Whoever takes the oath as Portland’s next mayor this January (and it’s looking like Charlie Hales) will wind up presiding over a legal settlement between the police bureau and US Department of Justice that was largely hammered out by the guy leaving office, Sam Adams.
That’s an awkward thing to inherit. And, given all the questions and concerns still looming over the dozens of pages of details in the agreement, we figured it was a good idea to get both Hales and Jefferson Smith on record with some of their thoughts on how they’d approach that. There wasn’t room for every single word in our print story in this week’s edition, hardly any room actually, so we’re posting the candidates’ full answers here for your perusal.
Where should Portland City Council go looking for the millions a year in new ongoing costs this agreement requires?
Hales: Up to now, work with the mentally ill has been seen primarily as the responsibility of the County. I plan to work with the County to find ways for us to work together to find the necessary funding. I believe that as a part of the effort, we’ll need to look to further reallocation in bureau budgets and reductions in overhead to help cover the cost.
Smith: Keeping Portlanders safe and building a greater connection between police and community will be priorities in my budget. I will be careful with how we spend and use our tax dollars for their intended purpose. We can trim middle management. I carried a bill in the Legislature to set a goal of 11 front-line staff for every 1 manager. The City Auditor reports in Portland it’s 6 to 1. I’ll keep an eye on middle management costs.
We might also find savings in spending on consultants and computer systems. And we should have greater accountability for private contractors. I will consider a “pause and review” of high priority for-profit private contracts over a million dollars.
We also need to look to the County and the State, particularly for the mental health elements. With the passage of the new library district, which will impact the city budget, there is a more obvious need to realign with the County the funding responsibilities of mental health and potentially other services.
In what areas does this agreement specifically fall short?
Hales: The report does a good job in setting a floor for what’s acceptable in our community regarding reduction of incidents of undue use of force and how our police force interacts with our community, particularly with people suffering from mental illness. Unfortunately, it should not take federal mandates in reaction to civil rights complaints to update our ‘use of force’ guidelines. The number of shootings involving unarmed people with mental illness is sobering and I agree with the DOJ’s findings.
But, because the scope of the lawsuit was largely limited to use of force (and particularly in incidents involving people suffering from mental illness), the settlement does not detail ways to move the police bureau forward in the direction of true community policing.
Smith: Though I have read the full initial DOJ report, I have not yet had a chance to read the full 74-page agreement. I’m glad to see expansion of the mobile mental health crisis unit, significant changes to training practices, a faster timeline for internal investigations, and changes to the Taser policy. We should look more deeply at how to diversify the bureau and to make sure shift sergeants are champions of high priorities for bureau improvements. There should be a clear understanding of accountability mechanisms. For example, if there is a failure to hit benchmarks in a year, the question of a special monitor might need to be revisited.
The steps laid out in the agreement are good ones—the major challenge now is to execute the plan, especially the community involvement aspect.
Coordinated Care Organizations (CCOs) aren’t bound by this agreement despite their promise to speed the creation of new drop-off centers for people in crisis. How can you keep them on task without a legal stick to wield?
Hales: We need to address funding for this new requirement at the state level, as the governor and legislature continue to put together the CCO budgets. Again, I will work with [Multnomah County] Chair [Jeff] Cogen to advocate for this critical funding. Additionally, we should look at our existing centers to see what adaptations can be made to accommodate this new mandate, in case we don’t need to start from scratch.
Smith: We’ll need to coordinate with the county and other local governments to create a real crisis center. Since this is a federal agreement and the Department of Justice has also investigated our state mental health system, the CCOs also have incentive to live up to their end of the deal, lest they face greater scrutiny from the DOJ or the governor.
CCOs need funding from the state, and the soft power of the city can help exert influence there. We will need to work closely with our legislative delegation and the governor. 26 of the 90 Oregon legislators represent some portion of Portland; we need to better leverage our delegation. And a Democrat can’t be elected Governor without real support in Portland and Multnomah County—if that relationship is strong, it can help the city keep CCOs on task. When mental health facilities are sited, there should be a greater awareness of placing facilities near where population centers and families are located.
The City needs to use the levers we do have. CCOs might need zoning, permitting, and transportation access for new facilities. We have to work closely with the County, whose approval is often needed for new offerings.
To Thomas Perez, U.S. Department of Justice:
The settlement offer distributed on October 27 may resolve differences between the city of Portland and the federal government, but from our point of view — that of persons with mental illness, those actually subject to the “pattern and practice” identified in your original report, those most likely to be harmed by police officers — there is little in the document which provides immediate reassurance.
Foremost, the city continues to employ officers who have mercilessly and thoughtlessly killed our friends without consequence. The settlement introduces no mechanism to separate those individuals from the police bureau, in order to prevent future threat to us or hold them duly accountable. No amount of policy, training, or wringing of hands can amend these crimes, and nothing has been done to protect us from the officers involved. Ignoring this situation evidences an unexplainable disregard for justice; as such, it undermines the entire agreement.
Second, as you noted in your findings, persons with acute mental illness, including psychosis, mania and even depression, often do not respond as expected to authoritative commands. Without worthwhile treatment resources, acute illness is a predictable, routinely experienced complication of many illnesses. For us, inability to respond to police immediately or typically can provoke an escalation in tactics that too often results in injury or death. While the settlement agreement does address treatment deficiencies, it is mainly responsive to the convenience of police, not the expressed needs of our community.
Third, just as persons with acute mental illness may be unable to respond to police commands, many of us have an equal inability to participate in normal political or bureaucratic processes. The settlement agreement introduces the Community Oversight Advisory Board, but its elaborate structure makes it wholly ill-considered if you want participation by persons at the center of the settlement. It is equivalent to giving a non-Braille text of Blackwell’s Dictionary of Law to a blind student: well-meaning, thoughtless, and cruel. You should have engaged capable persons with mental illness in your planning; they are plentiful.
In addition to the three points included in this email, the Mental Health Association of Portland supports the initial comments about the settlement made by Portland Copwatch.
We hope you will continue to investigate police brutality against persons with mental illness, because it does not just happen here, it is everywhere — and without real change, it will continue to deprive us of our lives, our rights, and our pursuit of happiness, unabated into the future.
Please note: Because our past communications with you have been ignored, we are sending copies of this email to members of the Portland City Council and to the media (and, somewhat pathetically, reposting it on Blogtown).
Terrible answers all around, people with mental health issues need real spending to give them proper care not treat them as cast away serfs along Burnside.
I can’t believe anyone who is running for mayor (city hall is what 5-6 blocks from Burnside) treats this as such a tangential issue.