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Court Monitor Begins Oversight of USDOJ Agreement,
Compliance Officer Submits Final Report
Community Engagement Committee Covers Various Topics,
Mental Health Advisory Group Flops Again

Court Monitor and COCL Overlap Makes Awkward Transition

When the Agreement was amended again in November 2023 (PPR #91), the arrival of the Court Monitor coincided with the removal of about half of the actionable paragraphs, turning some of the remaining remedies over to the City for "self-monitoring," and a 30 day overlap period where the COCL could, for lack of a better term, show the Monitor team the ropes. Unfortunately, the Agreement also requires the Monitor to spend time creating a monitoring plan, which has to be approved by the DOJ and the City. As a result, though the new team technically took over on July 1, they may not be ready to begin their own examination of the PPB's activities until August or September. The COCL put out its final quarterly report covering Q1 2024 on July 1, but because unlike dozens of other deadlines in the Agreement their 30 day overlap was treated quite literally, they did not amend the Report based on community input. The Monitor may or may not put out a report on Q2/Q3 in September... they only have to do two per year. If they don't, the community may have no idea what's been going on at the PPB until 2025 with a report covering three quarters at once.

Simon's approval came at a Status Conference held on May 15. As usual, several members of Portland Copwatch (PCW) read testimony into the record, including concerns that the Portland Police Association was acting in bad faith by filing a ballot measure to overturn the new oversight board. When the ACLU also raised this point, Judge Simon made it out as a First Amendment issue rather than that an "intervenor" in the case was trying to undermine the reforms promised in Paragraph 195-- to which the PPA agreed in 2022.

The Q4 2023 and Q1 2024 Reports were not earthshaking. The COCL only focused on the remaining paragraphs, so both Reports were shorter than usual. Only 11 paragraphs are currently out of compliance. Last issue, PCW reported all the Force paragraphs were in compliance, which was incorrect. Paragraph 69 on force reporting was not resolved because officers were over- or under-reporting use of handcuffing and control tactics due to confusion about what constitutes force. The solution appears to be that the PPB is now recategorizing these minor acts of violence as "de minimis force" which doesn't have to be reported in the same way any more (see Training Advisory and Directives articles). However, the COCL may have been left out of the loop on this discussion as they did not mention it in the Report.

The Q4 Report showed that of the 17 officers who had the most complaints, only six received any kind of counseling (PPR #92). Neither Report, though, faulted the Employee Information System (EIS) for not doing more to change the behavior of these outliers. The COCL says that the DOJ and City need to decide whether the EIS as a whole is effective, but it's not clear there is even agreement to answer that question.

Other remaining issues include the administrative investigations into supervisory actions at the 2020 protests-- now over four years ago. The "Independent" Police Review (IPR) began the investigations in 2022 and are still not done, nor did they explain what is taking so long. Related, the Bureau's crowd control tactics and training have to meet the approval of the Court Monitor, the DOJ and the consultant hired to review them, confusingly called the Independent Monitor, LLC. Implementation of Body Worn Cameras and of the new oversight system (see article) are also among the paragraphs that need fixing.

In related news, the COCL found another Police Review Board hearing was held where the members failed to seek justification for each of the bullets fired by multiple officers in a deadly force event. We hope that the new system will properly analyze these most serious cases.

When Dr. Tom Christoff took over as COCL in 2023, he set up a Community Engagement Team. In the Q4 Report, their conversations with the community showed that people are dubious about (a) the Agreement's ability to fix the system and (b) the City's jettisoning of most of the recommendations for the oversight board as proposed by the Police Accountability Commission.

PCCEP Hosts Chief on Crowd Issues with Mixed Results, Hears of Brain Injuries and Proposes Codification

The PCCEP's work is in part guided by a plan approved by City Council which requires the Chief and Mayor/Police Commissioner to each meet with the group twice a year. PCCEP hosted Chief Bob Day in early June and asked about the Bureau's crowd control unit, at that time dubbed the Public Order Team. Day noted that crowd control would be handled by the Rapid Response Team, the same name that was used prior to most team members resigning in 2021. As noted in the article on protests, he failed to invite PCCEP (or anyone from the public) to the news conference "introducing" the new RRT to the community eight days later. At another meeting a week following the Chief's appearance, PCCEP heard from community members, including several who had been subjected to inappropriate force during protests against the Israeli war on Gaza.

PCCEP also held a special forum on people with brain injuries in late June. One presenter spoke about her experience with police, the courts and jail guards who did not recognize her disability and mistreated her. There was even some discussion of examining prospective officers to see if they have brain injuries.

At several of their meetings, PCCEP discussed what City Code would look like to ensure that their group does not go away in the future. The process labeled "codification" includes basic barebones ideas about the PCCEP's scope and membership, and a requirement for the Chief and Mayor to respond to their recommendations within 60 days. Their proposal has gone to the Mayor, who has said he wants this to happen before he leaves office on December 31.

On August 7, Mark Smith and other members of the Monitoring team met with PCCEP and tried to assure them that community engagement is important to their process. That may be true, but there is an inescapable feeling that they were hired to push the remaining outstanding issues to the finish line as quickly as possible.

The second half of that meeting included a brief discussion of the Bureau's proposed crowd control policy (directives article), ending with no decision or direction for the Settlement Agreement and Policy Work Group. As a result, PCCEP will need to turn in their comments past the deadline given to the general public. They acknowledged there needs to be a way for equitable time for all interested parties to weigh in on policy recommendations, which is more complicated for advisory groups who only meet once a month.

BHUAC Hears from Wrong Investigators About Deadly Force

The BHUAC holds most of its meetings out of the public eye. At their quarterly public meeting in April, they did not talk about the presentation they received in March on deadly force incidents because the notes had not been published yet. What?? Yet, at the July meeting, they did not even have the issue on their agenda. Fortunately there was very low turnout and Portland Copwatch was able to raise a number of questions. The March notes indicated that the presentation to BHUAC was by homicide detectives, who are only looking to see whether officers violated the law when they shoot someone. The BHUAC did ask them questions about the administrative review on whether officers violated policy, which goes through the PRB. The presenter incorrectly told them that PRB hearings are 100% confidential and that he wasn't sure how to track recommendations coming from the Board. Had they invited Internal Affairs-- or held an open meeting where PCW could have spoken-- they would have known that PRB reports are published twice a year (albeit heavily redacted) and include the recommendations. It seemed by the end of the July meeting that at least Chair Beth Epps had more of an understanding of why PCW has been pressing the BHUAC for years to comment on deadly force cases-- they're the experts in mental health, and the rest of the community has to count on them to tell the Bureau how to change their violent responses.

See PCW's analysis of the COCL reports at: <portlandcopwatch.org/doj.html>.

Find the BHUAC's notes at <portland.gov/police/bhu-advisory>.

September, 2024
Also in PPR #93

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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