example, three discrimination service complaints in a short period of time, we’d say, ‘No more service complaints.'”
Eleven months after her incident, Nilsson received an email response from the sergeant overseeing Brian Sims, one of the officers involved.
“Officer Sims is now a detective in my unit,” wrote Sergeant Rich Austria. “I believe by discussing and addressing these issues with Detective Sims he understands how conflicts like this can be avoided.”
Nilsson, a local homeless advocate, admits that she was testing the limits of the complaint system. “I wanted to push the process to see where the leaks were.”
Pffft, and people say this little ol’ rag is for ‘entertainment’ only?
Service complaints should be accessible to the public.
Are they? It’d be nice, a crime map…and a map that includes the amount of ‘service improvement opportunities’ etc filed for police in that area …or something.
Also, who elects or appoints ‘ IPR Director Mary-Beth Baptista and two assistant directors’?
How long have they been there? What are her credentials? Etc.
Good article.
Needs way more depth though, in my opinion.
Maybe a five part series is in order?
Thanks for the write up though!
Good work.
Hey thanks Stefan for taking this on. I like JustinB’s suggestion of a series with a more in-depth analysis of the details to walk a Portlander through the actual process of the complaint and the sorely lacking action of the IPR when it comes to holding an officer accountable for misconduct. I believe my complaint offers just that.
To be fair, I was not only filing to find the glitches in the system, but it was as equally important to let the city and the Police Bereau know that misconduct of any kind will not be tolerated, and if officer’s are participating and I know about it, I’m gonna do all I can to make sure they don’t get away with it.
Besides the racial profiling, illegal search, harrassment, bullying, threats, innapropriate physical contact, unwillingness to give business cards, false charges, and falsification of the police report they also had the audacity to not show up at court. I was referred back to the Beareau itself–the same body I was complaining against–to remidy the situation. Really? And how does the IPR get away with calling itself INDEPENDENT? That is not accountability.
The major allegations were found insufficent for an investigation because neither the man profiled, nor the woman who was assaulted filed their own complaints; both, by the way were homeless at the time, not able to find the time between meeting basic needs and daily survival to make a complaint with the city agency. Wow! IPR dismissed the most serious charges because they claimed they couldn’t reach the victims for interviews due to outdated contact info. Never once did they contact me to request updated information.
Anyway, it’s important to know that the IPR is what we got. It isn’t gravy like it should be and that’s politics for you, but we need to make it stronger, especially when, as Ms. Baptista stated herself, that there is no set criteria for investigations, and it is the body that is supposed to hold police accountable when misconduct occurs.
The Citizen Review Committee was silent on the issue when I contacted them requesting help and an ally. The City Auditor refused to meet to discuss concerns, and the cops involved recieved no discipline and are still out there in the community. It’s our responsibility to watch the police, document their actions, and hold them accountable when they abuse their power because they have guns and they can intimidate our communities into submission–submission that often comes as a consequence of our allowing them to stomple our civil rights.
If we really want change, we can’t just walk by anymore and hope someone else pays attention. We must get involved, take notes, speak up, educate, organize, and do the hard work ourselves.
Stoop Nilsson
Thanks for the interest… I’d definitely like to pursue the complaint process in more depth, which it absolutely deserves. It is good that we have a process, but it won’t improve if nobody pushes or questions it.