Slow-coming computer program curbs public review of use of force
By JACOB QUINN SANDERS Issue date: Tue, Mar 21, 2006
The Tribune

 The Portland Police Bureau can´t tell you who its most violent cops are.

   None of the roughly 1,200 use-of-force reports filed by Portland police since their approval for use in August 2004 has made it into a computer for the analysis promised by police brass 18 months ago. The reports exist only as two-sided sheets of paper that remain unanalyzed because there still is no computer program written to enter them into the Police Bureau´s electronic records system.

   On top of that, said Capt. Randall Killinger, the Police Bureau´s records manager, it will be a minimum of four to six months before they are all entered.

   “Right, that means probably a year,” said Alejandro Queral, director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center. “This is not the transparency the Portland police have promised their citizens.”

   Portland Auditor Gary Blackmer said he was unaware the use-of-force reports had not been entered and said he would take it up with the Citizens Review Committee attached to his office´s Independent Police Review Division at a public meeting tonight.

   “There is data there that is of tremendous public interest and that is definitely of use in understanding the Police Bureau,” Blackmer said.

   Use-of-force reports are listed in the Portland Police Bureau´s 2004 Statistical Report in the “Accomplishments” section under the heading “Improve accountability.”

   Designed to be entered into police computers to provide the background data to weed out bad cops and help the bureau train police officers, the reports document every time an officer uses or draws a weapon, whether pepper spray, a baton, Taser, beanbag shotgun or 9 mm handgun. The reports were a reaction to the controversial Kendra James shooting in May 2003.

   The reports note the officer´s name, the type of weapon used, whether it worked, the date, whether the suspect was armed and the part of the suspect´s body hit, and a section for narrative description of the events, among other things.

   Killinger said staff cutbacks, a budget squeeze and more pressing priorities — such as the field-reporting system that has been delayed more than a year — have kept the use-of-force reports almost entirely unread.

   And because they remain on paper rather than in an electronic database, members of the public asking for copies would have to pay a standard fee of $10 per report — or around $12,000. An electronic version, Killinger said, would likely be substantially cheaper.

   “I think the program is pretty close to being done,” Killinger said. “Then it´s just a matter of my people having the opportunity to enter them all.”

   In an interview in July 2004, Chief Derrick Foxworth lauded the introduction of the reports, saying it would make the Police Bureau more transparent to Portlanders and would prove useful in the revamping of an early-warning system for troubled or dangerous cops.

   The 2004 Statistical Report said, “The data will enable the Training Division to evaluate training and to recommend changes to training and policy, and will aid the continuing efforts of the Police Bureau to be accountable to the community.”

   Queral said the lack of follow-through detracted from the Police Bureau´s credibility.

   “Without that kind of oversight, reform is going to come about very, very slowly,” he said. “It contributes to the overall concern we have about what Portland police are doing and whether they´re keeping their promises to the citizens of the city.”