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The NW Center is working to make Portland's citizen-based police oversight system a truly independent body which is responsive to citizen complaints and that is more effective, democratic and fair. We also represent activists who have been targeted and attacked by police officers because of the political content of their message, and individuals who have been victims of discrimination and abuse at the hands of the police.
Police misconduct costs the City of Portland an average of $350,000 per year settling excessive use of force and wrongful death cases. Other instances of police misconduct include racial profiling, surveillance and harassment of political protestors, and on-going harassment and abuse of the homeless and other historically-disenfranchised communities. In 2004, the city paid more than $840,000 to settle several protestors' suits against the Portland Police Bureau. According to Portland Copwatch, thirteen people have been killed since 2002 and at least eighteen people have been shot and hit by Portland police.
We recognize that the police have a difficult and often dangerous job of maintaining the peace but this should not be a pretext for using excessive force. Portland police continue to use Tasers despite a number of studies showing their lethality (a Medford,Oregon resident was killed in Portland in early in 2006 after he was "tasered" several times.) The Bureau continues to use pepper spray as a means of crowd control despite evidence that pepper spray can be extremely dangerous to children, people with asthma, and the elderly.
These problems reflect the need to have a system that empowers community members to hold the police accountable for their actions. While legal action can be a powerful tool to hold individual officers accountable for their conduct, litigation is generally inaccessible to those who lack the necessary resources even in the most egregious cases. The need for a citizen-based oversight system gave rise to the Independent Review Division (IPR) and Citizen's Review Committee (CRC). The general consensus among the NW Center's constituencies is that the IPR/CRC do not represent their interests. Many community leaders agree that the system has consistently failed to address complaints and patterns of behavior by the Portland Police. For instance, the Bureau's own statistics show there is a pervasive practice of racial profiling. Clearly, there is a compelling need to have a system that gives victims of police misconduct a way to air their grievances and to eventually improve the overall quality of policing.
While the IPR/CRC system was an improvement over its predecessor, there are major flaws and shortcomings which have left many Portland residents wondering whether the system is working at all. Recently, Commissioner Erik Sten told the Portland Mercury that while the current system is better than the one it replaced four years ago, the council also promised to revisit the complaint system if it wasn't working. "I think that we need to have a real public look at what's working and not working," he said.
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, and (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; and (3) the power to make binding decisions on whether or not police misconduct occurred.
Source Info: Portland Mercury, March 30-April 5, available at http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/Content?oid=37897&category=22101