The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2026-01-28
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Session summaryEditor-reviewed
On January 28, 2026, Portland City Council held a work session on the ninth periodic report from an outside oversight group reviewing Portland Police Bureau officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths, covering ten incidents from 2019–2022. Presenters described their review methodology, background with the city dating to a prior in-custody death review, and case-file review process, then outlined seven recommendations addressing pre-shooting tactical decision-making, evaluation of parked-vehicle boxing tactics, discrepancies between officer statements and physical evidence, coordination between the police bureau and emergency dispatch, supervisory approval before pursuit intervention technique (PIT) maneuvers, tracking of internal recommendations, and reviewing cases during active litigation. Bureau leadership, including the police chief and division commanders, responded to each recommendation, indicating agreement with most, partial implementation of others, and disagreement specifically with requiring supervisory approval before PIT maneuvers. Councilors asked questions about training, tactical review capacity, recommendation-tracking systems, mental health-related incidents, dispatch coordination, litigation timing, and comparisons with other jurisdictions. Discussion also touched on sentinel-event review concepts, oversight of alternative public safety responses, the community police academy, and broader concerns about federal law enforcement activity. No votes were referenced in this portion of the transcript.
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0 Good afternoon, friends and family. I'm calling to order this work session on the office of independent review report. The office of independent review group works with the city to review officer involved shootings. They review these events and offer the city feedback on policy. This is euler's ninth periodic report. Today's work session will be presided over our community and public safety co-chairs, councilor Kanal and Novick councilors. Who am I passing the gavel to? Councilor. Take it away. Thank you.
1 Thanks everybody for being here. Councilor Novick and I co-chair the committee. We're going to co-chair this session. I'll take the first part and then pass it to him to facilitate later. First, I want to start I think that we're passing it just to deputy director boyd and then introducing or am I going to dc?
2 I was just going to do the introduction.
3 Okay. Then we'll pass it to dca. Warren, thank you so much, everyone for being here.
4 Good afternoon council. My name is tracy warren. I'm the deputy city administrator for operations. Beside me I have kelsi lloyd who is acting as the independent police review director. Kelsi is going to give some opening remarks, and then we're going to move through the report. We'll talk about background and history, methodology, brief incident overview, the recommendations, and then we'll have give a summary response to recommendations. And then we'll do question and answers and a full discussion with council. So I'll turn it over to kelsi.
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5 Just real quick before you come in. I didn't get your title right. So acting director lloyd. Right. Thanks for thanks for being here.
6 Thank you. Thank you. And good afternoon, members of council. I'm kelsey lloyd, deputy director of the independent police review. Ipr holds the contract with the group that produced this report. As you may know, city code requires ipr to retain an outside expert to review completed investigations of officer involved shootings and in-custody deaths. Since 2010, the group have been those outside experts. There have been eight of these reports and each one has been presented to city council. This current report covers ten incidents that occurred between 2019 and 2022. Every incident involving the use of deadly force or a death in custody undergoes an administrative investigation, training division, review and consideration by the police review board that recommends findings to the chief of police. Ipr reviews all administrative investigations and is a voting member of the police review board. Only. Reviews closed cases that have fully completed that administrative review process, so they are able to examine the incident itself, as well as the ensuing investigation and accountability process. The administrative process process can take time to complete, so there is often a gap between the incidents themselves and our ability to review them during their reviews. They have access to the complete case file and meet with ipr and police bureau staff as needed. For additional information, we're working on the report. Although the incidents covered in this report occurred a few years ago, ipr has worked to ensure that all critical incidents receive a review by the group to increase transparency for the community. These reports are extremely valuable because they provide a thorough, objective review of the most serious uses of force by Portland police, conducted by experts with extensive experience in evaluating these incidents, they touch on important issues that are crucial to the police bureau and the city going forward. In the years the city has been working with our they have met with elected officials and their staff, community advocacy groups and leadership at Portland police, many times developing good relationships that go back many years. I understand that you're taking public testimony tomorrow, but I wanted to mention that there will also be a public meeting tonight at 6 p.m. Hosted by the citizen review committee, and our folks will be there to answer questions about this report. I hope everyone's had a chance to review the report, and we thank you for your time and attention. I'll hand it over now to julie rulon with the group. Okay.
7 Good afternoon. Happy. So happy to be here in Portland and experiencing your new form of government. We've been here many times in the past. My name is julie rulon. I'm with our group and my colleague mike gennaco also. And I think mike's going to get us started with the first slide.
8 Okay. Can we move to the next slide. So I thought maybe a good good afternoon all again, michael gennaco with our group. And it's great to be back in Portland. Appreciate the opportunity to engage with you all. Councilors, city leadership as well as your community. And we look forward to the community engagement this evening, as well as the formal presentation at your formal meeting tomorrow. We thought it might be helpful since there are some new folks we have not engaged in to this point. To give you a little bit of history about us and our work and our particularly our work in Portland and Oregon. We can our work as oversight professionals, police professionals. In 2001, when we ended up getting an assignment to oversee the l.a. County sheriff's department in los angeles. Prior to that time, julie had been involved in civil rights work for private firm as well as working for special counsel in los angeles, involving. Oversight. Prior to the existence of the our group in los angeles. I, on the other hand, had been doing work as a federal prosecutor for the civil rights division, and that included in engaging in prosecuting hate crimes, human trafficking, human modern day slavery, as well as police misconduct. And as a result of that opportunity that I did for about 15 years, first in Washington, but really all over the country, I was involved in prosecuting police officers for criminal misconduct, and I moved to los angeles in 1994. I did that in 86 throughout the country. In 94, I moved to los angeles, and I ended up doing additional work as a prosecutor of police misconduct in the central district of california in the us attorney's office. Topical. And thinking back on this, one of my most significant cases as a prosecutor in los angeles, and I believe this may be the last prosecution, successful prosecution in the west coast, but I was able to successfully prosecute an ins, which is what ice used to be called, an ins detention officer for using excessive force against a detainee in terminal island. So based on that experience, I ended up moving into the world of oversight. After about nine years in oversight, we were engaged by your city to conduct a review of a very controversial in-custody death. The death of james chassis, and that ended up beginning the beginning of our continued engagement with the city. While the chassis in-custody death was a one off assignment, we ended up being asked by the then auditor who oversaw oversaw this project at the time to start to conduct a regular reviews of all in-custody deaths and officer involved shootings involving members of the Portland police bureau, and have been doing that regularly since that time. So we've had a significant and long engagement with your city with regard to this kind of work, and appreciate the opportunity to present this new spate of cases and our review from them. Our work also has caused us to be involved in other auditing functions throughout the country, primarily in california, but not exclusively so. We have done projects for other jurisdictions in Oregon, for example, as a result of this engagement, I believe. So we have done work in west linn. We've done work for tigard, city of tigard, city of springfield, and Clackamas county, just to name a few of the assignments we've had in your state. So we come to that to this project with quite a bit of experience. We have probably unfortunately, during the course of the years we've been doing this over 20 years doing this, reviewed over 500 officer involved shootings and a significant amount of in-custody deaths as well as part of that work. But everyone is different and everyone presents different challenges. And one thing about our approach and our focus is that our work is not to investigate the incident that's already been done right. That is not going. That is not our work. There are times in which we are asked by jurisdictions to do an investigation, but that's not the scope of this assignment. And we are also really not focused on the conduct of the particular officer who may be involved in an in-custody death or officer involved shooting. Again, that's the responsibility of the city at this point. The bureau to conduct the investigation and also to ensure that there is a robust review process. So the conduct of the individual officer is not our focus. What our focus is, is really on evaluating the strength of the investigation that is conducted into these serious incidents and evaluate the strength of that investigation, as well as taking a critical review of the subsequent review that is conducted by the bureau with regard to accountability, with regard to policy development, with regard to other reforms that might emanate from these tragic incidents. The way we see it is that, you know, obviously, whenever an incident involving the ultimate force that officers are authorized to use under the appropriate circumstances is done, that it be done judiciously, that it be done within policy and within the law. But in addition to that, every incident, in our view, ought to be looked at holistically, completely and thoroughly with a look towards whether. The incident itself presents learning lessons, both with regard to training officers at large, both with regard to providing seeing whether the guidance provided to officers at the time was sufficient, and if not, to increase that level of guidance and supervision, and to determine whether there are other remedial measures, either at the individual officer level or at the bureau level writ large, that might be appropriate with regard to one goal. And that goal is really to better prepare the bureau, should officers be faced with a similar set of circumstances and a similar set of challenges. And the idea is that if, in fact, there is a robust review and a sufficient response and some remediation, either at the bureau level or at the individual officer level, that will reduce the likelihood that there will be a future deadly force incident. What we have found in the past, and I'm not speaking to Portland here, but for agencies that do not do that kind of review, they're only destined to repeat the problems of the past. Right? I'm not the first person to have said that, but I really endorse it. And I think that is concomitant with the way in which we do our work. As I indicated earlier, our work started with regard to the 2010 report. That was a review of an incident that had already been four years old. And if you if you ever take a chance and look at the chassis incident, we talk about some of the challenges that waiting that long to do review has with regard to intervention, remediation improvement. Because if you have to wait four years before you finally get to that improvement phase, then you are there's four years in which future incidents could occur that are going to be plagued with the same kinds of issues. With regard to the nine reports that we have now compiled between 2012 and 2026, we are up to 75 critical incidents. As part of those nine reports they're featured on on the city's website. Anyone can access them. And what we most appreciate about the scope of work that you have provided us and given us the opportunity to do is that level of transparency. So we're able to write publicly about the good, the bad and the indifferent with regard to all of the all of the incidents that we have had a chance to review and speak candidly and publicly about them. And that's a testament to, I think, the city's interest in in ensuring a thorough process and accountability and transparency with regard to these tragic events. You know, in order for officers to do their work, we imbue them with great authority, great authority, and no other profession is given that authority by us individuals. Residents of the united states. And that awesome authority is authority to detain and arrest individuals. But even a greater authority is also imbued to officers, and that's the authority to use force under appropriate circumstances in order to effectuate arrests, to stop resistance, to keep us safe. But to the degree that forces the ultimate authority intrudes on our fourth amendment, necessarily, it must be done judicially and with best practices. And in all cases, if at all possible, to be avoided, that use of force. And so that's our goal and that's our objective. And that sort of lays out our precepts. Julie I'll turn it to you.
9 Yeah. Next slide please. Just real quick. As mike said, our our goal in these reports is to review the bureau's own internal work and the work that's done. And so we review the complete investigative file. And that's often, you know, many thousands of pages or thousands of pages. It includes the detectives criminal investigation, the bureau's internal affairs investigation, any video that's available. And, you know, that's in in these cases, it's there's not a lot of video available. We're really happy to see bureau members now wearing the body worn cameras. You know, most of the agencies we have worked with have had those for a number of years. So getting to review video of incidents is really become quite routine. So we're grateful and happy to see that that the bureau's made that taking that step, the city has taken that step to to equip its officers. The training division review is another big piece of this file. And it's really we've talked about it repeatedly in, in all of our reports. And but it bears repeating that that document is really a testament to the bureau's commitment to using these events as a learning opportunity. There aren't other. We work with a lot of other agencies, and we just don't see a training division that is so forthcoming with its critique of officers performance and and willingness to sort of go dive deep into an incident, evaluate all of all of the decisions made, and then to lay that out in written form is is pretty remarkable. And something we are always complimentary of when we do these reports. And so it really is a very useful piece of this file. And we talk repeatedly in this report about the things that are identified by training as part of the sort of opportunities for learning and growth and, and needed improvements. So that's, that's a big piece of, of our review as well. We look at the grand jury transcripts. When these cases have gone to grand jury and review those. And then all of the documents that that talk about the internal review process and, you know, the police review board decisions and how those decisions make their way up through the chief's office and, and ultimately, where those where those land next slide. So in this report, it is our ninth report. There are ten incidents. Two of those are fatal officer involved shootings. Three of them are shootings in which the individual was hit but survived the wounds. Four of them are shootings where the the officer fired at somebody but did not hit them. And just again, I want to compliment the bureau on its willingness, the fact that the non-hit shootings get the exact same investigative treatment, exact same treatment by the training division as a the fact that somebody did not get hit does not mean that we don't take this very seriously. It's still an exercise of deadly force. And again, that's not something that we see in every agency. Often the non-hit shootings are kind of like no harm, no foul. And that that is not the way we see it. It's not the way your bureau sees it. And we think that's a good thing. And then there was one incident where the individual, there's a standoff in a car, a long standoff with officers, and ultimately that person in the car had a gun and took his own life. So that that was the 10th of those incidents. Throughout the report, we address a number of issues, including pre-shooting tactics and the decision making that go into that sort of led up to the uses of force and these things that are kind of we'll get to the recommendations in a minute. But we also talk about consistency in addressing the recommendations that come from a lot of different, a lot of different pieces of the review process. We talk, one of the themes is is looking at shooting at moving vehicles, and then the delays that are that resulted from litigation. In these cases, we make seven recommendations and again, we will get to those they deal with, the review process and follow up investigative protocols, training and timing of reviews. Next slide please. And again we don't want to we didn't want to walk through each of these incidents. And so just in terms of breaking them down and looking sort of thematically, there are three incidents where bureau members shot at a moving vehicle and or at a vehicle. And that is sort of an interesting, certainly timely, after what we've seen in minneapolis. And it's a it's a thing that it's a issue that is addressed by very strict policy. And it's a it's a concern in all of the work we do. When you see the shooting at vehicles, and there are a number of very particular concerns about that. It's interesting that there were three of those incidents in this set of cases, because it's not something that historically we had seen in prior reports. So it was kind of I'm not trying to make more of it than other than a statistical blip, but it was sort of an interesting observation that there were three in this after, you know, so many years where we just didn't didn't see that come up. Four of these incidents involve people who were in some kind of mental health crisis or had a suicidal intent. And again, that is a common repeat theme that we've seen not just in Portland, but really everywhere. As as law enforcement grapples with how to deal with people who are in profound behavioral health crises. And then in these cases, the set of cases, we see officers responding to a number of different types of calls, different scenarios, including a domestic dispute, a couple of cases where they're tracking down stolen vehicles, performing a warrant service, public disturbance, one subject who had was being pursued for a home invasion and then criminal trespassing. Next. Next slide please. So our recommendations, they are intentionally out of order just because of the way it made sense to us to discuss them. So the numbers jump around. Our recommendations are driven by what we see in the cases that we review. So we've grouped them here. But just we'll talk briefly about the sort of about the recommendation and, and why it's included in this report. Take this. Take number one.
10 Yes. Thank you. So we will go through the recommendations and the rest of our presentation will focus on the recommendations themselves. I think it really is important to have a factual recitation of each of the events, each of the incidents of for mere transparency purposes, as well as to give a better understanding for what became the organic reason for the recommendations that we have made, rather than just putting out the recommendations by themselves. But each of these recommendations do stem from these these incidents that are the focus of our of our work and the way these cases come to us. And the reason that there are these cases is that the way the contract has been structured is that there will be a certain time period in which the cases are closed, and during that time period, all the cases that are closed during that time period then come to us for review and then become the foundation of our report. So that's how that works. So looking at the at the recommendations and trying to put a little more meat on the bones with regard to what those recommendations are intended to accomplish, the first one has to do with the bureau's review process. And as julie indicated, and I concur of course, that. This is all comparative, but the bureau is quite significantly ahead of many other similar sized agencies that we work with with regard to a robust review process. So what that means is that both internally and eventually by the chief, but even before that by the police review board, there is a review, a formal review of officer's conduct, a supervisor's conduct, so that review formally forces the review board and eventually the office of the chief to come to certain dispositions or decisions, if you will, with regard to whether the performance, the conduct of the officers or supervisors met expectations were within policy and were within the law. Obviously, the district attorney has a different responsibility, and that is to evaluate whether or not any of the conduct rises to the level of criminality. And the d.a. Does that, and that's where the grand jury comes into play. But the bureau has an independent responsibility, again, to ensure that the performance of its officers are consistent with their expectations, as set out by bureau policy. And the way they do that is a very formal way. So with regard to the actual decision to use deadly force, that is something that is evaluated formally. So the review board initially and eventually the chief will be making a decision. With this question in mind, did the use of deadly force by any officer? Sometimes it's multiple officers. Was that consistent with policy, or was the shooting out of policy? And over the past years, there have been occasional times in which the shooting has been found to be policy. Not often, but it has occurred in this in this set of cases, there is there are no cases in which that decision was made, but the decision is being made on each of these incidents. In addition, pursuant to a recommendation we made maybe ten years ago, the bureau also agreed to make a formal decision with regard to what we call post-incident conduct. And the way this came about was we saw a couple cases in our review process in which there were some concerns raised by us and by the bureau themselves about whether or not, for example, the medical aid that is provided to the downed individual after the shooting was sufficiently timely, was sufficiently robust. There were also some concerns about the management of the scene. You know, the the way in which the scene is held, the protocols with regard to getting forensic people there to start the forensic investigation, etc. And so as a result of those concerns, and pursuant to recommendation that we made, the bureau agreed to also, in addition to looking at the shooting decision to also evaluate the post-incident management of the scene, was medical aid provided in a timely way or supervisors effectively managing the scene and ensuring a robust processing of evidence. And those are the two areas in which, since that time, the bureau in every case is making a yes no determination with regard to that. And also if there are issues with regard to maybe not a violation, but performance issues that should be addressed, the bureau uses those mechanisms to do that. What we haven't seen, though, is that there hasn't been a formal assessment or evaluation. Yes, no, in or out of policy with regard to what we call pre-shooting conduct. Another term that you may hear about is whether or not there was appropriate attempts at de-escalation leading up to the shooting. That's also part of shooting pre-shooting conduct. Another way of describing it is tactical considerations. And what we have learned over the course of our review of these 500 plus incidents is oftentimes the decisions that are made pre-shooting often contribute to the eventual decision to use deadly force, right? So if there are decisions made that cause the officer to get too close to the individual, to cause the officer to move too quickly towards the individual, where there wasn't sufficient thought to deploy de-escalation tactics that can cause the shooting itself to be more inevitable than if there was more careful consideration of some of these other concepts. So oftentimes it's those pre-shooting decisions that sort of drive the train, leading ultimately to the use of deadly force, if that makes sense. And while, as julie indicated, the training reviews that have been in existence since we began our project 15 years ago. While, as I said, those protocols look at the shooting itself and make formal decision and training review looks at that and looks at the post-shooting management of the scene. The training review also does look at pre-shooting conduct and evaluates that pre-shooting conduct and makes determinations about that pre-shooting conduct in their training review, whether it met expectations, what's consistent with training that the bureau provides, what's consistent with policy, the the hole that we have seen in the system, though, and that forms the basis for this recommendation, is that, as I talked about the yes no decisions on the shooting itself, the yes no decision about the post-incident management, there is no yes, no decision with regard to pre-shooting conduct. So the shooting review board, police review board is not required to make an evaluation about whether or not the pre-shooting conduct met expectations. The chief is not required to make a formal evaluation of whether the officer's pre-shooting conduct met expectations, was consistent with training, or was in violation of expectations, and the recommendation is intended to reform that system so that there is a yes no on that. And that's really the essence of the recommendation. What we'd like to see in our recommendation is intended to formalize what the training review is doing and requiring the board, as well as the chief. Eventually, upon receiving the recommendations from the board, to make that determination. And what that means isn't necessarily that someone's going to be fired behind it, or that someone's going to be found out of policy with regard to that. That could happen on an egregious situation, but really more frequently is what we would see is that as a result of that, yes. No evaluation, that the involved officer might be sent to additional training, that the involved officer, if the performance seems to be somewhat suboptimal, could be could be subject to briefing and targeted training so that that officer or set of officers that are involved in the incident are better prepared to handle the next challenge in their career. And it's as simple as that. And so that's recommendation one.
11 Okay, I'm going to jump to recommendation six, which has to do with sort of a structured response to recommendations that come internally from the review process. And so there is this very multi-layered review. Right. There's a training division review. Sometimes they have very often the training division makes recommendations. Police review board sometimes makes recommendations. There is a commander who reviews the whole file. The reporting unit manager who sometimes makes recommendations, things that might have to do with training issues, of course, or, you know, different types of equipment that the bureau should be looking at. Or there are just a wide range of recommendations that we see come up in these files. And the bureau has historically been sort of inconsistent in the way those recommendations get, get either formally accepted, rejected a question about, you know, who's in charge of them, who's going to do you know, what it will take to implement this recommendation? Do we think it's a good recommendation, all that sort of formal consideration. And so this is kind of a repeat recommendation we've made over over the course of a few reports. And that is to just really create a more crystallized process where you can take all of those recommendations and say, yes, no, and if so, who's in charge of doing it, and what's the report back and what's the due date? We see this. Some agencies manage this very well where they have, you know, specific action items coming out of each incident. And then somebody assigned to to track the implementation of that and kind of make sure that there's the follow through. I believe that many of the recommendations that we see in these reports do get done. I think training follows through and and adapts its training in accordance with what it's seen. I'm not saying that the recommendations are not always done or they're not, you know, or they're ignored. But I think without the formal process and the sort of mechanism for for going back and checking and ensuring that they got implemented, things can fall through the cracks and, and you can kind of lose track of things. So that has been. Like I said, a recommendation we've made before. And we reiterate it here in in our recommendation number six.
12 Thanks. Going to the next recommendation, which we number seven and, and this is all because they stem from the chronology of cases. And that's why they're out of order here. And this really pretty straightforward over the years that we've been doing this since the beginning. And we learned in chassis some of the downsides of waiting a long time to effectuate any reviews or improvements, because in that case, it took four years before any improvements were even thought of. And in fact, some of the investigation was stalled while the litigation went forward. Over the years that we've been doing this, we have been reviewing cases that are in active litigation and reporting on them without any untoward circumstances or significant adverse effect on the litigation posture, etcetera. But this time, two cases were held back from us that were in litigation with the issue of concern that the review, our independent review, should not occur until that litigation was over. That was a divergence from the practice that we had been living under for the ten plus years we've been doing this work for your city, and it caused us some concern. If any kind of transparency, any kind of recommendations coming out of our review are forestalled until the litigation is over, that could mean that it could be years in many years, depending on the length of litigation. Those of you who've been involved in litigation know sometimes how long it takes to get done. That means that during those years. Any reform or learning coming out of our report will be forestalled until we're finally able to access the information and then report to you and your community and to the bureau itself on what we see. And so our recommendation is to go back to the way the practice that we have been living under for the ten plus years and not hold back a case for our review simply because it's an undercurrent litigation. We have had an opportunity to review the chief's response to our recommendations, and note that he is in agreement with this recommendation. He has asked, though, that as part of that, if we are to go back to a situation in which there in which we are reviewing a case in active litigation, that we simply prepare a share, a draft of that report with your city attorney to make sure that we are factually on the same page with regard to our recitation of incidents, we have no problem if, in fact, that ends up being the system, because in many jurisdictions we do exactly that anyway, so we don't have a problem with that being part of the implementation of this recommendation. If we end up going back to that system.
13 Next slide please. This one to you.
14 Yeah. There was an incident in which a parked vehicle was used as an attempt to box or to keep an individual from fleeing. That didn't end up well for a whole lot of reasons. It wasn't very successful. And. And using a parked vehicle in that way can be problematic. And so our recommendation to was intended to raise this issue with the bureau and to update its training curriculum and its guidance to officers appropriately. And we have learned through the again, through the chief's response that this there has been some reform here that I believe satisfies this recommendation. So we appreciate that the bureau has taken this recommendation up and has recognized, even before our recommendation was made, that h. By the way, on the shooting of vehicle that julie referenced, it's heartening to see that since that time, there haven't been these kinds of incidents. And I do think that's because a training really upped its game after these three incidents and did really, through training, really impressed upon its officers. The concerns raised when a deadly force is used against a moving vehicle.
15 Got the next one to.
16 The next one. Yeah. Number three just again comes out of one of the cases we looked at. And this was a shooting at moving vehicles case. And in fact, as indicated in the report, the officer indicated that the reason that he shot at the moving vehicle is because the moving vehicle was coming in his path, and he felt that he wasn't able to get out of the way of the vehicle in sufficient time to, to and was concerned for his safety and therefore fired a number of rounds at the vehicle as it was approaching him. However, the photographic evidence that was conducted as a result of the investigation that the bureau did showed that, in fact, the bullet holes into the vehicle were, with maybe one exception, all into the side of the vehicle, which means that knowing physics, you're likely not going to be able to shoot into the side of the vehicle if you are positioned in the front of the vehicle. And our recommendation is simply that that was a discrepancy between the evidence, the photographic evidence, the evidence of the truck and the officer's account. And what we didn't see was the internal affairs investigator challenging that discrepancy or addressing that discrepancy during the officer's interview. Nor did we see it being considered as part of the analysis in determining whether the officer's account was consistent with the evidence, and if not, if there's an explanation for why there was an inconsistency. But primarily the officer, since the officer wasn't even questioned about that, wasn't able to explain why there might be discrepancy between his account of the incident and the physical evidence demonstrated by the physical bullet hole evidence. So we've asked, as part of the recommendation that there these kind of discrepancies, if they're identified, be addressed during the investigative process.
17 Recommendation for goes to a piece of regarding the dispatch and how calls get dispatched out to officers. And it's you know, often the police response begins with the dispatcher. And a dispatcher can play a critical role in how prepared an officer is when he or she arrives at that call, based on the information that they've gotten from dispatch, it's we have talked in past reports about the bureau of emergency communications and, and made various recommendations about how it should be involved in some of these post critical incident reviews and and examining its own role in that. It's a little outside our scope because boec is, you know, not part of the police bureau. And I think it's just as a it's interesting that I think you're I don't entirely know everything about your new form of city government. But, you know, I think in the past the bureaus were very siloed. Right. And so if something was happening in the police bureau and like those, there wasn't always great ability to work across those, those bureaus. And I think that's a that's a goal of your new city government. So I think that this is a promising sort of area for perhaps some growth and new communication between the bureaus. But this this recommendation really stemmed from an incident in which an individual went into a store, a convenience store, and was acting erratically and refused to leave and had eaten some food. The store owner, the store manager, the employee called 911 and reported this behavior. And the the critical piece of it is that the the individual had asked the store manager to call the police, and that the store manager reported that to dispatch, but that piece of information did not go to the officers when dispatcher sent them out. It was just a sort of unwanted persons call. He's eaten, food won't leave. And so, you know, it seems like a it's a minor point, but and we don't know, you can't say how things might have gone differently. But as it turns out, this individual said after the incident it was a it was a non-fatal shooting. He said that he was trying to get police to shoot and kill him. Right. So it's that little, little extra bit of information. If the officers had known going in that this person was asking for a police response, he was not just being disruptive and not leaving. He actually wanted the police to come again. I can't get inside the inside the minds of those officers, but perhaps they might have recognized it going in as a mental health call, and perhaps that might have shifted some in some subtle ways, the way they approached the call. And so it was really just this recommendation is, is again, meant to encourage that communication between the police bureau, what they learned from these shootings, and to get that information back to dispatchers so that these kind of responses can be improved.
18 Yeah. The last recommendation has to do with putting some guardrails on what is called a pit maneuver, which is a pursuit intervention technique. And what that means is that. When an officer is engaging and wants to detain a suspect, that instead of pursuing them, instead of trying to pull them over, and if they're nonresponsive and are not complying with directives that the officer actually uses his vehicle or her vehicle to actually strike the subject vehicle and try to disable it. We have seen in other jurisdictions where this has gone very wrong and resulted in injury, either to the officer or to the subject. And in fact, there was a case a number of years ago in Portland involving a van that ended up flipping over, and there was injury as a result of the deployment of a pit maneuver against a van. So the interesting thing here is that the officer recognized that. The type of violation that the individual was suspected of committing did not meet the criteria to pursue the subject. But there are no similar guardrails with regard to engaging in a pit maneuver maneuver. So instead, the officer uses pit maneuver to disable the subject. It was successful in this case, but as a result, it resulted in the officer sort of being alone with this individual, and it took a while before it helped out there. In our view, our recommendation and this is a current policy, recommends that before a pit maneuver is engaged in that there be considered a strong consideration of consulting a supervisor over the radio before doing that. But there's no requirement that that be done, that there get that supervisory approval. Many jurisdictions that we work with have that requirement before a pit maneuver can be deployed. For the various reasons that I've suggested. And so that's what our recommendation here is in this case. And I think that ends our recommendations.
19 I think that that's that's all we have in terms of a presentation. We are really happy to answer your questions and engage with you. Thank you.
20 Thank you. I'll just clarify with the council president, I've seen two versions of this, but we do need to also have pprb come up. And I wanted to verify with you that you'd like that before we open up the q and a.
21 Honestly, I'll let you guys.
22 I think we might do that. And so we might have a little bit of musical chairs, if you don't mind. But thank you so much for the presentation. We have a presentation. I will note we're a little over time. So just flagging for our next presenters and for councilors as well, and our next presenters to discuss the pprb recommended response to the recommendation. I think we have chief of police bob day, commander of the professional standards division, jeffrey bell, captain of the training division. David jackson and andrew jensen is a sergeant in the specialized resources division. Please let me know if you swapped someone, but otherwise I'll hand it over to you. Chief. Thank you for being here.
23 Thank you. Good afternoon. Council president, vice president, councilors, and bob day. I'm chief of police for the city of Portland. City. To my left. Your right is commander jeff bell, professional standards division captain dave jackson from our training division. And sergeant jensen oversees our drone program. Grateful to be here. Appreciate. And their good work. We've been together a long time. I can remember when they started and, you know, a little context. It's been about 16 years. They've reviewed 75 critical incidents, bureau averages about roughly 200,000 calls a year. So, you know, some quick math there puts us in the several million range of calls for service. And 75 critical incidents are super important. But I also think it's important to remember in context that the good work that the men and women of Portland police bureau do every day in managing high stress, critical incidents that don't rise to the level of force that is necessary for this outside review. But we welcome that that same time period, some of the things we're going to talk about today are just, you know, the ever evolving changes in the police bureau. And just as a context, there's been nine chiefs. I'm the 10th chief since o.a.r started their first report. So that does factor into some of the recommendations and things that we've been trying to address. Under my leadership. None of those are to be taken as excuses, just simply some observations that I think are important. As we look at the entire context of what we're trying to address and improve upon. So both mike and julie, we've had a lot of conversations over the years, including this morning, and I just appreciate and respect the work they do. And on a final note, should we still be here an hour and a half from now due to a scheduling conflict, I will need to step out at about 427 to to take a phone call that wasn't anticipated as this set up. So not abandoning you, but you'll be in good hands from the remainder of the time. So let's go ahead and just jump into our response to the to the recommendations. They've already covered them. And so we'll just kind of give you a little overview. The one regarding the pre-shooting tactical decision making. We agree with this recommendation. I will say that, and I think it was highlighted in the report that we do look at that in a training from a training standpoint. But in terms of the yes no decision making policy piece, we're going to add that under our satisfactory performance section two, the directive says this subject sets performance. This subsection sets performance standards for decision making during confrontations and requires that members use sound tactics and good decision making during a confrontation. So that will encompass the entire event. So we will be adopting this specific review. As you can see, for the internal affairs department for internal affairs review. So and I'm just going to go through these quickly for the sake of time. And we can we can come back. If you want something different let me know. So number two. Evaluate the efficacy of park vehicles boxing. We agree with this. And we are putting that into practice. And captain jensen excuse me captain jackson can explain more as it relates to the training we've done over the last couple of years. But suffice it to say that we are in agreement with this evaluation, this recommendation, and have been implementing that, and we have training that we will be providing in the 2026, in service to our members, so we can go into more detail to that if necessary. Next slide please. Discrepancies between officer statements, physical evidence. We agree we have a discrepancy section highlighted now in our process. So we are in agreement with that. And that is currently in practice number four. Pbb should work with boec boec response. Speaking on behalf of acting director mawdsley. But of course we have the subject matter experts sitting right behind me. If dca bob cozzie wants to jump in, but we are in agreement and there has been additional training offered and received up at 911. Excuse me, specific to callers with suicidal suicidal ideology or suicidal intent and then how that's communicated and relayed between the bureaus. Number five. This is the recommendation of requiring permission prior to prior to a pit. This is the recommendation that we have some disagreement on. And I'll go into a little bit more detail. Why, once again, for perspective, rough numbers. We've seen about 230 recommendations come in from our and the time period we've been working with them. And I think we've adopted all but seven of those. So it is unusual for us to not necessarily accept all of them, but we appreciate the recommendations. But they are recommendations as we look at other bureau needs, community expectations, as well as my own vision direction for the organization. So a couple thoughts on this. One. Rarely does a pursuit intervention technique happen in a vacuum. In other words, officers are generally on the air. They're describing the circumstances of the situation of which they're going to make take this action. So my my confidence is, is that we have sergeants that are monitoring the air. If the sergeant hears something that is not appropriate or doesn't sound like it's in line or necessary, my expectation what they would be responsible for, for stepping up and you know, so making sure that they exercise their authority which they could to say no, that's not allowed. The the part that's really more important to me from a cultural standpoint is that we have a tendency, particularly in, in bureaucratic organizations, to want to push things up versus push things down. And I like to see a phrase that I use oftentimes in the organization is own your position. I like to see personal accountability for decision making that we have. We train our officers in pit. We train them what to look for. We expect them to be able to articulate that and manage that and then own that decision. The sergeant is not going to be in position to evaluate whether anything that the officer is seeing is actually happening or not. They're simply relying upon what's being said over the radio. There may be occasions where the pit needs to occur before that person can actually respond, to be able to provide that. If, if, if a sergeant isn't readily available. And the the reasoning behind the pit is to try and prevent the weaponization of the vehicle, to try and take it out of the context so that it's safer. For all. You know, this is a this is a small distinction. I'm aware of agencies that do this. I'm aware of agencies that don't do this. This is not considered universal. And for me, it's really less about whether or not, you know, we accept or or do not accept. The recommendation is more about what I'm trying to develop from a cultural standpoint. I want our officers and to be responsible for their decision making, and they will still be responsible even if they ask for supervisory approval. But but I do not see the need for it. I believe that the process and captain jackson can talk about our training around pit already encompasses the goal, which is to make sure that they're within policy. They're consistent with our training. I would finally add that all of our pit techniques are considered use of force. So they're all reviewed through our after action force reporting process. And as I said earlier, we're taking into consideration decision making beforehand etcetera, etcetera. So that would all be encumbered in that ultimate report as to whether or not it was in or out of policy. So this is the recommendation that we do have some disagreement with. Number six. This is already partially in practice. We're in the process of making sure that we can better account for these action items. I thought julie was very gracious. I think she said historically not included. We have failed in this area and there really is no excuse for that. I mean, we have plenty of systems available and there's certainly many today. We should be better at this. It's been a priority of mine since I've returned. Commander bell has been leading this effort, both in the area of making sure that we have appropriate software, and then we have the appropriate follow through. One of the things that I recognized in sitting in this chair, more so than my previous experience, is just the transitory nature of the bureau. People come and go so regularly. I was I was advised today that 75% of our bureau has ten years on or less. Right? So, I mean, 75% of the police bureau wasn't even working here when these events, not these events today, but when we started their relationship with us. So, you know, recognizing that it is so transitory and people come and go hold numerous positions. I already mentioned the chief piece. None of that is acceptable. We have a responsibility when these recommendations to come in, to follow through with them, for them to be assigned and for us to be able to point to completion. I do appreciate julie's comments. I'm confident that many of these have been, but if you can't show, your work doesn't really matter. So just know that we are that we are moving in this direction and hopefully sometime in the near future we can come back. Jeff can give a more full report. He's got some some numbers and ideas around that. And then the final one, number seven, was already highlighted regarding the city attorney and regarding litigation and the the review of the report. So going forward, we will be making sure that even if there's ongoing litigation, that our whoever has that outside, whoever that outside entity is, has that information. The last thing I'll add, thank you, councilor Avalos, for sending over a series of questions ahead of time. Appreciate that very much. We do have responses to that. Not in a slideshow, but happy to address that either during q&a. Or we can send you back an email or however you want to do that. So appreciate that. Tried to make up a little time for you counselor.
24 Thank you chief. So we're going to move into q&a from from counselors. We may have a little bit of musical chairs. So I don't know if you want to have a couple folks say and rotate, but I'm going to pass it over to councilor Novick to moderate that. I don't actually have the gavel yet, so if you want it, you can talk to the council president about it, but I'll pass it over while just I did want to also just note for the public and all this folks who are here that there, you know, a lot of the the specifics in this are pretty heavy. And as we're working through reading the report, I think it's going to be normal for people to have personal reactions to that, perhaps more so as we get into the public this evening at the crc and tomorrow in the council meeting. But I just wanted to acknowledge that, put it into this space. I'll pass it over to my co-chair.
25 Thank you. Co-chair Kanal. So we're going to move into questions followed by council discussion. Counselor Zimmerman or is that a legacy hand? No, no. That's great.
26 Don't really know who's running this meeting okay. So I thanks, chief for that rundown. My questions are actually to and I, I walked in after you all had introduced yourselves from the other group on. I'm going to go to the recommendation regarding pre tactical decision making. And the first question I had there was when does that begin?
27 Was this for ocr.
28 Yes.
29 Yeah. Right. So jeff why don't you and I just we'll just kind of come back and forth. Let's do that.
30 I said pre tactical I guess it's pre-shooting tactical decision making. And my question is when does that begin? I know it ends the moment I weapon is fired.
31 Right. Thank you for the question, counselor. The question is the the the pre-shooting decisions begin can begin as early as the call for service and the way in which and some of that responsibility is going to be at the dispatchers, you know, behest. But once that officer is dispatched, or once that officer begins to make observations with regard to suspected criminal activity or need to engage with a subject, that's when the decision making tree begins. And all through that process, the approach, if there's a pursuit, the pursuit, the way in which the officer engages, if it's a vehicle, stop all of that. All of those decisions will lead up, can lead up and impact whether or not deadly force ends up being a result. There is a concept that is becoming more and more considered. In fact, the supreme court actually considered this in its last session. And that's this concept of what is called officer created jeopardy. And what that means is that an officer puts themselves in a situation that jeopardizes their own safety, and then results in the officer feeling the need to use deadly force. So in the case that the supreme court heard out of texas, the officer had stopped an individual on the freeway and was engaging with that officer, with that individual on the freeway at the side of the road, by the by the by the the driver's door. The driver decided he was going to move away and so puts his car into gear. And instead of the officer taking precautions and moving away from the incident, which was I think it was stopped because he had outstanding tickets. And instead, instead of that, the officer jumps on to the the floorboard of the car. The car speeds away. The officer is now in peril and then feels constrained and a need to use deadly force. So the incident that at the moment that the officer used deadly force, clearly there was fear and justifiable fear that justifies the use of deadly force. But it was the officer's decision that put him in peril that caused that decision to occur.
32 I'm well aware of the concept.
33 That's the example councilor Zimmerman that I'm talking about.
34 I understand that. Okay. So you said as early as maybe the call for service, you also in your explanation of this recommendation, you talked a lot about training though. So to some extent it's even before that is how are we how are we training decision making to a degree. But I don't want to I don't want to complicate. But your point about the concept of officer created jeopardy! As I understand that. What I wasn't able to tell from your presentation is you used the term decision making or decision to use force versus reaction, and that caught me because of sometimes we react based on training. And you could argue it's a decision. It can be hard to articulate the differences between different incidences when we are in that moment versus a more deliberate decision to use deadly force. And I hope that we can. Separate out those those incidents, because the reactionary decision making I just from my own level of experience, is highly related to training and deliberate decision making is highly related to policy. But that didn't really come off the pages. And so I don't know when we're talking about these incidences, what it is necessarily in terms of that piece of it. So from a where to take the chief's recommendations or his response to those recommendations on different pieces is a little hard to know what part of the of the organization we squeeze. Can you talk a little bit and I, I just caught the tail end when you were introducing yourselves. Can you talk a little bit about on your team who your tactical experts or subject matter experts are? I think you described yourself as a former federal prosecutor, but from I'm wondering where in your in your evaluation is a tactical lens and a tactical experience used as part of the holistic review of these cases. Do you have any tacticians?
35 Yes. Councilor I am a I've been certified by numerous courts, administrative courts, federal courts, state courts, and criminal contexts. Administrative context as well as civil context. And I've been certified as a use of force expert in all of those jurisdictions.
36 And those are great credentials. Have you ever been in a tactical situation yourself?
37 I've gone through training and have certainly engaged in simulations and helped developed training with regard to tactical situations.
38 Okay. It's helpful. I think it's a missing part of your organization because I think it's an important lens to have here. For those who can describe what your heartbeat feels like in the moment, and it is just different than in training. So I wish that we had that perspective involved in your in your recommendations. It would help when the blood flows from your brain and you can't feel yourself and you see about this much of the aperture, none of that comes out in this. And I wish that it did, because I think combining that with some of these recommendations would be, would be a strong additional lens. I really do appreciate the that you brought up some of the decision tree decision making in that, you know, I'll use the term you introduced, which was officer created jeopardy. I'm challenged. You know, that's the difference, right? I think it's the difference between stopping your patrol vehicle 20ft away, ten feet away or 50ft away. Right. That introduces that situation where force can be avoided if we avoid putting ourselves into a position. I think that's just an important part to get out here. I, I think this was the recommendation that we saw. You were hoping to have eventually a to move the pre-decision pre-shooting tactical decision making into a yes. No. Did they follow? Yes. No, I, I am cautious with that. Your quote was it's as simple as that and I'll just tell you it's not. And I'm concerned that we use that kind of words here. Not because it's not wrong that we should go through it. And I appreciate the nuance that the chief introduced here. But as simple as that. The thing is, is in this community, if there comes a report out that says an officer didn't follow a policy, even though we say it's as simple as that, as whether or not you parked your vehicle 20ft away or ten feet away, there is there is a loud voice in this community to say he violated a policy. She violated a policy. Now can them and get them out of here? And I don't think that that's what you were recommending. You actually said it. We can retrain, we can talk about situations. But to put a yes no category on it, one, I don't think that we are mentally capable, organizationally capable of encompassing policy that will or developing policy that will encompass every each that a person will encounter. But the way that the chief described it, which is more of a was this in were these behaviors prior to a critical incidents? Were they are they meeting my as chief I'm putting I'm speaking as chief here. Were they meeting my standard that I expected my officers which is less of a yes no on individual moments and more of a yes no on the holistic actions from call to incident. So I just I offer that up because it came off a little bit like there should be the ability to do a yes no along the checklist. That would give me concern given how robust our public will get if we have one officer who did one thing that was out of policy. But if the chief determined in holistically that that maybe they could have parked 50ft away, but they only parked 20ft away, that that caused a problem that probably can be retrained. But I just kind of offer that up. It seemed to be lacking in what I saw there. And I want to thank you, chief, for your for your explanation on the ownership at your level. I believe strongly in ownership at your level. I think that the elevating of decisions is the scapegoating of good decision making as well. And so there are some things that do, and I agree with you in in your assessment of that. And I think that's the kind of officer that I hope we are enabling. But that comes with a host of training standards, cultural standards, etc. And so I, I hear you loud and clear on that. And I didn't want that to be lost, because I actually think that's how we have the safest, most de-escalating force possible, as if we elevate the empowerment of the person who interacts on the ground in the moment. So I thank you for responding in that way. And the presentation was was generally very easy to to track. So thank you both. And and then also for the PPB your responses were very clear of yes kind of yes. No. So so thank you for that.
39 President Dunphy.
40 Thank you. I think my question might be for the chief with regard to the pit maneuver recommendation and the change. I'm recalling specifically a a lawsuit that this body had to approve a while back in which a pit maneuver was done against the wrong vehicle. It was a similar color and style, but it wasn't the right vehicle. Was that the incident? I don't know if we can use this, but. And I won't even ask. It may not be the incident in question here, but if we are rejecting the recommendation around supervisors for pit, and I understand what a supervisor is going to be able to see. Et cetera. Et cetera. But if we are rejecting that, are we making policy changes in light of that, that specific lawsuit that we settled?
41 Yeah. So that that one you're speaking was is not part of the review. It's separate from. But captain jackson can provide maybe just a couple minutes of what we've been doing around pit, as I don't know if you can answer specific to that lawsuit, but do you want to be able to touch on just a couple of examples about recent pit training and future pit training that is on the schedule?
42 I'm actually. Chief, if you don't mind, I can talk specifically about that particular case. That was an issue with decision making and officers not identifying the correct vehicle. I don't believe that consulting with a sergeant would have made any difference, because I think they would have said, no, we've got the right vehicle. And upon further review, it was clear that they did not, which is why. And so there was there was there were investigations. There was corrective action to go along with that. So obviously it involved a pit, but not, not not quite in the same context here.
43 Okay.
44 And so.
45 To cover the the pit training or pursuit vehicle operators training our advanced academy, they currently go through around 34 hours, approximately 34 hours of training. And that's all patrol vehicle operations and all specific to pit. But we have two full time instructors out there that conduct this. They conduct the advanced academy, approximately 80 pits, which is quite a few repetitions, are going through out on our pad. In addition, we do approximately a little over two hours in training, coming up in 26 and then in 27. We're also going to be our plans to go to pier Portland international raceway and do additional training out there in terms of high speed driving, pit maneuvers, and that will be coming in 27, and that will be a full day training for for operations. So we're always training, we're always learning and we're we're always trying to, you know, do the best we can.
46 And just to emphasize one final comment, I mean, they are you category three use of force. So there everyone's going to be reviewed. And I just want to one other comment councilor Kanal, I appreciate you recognizing the sensitivity of this conversation, and I regret that I didn't highlight that myself at the beginning when I was throwing out some of those statistics, because although it's 75 within the, you know, cast of millions of calls for service, those 75 are, you know, lives. And so I appreciate you recognizing that. And I want you to hear from me and hear from the organization that was not in any way, shape or form meant to, you know, dismiss the seriousness of the reviews that are being done. So thank you for highlighting that.
47 Thank you. My last question is for in the past, there has been a recommendation from your reports about the 48 hour rule. I believe that the 48 hour rule at that point, when he recommended it, however many years ago the recommendation was rejected by the chief at the time. Do you all ever reintroduce previous recommendations, or do you just sort of assume that that if the the leadership at the time says no, then it's no and we move forward, or how are you thinking about that? And is that still something that you all would be recommending broadly?
48 Yeah. Thank you for the question. The answer is yes. We do come back at times to engage again on a particular recommendation. We still do have concerns. I think ideally in a perfect world, we would like to see interviews conducted more close in time to the event and still are of that view. But we also recognize that every, every, every time we come back, we don't want to continue to hammer that same recommendation, although we will be revisiting it, I'm sure if we are engaged in future reports. And as an example of that, president, council president. We initially made a recommendation that supervisors should ordinarily not get involved in tactical operations, especially if there are line officers on scene that they should refrain and should be supervising the incident rather than engaging themselves. That was initially made as a recommendation. There wasn't real acceptance of that. So we came back and and now there is acceptance. And so now there is policy and guidelines that effectuate that recommendation that was made maybe in year two, maybe it took year seven before we got there.
49 Jeff, can you speak to the interview? 48 hour rule interview. Just what the what we're doing.
50 Yeah. I it's I mean, it's a subject of bargaining. And so that's where the and I've not been involved in any of the bargaining. But I know that's where that's where the issue has, has been.
51 We're interviewing we're interviewing.
52 We're interviewing within 48 hours.
53 Yeah. We are interviewing within 48 hours.
54 And prior to the recommendations it was typically 72 to 96. So 3 to 4 days.
55 Councilor Avalos.
56 Okay. So well, thank you, chief, for letting me know that you've got some prepared answers. I think I will just bring some of them to the table here. I was listening to the discussion around the pre-shooting tactical decision making stuff, and I think my only other remaining question. Well, two, I guess. Can you tell me more about what you mean when you say partially in practice? Could you just explain what that looks like? And then I would love to hear if there are any specific barriers, policy, legal or operational, that prevent the bureau from adopting that recommendation in full.
57 Well, just one example I give. I'm apologize. I was looking for where I put your questions here. I know they have them out in front of them. But regarding partially in practice, I don't ever want to come before you and, you know, overpromise and under-deliver. I try to be as transparent as possible. And so, for example, partially in practice on the tracking of recommendations, you know, we don't have that completely built. We're working on it. We have a software program. But I can't sit here and tell you that every recommendation that's come in in the last year through the various reviews is being captured and tracked. It's somewhere, it's sitting somewhere. But so that's a reference to partially in practice, I want to be able to come back and say, here's what we're doing, here's what this happens. This happens, and then this happens. And we're just we haven't been able to do that. Some of that is, you know, clean up this this one recommendation I just referenced is one that has brought forward in the past. Some of these are new recommendations. So we're responding to it. And I've mentioned before, you know, nimbleness and speed is not a strong suit of pbps at times, especially when it comes to new systems. So but know that we're working on them and happy to come back. Provide a 30, 60, 90 day, you know, whatever feedback loop. Just so you know that that there are that we're closing those gaps.
58 It actually leads into one of my other questions. So let's expand on that a bit because, you know, and as you noted, there's been ten chiefs. And of course we know that with transition things fall through the cracks for sure. I'm curious what in general, who is like who is the holder. Right. Who is responsible for overseeing the recommendation tracking as a whole? And, you know, you're starting to say, like you want to make sure that you can bring things back to us, I guess. How do you think council will be informed about recommendations that are repeatedly identified but have remained unresolved?
59 Yeah. So I don't say this flippantly. I mean, ultimately I'm the holder of all that. I always take that responsibility. That's that's certainly under my purview. So but we also know that that's I'm not going to be able to hold everything. So right now we're relying upon the professional standards division. And you know that's part of why it's partially in practice. I think, you know, a lot of stuff comes out of the training division as well. Those are the two primary receivers of it. But right now the direction is to the professional standards commander to will funnel everything to that position, which is a direct report to me. So it it does allow for a greater deal of oversight and accountability. And as those directions come out for so and so to follow up on this, you know, they're speaking on behalf of the chief. It's not like, oh, I just wish somebody would get to this. So we're trying to build in some structure to make sure that there's actual follow through.
60 And chief, I can I can add to that a little bit. So it's real easy to say, yes, we accept it and we're going to work on it. I can I can tell you that the actual plan, what we have. So we have been tracking recommendations from our reports, from police review boards for at least 15 years that I can find records for. They've they've had different homes and different parts of the bureau where a large bureau and as it's moved back and forth and people have moved, you know, it's it's I'm just going to be honest, we haven't done a good job of maintaining that. So my plan going forward, I'm working with our policy group to develop a policy so that we actually have a directive in writing that future folks can refer to, that the public can refer to, that the council can refer to, that says, this is what our process is when we get recommendations, anybody in the bureau gets a recommendation, it will come to me. I have someone on my staff that will actively track those. We have a software solution, actually in sharepoint that we've got almost all built out with a workflow to make it really easy so that we can when when the chief or the deputy chief makes a decision, yes, we are going to do something with this. There's tracking. They'll be reporting so that we can report on hey, euler's ninth report. Here's all the recommendations. Here's what we've done. Here's, you know, the policy that we developed because of that. But but again I'm working with our directive, our policy folks to create a directive that actually says all this, that will designate people who are in charge. So that and again, these are these are real concrete steps to be able to be accountable for for these recommendations. So that's that's where we're headed with this. We're actually just testing it out this week. We were actually working on it before the recommendations came out. We recognized the issue. That and I appreciate julie's kind words about how I mean, we believe most of this stuff has been has been acted upon. But if we can't prove it, then I you know, that that that doesn't help anybody. So so these are the concrete plans going forward that we're trying to do so that we can be accountable for when we get recommendations. This is what this is who we assigned it to. This is what we've done. And and we can show our work.
61 Well that sounds great. It sounds like you're on the right track and good timing with the cba coming online, because I'm sure that's going to be a big part of your relationship, right, of just making sure that the public can understand the way you're implementing changes. And also, you know, how the effectiveness of those changes. I think it maybe is another layer if I didn't I don't know if you said that, but if not, another layer, I'd love to explore in that reporting. Okay. I wanted to ask something about within policy. Right. This is kind of a constant quandary. I don't know what you want to call it, but I think that, you know, there are several incidents that were reviewed that are deemed within policy, even when oer is saying that there was poor planning or unsafe positioning or officer created jeopardy or rushed engagement, that escalates risk, right. And the bureau often responds to those findings by noting that it complied with existing policy and training. So I'm curious. Tell me more about how does PPB distinguish between conduct that's within policy, and conduct that reflects avoidable and, you know, poor tactical choices that nonetheless do lead to deadly force. And the follow up to that is when we're training identifies tactical shortcomings, but a use of force is still deemed justified. How is that tension documented and addressed to prevent repetition?
62 So a couple of things. You when you you have policy, you have training and then you have application. And the theory is that those are going to line up like they should work in unison with one another. But we also recognize and this is I don't want to put words in councilor Zimmerman's mouth, but this recognizes the significance of policy and the role of policy and how, you know, as it relates to training, in the sense that policy needs to have the ability to encompass a greater set of circumstances, need to be able to encompass the entire context. And training is oftentimes we look at this event, we look at this event, we look at this event. And so it's not as if they're not in alignment. Policy is what the decision is going to be made around regarding discipline. But we know that there is room to move within that. And the courts have been clear about that when they you know, courts have heidi brown here so she can correct me if I'm wrong or maybe she stepped out, but sorry, maybe somebody. But the courts have been clear around the graham standard reasonableness. You know, things like that that allow us. Sorry, heidi, that that that allow us to have that flexibility within the policy. I will say, though, that it's it's really paramount to me that these things do line up. I mean, we don't want to have something. We can't have something in training that's not consistent with policy. So, yes, it is a broader area to work about, but the training is what we want to continue to refine and work on. And many of the recommendations that they have made. And that is why we have such a review, a robust training review. We're not required to do the training review as was highlighted. It's something very unique that we would go through it with such a fine tooth comb and point out all the areas that we can improve upon from a training standpoint, most agencies look at it and go, is it in policy? Is it out of policy? Okay, that's what we're going to deal with. And so we've added this additional piece to highlight. And so we know there's a discrepancy there. But we're also not going to use that in the from the policy point from the disciplines standpoint, we need to stay within the boundaries of the policy.
63 Thank you. That's helpful to understand. And, you know, especially the part of like how that tension is documented and reflected upon to reduce repetition is really key. So I'd love to continue, you know, talking with you and hearing how you're addressing that. All right. My last question is regarding mental health crises. And this is, you know, at the core, right, of a lot of the issues that we've struggled with in community. So at least four of the incidents reviewed involved individuals experiencing acute mental health crises or suicidal ideation. And you all note that there have been improvements in crisis negotiation and training and coordination with boec, which is great. And you all noted as well that it's in practice. You all are adhering to those recommendations. But can you tell me a little more about how PPB is evaluating when a situation has reached the limits of what police intervention intervention can safely accomplish? And especially, you know, what it looks like for officers or supervisors to slow down or shift strategy when it becomes apparent that police engagement might increase the risk in the situation.
64 Yeah, I appreciate that question. I saw that earlier. It was probably the single question that challenged me the most to be, because I've never been succinct in much of anything I say. But try and be succinct. I mean, this is a conversation I would love to expand with you and your office because, well, it's so relevant and relevant to what we're doing right now, but it also has a massive amount of complexity to it. And as I read that a couple of times and thought about it, it I don't have a yes or no or a or a finite point on it right now, but the things that you highlighted do factor into that. The expectations we have around de-escalation, the the expectations that we have around our enhanced training with, you know, that you've already highlighted our expectations around just that ongoing community sensitivity to, you know, is this person experiencing a crisis? I mean, there are so many factors that are going into this because it is a daily challenge for us. If you ever listen to the police radio, I rarely hear a call come out that doesn't have a mental health component to it. So your question very specific about sort of where is that moment in time? I don't have that, but I do have an expectation, and I believe our training and policy continues to drive us to try and find that finer point. And these reviews that are being done right here provide information into that. So it's why it's critical we keep doing it.
65 Thank you. Yeah, I know it's a hard question. I just wanted to raise it and also so that my colleagues can kind of grapple with it too. And it's definitely a policy discussion that we need to have about how we're filling some of those gaps. And I'll just leave you with, you know, I would love to see some analysis on how you are assessing repeated encounters with individuals who are in crisis and how those are indicators of broader system gaps beyond policing that we need to be addressing. And so I just want to flag that I really I would love to engage with the bureau on how to fill that gap with some of the other solutions that I know many counselors have been putting forward. We're going to get into budget discussions soon, so I just wanted to lift that up and thank you. I appreciate the work that you all have been doing to try to fill some of those gaps with your training and your crisis negotiation and all that, but definitely still an area that we need to continue to improve on. And that's all my questions for today. Oh, did you have.
66 To clarify one thing on that last comment analysis, repeated encounters. So I know one of these cases was a repeated encounter where, you know, officer had been with the person before, had been able to de-escalate. And the second time around didn't, but, you know, deferred to that officer the second time around in an attempt because they believe that he might have a rapport. And so those are the kind of things you're looking for in terms of kind of like, you know, people that were that were having repeated encounters with and kind of can we show, you know, various outcomes, something to that effect? I'm just clarifying.
67 Yeah. I think it just speaks to the broader issue. Like it kind of intersects with, for example, how officers are now engaging with the unhoused population. And, you know, where does that overlap appear? Right. If you're engaging with somebody in crisis, whether it's in crisis because they're housing unstable and that creates crisis, whether there's mental health issues, I'm just trying to understand, like what it looks like for you all to document repeated encounters with people and where there might be off ramps for, you know, you all as a bureau to say, okay, we've had this person for these reasons multiple times. What are the other avenues or other tools that we have to address it so that it doesn't continue to escalate each time you have to have an encounter with that person, right. So just recognizing the intersectionality of all the issues that we're dealing with, especially with folks on the streets and want to brainstorm some policy solutions.
68 Yeah.
69 Great. Okay.
70 Thank you. Sounds good. Thank you so much.
71 Councilor Koyama Lane I really overlooked my apologies.
72 Totally fine. Thank you all of you for being here. This feels very helpful and I appreciate your commitment to your work. And I also want to say, chief de and to your chief, mr. King, I really appreciate how responsive you are and how open you are to conversations. I am surprised at how quickly you all will respond to me and how you're open to have conversations, even ones that are that are not easy. So thank you very much. One of one of my first questions is around mental health responses for oyer. I believe 3 or 4 different ones were highlighted, and I agree with the assessment that mr. Tran's case, mr. Tran's case outcome means he fits into that. Can we hear a bit more about the definitions and how you evaluate whether or not events relate to mental health?
73 Yeah, I mean, it's sort of you just have to look at all of the circumstances, right. With mr. Tran's case, the officers, you know, there was no indication going into their interaction with him that that was a mental health, that there was a mental health component there. But but I think the outcome speaks to, to the fact that there was. So, you know, it's there's no clean way to categorize that. I mean, the best I can say is we often will look at like, what did the officers know going in and what would what or should have known, you know, how could what what information was available to help people, you know, to to aid in that assessment that could have said, okay, this isn't this is not just somebody who's, you know, robbing a store, this is somebody who's in crisis and that, you know, there's still the criminal component in these cases often. But I think the officer's approach can and should often be different when they recognize that there's that mental health component. I don't know if that is helpful.
74 Thank you. I appreciated how the report raised the idea of handling situations where police are not necessarily interacting with someone with a gun, but maybe someone who's operating a vehicle or someone with a sharp object. Can we hear how the decision to use use of force might be different in these different cases?
75 I think, you know, those are two very different. The shooting at cars is kind of a subcategory in itself, and there's so many different considerations. The the presence of a knife or some kind of edged weapon. Again, that's a there's very sort of specific kind of tactical considerations that you look at when, when that's present. So do you I mean should we break it down each one or are you just sort of saying, you know, something. That's how do you approach something that's not a gun?
76 Yeah. I mean, and this can also be for either if pd wants to respond to.
77 It's all about the threat assessment essentially. Right. You know what. What is the threat posed and what what needs to be our response to that threat.
78 Right dave do you want to touch on any of that from a training standpoint?
79 And that's just training. That's you know, everything kind of interweaves together. I mean, it's control tactics that's going to be patrol procedures. It's going to be, you know, our firearms program. That's all going to be how they kind of intersect and kind of how you're assessing that and then kind of how it all applies to gram and policy or directives.
80 And and what he's referring to is we went to a model a few years back where we now integrate all of that. So if you are on the range, it's not just about being on the range. It's about incorporating all of these other aspects. So it's not they're not happening independent of one another. You take what what happens in control tactics or patrol procedures or whatever. And they all they all intersect. And so that we are trying to demonstrate, I think, to get to your point, councilor, is, you know, so that they're equipped and prepared to make the appropriate evaluation based upon the facts presented in front of them versus saying, well, if this or this or this, no, but more of a holistic looking, we really are asking our officers to do the impossible, but we want them to look at the whole entirety to the best of their ability.
81 Yeah. And kind of where this came from was page 15, the quote where it says, and with so many other pbb officer involved shootings we reviewed, this case raises questions about the options officers have when responding to subjects with knives or other edged weapons. Just thought that that kind of opened up some interesting conversation around the other options. And if if anyone wanted to expand, but that's fine. If kind of. That's it.
82 Yeah.
83 Yeah, I think we have seen a number of these officer involved shootings that involve subjects with edged weapons, and it's a it's a, you know, it's an issue that law enforcement everywhere is sort of grappling with. And, you know, there aren't always great responses, right? I mean, sometimes there are tasers and there are there are less lethal tools that sometimes work and sometimes don't. But if you're if you've got someone charging at you with a knife, can you rely on a taser to maybe work or not? It's it's a challenge, right? Because the knife can do a lot of damage and can kill someone. And, and so the, the training is that you respond to a deadly threat, you know, in the way that you're training teaches and there aren't. I know that there have been various tools that people are out there marketing and trying to, to use to address. How do you how do you subdue somebody with a knife? And they all there's no there's no easy answer to that. There really hasn't been a great solution.
84 My last question is more for pb. The report mentioned kind of a theme that there could have been better communication and planning among officers before coordinating action, as well as situations where it wasn't clear who the incident commander was for a specific response, and just wondering if anyone wants to speak to this and share actions that have been or could be taken to improve this, to mitigate this?
85 Yeah, I think we have some of that about training. We've done, training we've done since then.
86 Yeah. So so currently a lot of our training, we end up going through a scenario based training as well, usually at our in-service as well as at our advanced academy as well as the basic academy. So it kind of gives people those building blocks in terms of identifying a leader, whether that's a supervisor on scene or a supervisor not on scene. But then we also are sergeants academy. It's an 80 hour sergeant academy. Part of that is, you know, critical incident management. Going through that process. We now send everybody who's actually on our sergeants list. So that would be people who are either in an acting capacity or want to be sergeants. So we've been doing that for the last several years with our sergeants lists. Then we also have people going through ics training, which is the incident command structure that's put on by FEMA. So that way it kind of sets up that as well as far as organizational, you know, compartmentalizing different incidents. And you can build those incidents out as either from two officer response all the way out to a tactical event.
87 So when I'm driving around and I'm listening to the police radio, I'm one of the things that I'm listening to on these critical incidents is exactly that. Councilor you know, how are they coordinating, identifying resources? Yesterday I listened as going to an evening meeting, but state police got on the air. They were behind somebody with stolen license plates on their car. So, you know, Portland officers are responding. So I'm like, okay, what's our role? Who's in charge, who's got you know, I mean, so those are things that we're really growing into, but they're always going to be areas that we're going to need to emphasize.
88 I've got a question for michael and julie and michael. First of all, I want to tell you that we share the experience of having once worked for the justice department. I was with the civil enforcement section of the environment division. So we've both been having the experience of watching our once proud divisions gutted over the past year. The question I have for the two of you is, several months ago, I stumbled across an article that indicated that there are huge disparities between jurisdictions as to how often the police shoot people. As I recall, the data I saw indicated that if you live in saint louis, you're 150 times as likely to be shot by the police as if you live in new york city. And I was wondering if you were familiar with any research on what those disparities are, and if there's any indication that there's policy or training differences, which account for those huge disparities? I mean, does new york have some secret don't shoot people training or policy source that we should be emulating?
89 I appreciate the question, and I also appreciate our shared experience. To see how the federal government is has gone about its business these days. But. There needs to be more work on that. In my view, one of the things that is very difficult in this arena of trying to evaluate data across agencies is that one, many agencies are reluctant and sometimes intentionally reluctant to provide that information. So there, for example, is no national database on officer involved shootings that anyone can trust. The best databases that have been collected in that arena are ones that have been done by media sources, which is unfortunate. And so that's a problem. The other problem is that the way in which this information is reported locally by various jurisdictions varies. So for example, we were asked to do a evaluation of taser use across the state of california. And that information in many of the counties is there. Some of it isn't there. But then the way in which it's reported, the way in which it's counted, varies, and then it makes it very difficult to get to your question, though, with that preface, is that I do think that. There is a correlation between. Training, hiring, supervision and those robust and careful consideration in all three areas. I think do contribute to the less likelihood that there will be a deadly force incident in any particular jurisdiction, and bureau recognizes this, and I think is continuing to work in all three capacities, in contrast to a jurisdiction I will not name in those areas where there's very little supervision, insufficient training that's being collapsed, and no real hiring standards anymore. What do you think is going to happen with regard to uses of force and uses of deadly force? It's not going to be good. It's not going to be a good ending. Councilor Novick.
90 Thank you. And I hope we'll be okay. Although you're not being paid for this, I might give you a call and follow up in this discussion subsequently.
91 Yes, you may, sir.
92 Thank you, councilor Clark.
93 Thank you, councilor Novick. Just I want to check my takeaways from today. And first of all, thank you all. I think the materials that you provided us were excellent, easy to understand, particularly for a civilian that doesn't have experience with police. But they were they were excellent. So my takeaways very high level. There are lots of specific ones. But from your presentation I think I heard that our bureau is very responsive, that they've invested in training and most recently in de-escalation, escalation. And in fact, what I think I heard you say is that we're ahead of the curve compared to other cities and other bureaus around the country. So our bureau's leadership is proactive. And I guess I wanted to ask you a question. Maybe it's unfair. You can't answer this. It kind of keys off of councilor Novick. But would you consider our police bureau a progressive bureau?
94 At the risk of insulting other clients and other engagements that we have, I would I would say that maybe I would say it in a different way. When we began our engagement with the bureau. And this is true in other organizations as well. There was a lot of low hanging fruit, if you will. There were a lot of things that, you know, definitely deserved consideration and change and reform. And even at the beginning of that engagement, the bureau leadership, you know, nine chiefs ago, was also responsive to our suggestions. I would say that one way of looking at it is now we are involved in oversight at sort of a graduate level instead of oversight 101, which is good. That doesn't mean you can cannot continue to get better and improve. And one of the things we appreciate in working with the bureau is their interest in continuing to get better and better and better as they serve the residents of this city.
95 Thank you. I really appreciate that answer. Thank you.
96 Before I continue, I've got notes reminding me to take a ten minute break at some point. I'm curious whether people think that we need a bio break, or do we think that we can conclude the questions and discussion in short enough time that that's not worthwhile? How many we think we need to break a couple do. Okay, a couple is enough. So let's take six minutes and come back at 356. Thank you. It appears that we are mostly back, so let's get going again. Councilor Kanal you're next in the queue.
97 All right, we're coming back. Okay, I have my questions.
98 And I have a bunch of comments for later, but we'll we'll do the questions down there. All are related I think. Although ipr might get one of them sort of on the side. Can you speak to why this one? The gap between this report and the previous one was longer than before, and I'm trying to understand how we can build a system that gets more timely responses because and I don't put the blame on you. I'm just trying to address it because I think these incidents are three and a half to six years ago, is the range of what we're talking about here. And I don't know if this is an ipr contracting question. So that's why I wanted to flag it.
99 It was a little bit of a contracting question. So, you know, I think the the way the these cycles work is you can you can sort of just renew the contract for a certain number, and then at some point there has to be an entirely new contract. And between our last report and the next contract, I think that was like, I don't I don't exactly know that it was a long time that passed between when the, the, the next contract got finalized was, was was a piece of it.
100 Okay. Do you know when what the next cycle is right now or is that still in progress?
101 It's you know, our contract is done in I think January 31st. So I'm not sure where that gets taken up.
102 I'll follow up offline about that.
103 In your other cities, do you review other types of incidents you do deadly force here. Officer involved shootings. Are there other types of police incident that you review?
104 We do. We're engaged in in various ways in different jurisdictions. There are some places where we serve as the independent police auditor, and we get complaints from the public and help shepherd those through an internal investigation process. We look at we look at uses of force routinely that are non deadly uses of force in in other jurisdictions and do audits or reports on those. So there are some places where we're very engaged in in all internal affairs investigations, not not just things relating to critical incidents. Yes, thanks.
105 There are two cases in this where officers used chemical weapons to get a person to leave their vehicle. And I wanted to ask this. One of those is the is the one in which a person committed suicide as part of it. Can you comment? There's not much on the specific question around the use of chemical weapons at about broadly, or about the use of it as a tactic to get people to exit their vehicles? Can you speak to that?
106 Yeah. I mean, it is a it's a it is a common practice. If there is the need to get somebody out of a vehicle. And I think the question for us is, you know, what what steps are taken before that decision? What kind of preparations are being made for when the person does come out right, like, how are you ready for when they come out and you know, have you exhausted all other possibilities, other ways to get the person out? So and you know, what is the exigency. Right. Like is it how do you need the why do you need them out? What other things have you done to try to get them out? And how have you prepared for their coming out, if that's what's going to happen when when you introduce the chemicals.
107 Okay. Thanks. I might want to follow up with you offline on that. I think I'll add my name to the list with councilor. Novick about following up on page 63, you talk about the the training division recommendations. You talk about the lack of a formal mechanism. I appreciate the chief's candor on that. I wanted to ask if you had specific recommendations for what that new system would be for PPB, and also if you had thoughts on recommendations for non PPB processes to review the training division recommendations, given that our new police oversight system has policy recommendation functions that will be coming online in a couple of weeks here, right?
108 Yeah. I mean, I just think it's important that the training division makes a lot of really thoughtful recommendations. They're they're very much into the details of these cases. And, you know, some of them are just things that they can do on their own, you know, and they're almost like recommendations to themselves. And our next training, we need to do this. But some of them are things that maybe require broader bureau involvement or that might require additional resources, or that might involve some new piece of equipment or and those are things that just we think the, the bureau as a whole, and not just the training division needs to be evaluating and saying yes or no. We think this is a good idea, and this is what we're going to do to move forward with it. I think, you know, commander bell's talked about the new approach they have for tracking those, and I think that will be important. I yeah, it's really about creating that sort of formal list of what's coming out of this and and what actions are we expecting to be taken. What is the deadline for taking that action and just formalizing that out of each of these? Thanks. Did that get to it?
109 I think so, yeah. I'm, I think it's a longer conversation or it's this I feel like. Yeah. And then the last question I had was about the third recommendation. And I want to stress that I actually think that practice on the whole is stronger than the recommendation. That's my my question about it. And I want to be clear on that, because we reviewed an incident where, regardless of the finding on whether or not there was misconduct, the police bureau issued discipline because the officer had because of the discrepancies in the investigation. So that's what I mean when I say PPB practice seemed to me to be higher than the recommended level here. So your quote is where photographic or forensic evidence conflicts with an officer's account of the incident. The bureau of investigation should examine and ask the officer to explain the potential discrepancy. And as I noted in that example I just gave, the bureau has rules where dishonesty is itself misconduct independent of whatever the underlying incident is. And in that particular example, as well as many others has that has come up. So my question is asked the officer to explain, is that a strong enough recommendation or are we? It almost seemed like it was lowering the suggested standard for PPB.
110 Yeah. Councilor I would I would answer your question this way, and that is. What we would have liked to have seen at the outset is that first, there's a criminal investigation in this case, I don't think there was because it was a non hit. But the detectives do an initial investigation. At some point during the internal investigation, the officer is. Routinely interviewed. And in that interview that's where I think there was a shortcoming in that the officer wasn't afforded the opportunity to, hey, look at this truck here and explain to me that if you were in front of the truck thinking you were being aggressed upon when you shot, well, why are the bullet holes all on the side of the truck? That's the kind of question you want. And maybe the officer has an explanation. I wouldn't jump necessarily to the fact that the officer is being dishonest in the heat of the moment. Split second decision. A lot of moving parts. There may be a reasonable explanation for that, but in our view, that wasn't sufficiently plumbed during that initial interview.
111 That makes sense. Thank you for clarifying the immediacy of that. My last question was you talk through the process of who you speak to, and it's a lot about different parts of PPB. I obviously know that you speak to ipr as well as part of this process. When you're sort of reviewing reviews, do you speak to other parts of the review process like members of the prb, members of the crc would, would, should we expect that if you continue, if we end up renewing the contract, that you'd be speaking eventually to cbp members who are part of this evaluation, or is that outside the scope of what you do?
112 Yeah, we you know, we look at the the written documents. I don't think that we never have reached out and spoken to a prb member. It's not really. Okay. Never mind. I mean.
113 Councilor Kanal. Yeah, yeah. We there were times and there still are times that we had some concerns about the prb process. And in fact, we did talk to the civilian members of the process as part of our review process when we were looking at that particular piece. So that is true. We regularly talk to crc members about the output of a report. We're going to be doing that later this evening. So we do engage regularly with that. And then we also engage, particularly at the time of the release of our report, with any general member of the public who wants to talk to us. And in fact, there have been times in which during those meetings, we have talked to individuals related to individuals who have been killed as a result of deadly force incidents. And they have appreciated that transparency that we've been able to give as part of our assignment. So I do not see that as outside our scope.
114 Okay. And I'm assuming as well that you're speaking to the non-sworn folks, I think forgive me if I forget his name, but I think it's christopher was over the prb.
115 We went to work for fire.
116 Oh, that's unfortunate, but when he was there, I think he was the the coordinator of the prb for a while. So I assume you talked to folks like that as well.
117 That's correct. Yes, sir.
118 Great. Thank you. And I'll pass it back to you. Couch Novick.
119 Councilor pirtle-guiney.
120 Thank you. Councilor I just have a couple of questions. Thank you for being here today, all of you. And before I ask my questions, councilor Kanal you were asking about what comes next for this review and you didn't quite say we should keep this going, but I think you implied it. So I'm going to say.
121 You should keep this going.
122 I hope that this is a practice that we continue even under our new forms of accountability, even under our new form of government, even if we are not required to in the future. I think it's helpful. And just to have the transparency of an outside review, you were asked a somewhat subjective question earlier, and I'm going to continue us in the direction of subjective questions you've looked at between the two of you, a lot of different police departments across the country, some bigger, some smaller, some similarly sized. How has our response and our follow up been compared to other entities? And what I'm trying to understand, because we're a new body here is, is our response timely? Is it thorough when you come back and do a next iteration of a report, are you seeing the same mistakes happening? Even if we say on paper that we've changed policy, or are you seeing improvement? Is this working and is it working enough? As we hold ourselves up to how things are going in other cities and as we hold ourselves up to our own mirror?
123 I would say that generally, generally speaking, the level of responsiveness is high. The commitment, I think, to evaluating our recommendations and then deciding whether or not to implement or accept them is also high. I am not unhappy. For example, in this group of recommendations that one of the recommendations wasn't completely we're not necessarily in agreement on. That's fine for us. What we don't like is when a mayor or somebody in another jurisdiction receives our report and says, we looked at this report and within 24 hours, all the recommendations will be implemented. That's a bad sign. That means to me that the report's gone into a bookshelf and never coming out again. And that's exactly what happened in the one case I'm talking about. So I don't have a problem with that. I would say in and chief tay has already mentioned this, and I do think that the revolving chairs at the leadership level of the organization over the past ten years has, I think, caused there to be a lack of continuity. So, you know, we'll engage with one chief and then by the time we come back, there's two more chiefs that have come and gone. And so the representations made by that chief, you know, don't necessarily get put into a memo for the successor. And I do think that has been a continuity issue.
124 Thank you. Chief, some of the recommendations in the report, it says are partially implemented. Presumably that means there's more work to do. What does that timeline look like? And are there things that you need us to do as council in terms of directives on policy that would help you to make sure you can fully implement the recommendations that you believe should be implemented.
125 I really wish I would have anticipated that question because it's an excellent question and I just don't have an answer, but it's very reasonable and I'm going to have to we're have to dig into that. As we were going over these recommendations and our responses, that didn't occur to me, but it's a very valid question. So let's let me get back and we can send something out in writing. We'll work through bri to get something out to everybody.
126 I'd love to see follow up on that. Thank you. And I appreciate you owning the buck, stopping with you on implementation. I also think that under the new form of government, to some extent, ensuring that these recommendations outlast you, take some responsibility from us. So I hope that through our community and public safety committee, we're able to do the follow up and maybe sit down with you. You tell us the right amount of time based on what you need for that implementation. But a year from now, whatever that is, that some interim period to say, have these been fully implemented? How are we doing?
127 Yeah. No, I appreciate that. That's a great, great thing to highlight. Thank you.
128 Councilor Ryan.
129 Thank you, councilor Novick. And thank you. Our Portland police bureau leadership and my fellow colleagues on council for this really helpful dialog we're having today. I've been through a few of these, and I would say this one seems the most thorough and I appreciate that. I want to also do something real quick here. And that's I found attending the police community academy as a year ago was so helpful. And I do have a question. And when is your next when is the next one? And of course, encouraging my colleagues to consider attending.
130 So I can answer. Our next one is scheduled for April of 2026. I can look up the exact date and then same with November, so we can make sure to get an email out with those exact dates for you. But we have two planned for 2026.
131 I know there was something about doing that training and that allowed me to experience these reports now on with a deeper lens. And I just want to acknowledge that. And I know that councilor Novick was there as well. And I'm sure others might have participated this in the past. My question is, in the complex category of mental health, which I often place under behavioral health, which so it includes both mental health and addictions. Chief day, you made it clear in some earlier conversations that I don't know if your word was many, but most incidences often have a mental health component. Was that a fair statement?
132 Yes, yes.
133 And that that should not surprise any of us, because we reside in the state of Oregon, in the county of Multnomah, where we are known across the country, unfortunately, is having a very poor ranking in terms of mental health and behavioral health. In fact, there's many studies that objectively compare us, that we have the highest number of untreated people suffering from behavioral health and mental health incidents in our community. So that that kind of made sense when that was offered earlier. Boec was mentioned, and I thought rightly so, as a partner in public safety response. As such, in terms of mental health, behavioral health, I asked this question outside of the own your own bureau's behavioral health unit. This is for you, chief. I know you have to get to a call soon. Try to get this in. How are we evaluating the other public safety units? We are investing big dollars in, such as Portland street response. We also have chat through fire. We invest in these first response systems to work with police in this complex area of mental health. So are we reviewing these expenditures, these big investments in other parts of our public safety system that focus on mental health and behavioral health? As part of this objective analysis of our response?
134 Yeah. Councilor. And I think that this is a great question. I think it's a question maybe more posed for dca and psa, because so many of these programs now are falling within the service area. But to my knowledge, we haven't done that level of robust review for these other programs. But going forward, I think that's really good insight to just make sure that we're all, I think the scrutiny for all of the programs, because they are becoming more interconnected. I know it's a passion of mine that we continue to interact more psr chat and project respond. I know the county, but I just, you know, wanted to highlight their services, but I'm not aware off the top of my head about that review for those programs. But I would encourage dca causing you to have that conversation.
135 And I have there's other public there's other public safety systems around the country that you work with that perhaps have done similar investments to improve their response to street response for mental health, behavioral health issues, in coordination with the public health system that includes police. Have you integrated those big public investments into your findings?
136 Yeah.
137 I think we're innovative here. So I'm trying to get the evaluation aligned with our innovation since, again, these are big investments, right?
138 We you know, we engage primarily with law enforcement. But we have in some of our work with other jurisdictions conducted audits or reviews of the, the, the sort of joint response mechanisms that have been created by those agencies. And so we will do we'll take a look at, you know, how is this co-response model working? Let's, you know, pick out sampling of calls and watch the video and look at the look at all the reporting and, you know, see if we can identify any areas of improvement. We have done those sorts of reviews in other in other agencies that we've worked with.
139 Thank you. I do think it's important, as we continue to make more and more investments into behavioral health and mental health investments in public safety outside of police, with the hope that they were supposed to be integrated. It's very important for us in our analysis and evaluation to start including that broader lens. Yeah. Would you agree?
140 We do. Yeah.
141 Okay. Thank you.
142 Sure.
143 I see no one else in the queue. Can we thank our guests and let them go or. Oh councilor Kanal there you are.
144 To clarify, are are we moving into we have q&a followed by discussion.
145 Right. I was going to say if we can let our guests go, then the question is whether we people want to have some discussion. So we can let our guests go. Thank you very, very much. Really appreciate the presentations and the thoughtful discussion and answers to questions. So if you want to stick around and hear our discussion, that's fine. But if you want to rattle off home, then that's fine too. Thank you.
146 Thank you, thank you very much.
147 Colleagues. Any discussion? Councilor Kanal.
148 Thank you. Couch Novick. While they're still here. Some of them are. I just wanted to start by just thanking everybody again. I also noted, in addition to the city operations, independent police review leadership at PPB and our group, that we also have a leadership in the city attorney's back there. And but with relation to our group, I'm generally pretty skeptical about contracting out work. But I have found in my experience with our group that that you do very professional work and for the city, and I appreciate it quite a bit. I also wanted to thank you for recommendation that you put into the previous report, and that PPB implemented, and that you recognize the implementation of around avoiding the inevitability framing around so-called suicide by cop incidents, as well as the post-incident conduct piece that you already talked about. These are both really important improvements that I think came in part due to your recommendation and PPB implementing it. I wanted to give maybe a little additional good news. You discussed our group, discussed silos and how they hope the new form of government helps break those down between PPB and boec. I want to point out that actually, this coordination predates the new form of government, beginning with the creation of the community safety division in 2021, then led by mike myers, who had previously led both fire and pbem, and now as the public safety service area led by bob cozzie, who is formerly the director of boec. And I think I'm hoping that the next report, even if it doesn't go all the way to 2025, shows improvement on the siloing. Even prior to the advent of the new government. Also appreciated the candor from chief about recommendation six and its history. One thing that I really wanted to talk about was the and councilor. Avalos spoke about this in her questions about how we document when activity is in policy and nonetheless not ideal. This policy review that our group does is pretty much the closest thing we have in the city of Portland to a concept called sentinel event reviews, which are when you review something not to assign blame or determine a response that's backward looking, but to learn from it and act to ensure the event doesn't happen again. On page seven of the report, it says, we advocate for a systemic approach, sorry, systematic approach that would make this practice consistent with a formal process for centralized consideration and documentation of all recommendations stemming from a critical incident. And that critical incident could involve multiple people, multiple agencies as well. It's about prevention of recurrence, not blame. And I appreciate that that the group does it for us in this specifically narrow subset. This was recommended for the new oversight board to do, by the way, for for all sentinel events that may occur, not just those involving use of deadly force or officer involved shootings. The old council did not put that into code. And so I really think that this is important to do. And frankly, having us do it, even if our group is doing it in this narrow set, is to avoid that lag, because if it's happening live, that might happen a little bit faster. And we've seen this in seattle, minneapolis, dc, a lot of other places as well. But that's sort of the specific thing. I wanted to take a step back and just say, I appreciate this conversation. I think it's really important that we talk about it now. It's not because we think police are bad or want to punish them for any mistakes, but because this activity is good governance. When we give city employees the tools and right to use force up to and including taking portlanders lives, we have to do the due diligence to review, consider, and remember the lives lost or lives that could have been lost. Its oversights, accountability. It's our responsibility. And I'm particularly heartened by this process happening now in light of seeing what happens in minneapolis when you don't do this work, because what's happening in minneapolis is what happens when law enforcement is devoid of accountability and allowed to operate without any oversight or restraint. And it's important that we make sure it doesn't happen here in Portland. And that's what this process does, and it has done for many years. I want to recognize that that's been good, too. And the last thing I wanted to mention that's specific here is we currently do not include officer involved shootings in our shooting data on the PPB open data portal, and I wanted to highlight the alliance for safe Oregon, that recommendation that they've been making for a few years, that we include that in the data dashboard. And I'll stop here. Thanks.
149 Councilor Clark, thanks.
150 I just wanted to ask councilor Kanal, when you say sentinel events, I'm familiar with those. I was on a hospital board. We reviewed them all the time. You know, scissors left inside of people, that kind of thing. It really happens. Sponges, whatever. So are you. I wasn't sure I understood what you were suggesting. That you want sentinel events to be reviewed by the council. Is that what you're saying?
151 No. I think the city doing it internally. If it's so, I'll give you an example. Seattle did a sentinel event review. Not on any individual officers conduct, although that was mentioned in passing, but on the police's response to the 2020 protests. And it started that process in 2021, and it continued for a few years. But it was it was not three and a half to six years later in the way that sometimes when there's a possibility of it affecting an individual officer's employment or criminal charges or even civil litigation, there's often pressure to delay or some reason to delay, whereas when it's explicitly separated from any possibility of blame or, you know, punishment or discipline or whatever the the terminology is, sometimes it's just helpful to see, like, what if what if something that happened in 2020 happened again in 2022? How do we how do we learn from how we responded to it the first time and do better the second time? And in the case of police, it's often not just police. It involves boec, it involves elected leadership.
152 And I'm assuming that sentinel event in this situation would be beyond a critical incident. It would be broader than that or critical incident.
153 In the context of policing, it is usually broader than that. It is often, you know, multiple related events that are kind of one thing, but not an individual, you know, a use of force.
154 Okay. I just want to make sure that we were not going to review all those sentinel events.
155 Oh no, that would be a lot.
156 Councilor Green.
157 Thank you. And I also want to I just want to say thanks for the discussion today. I thought that was really helpful for me, for all of us. I think for the city. I missed what you said there. The councilor What page in the report that you were referencing back to the court and in the context of these events, and I just think I missed.
158 As page seven of the report, it's in the introductory section there. I'll figure it out.
159 I'll read up on that, because I thought what you said there was interesting. You know, I think the other thing that I'd like to say in this moment, and it's not directly related to the report we just received, but it is also about police oversight. And I don't know where else to talk about it in a timely fashion. So I'll just I'll just do it here. I attended the there was a very interesting conversation last night out in east Portland that was like I think was called like protest policing. And I came away from that feeling. This was a very evidence based approach. And the conversation that unfolded in that room, I thought was very interesting and very promising. What I saw was I saw officers who were engaged specifically with. Activity, with folks who have been protesting down, specifically the macadam facility, just like engaging with those protesters at the macadam facility. And they were they were not getting overly defensive about it. And it was sort of a kind of acknowledgment that this is an important conversation to have and that we should keep having it. And I thought that that was an interesting other, another dimension to our oversight apparatus that I think is really important to continue to invest resources in. I know we're not talking about policy here at the work session, but it I think it allows us, as councilors to receive those sorts of complaints or, hey, this happened down here at the ice facility to have another layer of context to know that we're we're doing this sort of dialog officer based approach, and there's this evidence based approach. So if you guys didn't were not able to attend that or if you see other opportunities to attend it, if they do it in the future, I highly recommend it because I thought there was a really interesting dialog going. Specifically, some of our constituents councilor Who've been down there engaged in shouting matches with the police and and they kind of like they continue talking. So I was like, I think this is something we need to continue to encourage and invest. So I know it's a little off topic, but it's not wholly off topic. Thanks.
160 Councilor Avalos.
161 I was playing tag with Sameer in the queue. I was trying to go after him because I was curious what you were gonna say.
162 That's a good point and I'm so sad that I missed it. I really wanted to head out there, but couldn't. But yeah, I think what you're raising is just a broader discussion that we hopefully will start having in the coming weeks, as we continue to see the escalation of the federal government. And we need to have a plan. We need to have a way to protect our community. I think it was in minneapolis. The police there are like really taking a different and interesting stand, trying to be a bit of a buffer between ice and federal enforcement and the community. I saw a news article about it earlier today, so I don't know all the details of how they actualized that, but I I'm very curious about what that looks like. And just in general, you know, how we as a municipal government are supposed to respond to the federal government, right? Especially because, you know, uniquely, especially when it comes to the and the settlement agreement that was the federal government intervening in our local government to say, you know, local government needed to do things better. And their oversight was really critical. And now it's like we don't have their oversight because they're the ones who are the baddies now. Right? So it's like it's just a mean guys. And so I just, I, I'm really concerned about how we are supposed to act, given the difference in power and our limitations of our local police and government. But yeah, I just flag it as an interesting conversation. I hope we have. And, you know, for our police force to engage with us, and I, I would also love to maybe we could just do some looking around the country and seeing how some of the other police forces are responding, because I think everyone's kind of taking a unique approach. But yeah, I would love for us as a council to have that discussion. And overall, you know, we really need to strengthen how we protect our communities against these forces. And I see the police as being a critical role in that.
163 Councilor Zimmerman.
164 Riffing a little bit, where councilor Avalos took us, I, I also appreciate, you know, this, this type of endeavor that we have taken on in Portland, the fact that our significant amount of leadership from our bureau is here, the fact that this group has, I think I heard 16 years of a relationship is the way in which departments get to be better at what they do, and I we are always going to face a problem. Somebody is going to let us down and that let down. I want to remind us, and I remind myself that doesn't speak for the values or the intent of the department. And that matters a lot to me, because the intent and the leadership and the philosophy behind the department, the city, and our and our partners who help us be better is how we get through the day when somebody lets us down. And whether it was a well-meaning mistake that resulted in terrible actions or or malicious, any large organization involved in big work like this is going to have a bad day. But I've always been proud of the Portland police bureau's work within my community. Right. And policing is not inherently or has not inherently been a thing for the lgbt community to feel as good about as it does in Portland. But because of training and because of policies and because of conversations like this, my community sits, I think, in a better position than maybe in some other cities because of that deliberate engagement, deliberate discussions about these types of topics. And so I'm really thankful for that. And to to compare that to the rapid and rampant increase of what we're seeing at the federal level. And I was trying to think of another time when a law enforcement agency hired as many people or got as much of a cash infusion. I can't think of a single time in our history, in our government's history. Right. The fbi started out as a few people. It's grown. Obviously, most police forces started out as a few people. I think world war 2nd may have been the last. Maybe vietnam, when a military paramilitary organization got such an infusion and such a large influx of people, given an enormous amount of authority, and to even think that those are comparable in their duties is is a hell of a stretch there. But I don't think there's any conversation about accountability. I don't think there's any conversation about this level of nuance that we saw today that is happening within the department of homeland security. I think that I'm going to be very careful as we go forward to make sure that the actions of the federal government's law enforcement activities, they represent the federal government's law enforcement activities and, in my opinion, the failure of them and not speak for other people who are in the line of or in the profession of law enforcement. I value the profession a lot. I value the fact that we put resources at a professional standards division, and it's going to get harder. It's going to get harder to figure out the best way. Cities across America are dealing with this in terms of how to use our professional forces, who are members of our community dealing with a federal force who has very little training, in my opinion, and very little. Value or cultural base in, in police standards. And I think that's going to be very tough for, for everybody. But this is the way that policing should be occurring in all communities, is that policing should involve community feedback, professional outside feedback and internal opinions about the direction of which the department goes. It's all things. It's not just one or the other. So I to councilor Avalos am interested in where we go here with some of those other things, and I know it is similarly unrelated somewhat to the the discussion at point, but it is such a pressing topic for us as a community and all communities in the united states right now. And. I, I am I am saddened because there was a time in this, in this country when we would be very glad if a local police officer or a senior leader got to go to something like the fbi's academy, or got to train at the federal law enforcement training facility, fletc, which had used to have great clout. And I don't want to lose that, but it's hard to keep those things in good memory of like, right now, how to engage in those areas that should be helping us professionalize. Our almost seen as unworkable right now. And that that worries me a lot. And so I don't have answers for that. But I do keep it front of mind for where do we where do we look for professionalism in the industry? When, when our when our norms have been broken by the current administration? I don't know where we're going to look, but I think I think our learning apparatus has changed and we don't have an answer to that void yet. And so I am all ears where we go forward there. Thanks.
165 Councilor Kanal.
166 I appreciate that. And I, I think we should definitely be consulting with our training division to understand what the sources that they already are using are. And I know there's a training advisory council that I was remiss earlier and not shouting out the work of as well on the volunteer side, just to speak to something that came up a couple times. I have no doubts that this particular process of reporting has made pbem better, and that council being a part of that process and reviewing it is key to that. Speaking only for myself, I do want to encourage the continuation of this particular contract. Switching gears to councilor Ryan's comments, two points. I agree with your point about the community police academy. I think having as many sources about of information about policing as possible from within the bureau and also outside of it is really helpful. I've participated in that and done a few ride alongs now, as well as talking to a lot of folks who are, you know, external to police, but experts or researchers. And I think that's a good way to to broaden everyone's knowledge. So I'll just cosign that recommendation and expand it. And then I also want to fully 100% agree about the need for review. Psr, with a budget over $10 million, has had the most extensive review, the top to bottom review in a way that no other part of our public safety has had in a single place, twice from a single researcher. And so I appreciate councilor Ryan's support of perhaps scaling up that review for everyone across public safety. And I don't know if anyone from psa is still here behind a pillar, but yeah, but maybe we can talk about that. And finally, I wanted to just go back to something that councilor Avalos talked about, which is about how we how we document things. I referenced it earlier, but the terminology sometimes matters a lot. When we talk about public trust building. I think the old council made a choice of labeling when we do investigations that the allegation is sustained or not sustained, and that's the only set of choices available to the review in the new system that's about to come online. I think that breeds less trust than the original recommendation, which was that the officer's conduct was in policy, out of policy, insufficient evidence or unfounded, which allows for a complete exoneration rather than simply or a finding of exoneration, rather than simply we didn't know. And it conflates three different types of why someone's not found to be an allegation, is not found to be sustained, or conduct not out of policy. So having those additional options, along with other extra findings, can help the public understand what exactly happened or what the finding was, and might help folks understand why they're not seeing what they might have expected going in in a way that breeds public trust. And so I really appreciate you bringing that up. And since we're a little bit off topic, but in the broader context of it, I agree, and I'm very excited to continue the conversation that councilor Green talked about, because as as you said, it's going to be it's going to be a bigger thing as we go forward. Thanks.
167 Councilor Ryan.
168 Yes, thank you, councilor Novick. Just a clarification. Councilor Kanal. So you're thank you for the shout outs. You're saying that you would like the investment that we did with Portland street response, with the studies that Portland state university did. You would like to expand that or you'd like to expand the mental health behavioral health supports we have, whether it's chat or psr, into the study. That's what I was mentioning. I just couldn't tell what you said there.
169 I was just I respond to that. Yes.
170 Yeah. So thanks for thanks for clarifying that that I was I interpreted your comment as more the former I agree with that doesn't necessarily have to be PSU forever, but I think they did a good job. So I'm not opposed to them either. With relation to the other piece of it. I don't know every piece of expertise we I asked a few specific questions about our groups expertise and what they can work on beyond simply the two things that we we talked about. I don't know if it extends to evaluating mobile crisis, street medicine, things like that. So I can't speak to that. But I do think it's worth having these evaluations across it. I know that councilor Novick has also talked about these sorts of things in terms of evaluating things like clearance rates as well. And there's also, I think, benefit to having these these extend beyond just police as well in some situations, so that we're not we're not having to get too deep into the specific nature of each type of first response. But we're also able to to share across an entire service area metrics that we can use for eventual decisions on policy or investment or whatever else. I hope that helps.
171 It does help. I think it's a longer conversation. I think as we continue, continue to invest more and more in alternative responses, we have to make sure that they're accountable within the system of public safety and not treat them as silos. The last thing I want to do is keep building more silos.
172 Thanks.
173 Seeing no one else in the queue, I think I'll bring us to a close a little bit early. After making a few off topic remarks of my own. First of all, councilor Avalos, I think it's a really interesting idea to hear what other police forces are doing and our sister cities in this situation. We had a great conversation with people, staff from city councils and other cities in public safety on the federal response a couple of months ago, because lisa freeman knows people all over the country. And I think that chief day has been talking to his colleagues all over the country. And maybe we could see if some of them are willing to have a conversation with us. I also wanted to second or third counselor ryan's suggestion of going to the civilian academy. I've gone through it twice in 2013 and last year. My impression going through it last year was that it seemed more interesting and perhaps more realistic. I did get myself shot both times, hypothetically speaking, but you know, the embarrassment wore off and and finally, I just wanted to say about minneapolis that one of the new york times columnists yesterday had a column saying, maybe minneapolis is trump's waterloo, that there's some indication that maybe there's enough backlash that they will start to back off and change their conduct. I fervently hope that that is true, and it puts me in mind of a conversation I had in November 1990, when paul wellstone was elected to the senate in minneapolis, and the next morning I found his campaign office number by calling five, five, five, one, two and two like you did in those days and and said I was. Hi, my name's Steve, and I'm just calling to say congratulations. And the young woman who answered the phone said, thank you, thank you. Well, you know, this is minnesota. Miracles can happen here. So maybe that will prove true now to and now, using my hook as a gavel, I bring this meeting, this work session to a close.