| Written by Webmaster Gary Blackmer,
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To start, you should know that it was not an audit. This was not a safe place to send auditors, so we hired consultants. If you think that is crass, ask yourself why you’ve never conducted an audit of officer-involved shootings.
You should also know that my office contains the Independent Police Review Division (IPR) that takes complaints against the police and ensures that the investigations are thorough and fair. We apply other strategies like mediation, performance standards, and policy reviews, but City Council also wanted us to deal with officer-involved shootings. Council wanted us to hold public forums after each shooting but I argued that these activities required a huge outlay of resources, did not produce constructive solutions, and were far outside our usual types of complaints – issues like officer rudeness. After he was hired, Richard Rosenthal, the Director of IPR, proposed we contract with some national experts to conduct a review and Council adopted our alternative.
To my knowledge, no other city has voluntarily undertaken this kind of review and reported the results to the public. Some cities have been forced to undergo these reviews by the US Department of Justice and some cities have had a review but kept the results confidential. City attorneys argue against public disclosure because it may compromise their efforts to represent their government’s employees and result in more tort claim costs. Unfortunately, this runs counter to the fundamental principle of accountability to the public as well as the practical matter that transparency seems to be the best prod for problem-solving.
The risks are high in other ways. On a political level, the relationship between a police department and its community is most threatened by shootings. The use of deadly force against citizens can increase feelings of fear rather than safety. Add the fact that, across the nation, members of minority communities are more likely to be victims of police shootings, and the issue regularly threatens to detonate in the community.
On a personal level, there is no other action of government that is more heart-wrenching to those involved. Officers, family members, surviving victims all have their worlds turned inside out. Public and private discourse is filled with many free-ranging “what-ifs” and hindsight perspectives – the “coulda’s, woulda’s, and the shoulda’s”. Shootings have often forced officers to leave policing because of the emotional damage these thoughts can inflict. And the stories of the victims whose lives were cut short are often pure tragedy.
The work of auditors is about risks and rewards, though. We mine an agency’s operations for those gold nuggets of savings and improvements. Sometimes we find big savings, sometimes we find a well-run organization – which are both good news for the public. Our reports measure any dollar savings and we identify the qualitative impacts, but only on rare occasions can we point to lives saved. When there is a need for an objective review, and possible substantial benefits to the public, I think an auditor must seriously consider stepping up to such challenges. Simply contracting with experts may be sufficient to ensure the credibility and usefulness of the results.
We assembled a selection committee including police representatives and citizens and conducted a national search. We contracted with the Police Assessment Resource Center (PARC), a non-profit that assists in the oversight of police departments. They had done similar kinds of work for Detroit, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, and other communities. We asked them not to identify individual officers, and to recommend general improvements on policy, training, and investigative quality. Council directed us to only review cases no longer subject to litigation and, as a result, nearly all the 34 cases occurred prior to the current Chief’s years with Portland.
Our contract with PARC required several extra steps in their normal review process. We asked them to provide the Police Bureau an end-of-fieldwork briefing, to discuss a confidential draft of the report with the Chief, commanders and investigators, and to attach a response from the Bureau to their report. Auditors routinely perform these steps but the activity was new to them. We strongly believe in this kind of communication during audits and, though a little daunting, we find it increases the likelihood of getting recommendations implemented.
They conducted their work and when we heard that they had reached their preliminary conclusions, we requested a meeting with the Chief and his commanders. This meeting ended very quietly, because of the gravity of the topic and findings. One great benefit that arises from these briefings is the time it allows managers to question and discuss the issues among themselves to validate the findings and begin thinking about solutions. As a result, when we facilitated the meetings to discuss the report, the managers were focused on how to implement the recommendations.
You can read the PARC report on the IPR website and in the 220 pages you’ll find a narrative that describes weaknesses in how the Police Bureau investigates, reviews, and manages risk in deadly force situations. PARC emphasized many important areas to achieve their goal – to always protect the safety of officers as well as the public. While there will be occasions when deadly force is necessary, managing the risks that officers face can reduce those occurrences. They saw no indications of gratuitous use of firearms or other weapons, or of racial or ethnic bias in the incidents they reviewed.
PARC consultants were unfamiliar with the elements of a finding, yet their report is an excellent example of all the necessary elements, including an objective tone. Many of the 89 recommendations address “cause” elements that are familiar to us all: inadequate communications, non-adherence to sound training and policies, weak coaching and supervision, unclear duties, and insufficient “learning” from incidents. One commander said to them, “There is no administrative review in this organization. People are afraid to ask hard questions. People are afraid to hurt feelings.” The causes are mundane, but the context is highly charged.
The Chief’s response letter addresses each of the 89 recommendations, agreeing with and committing to implement over 90% of them. I made a commitment to the Chief, as I do with every manager who agrees to improvement, that we would emphasize the Bureau’s strategies for change and positive responses to the recommendations, rather than the findings of the report. My press release simply stated that the Police Bureau recognized the areas needing improvement and had committed to making the changes. In its presentation of the report, PARC consultants also recognized good work done by the Bureau and urged Council and the public to apply the lessons of the report to the future, rather than placing blame for the past. The Chief sat with the consultants and again made those commitments to City Council.
We printed 500 extra copies to distribute to all the precincts so every officer had an opportunity to read the entire report. I think this helped defuse some officer reactions against a report whose contents they might only learn through a reporter’s summary or second hand.
Not surprisingly, the report was front page news for several days running. The Oregonian newspaper editorial said, “The report is a devastating critique of Portland police, and there’s no way to soften the blow. The public can forgive mistakes, but it’s hard to forgive a police agency that fails to learn from them.”
The 89 PARC recommendations call for substantial changes in the organization and its operations, nonetheless I was surprised a few days later when the Mayor requested the resignation of the Chief. I don’t know the influence of other factors on her personnel decision but I found him to be open, cooperative, and civil in all our interactions. The new Chief has also committed to implementing the recommendations and has recently stated that 40 recommendations are implemented, another 46 are under review and in progress, and only 3 have been rejected.
I know the results of this review put a severe strain on all the working relationships within the Police Bureau, in City Hall, and in the community. Significant problems and profound changes will do that. This report will never let Portland return to its past practices, which is progress. In addition, we will hire consultants again next year for another review, so regular monitoring will encourage further improvements.
The consultants delivered everything we asked for, except comparative statistics on police shootings. It is a sad commentary on police performance measures that PARC could not obtain consistent, reliable counts of officer-involved shootings from other city police departments. (Incidentally, they found the experience of discussing the draft report with police managers to be extremely valuable and are considering making it a regular part of their other reviews.)
Gary Blackmer is the Portland City Auditor and ALGA Webmaster.
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