THE DAY AFTER the city released an outside analysis of seven police shootings since 2004—a report that raised significant concerns about the Portland Police Bureau’s ability to learn from its mistakes—the bureau’s official response didn’t inspire much confidence.
Instead of acknowledging the basic theme of the report—that “there is still room for improvement” in how the bureau trains its officers to avoid shootings, and then in how it analyzes shootings when they inevitably happen—Chief Mike Reese’s office sent out a news release with a congratulatory headline.
It said, simply, “PPB Superior.” And it was an attempt to spin attention toward one of the report’s few pure compliments: that the bureau is better than most when it comes to reviewing errors. But after a detailed review of the 90-plus-page report, prepared by the Los Angeles County Office of Independent Review (OIR), a far bleaker picture emerges.
While the bureau might be trying to improve, communication lapses at shooting scenes, training issues, investigative shortfalls, and long delays in interviewing officers involved in shootings remain very real problems that have yet to be adequately addressed.
“Many of these events raise questions about officers’ ability to communicate with each other at the scene of critical incidents, to consider alternative plans, and to respond quickly and effectively when a subject has been downed by police gunfire,” the report’s authors write. “In some cases, [the bureau’s] evolution is notable and commendable. Others lead us—and members of the public—to question why the bureau had not learned more from its prior shooting incidents.”
The OIR report, expected to be the first in a series, focuses on seven shootings from 2004 through 2010, most of which involved someone enduring a mental health crisis: James Jahar Perez in 2004; Raymond Gwerder, 2005; Jerry Goins, 2006; Lesley Stewart, 2007; Jason Spoor, 2008; Aaron Campbell, 2010; and Jack Dale Collins, 2010.
OIR lays out a series of recommendations meant to address its concerns, with some more controversial than others.
High on that list is a call to stop giving officers 48 hours after a shooting before internal affairs investigators can sit down with them. That change would require renegotiating labor contracts with the city’s two police unions, the Portland Police Association (PPA) and the Portland Police Commanding Officers Association (PPCOA).
While that wouldn’t affect the cops who actually fire shots—as criminal suspects, they’d still be able to claim Fifth Amendment protection to get out of an internal affairs interview—it would affect all the other officers on scene at a shooting and defuse any concerns about cops getting together to get their stories straight.
“This circumstance is unfortunate,” the report says of the delay. “Public confidence in internal police investigations would be enhanced if involved officers would agree to be interviewed on the date of the incident.”
Both union contracts come up for renewal next year—and, significantly, both of Portland’s mayoral candidates tell the Mercury that if they win the job, and become police commissioner, they’d be willing to consider the change.
“The 48-hour rule is one of the most obvious changes I’m interested in making,” says former City Commissioner Charlie Hales. “I have not heard and have difficulty imagining an argument for why [the delay] is a good idea.”
State Representative Jefferson Smith, who’s been endorsed by the PPA and received, as of last month, $10,000 from the PPA’s political action committee, was more nuanced.
“It should be a matter for negotiation,” says Smith, who also wants to look at what other cities are doing. “I want to be tutored less by politics and more by the facts.”
Later, the report rips the bureau over “a central shortcoming” in its post-shooting reviews: “the reluctance” by its training division “to second guess an officer’s split-second decisions in the field.” The report says the bureau considered whether it was even okay to use deadly force just once, in the Campbell shooting.
“To decline to delve into the possible reasons why an officer mistook one action for another is to turn away from this subject matter when its examination is most vital,” the report says.
Other recommendations include adding explicit limits on officers’ use of Tasers and, because “the bureau continues to be stymied” by communication gaffes, a call to train all officers on “critical incident” management.
But not all accountability advocates are bullish on the findings.
“Our people paid a high premium for a mix of public relations advice and common sense,” says Jason Renaud of the Mental Health Association of Portland. “There’s no recommendation that would have stopped Jack Collins or Raymond Gwerder or Aaron Campbell from being killed.”
You know, at first i easily preferred Jeff Smith (out of the 3 major candidates) to be the next mayor. Certainly over Charlie Hales. But ever since the PPA revived their political PAC and threw their endorsement behind Smith – along with as much as $10K in donations (blood money) – i’ve backed way off on supporting him. The fact that all that campaign money has effectively muzzled Smith in terms if criticizing the PPA even legitimately soo, proves how far money walks.
Sad – at least i know better this far ahead.
And it’s also sad that the OIR did not include ANY/ALL manners of death with which Portland cops deployed. By limiting their focus to SHOOTING deaths only, the OIR’s analysis completely omits the vicious Sept. 2006 MURDER of James P. Chasse Jr.!
For once, I have nothing to add. DamosA said it all.
Well so far as i’m concerned, i haven’t said NEARLY enough!
“room for improvement”? So, the cops could be MORE violent?
How do you mean?
Cameron Whitten has my vote.
Hales and Smith are stooges.
my wife Joan Wagar started an affair with a Portland police officer named Eric Carlson in 2005, and Eric Carlson nick named my wife Joan Wagar Mrs Dash after she started poisoning me.
Eric Carlson and his bro’s in law enforcement made sure I could not get help from a hospital by coercing my doctors into not taking a toxicology test, and behind my back my wife Joan Wagar and her daughters were destroying my reputation so no one would care that I am a victim, and they have a name for it too they call it “Pedofying” meaning they run around labeling me as a pedophile to their friends, neighbors, and coworkers, but they don’t press charges, while to my face they pretended to be a loving family.
For two years between 2005 and 2007 I was stuck at home in my apartment, too ill most of the time to go anywhere because of the repeated poisonings done to me by my family, and Joan Wagar and her daughters and her sister Vickie Rosales spent two years pedofying me at their place of employment that they succeeded in recruiting their department in softlines against me and to lie for them, softlines department at Clackamas Walmart is the clothing department and shoes department combined.
On March 26th 2007 Joan Wagar helped Eric Carlson and a John Ray to break into our home early in the morning by opening her bedroom window for them to crawl in through while I was asleep in the living room on the couch.
Eric Carlson and John Ray sneaked into our daughter Kayle Wagar’s bedroom and they molested her, with Joan Wagar’s help and permission, and John Ray was photographing it.
I woke up on the couch hearing my wife whispering to a guy and I heard a guy whisper back to her, thinking I was catching my wife in her affair with the cop Eric Carlson I got up and put a audio recorder in my wife’s purse and laid back down knowing my wife will be leaving for work soon, I did not realize they were in my daughters bedroom until later when I listened to the audio recorder.
What I caught on that audio recorder has to be one of the sickest things ever recorded, I caught Joan Wagar, Eric Carlson, John Ray, and my our 17 year old daughter making child porn, and then they planted copy’s of it on our computer in my folder, then John Ray climbed out the window and then Joan Wagar and Eric Carlson sneaked past me into the kitchen and they poisoned my coffee pot and coffee cup, and then Joan Wagar grabbed her purse and both of them walked out our front door.
Once they were outside they discussed with each other a little of what they just got done doing, and then they got into their cars and drove to Clackamas Walmart, when they got to Clackamas Walmart Joan Wagar’s sister Vickie Rosales was waiting in the parking lot for them because she knew what they were doing and she wanted to know how it went, and they all told Vickie Rosales about it, and they were laughing about it, cracking jokes and bragging they framed me as a pedophile and poisoned my coffee pot!
As other Walmart employees showed up they bragged to them that they caught Terry Wagar in the act and they got it on photogenic, but when they got into the break room at Walmart everyone in the break room was cracking jokes about how Eric Carlson was dressed up like Terry Wagar, Joan Wagar even jokingly introduced Eric Carlson to another Walmart employee as Terry Wagar and everyone in the break room broke out into laughter and an employee jokingly said after that “So you must be incognito then! bwahahaha!” and after that Joan Wagar was discussing with everyone in the break room she is going to make some purchases with her husband Terry Wagar’s check card in the store.
After everyone goes to work Joan Wagar starts printing out copy’s of a flyer she and another woman already had prepared and she prints out hundreds of copy’s of a flyer labeling her husband Terry Wagar as a pedophile!
When Joan Wagar and Eric Carlson had some time to be alone in the back of Clackamas Walmart Eric Carlson admitted to Joan Wagar he was framing her husband over a missing runaway, and then Eric Carlson and Joan Wagar discussed who they were going to invite to their pre-wedding party!
Vickie Rosales and her husband were at the top of their list!
There is a whole lot more on that audio recorder, a LOT more, I was not their only victim they have a history of poisoning people and for framing people, Eric Carlson has since changed his name and Portland police cover up all complaints made against Eric Carlson and Joan Wagar, now Joan Carlson!
I was a plasma donor when Joan Wagar started poisoning me.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/53065984/JoanEricSgtWalker
http://salem-news.com/articles/may072012/wagar-diary.php
http://www.rotten-eggs.com/2011/02/doubleclick-and-mrs-dash-real-life.html#comment-form
Terry Wagar