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IPR Assessment Calls for Civilian A long-awaited assessment report on the "Independent" Police Review Division (IPR)--Portland's "Civilian Police Review Board"-- was released on January 24. The report has led to some interesting developments, including IPR Director Leslie Stevens quitting her post to take a job inside the Portland Police Bureau at their new "Office of Professional Standards." Mayor Tom Potter talked briefly about taking the IPR out of City Auditor Gary Blackmer's hands, since Blackmer made it clear he was not supportive of making many of the changes proposed in the report. Mayor Potter later backed down. The report contains a lot of amazing information, with some basic concerns about the IPR system that community members have been pointing out for years. For instance: The IPR doesn't do independent investigations; its 9-member Citizen Review Committee (CRC) doesn't have enough power; the public doesn't know the system exists; and those who use it are far less satisfied than the officers who do. And, perhaps most clearly, it shows that the system is nearly impossible to understand and tends toward "behind the scenes" work, instead of being open and transparent to the public. The 137-plus-page report by nationally recognized expert Eileen Luna-Firebaugh contains at least 3 dozen recommendations, many of which could immediately bring improvements. Most significantly, it suggests that the IPR should be doing independent investigations not only on its own, but when directed to do so by the CRC. The current ordinance allows such investigations, but the IPR has never conducted one during its entire 6-year existence. Since the report's release, there have been a number of events, most significantly a hearing at City Council on March 19. The Council accepted the report unanimously, with the Mayor promising to look at how to implement its recommendations. In addition, Portland Copwatch (PCW) organized a "People's Hearing" on February 28, the originally scheduled date for the hearing, at which a dozen community leaders spoke about the need for a more independent board. Representing the City Council at that event were five empty chairs labelled with each Commissioner's name. On March 18, the day before the Council hearing, they held a "work session," meaning that Council members and Blackmer, who oversees the IPR, were allowed to speak, but the public was not. In the weeks leading up to the hearing, PCW released an analysis of the report and a companion YouTube video, viewed over 250 times (http://www.youtube.com/peaceandjusticeworks ). On March 12, the League of Women Voters (LWV) held a community forum about the IPR system at which PCW and Alejandro Queral, the former director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center, talked about the value of the report's recommendations while Auditor Blackmer and newly elected CRC Chair Mike Bigham questioned its validity. However, Bigham also publicly stated that (a) he felt the CRC should find a way to help after officer-involved shootings and deaths in custody, since now the CRC is held "at arm's length" and the media puts the officers "on trial," which is "not serving anyone"; (b) the IPR should consider putting appeal forms in with the disposition letters that go to complainants; and (c) the IPR should consider allowing citizens to appeal "Service Complaints" (what we call the "dirty fork finding"), in which an officer gets talked to for what IPR deems minor misconduct. Bigham repeated only this last proposal when he testified at Council a week later. Meanwhile, Auditor Blackmer and Director Stevens released their own analyses of the report on the morning of February 28. The scathing memos appeared to be efforts to divert attention away from the shortcomings outlined in the report, as they omitted important recommendations and inadvertently affirmed the report's suggestion that the IPR and the Auditor do not adequately value community input. The Oregonian's January 26 editorial advised "when [Auditor Blackmer] does respond formally late in February, he should take care to model the nondefensive behavior he expects city agencies to show when he audits them." The Auditor would have done well to heed that advice. Instead, he rejected nearly every recommendation as being vague, faulty or already being done, labelling the report's conclusions as based on "errors, faulty assumptions, and inadequate research." For her part, Director Stevens avoided discussion of the pros and cons of most of the actual recommendations, instead attacking the report's conclusions--lending a further sense of defensiveness to the conversation. Blackmer showed his contempt for the citizenry when he wrote his thoughts on Luna-Firebaugh's suggestion that the CRC "direct the IPR Director to conduct an independent investigation" in certain circumstances. "I disagree on principle because I will not have my employees under the direction of a citizen body. ... I was elected to serve the citizens of Portland, not to have my judgment and expertise over-ruled by a committee appointed by Council." He repeated this assertion at the LWV hearing, and at the Council work session declared that the CRC should not have this power because "they don't know what a thorough investigation looks like." This would appear to be another slap in the face to the CRC, whose main functions include determining whether police Internal Affairs Division (IAD) investigations are thorough. The consultant made it clear that an independent police review board should be run by the board's director, not an elected official; in some cities where the board mainly reviews IAD investigations, this job is called the Police Auditor. Perhaps Auditor Blackmer believes his position as an elected Certified Public Accountant makes him Portland's Police Auditor. At the Council hearing, Luna-Firebaugh presented the report by broadly framing the idea of a "continuous improvement model" and highlighted her emphasis on empowering the CRC and finding ways for the IPR to do independent investigations. Commissioner Randy Leonard, who ultimately stated that he likes what the report says, chided Luna-Firebaugh for expressing that she is biased when it comes to police--even though what she said was that she is biased in thinking that the City Council should know what's going on with their law enforcement. She also said she is biased in favor of citizen involvement in government. Portland Police Association (PPA) President Robert King testified that he felt the entire report was biased, even though it includes interviews with numerous officers who complained about, among other things, favoritism in the IAD process. The ACLU of Oregon, LWV, and Jose Espinoza, a PCC professor, were invited to testify in support of changes to the IPR and CRC. Public testimony also included Queral, Portland Copwatch, the Albina Ministerial Alliance, the Community Committee to End Racial Profiling, former CRC chair Hector López, former state representative Joe Smith, Diane Lane Woodcock (member of the 2000 Mayor's PIIAC Work Group), and attorney Steven Sherlag. PCW's testimony included debunking the Auditor's claim that Portland's officer involved shootings are down because the IPR contracted outside reports with the Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC) starting in 2003. Blackmer's figures show the average shootings down from about 9 to about 5 after 2003. We pointed out that (a) there is no causal link between the IPR reports and the drop; (b) every street officer was armed with a Taser starting in 2003, leading to their use 1000 times per year; (c) there was only one shooting in 1995, when the old system, PIIAC, was in place, and (d) the amount of money paid out in lawsuits has doubled since 2003 (see article in this issue). Sherlag's comments wrapped everything up nicely. He told the Council how a client of his tried using the system to hold an officer accountable, but IPR stopped their investigation because he won his lawsuit against the City (PPR #35). He said the only reason he can see to use the IPR is to build a case that the City doesn't adequately address misconduct, and he implored the Council to make improve-ments, saying "I don't want to sue the City any more." During closing comments, Commissioner Sam Adams made it clear he wanted to find a way for the IPR to conduct independent investigations. Due to either confusion or deliberate efforts to distract, Auditor Blackmer and Chair Bigham implied that the recommendation means the CRC must screen all 700 complaints that come to IPR to decide who should investigate; in fact, the recommendation is to set criteria that would trigger such investigations. The report notes that in Boise, Albuquerque and Eugene, OR, such criteria are: high-profile shootings, deaths, use of force with serious bodily harm, racial profiling, illegal searches, and when there is "high emotion in the community," or a conflict of interest. Speaking of conflict of interest, Stevens' departure to the Police Bureau could not have better illustrated that the IPR's relationship with the police is far closer than its connection to the community. The Auditor posted a job description for a new IPR Director on March 24, which did not mention either the ability to conduct independent investigations (though it mentions conducting investigations as a required skill) nor the Citizen Review Committee (though it says the Director has to work with the public). Information on the assessment, including links to the report and all the above-mentioned analyses, are on our website at http://www.portlandcopwatch.org.
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May, 2008
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Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#44 Table of Contents
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