Portland City Council received its first annual report Wednesday on the Portland Portland Bureau's (PPB) involvement with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), a cross-jurisdictional group of regional law enforcement officials who collaborate on domestic terrorism cases.
City Council voted in February 2019 to remove its two PPB officers from the task force, responding to community concerns about federal law enforcement disproportionally targeting people based on their religion, race, or political beliefs. Since then, PPB has only been informed of local FBI investigations when the JTTF believes it's critical to get PPB up to speed. Those cases go directly to PPB Chief Jami Resch, who presented the report before City Council Wednesday.
According to the report, the JTTF referred 10 cases to PPB in 2019—and the police bureau has closed all but one of them. Based on the little information shared about the closed cases, most of the incidents involved racist, anti-cop, and generally violent speech. All suspects in the nine closed cases were white men. One was a white woman. Many of the suspects were referred to the PPB's behavioral health unit.
The report also notes that in 2019, PPB referred 12 of its own cases to the JTTF for review. Per the report: "The nature of these cases includes bomb threats to critical infrastructure, public buildings, private entities, and houses of worship; threats of mass violence; reports of racially motivated violent extremist and sovereign citizen activity; and threats to public officials."
All of the suspects in these cases were men—eleven of them were white and one was Black.
"I think it's notable that only one [of these cases] involved a person of color and only one involved a woman," said Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, "because that more accurately reflects the truth we face domestically, despite public perception."
At the morning City Council meeting, all four city commissioners thanked PPB leaders for offering a more transparent look into how the city collaborations with the FBI.
"I think my colleagues and the public appreciate the level of transparency we're getting," Eudaly said. "It was somewhat of a mystery to me what the JTTF was doing prior to our withdrawal."
"This process turned out the way I was hoping it would," said Commissioner Amanda Fritz.
Police accountability advocates, however, said the report was too vague and questioned the constitutionality of some of the cases. As an example, Dan Handelman with Portland Copwatch pointed to one case simply described as: "Report of person affiliated with a racially motivated violent extremist group talking to a person at a bar."
"Does that mean that if someone says they're a white supremacist, the police will investigate them?" Handelman told the Mercury. "Legally, there has to be suspicion of a crime to investigate. What's the crime there?"
PPB Sergeant Pete Simpson, who presented the report with Resch, said the bureau hopes to improve upon the inaugural report in 2021.
