ARIZONA CONSULTANT Eileen Luna-Firebaugh finally presented
her critical report on the city’s Independent Police Review (IPR) to
council last Wednesday, March 19—but it appears to have done
little to bridge the divide between critics and proponents of the way
police oversight is conducted in Portland.
The IPR currently dismisses 68 percent of the roughly 700 complaints
it receives per year without making an investigation, and without
giving citizens a right to appeal the rejection, according to numbers
from the IPR’s most recent annual report. On average between 2005
and 2006, 110 complaints per year are classified as “service
complaints,” which carry very little risk of discipline for the
officers involved. Furthermore, there is a very low sustained rate
for complaints: IPR only sustained 0.7 percent (or five) of all its
cases in 2005, and 2.7 percent (or 18) of all its cases in
2006.
“In Portland, 12 percent of cases were judged to have insufficient
evidence to back them up, which generally speaking is lower than an
average of 33 percent in at least five other US cities,” says Dan
Handelman of activist group Portland Copwatch. “This means Portland’s
IPR is not weighing the officer’s word and the citizen’s word
equally.”
Luna-Firebaugh thinks the system could be working better, and wants
the IPR’s Citizen Review Committee (CRC) to have more power to direct
the city auditor and the IPR in the way it handles complaints.
Her top recommendation is for the mayor’s office to come up with a
set of criteria for when citizens’ complaints should be independently
investigated, instead of investigated by the cops’ own internal affairs
division. The idea is to improve the community’s trust in the outcome
of complaints, especially when there’s a controversial complaint, or
excessive force is alleged.
Luna-Firebaugh also wants the CRC to hear appeals from citizens
whose complaints are rejected without an investigation, and for the CRC
members to receive better training in how to do their jobs.
“No one should be thrown into this sea without learning first how to
swim,” she told council. “I believe in the community directing the role
of government. It doesn’t just think about it, it doesn’t just comment
on it. It directs it.”
Council isn’t necessarily in disagreement with any of the report’s
findings, but it will delay forming an action plan until after another
work session on the report, and until the mayor and City Auditor Gary
Blackmer have had time to come up with their own recommendations.
The problem is, the mayor and Blackmer are at loggerheads over
whether the IPR is currently doing a good job, and whether any of
Luna-Firebaugh’s recommendations really make sense.
At a council work session before the report was presented last
Tuesday, March 18, Potter drew attention to a drop in Portlanders’
satisfaction with police services from 70 percent to 64 percent between
2001 and 2007, according to the auditor’s own “Service Efforts and
Accomplishments” survey.
Blackmer hit back, asking: “So I’m responsible for that?”
At last Wednesday’s hearing, police union boss Robert King said the
role Luna-Firebaugh has played is “disappointing, divisive, and
unnecessary.” He said she had made mistakes in basic math (he did not
note specific examples), and made no efforts to appear impartial in her
report.
Council accepted the report unanimously, and will now debate what
changes to make to the IPR, if any, over the coming months. But
Luna-Firebaugh’s $60,000 report may well achieve nothing, if the mayor
can’t get Blackmer to see his point of view before he leaves
office.