The whitest guys I know: After his Portland City Club speech, Police Chief Mike Reese, left, poses for a group photograph with his most of his command staff.
  • The whitest guys I know: After his Portland City Club speech, Police Chief Mike Reese, left, poses for a group photograph with his most of his command staff.
In an hourlong lunchtime speech warmly received by the Portland City Club, Police Chief Mike Reese continued his political barnstorming on behalf of the Portland Police Bureau—essentially asking a roomful of well-heeled Portlanders, who might have the ears of politicians and candidates, for more support at a time when his bureau is trying to keep from laying off more cops.

Tune to OPB at 7 to hear it for yourself. This kind of event plays to Reese's strengths: He comes off equally reasonable, apologetic, and concerned—and generally says the things he's supposed to say. He also made no major announcements. Just as he did a week ago in front of city council, he painted an appropriately grim picture of a bureau struggling with budget cuts. Comparable cities, he argues, have more officers per resident. His officers can't investigate all traffic crashes, he said. And that spike in drug-dealing in Old Town?

It's "because our officers haven't been able to do the type of enforcement that's necessary to keep a handle on drug-dealing.... We really came to understand how lean our organization really is" after combing through the bureau's budget.

But Reese also took the chance to address his bureau's ties with the wider community, strained after a troubling spike in officer-involved shootings, nine since January 2010. He talked about the lack of trust, or at least the perception of it, cagily. In one important nod to accountability advocates, he took strongly affirmed his rank-and-file-riling decision to fire Ron Frashour, the officer who shot and killed Aaron Campbell last January.

"Some of our officers and sergeants didn't follow our training and policies in this incident," Reese said. "It was a complex event, and our offers had the best of intentions. Unfortunately they made mistakes. We held them accountable, and one officer ultimately lost his job."

Of course, right after, stuck between his role as top cop but also as the bureau's face to the community, he was forced to pivot. He also promised, just as strongly, to defend other officers who—even if they slipped up—were performing with good intentions, and as they'd been trained. Although Reese made his point without the same bluster he managed last year when Leo Besner, the cop who shot Raymond Gwerder, was given a promotion.

And for most of the second half of his speech, he detailed what he defined as a deep burden placed on his department by the crumbling of the state's mental health system. His basic point was this: We can only do so much until the rest of you get serious about why so many addicts and mentally ill people are on our streets.

He repeatedly hammered on the difficulties he says his bureau faces keeping the peace with mentally ill and homeless Portlanders. He estimated that 28,000 of the bureau's 400,000-plus calls in 2010 involved someone either mentally ill or distraught.

"It's overwhelming our system," he says. "It's a lot of opportunity for failure."

He said his officers now find themselves waking up transients in Inner Southeast and downtown every morning, never knowing when someone might "come out from that sleeping bag, or out from under that cardboard" with a knife in hand.

"How does that play out on the front page of the Oregonian?" he asked. "Do we as a community support he officer or vilify them for taking on the unenviable task of dealing with social disorder?"

Reese reiterated his case for new Taser weapons, new pepper-spray, and affirmed his commitment to program like the Project Respond partnership that sees one of his officers—Chris Burley, shot before fellow officers killed Keaton Otis on Reese's first day as chief—work to target mentally ill people before there's a crisis call.

He closed with a blow-by-blow of Marcus Lagozzino's shooting December 27, intended to illustrate how even when, in his words, better-prepared cops facing an unpredictable situation sometimes have to fire at someone. Lagozzino lived and is back on the streets, Reese says.

"He's a neighbor of mine. I've met with his parents. They wanted me to share with the officers involved their appreciation. There's very little help for families like them, and in our community, given the state of our mental health system."