Portland: The battle over civilian review
“I mean, I would not be a good auditor if I did not say there’s always room for improvement in my office as well as everywhere else,”
---Portland Auditor Gary Blackmer to Portland Local News Daily last August.
“I am disappointed in this report. I wanted fresh insights and strategies to help us improve but this report doesn’t move our system forward,”
---Blackmer, on Feb. 28, 2008
Columnist Dan Bernstein of the Press Enterprise addresses the budget crisis hitting the Riverside Unified School District and the closure of Grant Elementary School which has been protested by its students and their parents.
In the meantime, City Hall is putting a proposed rezoning on hold which may help Jack Harris, 83, keep his birds to the delight of many who have enjoyed visiting them. The city's proposal to change the zoning rules led to some major protesting by city residents which halted the plans to do so in their tracks.
In other cites, budget cuts but no job losses are planned for Redlands while in Rialto, the city is trying to figure out how to do more developing in its downtown area.
Was Mira Loma sold out by the recent vote by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors or was it a clerical error? A perplexing vote taken by the majority of the board (but apparently not Supervisor Bob Buster) was roundly challenged by the Press Enterprise's Editorial Board.
In Portland, Oregon there's been a lot of discussion about the roles of the Independent Police Review, the Citizen Review Committee and a report evaluating both which was drafted by consultant Eileen Luna-Firebaugh about a month ago.
The latest news being that Mayor Tom Potter has taken control of the IPR away from the city's auditor, Gary Blackmer. There are those who are happy about that and there are those who are not.
(excerpt, Portland Mercury)
Potter's announcement followed a protest at city hall last Thursday, February 28, over the mayor's decision to delay a public hearing on the report until after March 18, when council will hold a work session on the report.
"I do not believe the mayor's office is the proper, permanent home for IPR, but it is the most appropriate during this review," Potter wrote in his statement.
"It's clear from Blackmer's response to the consultant's report that Blackmer is not the person to be the running the IPR," says Dan Handelman of activist group Portland Copwatch. "I think he showed at the very least he doesn't understand what the community wants a citizen review board to do, and at worst he showed contempt for the citizenry."
Yes he did and his removal from the process albeit temporary is an interesting development in this ongoing situation. Tension between Potter and Blackmer may have preceded the hiring of Luna-Firebaugh to do an analysis on the IPR and CRC.
But last August, Blackmer's attitude was much different about the prospect of a review being done on the IPR.
(excerpt, Portland Local News Daily)
On a more personal level, it could put Blackmer, the mild-mannered, bespectacled government official who enjoys good relations with other elected officials, in a spot he doesn’t much care for — the spotlight.
Luna-Firebaugh, who staffed civilian police oversight agencies in San Francisco and Berkeley, came to Portland last month and hauled away boxes of documents provided by IPR staff. She also met with rank-and-file cops and their supervisors, as well as cop-shop critics who routinely pan IPR’s work.
Asked whether it is an interesting feeling to have the program he designed scrutinized, Blackmer appeared to choose his words carefully.
“We’re always open to constructive recommendations,” he said.
OK, but is it an interesting feeling to have your work scrutinized?
Blackmer laughed and said: “Yeah, well, sometimes surgeons must undergo surgery. And what they hope is that they have a very skilled surgeon who will not slip. And in the same way, I think we all hope that when we have someone evaluating us they are doing so in a thoughtful and methodical way.”
His office already undergoes peer reviews by other auditors. “There is a certain anxiety,” he said.
The difference, he said, is that unlike audits, which are conducted according to government rules, the consultant’s performance review does not have to follow standards.
“You’re just going to have to accept that you’re going to have an opportunity to look at the report and comment on it, and you kind of cross your fingers,” he said.
One of the ongoing issues has been Blackmer's objection to providing the CRC with more power. That sentiment is shared by the current director of the IPR, Leslie Stevens. But they're not the only ones who would like to maintain the status quo of the current IPR being placed under Blackmer.
The action of moving the IPR to Potter's office has also angered the leaders of the Portland Police Bureau's labor union.
(excerpt, Portland Tribune)
Activist Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch, when told of Potter's statements, said, "That sounds like what we've been saying. I think that's a great idea."
In an interview with the Portland Tribune, however, King cited statistics showing that police shootings are down substantially in Portland, and so are citizen complaints. He said Potter "must fundamentally misunderstand how successful we've been in Portland. I guess nothing positive about the police would ever satisfy him."
King suggested that Potter is acceding to Handelman’s criticism of IPR. “I’m guessing he plans to give it to Dan Handelman,” King said sarcastically. Many cops do not like Handelman, a frequent police critic.
King noted that in many other cities' cop watchdog units that have had a more empowered citizens role, the units have been hampered by strife and litigation. In California, civilian oversight agencies can no longer hold public hearings about disciplinary matters due to a police union lawsuit.
"Everywhere else in the country it gets ground to a halt by grievance and lawsuit and maybe that's what he needs here," said King of Potter.
What King neglects to mention is how much more powerful the law enforcement labor unions are in California than they are in Oregon and consequently, they have more power and more funding to engage with civilian review mechanisms from San Diego County to the Bay Area and back again. What King neglects to mention that often this "strife and litigation" happens when labor unions don't like the involvement of citizens where they believe it doesn't belong.
There are no updates on whether or not the city government will take King's suggestion and hand off the IPR to Handelman.
King should by all means start providing "what he needs here" which no doubt in a city like Portland will bolster the position of civilian review at a time when it's needed. Any action by his union is certain to add to the debate not detract from it by again, building the argument of why the IPR and CRC are important, necessary and yes, need to be improved and more accessible to the public.
A lot of people watching this might throw up their hands and yell "conflict", "division", "strife" and other words but what's taking place is likely a long overdue discussion on the role that civilian oversight should play in Oregon and what role it is playing and the expanse that lies between the two. It's a very important discussion and even if it's contentious to some, the process can't really proceed foreward in a meaningful way without it.
Watching from Riverside which undergoes its own similar process about every 10 years or so, has been interesting. Riverside is different than Portland in political climate but also in the sense that its city government does anything that it has to do to avoid any dialogue remotely like what's happening in Portland on any issue. When over 300 people answered City Manager Brad Hudson's challenge to pack the chambers of City Hall on the issues related to the renovation of the library, the city officials appeared indifferent about the opinions expressed, making it appear that they had made their minds up already.
Perhaps if it were an election year.
At any rate, there's been discussion in various places involving civilian review and related issues in Riverside for the past several years whether City Hall has provided the venues for those discussions or not. Just like there's discussions that take place on other issues such as the city's fiscal budget picture. Among the same populations that issued pink slips to two city council members and nearly a third one during Election 2007 in part because many people do not feel that their opinions even as voting residents matter as much as the opinions of those who pay money into the campaign coffers of elected officials. After it became clear during the summer of 2007 that there would be four runoff elections involving three incumbents, there were more efforts especially visible ones to solicit input from city residents on various issues including park renovation.
The Northwest Constitutional Rights Center, which was one of those organizations that was derided by Blackmer as not being "community" has some recommendations about what it thinks should be done with Portland's oversight mechanism which is a hybrid model with the IPR and CRC being implemented in 2001.
(excerpt)
One of the main concerns is whether the IPR is actually independent of the Police Bureau. For example, the NW Center is concerned that investigations of police misconduct by the Bureau's Internal Affairs Division are not reliable and may result in biased findings.
Portland needs an effective oversight system that:
(1) is independent of the police,
(2) uses un-biased, independent investigators,
(3) whose findings about individual officers' conduct are binding,
(4) has the ability to make policy recommendations,
(5) is an effective oversight mechanism that is accessible to the community.
The NW Center's major goal for the police accountability project will be to reform the IPR/CRC system by advocating for key changes to the system. The priority changes should include giving the CRC:
(1) the ability to conduct independent investigations of allegations of police misconduct;
(2) the power to compel civilian and police officer testimony and evidence;
(3) the power to make binding decisions on whether or not police misconduct occurred.
The recommendations indicate that this organization wants the CRC to operate more like a review board than in its role in terms of overseeing the IPR. By providing the abilities to do independent investigations, issue subpoenas and release findings on complaints, that would provide the committee with some of the tools to perform that role. However, the city itself seems quite a ways away from implementing anything similar to that at this point in time.
Like the Community Police Review Commission in Riverside, the CRC has nine members serving on it. However, unlike Riverside, only one of those serving has a law enforcement background. Currently serving on the CPRC are three commissioners who are current or former law enforcement officers. Two others have immediate family members serving in law enforcement including in the Riverside Police Department. For most of its history, the commission has consisted of at least half of its members being current or former law enforcement officers. The CRC on the other hand seems more indicative of tapping into a cross-section of a city's population.
Links:
IPR FAQ
What needs to change about IPR
Sandy Banks, columnist for the Los Angeles Times takes on the Los Angeles Fire Department in the wake of recent payouts in connection with racial and gender discrimination cases.
WWSB ABC-7 covered this story about the police chief's decision in Brandenton to overturn a recommendation made by the department's internal affairs division involving an officer.
The role the federal agencies played in addressing the problems going on in Milwaukee's police department made a lot of difference according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
(excerpt)
They said Milwaukee police couldn't be trusted to investigate their own, the district attorney worked too closely with the department to do the job, and the city's Fire and Police Commission just shipped complaints back to police.
But the federal Frank Jude beating trial demonstrated a lesser-known but powerful option in pursuing civil rights complaints against local police: the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office.
After state prosecutors failed to convict anyone for Jude's beating, the FBI launched its own case that ended with seven former officers being sent to prison, the three primary culprits for more than 15 years each.
The Jude case not only highlighted the potential for federal civil rights action, but is helping to change how the district attorney and the Fire and Police Commission handle complaints.
The officers had their badges out, a New York Police Department officer claimed while testifying during the trial of four officers charged in connection with the 2006 fatal shooting of Sean Bell and the wounding of two of his friends.
However, the officer who testified said that he hadn't arrived onscene until after the 50 shots had been fired at Bell's car.
(excerpt, New York Daily News)
One of the detectives "had his shield out around his neck and he was holding it in my direction," Maloney said. "He had a firearm in his right hand. It was pointed down."
Maloney, the first regular police officer on the scene, said one of the undercovers told him, "I'm from narcotics, we have two perps shot."
Maloney said that an agitated crowd had gathered nearby, at the corner of 94th Ave. and Liverpool St. About 10 to 20 men and women were "crying and screaming and wanting to know what was going on," he said.
Maloney's testimony came a day after NYPD Lt. Michael Wheeler, who also was called as witness by the prosecution, testified he did not see any visible police identification when he encountered Detective Marc Cooper - one of the cops on trial.
The lieutenant in charge of the undercover team, Gary Napoli, has said he did not hear the detectives identify themselves as cops.
The question of whether detectives Cooper, Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnora identified themselves as police officers before they opened fire on Bell's car is key issue in the case.
---Portland Auditor Gary Blackmer to Portland Local News Daily last August.
“I am disappointed in this report. I wanted fresh insights and strategies to help us improve but this report doesn’t move our system forward,”
---Blackmer, on Feb. 28, 2008
Columnist Dan Bernstein of the Press Enterprise addresses the budget crisis hitting the Riverside Unified School District and the closure of Grant Elementary School which has been protested by its students and their parents.
In the meantime, City Hall is putting a proposed rezoning on hold which may help Jack Harris, 83, keep his birds to the delight of many who have enjoyed visiting them. The city's proposal to change the zoning rules led to some major protesting by city residents which halted the plans to do so in their tracks.
In other cites, budget cuts but no job losses are planned for Redlands while in Rialto, the city is trying to figure out how to do more developing in its downtown area.
Was Mira Loma sold out by the recent vote by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors or was it a clerical error? A perplexing vote taken by the majority of the board (but apparently not Supervisor Bob Buster) was roundly challenged by the Press Enterprise's Editorial Board.
In Portland, Oregon there's been a lot of discussion about the roles of the Independent Police Review, the Citizen Review Committee and a report evaluating both which was drafted by consultant Eileen Luna-Firebaugh about a month ago.
The latest news being that Mayor Tom Potter has taken control of the IPR away from the city's auditor, Gary Blackmer. There are those who are happy about that and there are those who are not.
(excerpt, Portland Mercury)
Potter's announcement followed a protest at city hall last Thursday, February 28, over the mayor's decision to delay a public hearing on the report until after March 18, when council will hold a work session on the report.
"I do not believe the mayor's office is the proper, permanent home for IPR, but it is the most appropriate during this review," Potter wrote in his statement.
"It's clear from Blackmer's response to the consultant's report that Blackmer is not the person to be the running the IPR," says Dan Handelman of activist group Portland Copwatch. "I think he showed at the very least he doesn't understand what the community wants a citizen review board to do, and at worst he showed contempt for the citizenry."
Yes he did and his removal from the process albeit temporary is an interesting development in this ongoing situation. Tension between Potter and Blackmer may have preceded the hiring of Luna-Firebaugh to do an analysis on the IPR and CRC.
But last August, Blackmer's attitude was much different about the prospect of a review being done on the IPR.
(excerpt, Portland Local News Daily)
On a more personal level, it could put Blackmer, the mild-mannered, bespectacled government official who enjoys good relations with other elected officials, in a spot he doesn’t much care for — the spotlight.
Luna-Firebaugh, who staffed civilian police oversight agencies in San Francisco and Berkeley, came to Portland last month and hauled away boxes of documents provided by IPR staff. She also met with rank-and-file cops and their supervisors, as well as cop-shop critics who routinely pan IPR’s work.
Asked whether it is an interesting feeling to have the program he designed scrutinized, Blackmer appeared to choose his words carefully.
“We’re always open to constructive recommendations,” he said.
OK, but is it an interesting feeling to have your work scrutinized?
Blackmer laughed and said: “Yeah, well, sometimes surgeons must undergo surgery. And what they hope is that they have a very skilled surgeon who will not slip. And in the same way, I think we all hope that when we have someone evaluating us they are doing so in a thoughtful and methodical way.”
His office already undergoes peer reviews by other auditors. “There is a certain anxiety,” he said.
The difference, he said, is that unlike audits, which are conducted according to government rules, the consultant’s performance review does not have to follow standards.
“You’re just going to have to accept that you’re going to have an opportunity to look at the report and comment on it, and you kind of cross your fingers,” he said.
One of the ongoing issues has been Blackmer's objection to providing the CRC with more power. That sentiment is shared by the current director of the IPR, Leslie Stevens. But they're not the only ones who would like to maintain the status quo of the current IPR being placed under Blackmer.
The action of moving the IPR to Potter's office has also angered the leaders of the Portland Police Bureau's labor union.
(excerpt, Portland Tribune)
Activist Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch, when told of Potter's statements, said, "That sounds like what we've been saying. I think that's a great idea."
In an interview with the Portland Tribune, however, King cited statistics showing that police shootings are down substantially in Portland, and so are citizen complaints. He said Potter "must fundamentally misunderstand how successful we've been in Portland. I guess nothing positive about the police would ever satisfy him."
King suggested that Potter is acceding to Handelman’s criticism of IPR. “I’m guessing he plans to give it to Dan Handelman,” King said sarcastically. Many cops do not like Handelman, a frequent police critic.
King noted that in many other cities' cop watchdog units that have had a more empowered citizens role, the units have been hampered by strife and litigation. In California, civilian oversight agencies can no longer hold public hearings about disciplinary matters due to a police union lawsuit.
"Everywhere else in the country it gets ground to a halt by grievance and lawsuit and maybe that's what he needs here," said King of Potter.
What King neglects to mention is how much more powerful the law enforcement labor unions are in California than they are in Oregon and consequently, they have more power and more funding to engage with civilian review mechanisms from San Diego County to the Bay Area and back again. What King neglects to mention that often this "strife and litigation" happens when labor unions don't like the involvement of citizens where they believe it doesn't belong.
There are no updates on whether or not the city government will take King's suggestion and hand off the IPR to Handelman.
King should by all means start providing "what he needs here" which no doubt in a city like Portland will bolster the position of civilian review at a time when it's needed. Any action by his union is certain to add to the debate not detract from it by again, building the argument of why the IPR and CRC are important, necessary and yes, need to be improved and more accessible to the public.
A lot of people watching this might throw up their hands and yell "conflict", "division", "strife" and other words but what's taking place is likely a long overdue discussion on the role that civilian oversight should play in Oregon and what role it is playing and the expanse that lies between the two. It's a very important discussion and even if it's contentious to some, the process can't really proceed foreward in a meaningful way without it.
Watching from Riverside which undergoes its own similar process about every 10 years or so, has been interesting. Riverside is different than Portland in political climate but also in the sense that its city government does anything that it has to do to avoid any dialogue remotely like what's happening in Portland on any issue. When over 300 people answered City Manager Brad Hudson's challenge to pack the chambers of City Hall on the issues related to the renovation of the library, the city officials appeared indifferent about the opinions expressed, making it appear that they had made their minds up already.
Perhaps if it were an election year.
At any rate, there's been discussion in various places involving civilian review and related issues in Riverside for the past several years whether City Hall has provided the venues for those discussions or not. Just like there's discussions that take place on other issues such as the city's fiscal budget picture. Among the same populations that issued pink slips to two city council members and nearly a third one during Election 2007 in part because many people do not feel that their opinions even as voting residents matter as much as the opinions of those who pay money into the campaign coffers of elected officials. After it became clear during the summer of 2007 that there would be four runoff elections involving three incumbents, there were more efforts especially visible ones to solicit input from city residents on various issues including park renovation.
The Northwest Constitutional Rights Center, which was one of those organizations that was derided by Blackmer as not being "community" has some recommendations about what it thinks should be done with Portland's oversight mechanism which is a hybrid model with the IPR and CRC being implemented in 2001.
(excerpt)
One of the main concerns is whether the IPR is actually independent of the Police Bureau. For example, the NW Center is concerned that investigations of police misconduct by the Bureau's Internal Affairs Division are not reliable and may result in biased findings.
Portland needs an effective oversight system that:
(1) is independent of the police,
(2) uses un-biased, independent investigators,
(3) whose findings about individual officers' conduct are binding,
(4) has the ability to make policy recommendations,
(5) is an effective oversight mechanism that is accessible to the community.
The NW Center's major goal for the police accountability project will be to reform the IPR/CRC system by advocating for key changes to the system. The priority changes should include giving the CRC:
(1) the ability to conduct independent investigations of allegations of police misconduct;
(2) the power to compel civilian and police officer testimony and evidence;
(3) the power to make binding decisions on whether or not police misconduct occurred.
The recommendations indicate that this organization wants the CRC to operate more like a review board than in its role in terms of overseeing the IPR. By providing the abilities to do independent investigations, issue subpoenas and release findings on complaints, that would provide the committee with some of the tools to perform that role. However, the city itself seems quite a ways away from implementing anything similar to that at this point in time.
Like the Community Police Review Commission in Riverside, the CRC has nine members serving on it. However, unlike Riverside, only one of those serving has a law enforcement background. Currently serving on the CPRC are three commissioners who are current or former law enforcement officers. Two others have immediate family members serving in law enforcement including in the Riverside Police Department. For most of its history, the commission has consisted of at least half of its members being current or former law enforcement officers. The CRC on the other hand seems more indicative of tapping into a cross-section of a city's population.
Links:
IPR FAQ
What needs to change about IPR
Sandy Banks, columnist for the Los Angeles Times takes on the Los Angeles Fire Department in the wake of recent payouts in connection with racial and gender discrimination cases.
WWSB ABC-7 covered this story about the police chief's decision in Brandenton to overturn a recommendation made by the department's internal affairs division involving an officer.
The role the federal agencies played in addressing the problems going on in Milwaukee's police department made a lot of difference according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
(excerpt)
They said Milwaukee police couldn't be trusted to investigate their own, the district attorney worked too closely with the department to do the job, and the city's Fire and Police Commission just shipped complaints back to police.
But the federal Frank Jude beating trial demonstrated a lesser-known but powerful option in pursuing civil rights complaints against local police: the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office.
After state prosecutors failed to convict anyone for Jude's beating, the FBI launched its own case that ended with seven former officers being sent to prison, the three primary culprits for more than 15 years each.
The Jude case not only highlighted the potential for federal civil rights action, but is helping to change how the district attorney and the Fire and Police Commission handle complaints.
The officers had their badges out, a New York Police Department officer claimed while testifying during the trial of four officers charged in connection with the 2006 fatal shooting of Sean Bell and the wounding of two of his friends.
However, the officer who testified said that he hadn't arrived onscene until after the 50 shots had been fired at Bell's car.
(excerpt, New York Daily News)
One of the detectives "had his shield out around his neck and he was holding it in my direction," Maloney said. "He had a firearm in his right hand. It was pointed down."
Maloney, the first regular police officer on the scene, said one of the undercovers told him, "I'm from narcotics, we have two perps shot."
Maloney said that an agitated crowd had gathered nearby, at the corner of 94th Ave. and Liverpool St. About 10 to 20 men and women were "crying and screaming and wanting to know what was going on," he said.
Maloney's testimony came a day after NYPD Lt. Michael Wheeler, who also was called as witness by the prosecution, testified he did not see any visible police identification when he encountered Detective Marc Cooper - one of the cops on trial.
The lieutenant in charge of the undercover team, Gary Napoli, has said he did not hear the detectives identify themselves as cops.
The question of whether detectives Cooper, Michael Oliver and Gescard Isnora identified themselves as police officers before they opened fire on Bell's car is key issue in the case.
Labels: Backlash against civilian oversight, business as usual, officer-involved shootings, racism costs, sexism costs
posted by Five Before Midnight | 1:12 PM
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