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Revolving Door at Training Division Brings
Killer Cop as Acting Captain
Training Advisory Council Continues to Get Limited and Incorrect
Information from Police

Volunteers at Portland Copwatch (PCW) have chronicled the astounding amount of turnover in key positions at the Training Division which make continuity near impossible. Chris Lindsey, appointed as Captain in January, was on leave for the March Training Advisory Council (TAC) meeting, leaving Acting Captain Bret Burton in charge. Burton (who was at the time a Multnomah County Sheriff's Deputy) was one of the three officers who beat James Chasse, Jr. to death in 2006 (PPR #40). Lindsey was already the seventh person to head the Division in seven years-- and had previously been one of the six people who acted as the Force Inspector in that same timeframe. The TAC continued to struggle with getting the Bureau to provide them data which would make their quarterly review of Force Reports meaningful, even though the Compliance Officer/Community Liaison clearly stated in a February report that the PPB can add data points to the current Reports without upsetting the requirements for the US Department of Justice Settlement Agreement.

The current Force Inspector, Lt. Mike Roberts, presented force data from Q2 and Q3 2023 at the January meeting, conveniently not mentioning that the percentage of people subjected to force who were Black was 27% and 24% respectively in those time frames. Roberts was absent in March, so analyst William Hollands presented the Q4 data-- also not mentioning that figure was 25% this time. Nobody has yet explained why Black people in a City with a 6% Black population has such a high rate of force used on them, nor why those numbers dipped to 20-22% in 2021 but went back up again afterward.

Hollands made a comment that the officers did not choose to initiate these force incidents, saying something about how it takes two people. That may be true, but officers also do not involuntarily use force.

The Bureau has been making a point recently to state that the Force Inspector's team doesn't deal with deadly force cases. That may be strictly accurate in the sense that they're supposed to look at other kinds of force incidents to consider whether policies or training may have been violated, but the deadly force data still appear in the quarterly reports. They never use the names of the people who are shot, and sometimes won't even give demographic data even though all the information about people's race and gender has already been made public by the time the Reports are made. PCW suggested they should at least do a five year total for data on shootings, which would show that for 2019-2023, of 29 people who Portland Police shot or shot at, at least five were Black men, or 17%.

One interesting fact was discussed at the January meeting: One reason the police use so many pursuit intervention techniques, in which they crash cars to stop them, is an increase in their efforts to recover stolen cars. It seems strange they would endanger lives and the very property they are trying to recover to get people's vehicles back to them.

Also:

--In January, former Chief Chuck Lovell and Community Engagement Officer Natasha Haunsperger presented about community engagement, taking up the full 30 minutes allotted to them and forcing TAC to use an extra 10 minutes for Q&A. They referred to police responses as "customer service" and PCW reminded them that people are not going to the "police store" to buy something.

--In March, when TAC considered a proposal to allow public input at the Chair's discretion instead of only at the end of meetings, longtime member Jim Kahan complained that he did not want to be "lobbied." As a group which has made a lot of impact by bringing information to the table, it's insulting to refer to PCW as "lobbyists." It also shows contempt for the community who the TAC members are supposedly representing when discussing Training policies on behalf of the 630,000+ people who weren't appointed to the Council, some of whom would not be welcome because they would not pass criminal background checks.

Burton did not say anything particularly alarming at the March meeting, instead he spouted off a lot of information about how many trainings were going on, and the Bureau's intent to get crowd control training going in time for the election season this fall (also see lawsuits article).

May, 2024
Also in PPR #92

Portland Copwatch
PO Box 42456
Portland, OR 97242
(503) 236-3065/ Incident Report Line (503) 321-5120
e-mail: copwatch@portlandcopwatch.org

Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.

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