IT SEEMED like a promising idea when it was first pitched in March, back when the Portland City Council was agreeing to spend millions of dollars on a new, long-awaited Portland Police Bureau training center.
Packaged alongside the bureau’s schematics was a promise to also improve the substance of its training regimen. The cops would create a “Training Advisory Council”—a citizen panel that would have the chief’s ear and help infuse the bureau’s policies with the community’s values.
The bureau—still, notably, under a federal microscope for its use of force—is ready to act on that promise. Which is good. But it’s also about to louse things up.
A posting for council candidates sent out by Mayor Sam Adams’ office on Monday, August 20, didn’t say whether the council’s quarterly meetings would be public or private. And, curiously, it said chosen council members would have to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA)—a contract that will limit what kinds of things council members can say about their work, and to whom.
I asked the police bureau to clarify both points. I also asked to see the NDA. For instance, it’s possible that the NDA would apply only to, say, confidential documents like case files and not the panel’s overall work.
These aren’t insignificant questions. If the meetings are private, and if council members can’t discuss their work, then it’s fair to ask whether the council will be a meaningful forum for improving community-police relations or mere window-dressing.
It took a while to get firm responses. But when I did finally hear back—Training Division Captain Bryan Parman called me from home just before press time—it was disappointing.
Training council meetings wouldn’t be open to the public—even just to sit in and observe. Parman says members would be having “frank” discussions, hashing through and refining policy changes suggested by other community groups and police panels. He argues it would be a mistake for “half an idea” to go public before members send their final recommendations to the chief. That also means any NDA, which is still being drafted, may wind up being fairly restrictive.
“It would be counterproductive to what we’re trying to do,” he says.
Instead, he offered, members would be allowed to talk only generally about the subjects they’re tackling. They could talk more freely, in a postmortem, about the ideas after they’re on the chief’s desk and discuss them in periodic public reports.
Other details are troubling. Parman confirmed that some police staffers would also be voting members of the panel—and that other cops would be sitting in as expert advisors. He also said there wasn’t a target number of citizen members yet because the bureau wasn’t sure how many people would be interested in joining.
Jason Renaud of the Mental Health Association of Portland, a longtime observer and critic of police training, had lamented the secrecy and warned advocates to stay away even before hearing what Parman had to say. Afterward, he said he hoped the mayor would step in.
“They’re not ready to be transparent,” he told me. “They’re not ready to take advice from the public. They’re not ready for civilian oversight.”
I can understand why some things—state secrets, confidential case files—might stay off limits. But getting a glimpse at what this group is doing, and in real time, is too important to sacrifice in the name of efficiency. The meetings should be open. Let’s hope the mayor agrees.
Many thanks, Denis and the Mercury, for staying on top of this stuff. The current state of the Portland Police Bureau Training Advisory Council, tasked with infusing the community’s values into the training of its police force, underscores the kernel of the larger problem by highlighting the state of the conversation regarding the values and practices of the PPB. The resistance shown by City Hall to bringing our watchdogs to heel, to ensuring that the Bureau and its leadership understand and are ready to implement the values of the city, tells the real story. There should be no question that the meetings of the civilian body tasked with infusing “values” into the Portland Police Bureau’s training regimen be held openly. “Values” sounds soft and vague, and it is inasmuch as it supports the notion of keeping the meetings open. It’s not as if the Council will be reviewing individual training records and disciplinary sleeves. It’s not as if the Council will be directing tactical situations in real-time. There will be no exposure to sensitive information. There is no need for closed, secret meetings. There is no need for a non-disclosure clause, unless the point of the whole venture is to provide window dressing.
Largely in line with Portland’s values (as recently demonstrated in our Occupy movement: concern and engagement, defiance of irrationality, non-violence, and respect for others), the Portland Police Bureau is comprised of a goodly number of members who actually DO care about doing the right thing, and want to be of service to their community. The actions of the Portland Police Bureau have been good for many people of the city of Portland, in many ways. We have a relatively even-tempered downtown, riding public transportation is much less of a dreary experience than in many similar places, violent crime is, while always a concern, not a major factor in the ability of the city to function and the people to thrive, and our schools are generally thought of as safe. This is in part due to tasks performed by members of the Portland Police Bureau. Their willingness to put themselves in danger, in order to protect the well-being of others, should never be forgotten.
While all of the above is true, it is also true that past a certain point any hero becomes a predator. When this happens within our police force it must be dealt with sternly. It is not to be tolerated, even for a second. We rely too heavily on the trust between the police and the rest of society. It is absolutely fundamental and necessary to our growth and our happiness. If an individual police officer puts that trust in jeopardy, it is the duty of the rest of society in total, both within and without the ranks of the police force, to be swift and resolute in its response to such behavior. The motivation and fortitude to appropriately respond when one sees one’s colleagues overstepping their bounds begins in the training of the Portland Police officer. For it is in the training of an officer that the officer begins to get an impression of where they will be serving. The culture of the police force is, obviously, much more of a factor in the continued professional growth of an officer than the bigger culture of the city itself. It is not until that officer enters into that sub-culture that they become aware of the reality of their chosen field and the reality of the demands and expectations of their colleagues, superiors, and the people. This is when an officer truly begins to become the agent of influence on the community that each and every officer is. Thus, the training that an officer of the Portland Police Bureau receives is of the utmost importance to the people of the city of Portland. Without an open and honest process to ensure that the values of the People of Portland are woven into that training, we rely on the Bureau to determine what those values are, which voices it will listen to, and what it claims to understand as its mandate. This is too much to ask, and impossible for the Bureau to achieve.
Jimmy Tardy
Portland