Comments

1
Once again we come up to a possible change in the way we do police work, only to be disappointed by the system and the people who work in its corrupt halls of injustice. Turner not understanding what the judge was saying to him and his union is sad. The fact that the DOJ comes off looking so weak is sadder. The city council will change as more and more people see we must have change or we will have more blood in the streets. This settlement is corrupt at its core and cannot be fixed, it should have been rejected.
2
The Agreement leaves what the DoJ terms our 'self-defeating accountability system' intact. It may indeed give the Independent Police Review Division "more power to conduct internal investigations," but those investigations will remain 'reviews' of PPB Internal Affairs' self-exonerations. IPR will continue to reject complaints en masse, Worborill will continue protect the City from exposing itself to culpability over the pursuit of justice. The Agreement was hammered out, behind closed doors, in less time - and with less reasoning - than Simon has required in a public hearing process. Had the DoJ actually been The People's advocate, it would have accrued public input in the designing of the Agreement. Failing that, the plea deal has no benchmarks, offers no remedial mechanisms to kick in if the parties do not engage in meaningful reform. The Agreement should have been rejected when testimony revealed that remedy to victims was merely 'aspirational.' Politically, we expected some would lose their jobs when found in violation of their constitutional oaths; instead this Agreement results in a hiring boom among perpetrators. It is a farce to pretend the City of Portland does not engage in racial profiling: it is an embarrassment that the DoJ lacks any means of establishing 14th Amendment protections for these sustained and substantial Civil Rights violations.

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