The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-03-25
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (21,828 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are not yet identified (colors just separate consecutive turns). Auto-captions can contain errors — check the recording for anything that matters.
Session summaryEditor-reviewed
The Community and Public Safety Committee met on Tuesday, March 25, 2025, beginning at 2:32 p.m., with roll call confirming attendance of committee members before the reading of a standard conduct statement governing public testimony. The session's primary agenda item concerned Portland Police Bureau allocation of personnel, time, and budgetary impacts. Presentations covered how the Bureau of Emergency Communications (BOEC) processes 911 and non-emergency calls, including detailed walkthroughs of disturbance, suspicious, unwanted person, and welfare check call types, followed by discussion of a call type restructuring project examining potential changes to dispatch protocols, including death calls and burglar alarms. Police Bureau representatives presented data on how officer time is allocated across dispatched calls, self-initiated activity, and non-patrol duties, including community engagement tracking, and described an incident involving a shooting near a school and mosque. Council members asked about advisory councils, bike squad and neighborhood response team activity, proactive patrols, warrants, and self-initiated call percentages, as well as staffing implications if call volume were reduced; figures offered on potential staffing reductions were described as rough estimates rather than firm figures. Discussion also addressed officer presence at town halls and a mutual aid event in Old Town. During public testimony, roughly twenty speakers addressed police staffing, budget levels, community safety experiences, and concerns about officer deployment, with views expressed both supporting increased police funding and calling for budget cuts and alternative response models. Any votes taken are recorded in the vote ledger. The meeting adjourned with the next session scheduled for Tuesday, April 8th.
AI-drafted from the session's auto-captions, reviewed by an editor — describes the discussion only; recorded votes live in the vote ledger. Captions contain errors.
Procedural markers in this session
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0 This afternoon. Oh, I call the meeting of the community and public safety committee to order. It is Tuesday, March 25th at 2:32 p.m. Keelan. Can you please call the roll?
1 Good afternoon. Smith.
2 Here.
3 Morillo here.
4 Zimmerman here. Canal here.
5 Novick here. Christopher, can you please read the statement of conduct?
6 Welcome to the meeting of the community and public safety committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance in the committee agenda at. Portland gov. Slash. Council slash agenda. Slash community dash and dash public safety committee or by calling 311. Information on engaging with the committee can be found at this link. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior to the meeting. In person, testifiers must sign up before the agenda item is heard. If public testimony will be taken on an item, individuals may testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise. For today's meeting, testimony will be two minutes per testifier. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves order disruptive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, or interrupting others testimony or committee deliberations will not be allowed. If you cause a disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Anyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject to arrest for trespass. Additionally, the committee may take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered. When testifying, state your name for the record. If you are a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent. Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
7 Thank you. Today's initial presentation grew out of a desire to find out how much time, relatively, do the police spend on different types of calls. But we're going to start off hearing about the boec process. And then the bureau's wanted to spend some time on the call type restructuring project, which seemed a natural outgrowth of talking about boec. So the discussion of how much time relatively to the police spend in different types of calls doesn't start until slide 20. So I'm a little worried we might wind up spending all of our time talking about the first 19 slides and not get to what I think is the meat of it. So I'm going to ask my colleagues to try to limit your questions on the first couple of sessions, so we have enough time for the third. And then of course, you can always ask questions about the first two parts of the. At the end, you may proceed.
8 Okay. Thank you. Chair, co-chair and council members for having us here today.
9 Sorry, I forgot to ask keelan to call the first item.
10 I'll wait.
11 Thank you. Item one Portland police bureau. Allocation of personnel, time and budgetary impacts.
12 Now, you may proceed.
13 Okay. Well thank you, chair. And thank you, co chair and council members for having us here today. For the record, my name is mike myers. I'm the deputy city administrator for the public safety service area. As chair, Novick said our business services unit has sought input from co-chairs Novick and canal. And we put together a presentation that we believe helps set some context on how calls for service come in and how the bureau of emergency communications and police respond to those calls. Today, we'll be presenting on how emergency response is allocated across various call types, with specific focus on call types of high interest, such as welfare checks, unwanted person or disturbance calls. Boec will discuss how dispatchers field emergency calls to send out the best suited agency for the situation, or respond to right call, and the Portland police bureau will also present on how much of the bureau's time is spent, directed to high volume call types and share other high priority duties. I'll now hand this off to director bob cozzie, the director of the bureau of emergency communications. Director cozzie. Thank you for being here.
14 Thank you. And good afternoon, co-chairs and members of the committee. I'm bob cozzie, director of the bureau of emergency communications. Forgive me. I'm losing my voice. I was sick last week and am definitely recovering. You just can't hear me. So I'll do my best to speak as loudly as possible. Today, I will be providing a high level overview of boec call processing and deputy director Steve maudsley, seated next to me, will provide some detailed information on four different call types disturbance. Suspicious, unwanted and welfare checks. And he's using recent call data from calls that were handled just this month. Next slide please.
15 4.20. Like it's not going up okay.
16 We're waiting for the call processing slide to show up. But as soon as it does, what you're going to see is really how calls flow into boec. And through boec 911 calls. Well, you're all aware that boec processes calls from 911 lines, as well as non-emergency and administrative lines. And the picture that you're going to see in just a minute, will will demonstrate that 911 calls are answered directly by a boec call taker who processes the information for dispatch. The dispatcher then sends appropriate help either fire and ems. Portland street response or police. Non-emergency calls are processed through our non-emergency triage system and depending on the need, callers are provided information directly. They're transferred to 311, or they're transferred to a boec call taker to set up a call for service. It's the same call taker answering 911 calls at boec, who also answers non-emergency calls. Now, I'll hand it off to deputy director Steve maudsley to go into more detail.
17 Yes. Good afternoon. As the director mentioned, I'm Steve maudsley, deputy director of boec. And as we're waiting for the slides to load on the screen, I will first talk about an overview of boec call processing. There will be a slide for that in a moment. Boec receives requests for service a number of different ways, primarily through phone, and we also receive text to 911 both through for emergency and non-emergency requests for service. Once request once connected to a call taker, a community member can expect to be run through questioning for the call taker. Obtaining the address, the summary of what happened, and the caller's relationship to the incident they are calling to report. They'll also gather additional information about time frame and determine whether an incident meets criteria for dispatching by boec, or if that incident would meet criteria for a referral or transfer to another agency within the city or county. If it does not meet criteria for dispatching, they'll determine the appropriate location and move that transfer referral out of bullock's phone system to get that person connected to the right service point. If it is dispatchable by boec the incident nature of the reason they're calling will result in a call type and priority being assigned. That will either be an immediate dispatch by radio or a non-emergent self dispatch. And that's one. In the case of law enforcement calls, where an officer will dispatch themselves from their mobile computer in their patrol car. I want to mention that as calls evolve through the call taking process, as information changes, either through call taking or in the response process, incident details such as time frame or hazards, or certain people who become involved or leave the scene, for example, may change a dispatch response.
18 I want to ask, do we think that we should be able to get the slides up soon? Or should we try to figure out how to proceed without slides?
19 Yes. So sorry, we're just getting the link shared so that we can join. We didn't get the link originally, so sorry about that. Thank you. Okay.
20 So we can keep going I would keep going just to keep sharing. Okay.
21 So. I can continue forward. And.
22 Yes and yeah. And if it's we up here do have paper copies. If you want to start going through the slides when we don't have it up, please do.
23 Great. Okay. Disturbance is the first call type that we're going to jump into. Next slide please when you get to it. So diving deeper into those call examples. Disturbance call came to us on 911. It was actually a community member that called 911 and hung up after doing so. So on callback, our call taker obtained the address and really a nature of the call and in asking what happened, and they learned that the that two parties on scene exchanged heated words with each other, one pointed finger guns at and then chased the caller's child. That subject who did that then left in a vehicle. The caller was able to provide the call taker with a description, including license plate and time frame, and note that two people were on scene. Both the caller and a witness awaiting officer contact disturbance call type was assigned, and since the subject was gone, it was a non-emergent call for self dispatch. Now, if the subject was still on scene or there was a co-response with another responder, that boec dispatches would have been an immediate dispatch for all responders by radio. Next slide please. Now this back one, please, for suspicious. Thank you. Suspicious call type. This one came to us also on 911. And it's where the neighborhood report was reporting someone seen along the side of their neighbor's house and that they had actually reached out to the owner of that house to confirm that the house should be unoccupied at that time. Our call taker proceeded with questioning and learned clothing description for the subject. The reporting party noted they were carrying a bag and really acting very suspiciously along the side of this presumably vacant house. At the time, unoccupied house and police were responding clearly to contact subject the caller, a neighbor in person, and then the homeowner by phone as a follow up. So suspicious person and circumstance call type was assigned. It was an in-progress emergency, so it was an immediate dispatch by radio. Now the caller later advised that the subject was a friend, and they were okay to be on the property and had, during the course of that 911 call, the caller described to the call taker that they saw the subject attempt entry through trying a door or a window or something like that. Suspicious would not be the call type used. It would be a burglary or attempted burglary instead. Still an immediate dispatch by radio and still an emergency. Next slide please. The third example of a call type we wanted to provide some details for you came in from a security monitoring company on our ten digit emergency line. So this line acts very much like 911. It's just for companies, for people outside of the immediate geographical area where 911 phone calls will land. And so the company was reporting, watching video, third party video of four subjects loitering on steps to a restaurant where they provide security monitoring. And they noted it had occurred before, but they couldn't really tell for great descriptions of these subjects. So the police were in route to check the subjects and contact the monitoring company by phone for follow up. Unwanted person was the call type we assigned while it was in progress. It's not an emergency at that point, and so the non-emergency self dispatch priority was assigned. So an officer responded and moved those subjects along. They the subjects later returned resulting in the monitoring company calling us back again, calling boec and requesting an additional dispatch at pb. With the incident being reopened. Next slide please. And this welfare check came in to us on 911 as well. Was a motorist reporting someone walking along the freeway in a really dangerous spot right on the fog line, and they were able to provide us a full description of the subject and a good location that we were able to combine information with. Talking to Oregon state police and ODOT, along with other 911 callers reporting someone walking along the freeway. And we used the welfare check call type. It was an in-progress incident, and as you'll see in just a minute, we'll provide a couple other examples of different types of welfare checks. And it's one of these call types that can be used across a number of incident types with a high concern of hazardous condition, both to the person walking along the freeway and to other motorists passing by. Immediate dispatch by radio was coordinated. The officer responded. Ppb located the subject and helped them order a tow for their stalled vehicle that was nearby. Next slide please. As mentioned a minute ago, additional welfare check incidents that met criteria for dispatching a PPB response. These are all incidents. These seven total incidents are ones that boec processed and PPB responded to in the last month. First one was a passerby reported someone not wearing appropriate safety gear or reflective clothing who was climbing the st. Johns bridge. Another caller reported a neighbor had not been seen in three days. They were really concerned about their welfare and a third 911 call. A caller received a text message from a friend, and that friend had asked them to call 911 for help. And then the friend stopped messaging, not knowing what the outcome in the moment, not knowing the outcome of those, or having additional contact info. Ppb was dispatched as those incidents met criteria for a welfare check, and I know you'll hear more about our call type restructuring project in a moment, but I'll turn it back to director cozzie.
24 As you can see, you know, these are four examples plus a few additional ones for welfare check. There's a lot of nuance in calls, and virtually every call that we take at boec. I'd like to, as a result of that next slide, please recognize that all of you really don't have the level of experience that we have. And I want to invite each of you to come in to boec formally invite you all to come in for a sit along. I think that would be really eye opening, very educational, and help you kind of put the pieces together. I know that, you know, as a whole city council is really expected to make some serious decisions and some tough choices this year. And in order to do that, I think it's paramount that you have as much information, as much education as possible. So I'm more than happy to facilitate that. Feel free to reach out and we can get you scheduled for a sit along 1 hour or 2 hours. Whatever works for your schedule. Also, I do want to mention that mid-april is national public safety telecommunicators week. That's coming up, and we welcome each of you to stop by and recognize our staff during that recognition week. So thank you. And at this point, I'd like to hand it off to nick mcdonald to discuss the call type restructuring project. Thank you. We have the next slide.
25 My name is nick mcdonald. I'm a performance analyst with the public safety service area. I'm leading the project to restructure the call type restructuring project we began in June 2024. The goal of the project is to make sure we send the right responder to the right call, identify solution situations where we may need not need to respond at all, recommend changes to the prioritization of calls. We should make. Proposed call types that we should retire, combine, or split into several new types, and ensure bureau policies and procedures receive appropriate updates. We have the next slide. There are 125 call types right now. You can see those here. Some of these are over the years have become redundant. Some of them need need updating. We can get the next slide. The bureaus, the bureaus and agencies that use these call types are more than you might think. There are a range of our own city agencies, people involved, other people who use the 911 system, labor relations, labor unions. There are legal implications when we make changes to the call types. So the group that is meeting around this is led by boec and PPB, but it includes a large range of stakeholders who are going to need to have input and be consulted and ultimately agree to any changes as we recommend them. Can we get the next slide? Here's the gantt chart for the project began in July 2024. We hope to make preliminary recommendations to the bureau leads in may this year, with a view to get this project wrapped up by March of next year, if all goes well. Next slide. So the next steps we're developing, we're meeting currently with the various stakeholders with a view to developing a decision making framework and a series of recommendations that will go to the public safety chiefs and directors, partner organization leadership and ultimately the dca and council for approval. We need to then meet with the city attorney's office, with bhr and with labor relations, and with the various labor representation groups to get those ironed out, and then create an implementation plan with performance metrics, dispatch protocols, new call types, dispatch criteria, prioritization levels. And then we need to educate the public about any changes that we make. Next slide. I don't want to preempt the findings of this group. But you know, just for information, there are a couple of things that have come up as being potentially interesting. The death call type for instance, currently the police attend all medically unattended deaths and wait at the scene for the medical examiner. We need to work with the medical examiner's office, but there's potential that we would not need to attend all of these burglar alarms. There are circumstances with unregistered burglar alarms or repeated false alarms where we may either not want to attend, or we may need to issue more fines. Welfare check and unwanted person. We're exploring whether some of these calls could be relocated, reallocated to psr, or medical if there's no threat of violence or crime. We're working currently with boec and with PPB to understand more about the nature of these calls and why they were routed currently to PPB, there are certain core elements of these that need to be routed to PPB, but some that we suspect might be possible to reroute. Thank you for your time.
26 Thank you. Matt Smith.
27 Thank you, mr. Chair. Good afternoon. Just curious, why would you think that a death call wouldn't wouldn't require a police officer? You wouldn't know if it was a homicide or. And then you would leave that to psr.
28 No, I'm not suggesting they would go to psr. Currently, any medically unattended death is attended by the police bureau. If there are situations where there is no belief that a crime has been committed, and we're exploring whether or not it would be necessary for the police to remain at the scene until the medical examiner can get there. There's a possibility that either nobody would be required to wait, or that a medical unit is a better response to do that.
29 Okay, okay. Thank you.
30 I.
31 See no more questions in the queue. So maybe. Let's see I. I said does this panel have more to say or I'm kind of getting confused. Should we move on to the next panel.
32 That sums it up for this half okay. And we actually took less time than than originally scheduled.
33 So you did indeed. Thank you.
34 Thank you.
35 Guys.
36 Well good afternoon chairs. Councilors I'm bob day. I'm chief of police for the police bureau. I appreciate being here. It's a beautiful day outside, but I'm going to defer here quickly to deputy chief jovic and lauren brown from our strategic services division. I want to thank the council for this opportunity. I want to thank the council for their questions and their thoughtfulness, as well as the engagement of councilor Novick councilor Kanal, particularly in the last week, being available to be on calls. Hopefully this meets some of your expectations. I'm confident there will be questions at the end as we work through this, but I also want to recognize dc jovic, lauren brown and our comms team and others who have spent many hours on this project the last couple of weeks trying to provide you with information that's helpful in your decision making. So with that, I'll turn it over to them. Thank you.
37 Thanks, chief.
38 Good afternoon everyone. I'm deputy chief chris jovic. I'm going to walk you through some call types today and some of the calls in general that the police bureau is responding to. And there's a few critical things that we want to make you aware of. You know, kind of as a level set when we go into these stats, you know, they're they're posted up here on the powerpoint and I won't read them all, but I just want to highlight that this data involves all calls that our staff goes to. That's patrol staff and all sworn staff, including our public safety support specialists. And we're talking about call types. It's a very important to remember. The call type that is originally dispatched is not necessarily the criminal outcome or the investigation that occurs. Once officers get on scene. Often, oftentimes officers arrive on scene and find something completely different than the call that was initiated. Next slide. So with that understanding, let's go ahead and dive in here. As you can see, dispatch calls or calls that actually come from boec take up about 74% of our time. Actually, I take that back 77% of our time. Call volume. Yeah, sorry, 77% of the time in our self-initiated calls take up considerably less. It's important to point out that over half of our self-initiated calls are actually not by staff assigned to patrol duties. Those are people that are assigned to specialty units such as the traffic division, our bike squad, or working mission based initiatives. The third category down there with the very low call volume, is directed patrol. This used to be actually used quite a bit more when we were more staffed. This is actually dispatching timing the dispatch of a specific unit to a specific location to intercede in something that we have information that, you know, crime is typically occurring in a specific location or a specific time in the day. So that is not used all that often anymore. Next slide. All right. The next slide. Actually two slides are our time on calls by priority level. These are the top 20. And I'll go through a few of these here. I'm not going to read each one of them. But it's interesting to note our priority levels obviously help determine our dispatch order and response levels. But our high priority calls, the ones that we consider high priority, are ones through threes make up about a third of our call volume, but we actually spend about 45% of our on call time on those calls himself. Conversely, we actually spend only 25% of our time on those higher priority self-initiated calls. Next slide. So these next two slides are actually the top 20 calls that that we utilize our patrol time on. And actually some non patrol time on I should say. And as you've heard from our partners at boec, call types are assigned priority levels based on dispatch protocol. And that's agreed on by boec and all of those members that were listed in that slide that are being consulted for the call type restructuring. There's over 160 call types in our database, and the following graphic provides the information on the on the 20, the 20 that we spend the most time on, which account for 70% of our total time on calls. And I'll go ahead and walk you through a few of those. Now, as you can see, we spend the most time on those disturbance priority calls. They're mostly dispatched and we use dispatch. We use mostly patrol officer time on those calls. They're usually assigned to priority to. And these calls include a threat to the public peace or safety and don't fit in a more specific call type. If there is more information that the caller gives, they could be refined down into a more specific call type. Detail call. So details are used for missions and generally involve coordinating multiple resources. So if we have a bunch of officers on our roster and we want to pull them to work one of our svo missions or retail theft missions, we put them on a call so they can't be dispatched by boec. So therefore they're sitting on that call until they take a proactive step, like make a traffic stop or something like that so they don't show available for service. That's why the number is so high. Traffic.
39 Would that include like the this the street racing detail.
40 Absolutely. Traffic stops are nearly all self-initiated. There is there is a 0.01 that that is not. And those are typically dui info calls that turn into traffic stops. So they're actually changed because they're dispatched by by boec. Slightly more than half of the time spent on these are are non patrol units. Again these are special units. Traffic division etc. So we don't have data on how much total time is spent between moving violations and nonmoving moving violations. But we know through our stops data that 68.4% of the time traffic stops are from moving violations. And number for suspicious calls, as you heard about are related to reports of suspicious persons, vehicles, or circumstances. These calls vary in priority, but are typically number four, and they use mostly patrol time. Unwanted persons are subjects refusing to leave from inside or outside a location when asked. These calls are mostly dispatch calls and mostly used patrol time as well. Number six follow up. Follow up is a very broad category. About half of it's self-initiated, and a large portion of using that call type is non patrol officers. It's used by a lot of our investigative units. Follow up is used by any member that's out in the community and conducting further investigation on a case of theirs, or it can be set up as a call dispatch by boec. If a community member has information or evidence to turn over to a patrol officer. Eight and nine are welfare checks of different varieties, welfare checks or calls requesting to check on the health and safety of a community member. Welfare checks are typically priority for, while priority welfare checks are usually a priority two. They mostly use patrol time as well in our in our dispatch calls. Next slide please. All right I'm going to cover a number 11 and number 20 because they can be confusing at times. So shooting with a weapon number 11 is when an assault with a firearm has occurred or believed to have occurred, not just shots heard in a general area. Shots fired is when four is when shots are fired or heard in an area with no indication of a victim, and don't always end up as confirmed shooting scenes, right? Many times these shots calls are the result of off season fireworks vehicles backfiring, but they can also result in bonafide shooting scenes that we arrive to before a victim or a witness is called in. Number 12 is assist. Again, another pretty broad category. Assist calls involve PPB. Assisting another agency could be fire, could be another law enforcement agency like Gresham, tigard, Beaverton that come into our jurisdiction looking for a witness suspect, something like that. They could also be set up to assist a community member. For instance, a person that has a car breakdown in a dangerous spot, and they need assistance with traffic control so they can get their tow and get moved out of the way. Number 13, 14 and 16. Those are all very low priority calls, and a lot of those are taken by our public safety support specialists. Next slide. All right. So far we've talked about you know responding to calls and some some of our self-initiated calls. But we also wanted to give you a brief illustration of all the other duties our personnel have to do in the course of their day. We frequently hear from our folks that we take on ride alongs, how how amazed they are by how much paperwork, frankly, we have to do. You know, we fill out our general france reports, which are our typical crime reports, custody reports, supplemental reports, property forms, and much more. There's also a significant amount of administrative work that happens during the day, including roll call downloading, body worn cameras, uploading evidence, as well as court appearances. There's follow up reports on previous days cases, and often follow up phone calls with victims and witnesses. And if you have an additional role, such as a coach or another detached job, there's also additional work that you have to do, such as if you're a coach, you have to fill out a daily observation report for your for your training, which is which is labor intensive. Next slide. And we also have proactive work that may take the form of addressing community livability or traffic concerns. You know, and not all of our training is done off site. A lot of our training we have to do with insider ten hour shift. We have our learning management system, where officers are required to watch videos and take tests when directives or laws are updated. And again, if you have additional responsibility, there's even more training to keep up on that end. As far as our people that are not in patrol response, you know, it's difficult to encompass all of the work they do. Specifically detectives, except to discuss the massive amounts of investigative follow up, including interviewing complainants, witnesses, suspects, reviewing evidence both physical and digital, as well as writing reports and affidavits, and carving out time to appear in court as well. You know, in all of our members, just like other city employees, are entitled to vacation and sick time or in some cases, you know, are away from work doing due to on the job injuries or protect leave. All of these have significant effects on our precinct operations that are not fully staffed because they force us to create or force us to hire people on overtime to backfill those vacancies. And last but not least, is our community engagement. And I want to turn it over to chief dave for that.
41 Yeah. So next slide please. Police bureau historically has not done a great job of tracking its community engagement. A while back, we developed an app and we're increasing the use of that app, which demonstrates there in November and December of last year, a significant increase was part of my direction that we were going to do a better job of capturing what we were doing. Also, if you look at November and December, we made a heavy emphasis on the walking beats in that time period, and we're tracking this now. We're putting out a report every two weeks to all of our precincts and everybody to see where who's keeping track of what. Community engagement is pretty broad, but it's essentially, you know, when they either are at a community meeting or an event or pretty, pretty well open to their discretion. But it allows for us to be able to capture what the officers are doing in a non enforcement way. And this is important to me. As I've stated before, my primary goal of transforming the dynamic between the police and the people we serve. I think it happens when we are not in critical incidents and we are not in times of crisis. It's difficult to establish rapport, and relationships in times of chaos doesn't mean that our responsibility is any less. When we're on scene, we absolutely have to make sure that we are equally as professional, and there can be some connectivity that happens, whether it be on a traffic stop or on a call. But these are incidents that are occurring outside of that, and we're really impressed, and I'm impressed and encouraged at the level of engagement we're seeing, as well as the accounting for it within the app. So the numbers in 2025, I anticipate, are going to be much higher because we are doing more of this intentional work, but also because we're doing a better job recording it. Next slide. These are a variety of examples of what I referred to as community engagement. And they kind of run the gamut of just trying to demonstrate where we're at and who we're meeting with or who we're talking to. The app allows us to put, you know, how many officers are on scene, how many community members are on scene, if it has a specific name or for the event, is there any social media associated with it? Can we post pictures and send it to our comms team, etc? I use the app extensively when I'm out and about, and just to be able to record where we're at. Next slide please. I already mentioned some of the things why it matters, but one of the things that's really important is if our officers are continually going from crisis to crisis or call to call and never see an opportunity to engage in other manners with people that are not crisis oriented, that begins to wear on their own wellness and their own well-being. They're not robots, they're employees or human beings. And they have, you know, basic desire to have that connection with community. I really believe that as we talk about trying to encourage trust and trust building and relationship building, it comes and seeing one another and understanding one another and challenging them regularly, as well as myself to be out and about in conversations, in spaces, whether we're in agreement or not, to be able to hear those voices and maybe develop some learning and some curiosity about one another that we didn't have before. I think that plays into so many aspects of the core role of policing in any community. Is that trust in relationship. Next slide please. A quick example of this where I was extremely proud of the team, was the shooting we had last fall in southwest in the parking lot of a school, a muslim school, also next to a mosque. And when the call came out there was a tremendous amount of concern. One of the suspects ran into the school. The excuse me, there was thoughts of this being a bias crime. There were thoughts of this possibly being an active shooter. A lot of misunderstanding. And we have a long standing history with the muslim community. We have a muslim advisory council, the vast majority of imams in the tri county area are participants in that. We have deep relationships in the muslim community and their leadership. Because of this advisory council and so quickly, officers on scene were able to determine this is not an active shooter. It was not a terrorist attack. There was not further risk. We identified the suspect. This was actually a disagreement, unfortunately, between two parents in the parking lot. And by just making a series of phone calls, we were able to share that information quickly with the muslim leaders in the community. They were able to put information out. And this has led to a relationship with the islamic school that we never had before, to the point now where we have gone back to the islamic school and provided ongoing training on active shooter response and opened up tremendous doors of communication with them. We've also had experiences, once again referring to the muslim community where we've been on scene and had language barriers, maybe with some of our east african immigrants and so forth. We've been able to call upon folks or have them be on scene and be able to interpret or at least explain to the community why it is and what it is that we're doing. And just recently, two weeks ago, I was in anaheim, where we actually were able to present, along with one of our muslim advisory council members, highly unusual, bring a community member with us to present at the international association of chiefs of police wellness conference. And our emphasis was on social wellness. There's a heavy emphasis on wellness and policing today, and that is about, you know, getting proper sleep, proper diet, exercise, all those things that are very practical and very much real. We were the only class that I was aware of down there that emphasized the significant of social wellness. And we used the model of breaking bread with the iftar dinner, as another example, with our with our muslim brothers and sisters that we celebrated a few weeks ago in southwest. And this is just one example. We have several others, but at the end of the day, I think it's important that we not only see the benefit in the personal relationship, but there's also a benefit when it comes to crime reduction, reducing the fear of crime. And this is better for our members. It allows them to have these relationships in a way and be encouraged. And I think that directly contributes to their wellness. I think we're getting close here.
42 That's it.
43 Getting close to the end. Yeah, that's the final slide. So we obviously have created some space and time for conversation and questions.
44 Jeff baer councilor Morillo.
45 Thanks for being here today. I appreciated learning about pbp's advisory teams and how they help you navigate different complicated situations. I was curious about how those advisory teams are established, what sorts of recruitment happen, that sort of thing.
46 Yeah.
47 And I want to speak to what I have learned because they have changed in the time that I was gone. But currently, other than the train advisory council and the behavioral health unit advisor, those those two councils report to the city. They are part of the city process. The 7 or 8 advisory councils, latino, muslim, african American, slavic, etcetera, asian, pacific islander, those are independent councils. So when they meet, they run the meeting. We don't run the meeting. We don't do the recruitment, we don't facilitate. It's a community led event. So in terms of the recruitment process, I really don't know. I haven't asked that specific question. I think it's a it's a great question to ask. This is a program that I inherited upon my return. And so far it seems to be working well. But I'm certainly willing to connect you with the various chairs of those different committees. And you can ask. But what I appreciated about it is they really are community led. They set the agenda. For example, last night there was a meeting once a month, there's a meeting with all of the chairs of all the councils. It's called the cag community advisory group, and they meet once a month. And they had some questions. I answered some emails. I said, hey, I'm happy to jump on last night at 530 and participate. And the response was, no, we're good. We don't, you know, we don't need you. We've got the answers and we're going to manage the meeting ourselves. And they had a police officer there for something else. And natasha huntsberger, who's the liaison with them. But it's unusual for a community group to say, hey, no, we don't need the chief. We're good, you know? But that's because they have their own agenda and their own program, and I'm there to support. But I can ask about recruitment. Councilor.
48 Councilor Kanal.
49 Thank you. I'm going to start with my sort of questions that are not related to community engagement. Just because I kind of about half and half there on slide 20, it talks about the majority spent on self-initiated calls was by sworn personnel not assigned to patrol, such as traffic, bike squad investigations, etc. And I think you explained pretty well how investigations are self-initiated. And I think as well as traffic stops. Could you speak to the self-initiated calls of the bike squad? Just give a little bit of information there for us please?
50 Yeah, a lot of it's, you know, proactive activity in the downtown core area, whether they're addressing drug hotspots or livability issues, you name it. I mean, their job is to be out, be visible and, and contact people that are violating the law.
51 So are you would I be correct then in saying that the self-initiated calls of the bike squad are when there is a suspicion of crime being committed.
52 Is that could be or.
53 I mean, they ride around and talk to a lot of community members. They also talk to business owners. There's a lot to do in the downtown core.
54 Okay.
55 Thanks. Thank you. Let's see.
56 Can you also.
57 Yeah. That's weird. In the when you get to the beyond call load section under proactive work, it's slide 25. There's a whole section there or subsection on patrols. And the only I'm not 100% sure what's captured in that category that isn't captured in sort of walking beats and some of the other things that are also mentioned under community engagement. Can you clarify what proactive work patrols means in that slide?
58 Sure.
59 You know, visibility is important for a lot of people. And we go into neighborhoods and people that have, you know, crime issues or livability issues, and we literally drive around and make our presence known. A lot of times we don't need to enforce a specific law or pull people over. Just that mere presence actually cools the temperature, or it stops the behavior that people are concerned about. And proactive behavior is certainly consistent. Not to be confused with community engagement, but it's not uncommon, you know, community engagement. We tend to categorize as an event. So we go to a community meeting. We label that as community engagement. But it's, you know, under proactive, it could be we're getting concerns or we have observations or awareness around, you know, x. And so we get out and walk around 2 or 3 square blocks. And that could be seen as proactive and maybe not recorded as community engagement. You know, because we are in the process of doing a better job of documenting this. Just recently had a back and forth email exchange with a sergeant at north precinct who's intentionally getting officers out to walk neighborhoods and communities and business areas that haven't seen a lot of police engagement. And it's really just getting out and walking around. But we have to do a better job of making sure. Are we calling that under proactive, like a call for service, or are we labeling that as community engagement? So those are those are some of the learning processes I think that that come out of this. But historically we look at proactive, as dekovic said, getting out, you know, addressing a problem per se. Does that make sense?
60 Yeah.
61 And I have a follow up on that to the first part of that, the that dekovic said, what helps you decide when it's appropriate to do that? I've been getting a lot of constituent requests about open air drug use near a school, in the stadium, for example. And I'm curious why there hasn't been a proactive patrol on that relative to some other things that that maybe don't have the same level of, of or the same level of allegation, if not necessarily interest.
62 Yeah.
63 I don't know if it's correct to say that there hasn't been a patrol, you know, there might not have been a patrol that the complainant saw or that we all know about. Right. There is problems unfortunately, citywide. Right. So we can't focus just on one constituents issue. We really need to move around and make the most of our time taking care of everybody's needs. And sometimes all those needs aren't taken care of just in one shift. Right? So yes, we would love to be seen. Like I was talking about visibility for people to know that we're out in the area doing that work. But a lot of times that doesn't coincide with them being present.
64 And I just want to affirm to your question about, you know, how does that decision get made? Right? It's very nuanced, not unlike you heard from director cozzie. And I want to recognize him and Steve for their work in conjunction with us on this project. In general. They've been great partners, and I really appreciate his leadership up there, but it's very nuanced, you know, and it's there isn't a script that says, you know, this is where we're going to be this proactive and this is where we're not. This is how we're going to respond to this concern. And it's oftentimes can be challenging based upon the prioritizing what that concern is and maybe who is that area affecting. Sometimes we're criticized because we're showing alleged to have showed favoritism to a particular area of concern. You know, one of the things that I hear as I travel around the city, there's frustration sometimes on the emphasis we place on downtown. You know, we place a heavy emphasis on downtown. And last year, I increased our bike squa. On afternoons. I took four officers from somewhere else and put an afternoon bike squad downtown. So we have a day shift and an afternoon bike squad. And I know there's other parts of the city that would really appreciate having that afternoon bike squad and I made that decision because of the fentanyl crisis, the overdose. You know, all of the things that we see. So I'm constantly challenged on our leadership to be evaluating all of those basic concerns and trying to make sure that we're being as equitable as possible. But I affirm dc jovic's comments. It'd be really not. Probably surprised, but I am continually challenged by the amount of requests that come in for us to check on this area, or check on that area that don't come to the 911 system, but come through either your constituents or, you know. Et cetera.
65 Yeah, thanks. And then my last clarification, I'll pass it on to the my colleagues is why are warrants considered so heavily self-initiated. This is slide 23 I want to say yeah a category 18.
66 Yeah. So those would be search warrants or arrest warrants that investigators initiate. So those aren't things that boec dispatches to us. Those are things that those are cases that we build up from their infancy and bring them to fruition. After writing affidavits and serving warrants.
67 Okay. Thank you.
68 Councilor Zimmerman.
69 Thanks.
70 With respect to the neighborhood response teams, I'm trying to understand where their type of activity is captured in this in these different tables. Obviously, bike squad is part of nrt, but it's even more than that across all precincts. Can you help me out with that a bit?
71 Yeah, much of it is self-initiated. There was a good question about the camping code and how low it is. So the camping code is used by specifically by our neighborhood response teams in conjunction with our with.
72 Portland solutions.
73 Portland solutions, thank you very much. They have weekly meetings that discuss camps that need to be addressed when they arrive on a, you know, on a on a location that needs to be addressed. They set up that call type and then respond to it.
74 But they do a lot more than just camps. I need to make sure we're real clear about that.
75 Absolutely.
76 I mean, they they are really the jacks of all trade. They they are the ones that take your constituents complaints and have well, they used to have a lot more free time, but have the time to actually address those and are not tied to taking radio calls.
77 One of the projects we started a year ago is we. Each precinct has a team, but once a month they all get together. So we combine all three teams and address a specific area in each precinct. So it's an attempt to try and maximize, but it also means that you could see maybe an inconsistency in reporting. Right. Because you can have, you know, five and five and five. But then when you have 15, come to each precinct in March, you might see a spike in that self-initiated, self-reported stuff. And then all of a sudden you see a spike in April in central precinct. It's because you've got more officers engaged in a specific area. That's just a possibility. But yeah, they do a ton more and have been just an amazing resource seeing them develop over the years.
78 So as I look at this dispatch, self-initiated and directed categories, I'm kind of landing on and I'm looking to you for if this is the right place to land, I'm landing on a I would I would feel like we were moving in the right direction if our self-initiated calls were a larger percentage, because in my mind I'm coming from this, it means that the presence patrol is more frequent. The bike squad is more likely to be able to tackle the challenges that are happening in whatever area. So self-initiated would be a good thing if we saw that rising. Is that a is that a safe way to kind of view as the numbers go over the course of this next year, two, three years, that that would be a good thing?
79 Yes, absolutely.
80 Back when we were we were fully staffed. We had we didn't just strive to have minimums, right. The minimum amount of people that we could get by with, we actually had people, extra people. So those missions that were now spending overtime on those were done on a daily basis, right on straight time. So it was there's a significant cost savings there. When we have people above the minimums and we can be proactive with just our regular shift personnel.
81 Okay. Thanks. I, I have really valued in my district, in particular, the west side, the presence. And I think it it is an important factor. And when councilor Kanal brings a budget amendment to put bike squads in all the precincts, I will second it with loud applause because I think those presents have made a big difference for a lot of folks who are at times concerned that they don't see the day to day stuff being dealt with. I shouldn't have to call 911 on this thing that is so obvious. Why isn't why is somebody driving past it? Well, they're driving past it because they're going to an even more important thing that bike squads and I think really have helped us tackle. So I appreciate you keeping them out there. That's been important. And it's part of why I think the ps3 branding should be reflect more of what the public safety apparatus of the city looks like, because I think it also helps us send a message. So all those types of things help in terms of how our calls come in as well. So thanks a lot, gentlemen.
82 And just one comment councilor on self-initiated and I don't have the numbers in front of me, so but I know that it's not always resulting in an arrest. Right. So I would love to see us be at a place where just the presence of law enforcement discourages criminal behavior, and that is the motivation behind the walking beats. The last couple of years was when we would maximize everybody from my office on down, being present and being out, not making arrests, just engaging, but being present. And when we did that, although a very, very, very small sample size, we saw a decrease in calls for service, a decrease in reported crimes, and literally zero arrests. So I think it's possible to create an environment where you have law enforcement and you have community and you have less crime, and that doesn't have to be because of enforcement. My point?
83 Councilor Morillo.
84 I, I already asked a question. Do you want to go first according to our order?
85 Now I'll take the privilege of the chair and delay myself.
86 Oh, okay. Thank you. I appreciate your graciousness. I had a kind of specific question about some incidents that have come up in the community that I'm curious about how they would be categorized. And it's okay if you don't know this off the top of your head. There might be a follow up situation. I'm sure you've heard about the community free store pdx and some of the incidents that have happened there. For folks who are watching from home. The community free store is a group of mutual aid activists that are handing out food, clothing, hygiene kits, and they do this. And, you know, full disclosure, they were doing this on a private, empty lot that was owned by somebody else. So that is obviously a crime, but it is my understanding. And I actually personally witnessed and went there in person and saw that there were 10 to 11 police vehicles on site, not once, but twice, and about 20 officers dispatched there. And that considering that it wasn't, you know, a violent situation, people were handing out free items, maybe in a space that they shouldn't have been allowed to be. I'm just curious about one. If that was a 911 call that was requested, and then dispatch decided to send ten cop cars there with 20 officers, or if that was a private request from an individual citizen, to have police show up there with that level of force. I'm just curious because it seemed like a really heavy use of police resources in the evening, which is a really critical time, I think, for you guys to be patrolling for something that was relatively benign. And I'm just curious if you can speak a bit to how that call type would be, you know, addressed here, if that goes through 911, if that goes through some community member asking individually. Et cetera.
87 I don't know the answers to how that that call was initiated or what call type it is. I'm happy to send you a copy of that call. I mean, that's all public record, so we can certainly do that.
88 We did have commander hughes looking into that. So I know that he's got much more detailed information on it, and I would encourage you to reach out and I can have him connect with you. But I know that commander hughes has been really engaged in that conversation, both that incident as well. I would say a couple of things, and I think dc jovic touched on it earlier. One is we don't always know the whole story in terms of what's not say we I'm talking collectively. I'm not talking about the police for a minute. I'm talking collectively. So it's not uncommon to show up and see ten police cars and everything static and think, what do we have? Ten police cars. And frankly, that is a thing of mine. When I show up and I see officers just standing around unnecessarily and we have a lot of work to be done, I'm the first to kind of say, hey, what are we doing here? Where can we move? But the circumstances about how that call arrives and I'm going to ask Steve or bob to check me, but they don't make the determination to say, send five cars or send ten cars. If it's a high priority call, you're going to send two, right? Thank you. They're going to send two. And then we can make the discussion or the determination about how we want to add that up. So that call may have came out categorized as x disturbance whatever I don't know. Once again we can get that a couple officers show up on scene. Then they evaluate and call for more officers. And you know, then they are responsible to better articulate what were the circumstances that required them to call for more officers. And it is my expectation that when we have that presence that it's legitimate, that we have reasons to be there and that we're only there for the amount of time necessary. But cops are people, too. They stand around, they see somebody they haven't seen in a while. They get to visiting, lose track of time. I mean, you know, that's just reality. I think this speaks to I know this isn't part of the question, but I think it speaks to the number of officers who are at councilor Kanal public meeting. You know, we had five officers show up. That wasn't my direction. That wasn't my expectation. We I wanted a couple officers to come by so they can hear from you and hear from the, you know, the community, but also then other officers heard and said, oh, well, they're going to check this out. I'm going to go with them kind of a deal. And one of the things that I'm learning in this process is to be more deliberate, to be more intentional about the direction that we give and the expectation we set. So the sergeants and the officers on scene certainly have that discretion. I'm always going to I'm always going to defer to them, but then afterwards be able to have the conversation, which, like I said, commander hughes has had and I would encourage us to follow up with him. I can get you whatever you need the details of.
89 Thank you. I appreciate that. And I think, you know, for our town halls, because I think that happened to well, I didn't I don't think it did happen to me as well with two officers that showed up. Hughes has always been lovely to me. When I was campaigning, he came up to me at an event and shook my hand, was very friendly and made sure that I felt comfortable. That's not really what happened with the officers that showed up at my town hall. And so I think that there's a different feeling, and I'm I'm very aware of what's happening. I it's not maybe there's an intention impact aspect to it, but I'm also not stupid. And I see what's happening with my own eyes. And I trust the evidence of my own eyes because I know the difference. When someone is doing community policing. I also still think that I have seen the community free store operate, and there are a lot of people getting services there that frankly, our government should probably be providing, and we're not. And that's why the community is having to show up together to give out free resources like COVID kits, clothes, etc. And I understand the aspect of private property, right? And them being on an empty lot and that being an issue. But when 10 to 11 police cars are there with 20 officers, that is incredibly heavy handed. If there's nothing violent going on, if there's nothing serious, I would expect that it would be much lower. So if I if there is a 911 call and I'm looking to boec, I want to see that 911 call if there if this was a call made from a resident in old town that privately contacted officers to show up, I would like to see that as well, because it's also my understanding that members of the district attorney's staff showed up who are unrelated to this sort of patrol, and so it seems like it was it seems like it was kind of coordinated outside of the normal bounds of how these calls should be dispatched. And I think that that's very serious given our limited resources. So I would just love to see more evidence about how that all came forward.
90 Thank you. Councilor. We're more than happy to do all the research necessary. If you could reach out to me directly with details of that call for service, we'll do the research. And we always do a quality check anyway. When we receive these types of requests. So we'll make sure we do that.
91 Thank you I'll follow up with you. Appreciate your time.
92 Chief day, I'm going to ask you a question which your staff and I have previously agreed is unfair, but I think that it's important to get an answer. And I think it's one of these situations where you're off the cuff answer is probably at least as good as an answer that you'd give if you had a lot of time to think about it. So here's the question I asked your folks how many fte to welfare check calls represent? And I was thinking, you know, if there were no welfare calls with check calls, how many feet would that free up? And lawrence said, well, if you add up the amount of time spent in welfare check calls and divide that by 2080, assuming that's sort of like a normal year of work, then you get about 11. And she cautioned, there's all sorts of reasons not to take that literally. And that's clearly true, because if you the six welfare checks are 6% of the calls, which is about 1/16 of the calls, which means that if you took that literally, all calls combined take up about 175 worth of officers worth of time, which would imply that if calls were completely eliminated, there were none of them, then you'd only reduce your force of sworn officers by 175, and you have 600 left. Even though you had no calls. So another way of looking at it might be you've got 800 officers. If you've sworn folks, if you think of 6% of your of the calls as being 6% of your total work, then you'd wind up with 48 fte would be freed up if you stopped doing welfare checks. I think the answer is somewhere in between, but that's a pretty broad range. So I decided to see if you have an off the cuff answer to the following question. If the total number of calls and the hours spent on calls were declined by 50%, how many of your 800 sworn folks do you think you would still need to provide the current level of service?
93 If the. So that.
94 50% reduction?
95 There's some assumptions there. You're you're assuming 50% of the calls are both.
96 I'm saying I'm saying let's assume both. Let's assume 50% of.
97 The calls.
98 Representing 50% of the time.
99 Is 50% of the crime go away.
100 Or the time. No, of the time spent.
101 Just the time spent and the calls.
102 Of the calls and 50% of the time spent went away. How many of your 800 sworn personnel do you think you'd still need?
103 Well, I'm my mind immediately went to the idea that not all 800 of us represent police officers taking calls. Right? So, you know, we have about 200 less than 300 right now that are taking calls, I believe I haven't looked today. So I'm trying to reconcile that. And in terms of holistically for the organization, for example, if that 50% of that went away, you know, do you need these commanders, these captains, these lieutenants, these sergeants, right, that don't necessarily feed into this concept?
104 Well, I mean, for one thing, it was we were told that the time spent on calls wasn't just time of patrol officers. I think chief jovic. Is that right?
105 Right.
106 He highlighted a couple of those calls that are primarily like investigations and so forth. So your argument is then if those went away or 50% of that went away, then those officers could do something else or not be needed. Yeah, yeah, yeah I get where you're going.
107 And my assumption is that the, you know, the, you know, the superior officers, etc, to some extent support the people doing calls. So if you drastically reduce the number of calls, you could reduce to some extent those higher levels too.
108 Yeah. In theory, yeah. You may not even need a chief of police for all I know. So but I would say I guess you're right. I mean, this is an off the cuff. This is an off the cuff comment that I hate to even commit to, but I'm going to say 25%, and I'm going to say 25% because I don't think to say 50. I don't think it's a 50 over 50 deal. I don't think you can take away 50% of the calls 50% of the time and say you only need 50%, but certainly if that went away, there could be a reduction. And that's been my conversation the whole time. Right? I've said many times from this bench, you can have all the work you want, you know, and let me know what it is that we need to do differently. But, you know, there's right now as as of most of this almost current data, we're about 45, 50,000 calls for service into 2025. So portlanders are calling at a high rate and boec, to the best of their ability, are sending the resource that they have, which is the police.
109 I can't tell you how grateful I am that you're willing to give me that off the cuff answer. Really appreciate it. Councilor Smith.
110 Thank you, mr. Chairman. Question. I want to thank you all for first for the presentations that you've given. And I did a town hall meeting this Saturday over at reep on 100, and I think it was about 108th. And halsey, I don't know if you're familiar with the reid program. It's a youth organization that works with youth of color in the david douglas reynolds school district's in parkrose, and there were two young ladies there. And I have to tell you, I didn't know how to quite answer it. I was thankful for terrance hayes for being there. But there are two young ladies there and they said, councilor, I'm afraid, because sometimes at night I hear gunshots. What am I supposed to do? And. That that was very chilling, that I even though they're kids and they're not my kids. And if they're afraid if I was there, I would say, come and tell me what you're hearing and keep them close. But what do you tell young people who are afraid, who are in their homes and they're hearing gunshots? Should they call 911? What should we be referring kids to do?
111 I'm a believer, you know, I've said this for years. I think this is an inadequate system. I think that the system we've designed is not adequate. One of the major changes that occurred to the system is many of us in the room can remember when if you wanted to talk to the police, you had to find a payphone, or you had to go home and call them, right. 15 years ago or whenever it was, we put one of these in the hands of everybody over the age of 12. So we created this type of entry point into this type of system before it was sort of like this. And you drove down the road, you saw a problem, you had to make a decision. Am I going to go down to the gas station and call, or am I going to stop and help this person in real time, but with do it on my own. This has granted immediate access to people and no matter what their concern, no matter what their frustration, no matter what their impatience might be. So it's an inadequate system because it's taking this massive volume and trying to shove it into this routine of just still a few number of officers or whatever the receptacle might be. But the reason I say that is because I still believe in the system. It's what we have. And to answer your question, councilor, absolutely. I think those people should call 911. I think they should. Absolutely. We cannot we cannot as much as the work we're doing here. We cannot abandon the confidence and the hope and the belief or the assurance or the understanding. If at a minimum, at least we have a record, at least we'll have a record, they should. So. So I would affirm them to call when they hear.
112 That, and I did. I offered that up to them and they said they don't come out here. It's in district one, it's in the numbers. And there's like, they don't come when we call. Terrance hayes, who works for the public safety department, he happened to be there, and he was talking about some ways in which his office can come out and talk to communities. And ceasefire and that kind of thing. And he gave them their cards to say, if, you know, if you need help, call us. And I, you know, I don't know what kind of situation. Sometimes it can be somebody just in their house and they're just shooting off guns, you know, just because. And then sometimes it could be some really serious stuff that's going on. You never you can never tell what the circumstance is around gunshots. So I just wanted to make sure that I was in line with what I should be telling young people, even though many don't feel that the response would be adequate enough from police. But I still think that we need to have it as an option.
113 I agree, I couldn't agree more and I just want you. It breaks my heart when there are portlanders who think you know, why bother, why bother? And that's a reflection on the police bureau. But I think it's also a reflection on the city as a whole that we need to do better to be demonstrate that responsiveness. And maybe it isn't 911, maybe it is alternatives, much like this council is considering and we are considering. But there is a reasonable expectation for people to be able to reach out to get some type of service. And I know that that is a belief, particularly in east Portland. Yes. And, you know, I'm committed to changing that belief and understanding. Maybe it's maybe we do a better job on a follow up phone call, you know, hey, we heard you called. We drove around, we didn't see anything. But we just want you to know that we were here. You know, something like that could be a long ways towards helping people know. At least we were there.
114 And just as a note. So I forget that I have the middle school that they go to, and they asked if I could come out sometimes and talk with them and talk to their class, and wanted to know if you could also come with me. I think that would be, you know, there is a stigma for sure that we all have to deal with around law enforcement and communities of color, and also one of the ladies was an immigrant. So I know that there there are some some clear lines on what they will and won't do. So I told her that I would be willing to come out and talk to them and they seemed pretty happy about that. But, you know, it would be great if we could have some sort of presence. I don't know if it's an officer with, with full regalia on or anything like that, but just to be able to, to know that they should at least if they are afraid that they should call 911.
115 Yeah, yeah.
116 And I'd love to be a part of that or have somebody be a part of that if I'm not available. So, you know, I live for that. Those kind of conversations. Thank you.
117 Counselor Zimmerman. If I can add just one thought to that, of course I would. I would encourage that that kid to call 911 also recognizing and let him or her know that other people are also calling because of the fact that everyone has these, these devices that even if they don't, that moment for something that is as noticeable as shots fired, inevitably we're going to be getting calls on that as well.
118 Thank you.
119 Counselor Zimmerman.
120 Thanks, chair. I don't know. I appreciate that we heard, given the situation in old town, we kind of heard two calls. Excuse me, two patrol vehicles will go to a priority call. And at that point, that officer is now in charge of whether or not calling more is what I'm hearing from the description. I think that's helpful to kind of understand how a situation escalates. We've had a few references colleagues to things in my district. What I would say is there is no greater ground zero for me as the district four counselor, than old town. And while we have some groups who I think have an honorable mission in their in their hopes that they are having second and third order negative effects in that neighborhood, because I did hear from people who live in that zone, who have businesses in that zone, that it that those types of events have caused problems. And so I don't want to rush to too many judgments there. I don't know why 11 cars, I can't be the person on the ground who made that call. But my point is, is that if there are areas of town who want to invite that activity to occur, then that conversation should happen. But old town has been around ground zero for so many services, for so many people coming in from other parts of town. I think we are also a little bit on edge in old town when anything kicks off. And so it hasn't been a great experience the last few weeks with this group. And I think that there are solutions at hand that can we can work through, but it's hard to not respond as the councilor who has those areas who, you know, I do get occasionally a call or a text from somebody about a thing going on in a variety of different areas. And. You know, you always wonder is like, okay, well, has that person called 911, have they not? I always encourage people to call 911. I think I learned an important lesson a few years ago that people thought there was a way to access psr without calling 911, and I thought, okay, we've got to fix this because people are choosing not to call 911, but at the same time, public is going to reach out to their elected representatives. And I think that we're going to be able to reach out to the leadership and say, quick note, something's going on, right? And I think that's a responsible act because it's just a passing of information. But I'm going to I'm going to always look out for old town. I hope if you all have some connections in that group, we can work through it because it hasn't been a positive experience and we've got to fix it. I hope it doesn't take 11 cops to fix something, but we've got to fix something because it has been unwelcomed. And I know that this Thursday they're planning on another event, auxiliary groups, that seems very targeted at a business based on some specific ethnicity issues that I think we've got to get in front of because this stuff, we all know it, it it cascades. And in old town things cascade even faster. And that's why I think things have shown up. And as a representative of that, I would rather we show up in force quickly to stop a cascading effect than allow things to, to deteriorate to the point where and we have seen it, stuff is happening in the streets and the cops are just observers because there's no way to stop it. So it's more commentary. Sorry, chair, for taking down that path. I just we were in my district. I had to comment a little bit.
121 Understood.
122 Councilor Kanal. Thank you. And I want to first say councilor Morillo pointed out that that we've had the part of this whole conversation is about groups that are taking on tasks that that government would take on. I think we've done that to police, too. Right. There's a lot that we've asked police to do for people who've sat up here historically that are, we've been told, are outside of the scope of police's forte. And it's incredibly important that we recognize that and not put the blame on you for those, those requests. And also that we talk about the expectations, which is why I was really grateful. And thank you to the call allocation team for pointing out that there are some calls where the appropriate response is not to respond. And that's an important thing. It's a very narrow, small number, but I think that's an appropriate thing to bring up. And I appreciate that being highlighted. And because, chief, you mentioned the idea that that we can advise, I think it's important on the community engagement side. And as someone who's done that on public safety for three years at the city, I this is a passion of mine to say that I think throwing more resources at an imperfect approach might be less effective than adjusting that approach and would also have the benefit of freeing up your resources. So I think and I've seen this from you actually, because you've come to community events not in uniform and not with a visible weapon. And so because community engagement is not at its best when one party has a gun and a known visible gun at that, I think that's that's particularly important because it creates a power imbalance. And then that's not to say that there aren't appropriate times for armed officers to be present. I think the focused intervention team, community oversight group, is actually a really good example of that. And then but you do have another model within pb where we've seen officer harnsberger and assistant chief lavelle coming to events, often unarmed as well. So I just kind of want to mention that. And then certainly there's the independent community engagement where the city is doing engagement about policing, but it's not necessarily the police doing it. Pccep comes to mind there, and that gets less pushback and less criticism than the kinds of comments that we just heard for holiday markets or for mutual aid events like my colleague brought up. So, in other words, I guess the example that you gave about doing good police work at after the shooting that was outside of the islamic community school, those those stories kind of tell the story themselves. The dawson park mission two weeks ago. Right. Those those tend to do the work themselves at helping to build trust that something is being engaged with. Because I hear the same thing that councilor Smith is saying, I hear two reasons why people don't call the police. One is the fear that there may be someone who they want to be helped that might end up, might end up being harmed. The other is that there's no point sometimes when your car gets broken into that. And so I offer this in the in the sense of trying to see if there's a way to free up the sorts of resources that can be used to pursue the investigations that help address that second concern, and in so doing, help minimize the types of interactions that can lead to the first concern. So with that said, like, I don't want to I don't want to just talk. I did want to ask one specific question, which is how how do you decide when an officer is going to do a community engagement event armed and in uniform versus in plain clothes? Because that's the single thing I hear the most about with relation to this.
123 A couple things. First of all, I mean, I have been, as I said, in this profession for over three decades. I've been in a lot of places in this city, both in uniform and out of uniform, and there are many, many community members who are very comfortable with me being in uniform. And I recognize that also there are those that are not. But I don't want to cast a net that just says that all portlanders are uncomfortable because a Portland police officer shows up in uniform. I'm proud of the uniform. I'm proud of the members that wear the uniform, but I understand the sensitivity as I've spoken to before and demonstrated when not being in uniform in terms of when people show up or in uniform or not in uniform, it's largely based around when they're on duty or not. If they're in a patrol function, excuse me when they're on duty in a patrol function. So let's go back to let's just put this on the table for a minute. These councilor Meetings and, you know, in full transparency that did not go as I had planned, that was clunky. And that's on me. That's my responsibility from the start. I have been anticipating since November, upon the election and the creation of this council, the opportunity for increased community engagement. And what I mean by community engagement is cops and community in the same place in low conflict, low stress areas. That's, to me, is community engagement. As I said earlier, it's really difficult to establish trust and rapport when you're in the middle of a crisis. So in November, I started to prepare the organization for the expectation that in this new form of government, we would see an increased amount of opportunity to partner with our elected leaders and their constituents just by the nature of the new form of government. And that materialized in January, when I noticed online posting of council meetings that were happening. And so my error in judgment was, I thought that, you know, the other 799 thought, like I did in terms of what community engagement is, the example that councilor Morillo used with, you know, brian hughes, for example, I made some assumptions. I also failed to recognize some of the dynamics that were happening even in this very room. And the reality that those have impact upon perception and experience. So several misses right out of the gate. What I can say with unequivocal certainty is that the intent. But people care about our behaviors, not our intent. I understand that, but the intent was because I believe these are amazing spaces now. I had a conversation yesterday with council president, a couple of things I didn't, I didn't, I did not anticipate. One, you folks and your colleagues are out there a ton. I thought that this would be an occasional event. Kudos to each of you for the amount of time you're spending in your district, and the number of community meetings you're holding. I thought we would be able to send an officer on a regular basis to hear clearly. We can't keep up. I mean, councilor Smith's comment about being out there on halsey, I didn't know about that. Clearly, we can't keep up the second the. So we're reevaluating that whole process in terms of just what it looks like. And I think, you know, we've heard that we will be, you know, reaching out in the future. Second of all, I am not social media competent to say the least, but I am learning that most of you and most of your colleagues do have a social media account, and that's one way that we can keep track. I saw commissioner Ryan councilor Ryan posted you and I think councilor Kanal, and I think councilor Pirtle-guiney were at an event over in the lloyd district or somewhere on broadway here recently. And so that's another way for us to stay informed and aware of, you know, what's being heard, what's being said, what's being put forward. So the short answer, the short answer is most of the time when people show up in uniform, they're typically working. So we asked two patrol officers from each precinct to go to councilor Smith's meeting at 108th and halsey while they're working, because that's their district. She's their representative in that district. She's going to hear from the community. I love to go to this stuff. I'm only one person, and I'm probably the worst to go because as has already been demonstrated here, you asked me a question. I don't know the answer. It seems like an answer I should have. So we are trying to get more of our membership into those places so they can have those conversations and provide that real time feedback that's needed going forward. As I said, we're evaluating this whole process and I just want to apologize and own that. That's on me in terms of the direction that was given. I made some assumptions, didn't have a clear understanding organizationally, but that was, you know, the hope was to create more spaces. And what I would like to see and continue to have conversations about is how we can maximize those spaces. Much like councilor Smith just did. That may be the better approach. Hey, we're going to go have this conversation. We're going to go have this conversation in old town. Maybe there's an opportunity to join the district four councilors. Et cetera. But a lot being said there, but I just wanted to kind of clear the air and own that. In addition to answering your question, hopefully.
124 We're going to move to public testimony. I just wanted to say I really, really appreciate all the information you brought here today. A few weeks ago, I had no idea it was even possible to identify the amount of time spent on each call type, so I'm delighted. Mr. Bob cozzie, I want to. A couple of weeks ago, we had a conversation where I said, well, couldn't there be some call types we just stop responding to at all? And you said they tried that in Gresham, and the roof fell in and they were mad at the 911 folks. So if you could just say you can, we can take this up later. But just in 30s can you explain to me how the roof fell in in Gresham?
125 Yeah. So, you know, our we dispatch for multiple agencies, obviously. And there are decisions that are made at a command level to respond to certain call types. And in the case of Gresham, that did occur and what it resulted with for boec is community members who are frustrated calling to have something done and us really not having a resource to be able to do something about it and then referring them back to, in that particular case, the police, Gresham police, and ultimately just going in circles and providing really poor customer service. So, you know, when we say, can we just stop doing something? Well, you can make any kind of decision like that, but there's always going to be some kind of outcome as a result. And if it results in more work for my staff, then I would absolutely say, no, we don't want to go down that path.
126 Thank you. Thank you all.
127 Thank you.
128 We're going to move to public testimony. We have, I think, 20 people signed up. We have half an hour. So we ask people to limit themselves to two minutes. That might mean that we wind up with a few people that don't have time to testify. So if people could self limit themselves to like 100 seconds instead, that would help. We're not going to hold you to that, but that would help let other people testify. Keelan can you call the next item?
129 Public comment?
130 Public comment on Portland police bureau allocation of personnel, time and budgetary impacts.
131 Thank you. To call the first few people.
132 First up, we have tom simonson, brian orndorff and alan combs. Tom can you hear us. You're muted.
133 Yes.
134 Oh there we go.
135 Sorry my name is tom simonson and I live in district two. My hope is to encourage a better narrative to discussions about police and policing removed from the binary. Yay police or boo police that is entrenched itself over decades. My hope for better narrative is it's not anti-police to be pro accountability as city budgets are in the forefront. I don't think it's anti-police to expect a force that will not repeatedly act in ways resulting in the city on the hook to pay settlements totaling many millions of dollars in recent years. These payments are often from repeating the same actions and behaviors, with no apparent change to training, bureau directives, discipline or accountability. It's not anti-police to want good decision making from PPB leadership. We've been told repeatedly that staffing levels are perilously low, with too few officers to answer 911 calls in a timely manner. So though it's come up in this meeting, I still don't understand why leadership is pulling numerous on duty officers off the street to attend councilor Town halls, the town hall I attended, the five officers who were there for the better part of two hours, engaged very little with anyone that I observed. If the goal of community outreach is to build better relationships with the people of Portland, I would like to suggest that one of the most efficient, cost effective things that PPB could do to rebuild trust and positive relationships would be to embrace, encourage and achieve the real, independent, transparent oversight that the voters of Portland overwhelmingly passed nearly five years ago. I feel doing so will build trust in ways exponentially beyond officers attending town halls. Thank you.
136 Great. I'm brian orndorf, proud. Resident and business owner in district four. The rule of law is central to the success of a community where accountability is not only expected, but required, whether it's from the highest authority to everyday citizens. It is the commitment to justice that ensures fairness and equity for all. However, Portland is at a critical juncture. We cannot ignore the impact of rising tide of mental health crises and substance abuse that many individuals, including those from out of state, bring to our city. We must hold accountable those states that contribute to the migration of the most vulnerable residents to Oregon, often without the necessary support systems in place. The dynamic puts immense strain on our resources and contributes to rising homelessness, substance abuse and crime. Portland's police staffing is critically low, with just 789 sworn officers for a population of 630,500 residents, yielding one of the lowest ratios of officers per resident in the country. Our violent crime rates remains unacceptably high, as evidenced by seven homicides this March already in districts one and two. The path forward must prioritize establishing law and order, which can only be achieved by increasing police force. This is not only a matter of rhetoric, it is a matter of safety for every Portland resident. I attended the d2 town hall, where one of the councilors commented that recent police overtime was unnecessary, claiming the violence never occurred. Does he forget the 179 nights of riots we experienced in 2020 and 2021? The violence and destruction we witnessed caused billions in damage to our cities, properties, businesses and reputation. It cannot be dismissed as a non-issue now. Furthermore, anti-police rhetoric from some members on city council, visible on platforms like instagram and blue sky is harmful. These posts undermine law enforcement's role in keeping the community safe and discouraging potential investors from bringing capital into Portland. I'm calling on each of you to recognize the gravity of the situation. Portland is on the brink. Blight, a state of destruction and decay, has already begun to creep into certain neighborhoods. We cannot allow it to spread. I fully support the recommendations by chief daye to increase funding for the police. Thank you.
137 Alan combs.
138 Thank you. Good afternoon. Councilors. My name is alan combs. I've been a resident of district three now for 25 years, and I appreciate the opportunity to provide comments today. I very much appreciate the information shared today by boec emergency communications and Portland police, or PPB, and have two specific reactions. First, I suggest you follow up on council member Novick questions and actually look at the data. You have lots of call type data. I think that you'll find that although there is a role for expanded psr or project respond, many welfare checks require police participation. In just the last week, at least ten houses in my neighborhood were visited upon by a clearly troubled person. He had a metal rake and he was not afraid to use it. He threatened residents with bodily harm and damaged a lot of property. He appeared to get the mental health care he needed later that morning, which I should add was out of the normal time that psr is available. But he got the right mental health care help. But he needed police assistance because he was dangerous. Second, I want to encourage all councilors, but especially those on this committee. In addition to visiting the boec, which you've been invited to multiple times. But to get into a patrol car for a ride along or attend the next community academy, I know that councilors Novick, Smith and canal have attended, as well as commissioner Councilor Ryan in the past. But clearly, from some of the questions asked today, I think some additional direct observation is needed. Honestly by all of you, for the remainder of my comments, I want to address police community policing in Portland. For many, you might think of that as being some old school notion of cops on the beat around on a regular basis. But that's not community policing today. Community policing can be done in several targeted ways. The first is getting well-trained and diverse officers, and the way you get that is to fund the budget as recommended by PPB. Those new officers will reflect the ethnicity and racial diversity of Portland today. The second is Portland.
139 Sorry, mr. Combs, we need to move on. I. Apologize.
140 Well.
141 Next up we have murray wall, todd littlefield, and terrence hayes. Murray is online.
142 Are you ready for me? Sorry.
143 Yes. Go ahead please.
144 Good afternoon. My name is marie tival, and I'm here as a person of white privilege to testify that pbb needs to be subjected to budget cuts. Street roots reported in August 2024 that ppb's annual budget increased by 42%, nearly 88 million since 2016. However, the city's population only increased by 3% during that time and at times since 2020, ppb's personnel was nearly 20% below 2016 staffing levels. And yet, ppb's data never shows a resulting crime wave. Only in short time frames did reported crime increase even since 2020, and there is no concrete evidence tying decreased police staffing to those short term spikes in specific types of crime. Ppb also seems to have plenty of personnel who have a lot of spare time to intimidate a local mutual aid group, as reported by community free storage account on March 6th, cops swarmed the block with at least 11 cop cars and began pushing folks. Three community members were detained and cited. One community member was pulled onto the street by multiple cops and then cited for being on the street, as reported by independent media, and a video on the Portland homeless facebook page. On March 13th, jessie burke, former campaign manager for nathan vasquez, chair of the old town community association and board president of district four coalition, apparently called the cops again on the community free store. Jessie was referred to specifically by cops as their spokesperson. The woman in sunglasses also seen in the video timestamp 140 is darlene herbert garrett, executive director of the district four coalition, also present on March 13th was j.r. Ujifusa, a district attorney at Multnomah county, Multnomah county, no doubt thanks to jessie's relationship with nathan vasquez. In summary, while PPB insists they can't be subjected to budget cuts, someone like jessie burke can apparently easily weaponize her relationship with the cops, the da and in her role as the board president of district four coalition, an organization funded by Portland taxpayers to summon the cops and da staff at will to harass volunteers handing out lifesaving supplies. Thank you for your time today.
145 Todd littlefield.
146 Good afternoon, councilors todd littlefield, Lents neighborhood livability association I very much appreciate the opportunity to share with you today what I have experienced living across the street from the multi-use path, which runs along I-205 and is in a residential neighborhood of many working class people and is a safe route to school. Safe route to max, safe route to TriMet and built the path for all to use for bicycling, jogging, walking your dog, etc. No trespassing signs are on or every 100 yards since August. The path lights have been out. Yes. Not working. Why? An organized group has ripped all the wiring out. The devastation my neighborhood has experienced since 2018 cannot be overstated. I've had rifles pointed on my head, bullets shot into my shop, bombs going off in the middle in the middle of the night, next to our homes. Intentionally not by mistake. Slept on my living room couch for 60 straight nights so I don't have to. So I have multiple exits and fear. And in case my house is firebombed, I've been intimidated, threatened, assaulted, lost $100,000 in revenue, rental revenue. I could go on. I have not called the police in any of these matters because of two things one, no faith the bad actors will be held accountable and two retaliation. We live on eggshells, knowing any moment chaos can and does break out. But what's the worst part? The oppression. If I knocked on a thousand of my neighbors doors, my story would not would be common, not rare. And they'd all agree. We want more officers. We need more officers. We need bad behavior held accountable and the public safety threats removed, the livability held solved, and the quality of life destruction ended. Please support our needs. Thank you.
147 Next up we have terrance hayes, vadim mazursky, and tiana tozer. Thank you. I don't believe terrance has joined us. Go ahead buddy.
148 Thank you.
149 It's good seeing everybody. There's a lot of facts and figures today, which I'm sure smarter people than I will be able to make sense of, but I just want to kind of bring you down to ground level. Commissioner canal. Excuse me. Councilor Kanal mentioned some of the calls about drug dealing that happened in some parts of the city, and whether the police were responding quickly enough to that. I know quite a bit about that. I live in goose hollow and we've had drug dealing over there. I've talked to people in the stadium district, as well as couch park in the drug dealing over there. We had some drug dealers set up by the vista bridge, right across the street from where a school bus would drop off kids. The people in that area came out, the parents came out and they asked the people to move. They said, we know that this is something that happens in Portland, not where the kids are. Please. And honestly, some people did move, but some people did not. Some people were belligerent. They threatened people. They stayed. So people do what people do. They call the police and they ask for help. Unfortunately, the police are understaffed. They said it would take time to get there. It took a few days and finally they were able to make their way there. And guess what? Those individuals moved away and parents did not have to be concerned about their kids walking around, drug dealing, fentanyl use and all that goes along with that. We need the police to be adequately staffed in order to address those issues quickly so that parents so that adults so that grandparents don't have to worry. That's what I'm asking here about. And we talked about community engaged policing. It's almost exactly ten years ago that president obama came out with the recommendations of 21st century policing, a task force that entailed university professors that had religious leaders that had nonprofit organizations, civil rights leaders. Their fourth pillar was about community engaged policing. And they said that police on their police time should be encouraged to attend community events and be there and hear from the community. They come to my neighborhood association. We talk to them. We tell them what what we're seeing, they respond. And that makes people, at the very least feel better. But sometimes, hopefully, crime is stopped because we're reported in that way. So please fully fund the police. So we get the services that we all deserve. Thank you. Oh, by the way, I'm here for a partnership for progress. Thank you.
150 Tozer gianna tozer, district two I'm extremely concerned about the potential cuts to the police budget in maslow's hierarchy of needs. Safety and security are second only after physiological needs breathing, eating, sleeping. Most people in a budget deficit cut luxury items first. Police are integral to public safety, not a luxury item. I have been in three war zones as a humanitarian aid worker, unarmed. For the first time in my life, I have started carrying a weapon because I don't feel safe in Portland. I work in old town. Ironic. The police budget was cut in June 2020. By 2022, Portland saw record high homicides. In 2021. Portland broke its record for traffic fatalities. It is my understanding that the police budget is still under where it was before those cuts. My biggest concern is the unintended consequences that nobody wants to talk about. We saw those unintended consequences after hardesty's budget cuts to the police. The cuts were supposedly because police were killing black and brown people, when in truth, 50% of the people killed by Portland police are people with mental illness. That fact changes the narrative. It changes the solution. What I want to point out to you is that I live on the edge of a rich, white neighborhood. In the 20 years that I have lived there, I've heard shots fired exactly once the majority of traffic fatalities in Portland happened on the east side, in our most diverse and low income neighborhoods, as does most of our gun violence. I would highly encourage you, before cutting the police budget, that you make an extra good faith effort to reach out to the communities most impacted by gun and traffic violence. These are portlanders who are so busy surviving that they don't have time to figure out the online form. They may not even have internet, and they certainly don't have time to come to a public meeting where they only get two minutes to speak. These are the voices that you need to seek out, not the activists that were on the police accountability commission who were hand-picked because they had a beef with police. But the everyday people who bear the brunt of the violence, even when these budgets are cut, we can't solve our problems by pushing forward false narratives. And it is incredibly important that you seek out the voices of the people who will be most impacted, rather than listening to privileged white people or activists that are speaking for them and taking away their voices. I hope you'll do what's best for all portlanders. Keep the police budget.
151 Next up we have Loretta guzman, corrine frechette, and aaron schmutz. Loretta.
152 Okay.
153 Hi, my name is.
154 Loretta guzman. I own bison coffee house. I was born and raised here in the city of Portland. I live in district two and my business is in district two. Our city is in in a struggle of life and death. I say this as I live it in my life and in my district. Since I last testified in February 2025, we had three homicides in less than 24 hours in my district, and one of those killed was one of my nephew's friends. I pray that each of those that have been killed are in peace, as we have these homicides that are affecting my community. We have little kids that are being left without their fathers. We, as the family members are struggling to pick up the pieces. Our kids are going through trauma of looking for their fathers, their uncles, their brothers, and crying themselves to sleep as they do not understand. Each of you has the choice to help make our district and our community safer and or continue the downward spiral. I have little ones that are affected by this, and I will continue the way. If we continue the way we are one day, it will be them next. I do not have a political motive. It is life for some of us. Some of us live in a state of emergency. Some of you will never experience that. We do not have public public safety. And when we are calling for help, the response time is long and we are losing lives in the process of trying to decide if we're if we really need public safety, we well, we do need it throughout our whole city by reducing the police budget. This does affect my community and I say this with lived experience. If you choose to continue to take our safety, there are grave consequences to people of color. I am speaking for my kids future. I am a supporter of going home to that stepped up when my business was vandalized, and also when my nephew was murdered. I am also a supporter of victims of violence offensives choose to give us life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness which is in our constitution. Public safety is a fundamental right. Thank you.
155 Corinne frechette.
156 Our office of violence prevention stands on a model of upstream intervention. That very model is meant to inhibit criminal activity. And therefore, through that lens, it is hard to quantify criminality that never took place. While we can quantify is the fiscal investments we have made in those prevention programs, which come out to be multi-million dollars in the fall of 2024, large investments of police overtime were made to uphold free speech during the electoral period, as well as local residents rights to peace and safety. The remarkable prevention efforts paid off and we did not suffer from violence onto our residents or vandalism onto our buildings. Similarly to the prevention efforts exerted by the ovp, it is hard to quantify crimes that did not take place. Some politicians characterize those police overtime investment efforts as frivolous, but for the actual downtown members, those efforts were lifesavers to maintain the fragile ecosystem we live in and we work in. It is necessary to highlight the lack of logic when sometimes praising prevention and sometimes denigrating it, depending on ideology, not on social impact. We have to address the streak of seven homicides in district one and in district two, and as of Sunday, a child in district two was struck with gunfire and suffered life threatening wounds. All this in the span of 20 days. We sometimes hear the perception of danger in Portland exceeds the daily reality that we live. Not for those eight people, not for many of us. Our police bureau is staffed at half the recommended rate, and it relies on overtime in the same manner that boec had to while ramping up hiring and stabilizing the workforce. We urge you to support full public safety funding during this transitional time so Portland can once again be safe and peaceful for all, not just the politically connected who can safely retreat outside of Portland.
157 Next up is aaron schmutz.
158 Chairs committee. Thank you for the time to speak today. I apologize, I'm out of town, so I'm not there in person. As we continue to discuss public safety, staffing, overtime and the overlay of our entire service group, I simply want to encourage us to consider why we are doing so. The interactions between first responders and the public are amongst the core services that we provide. As a city, we know that we've had significant struggles in answering those calls, and boec has demonstrated their significant gains in answering more quickly. And if we do not have enough services to send in response, those efforts will be for naught. Further trust and systems come in. The systems coming are critical. Our our efforts cannot simply be about putting out fires. Our citizens deserve to understand, know and believe in both the services and the city employees coming to render them. Our efforts should not only be to fully staff our first response systems so they can respond to emergencies, but also to allow for relationship and trust building, building as well as follow up investigations so that portlanders receive the closure, justice and safety they deserve. They deserve to answer. Chair Novick question earlier on a 50% reduction in call load. I would suggest that if the police bureau had that level of reduction, this would free up our members to lean into community policing, follow up, provide closure for victims, reengage in our youth facing programs, fully staff our criminalist detectives, traffic, domestic violence, human trafficking and drug units. These are the connections that our community is begging for. I strongly recommend that we acknowledge that we are building a flying ship. Portlanders need need help and they need relationship today and in the future. Our efforts to lower overtime costs, provide better service, send the right first responder, provide warm handoffs and social services, lowering response times, and connect our responders to the community they serve. They serve are not mutually exclusive. Having pushed a patrol car around for 16 years, I can confidently tell you that the service is needed or services rendered are not. Are commonly not the services originally requested because chaotic scenes and circumstances change in real time, our system being nimble, responsive, well staffed and trusted to have the necessary bandwidth to serve is our pathway forward. Thank you.
159 Next up we have tyler fellini, max steel, and charlie michelle wesley.
160 Good afternoon councilors. My name is tyler fellini. I'm a registered lobbyist for Portland jobs with justice. But I'm here today as a renter, resident.
161 And everyday person in district three.
162 We just heard a lot from PPB about data and apps and categories to classify calls officers respond to. And I wonder what category harassment and intimidation would fall in. Earlier this month, multiple officers, including a.
163 Sergeant.
164 Showed up at a peaceful mutual aid event in old town. They were not responding to a crime, and it was not the first time they'd shown up to harass participants. In fact, there appears to be a pattern of escalation as officers have become more and more confrontational with that mutual aid group. They were there, it seems, as a favor to jesse burke, a politically connected business owner who serves, who.
165 Served as.
166 The campaign manager for newly elected da nathan vasquez. In fact, one of vasquez's senior deputy attorneys was also present at that event. This wasn't an isolated incident. Just weeks earlier, armed officers also showed up at town halls hosted by canal and Morillo, both of whom have expressed. Criticisms of the police. These officers were not responding to emergencies. They weren't out solving crimes. They were there seemingly to send a message. Chief day wants us to think this is no big deal. We just don't know all the facts. These instances were perhaps just a misunderstanding, but councilor Morillo said that she trusts what she sees with her eyes, and I think most portlanders do the same. So my question is, if the bureau is so understaffed, why are officers being deployed in numbers to harass peaceful events and political meetings? Why are public resources being used in ways that look more like political intimidation and less like public safety? Portland is facing a $100 million budget shortfall. This is a budget year and every dollar matters. I urge you to carefully scrutinize how PPB allocates its personnel and ensure that additional resources, if any, go toward real public safety, not political favors. Portlanders deserve accountability, not harassment. Thank you. I'll yield the rest of my time.
167 Thank you.
Procedural episode · turns 168–176
Parliamentary activity detected in this stretch (see the markers above). An editor-reviewed analysis has not been published for this episode yet.
168 Max steel.
169 On March 14th, I was meeting with a group of neighbors in couch park in northwest Portland. We were there, as we are every Friday, to discuss improving our park and neighborhood, mostly through activation of public spaces. I appreciate that this council acknowledges activation as a piece of public safety. On this particular Friday, I called 911 because a woman in the park was clearly very distressed with rapidly escalating into violence. What began as a seemingly minor disagreement between two park goers quickly spiraled out of control. I began by calling rangers, but when she became violent, I switched to 911. This is a public park with children present, and the speed of escalation was alarming. We value our park rangers and Portland street response, but there are moments when those options are no longer appropriate where police officers are needed. I have heard councilors refer to programs like Portland ceasefire, Portland street response as alternatives to policing. They are not. They are alternatives to police response. They are complementary to community policing. This woman was in that moment, violent. She was particularly aggressive toward men. When I relayed this to the dispatcher, two female officers arrived within a few minutes deescalated the situation and offered to connect her with services. Their kindness and professionalism were evident from minute one. This woman, who had just been lashing out at people, was treated with compassion and care. The momentum of the situation was interrupted. No one was badly hurt and she was given options on what happened next. This is the policing we want and it is possible with properly staffed and trained bureaus. What I saw that Friday was an example of what we can and should see every day, and I support chief jay's recommendation to maintain this momentum. Portland deserves this level of public safety. Thank you.
170 Charlie. Michelle. Wesley.
171 Thank you.
172 I'm charlie michelle wesley, descendant of multiple northwest tribes on this our land investing in qualified alternatives to policing saves money such as a fully funded 24 over seven trauma informed Portland street response. Truly dependent police accountability oversight such as cvpa social support and life saving services providing harm reduction. These reduced costly lawsuits for excessive and deadly force, lowering arrest, incarceration, and deaths proven to reduce reliance on unqualified policing on a smaller budget, freeing up police to focus on other pressing issues, including how about some healing, self-care, and some long term training on anti-racist and attending to their own trauma versus using multiple cops to target our marginalized and criminalizing poverty? Where is the humanity in that? It's ridiculous for cops to respond to a mutual aid event any time, but during a budget crisis and use imitation intimidation at town halls. Apparently, core values be cursed when those who entertain and serve the dominant, the powerful, the financially secure, and the well connected because of who they were endorsed by and believe arrest is the solution to human suffering, can snap their fingers and overpolicing occurs to intimidate, harass and abuse our vulnerable. How about reducing the bloated police budget to help versus hinder? I highly respect and rely on those city councilors who actually work toward solutions that align with our core city values, to name a few. Whereas violence towards people of color is condemned, whereas lived experience is valued, whereas fiscal resiliency, equity and the needs for our most vulnerable populations will be the focus of every budget decision. Courageous support by our city leaders allow alternatives and an oversight system to flourish. Despite objections, strong values can provide stability, direction and reveal ethical character during times of adversity with integrity over resource, not over. Policing is a humane solution and addresses the budget. The status quo is not working. We need heroes to. Thank you.
173 Next up we have corey seymour. Followed by michelle miller and. Nicola burnham. Go ahead corey.
174 Hi. Thank you guys for your time. So I've read some of the same things about the Portland police bureau being understaffed when compared to other similar, similar sized American cities. Given my experience in the stadium neighborhood in northwest Portland, I believe it. Open air drug dealing, public drug use, menacing behavior, trespassing, and property crime are common in my community. While some seem to believe that this sort of crime is just part of living in the city, I can tell you from my experience living in new york for 19 years, that is patently false. I believe that a fully funded, fully and adequately funded funding the Portland police bureau without cuts is critical, is a critical component of public safety, and the best way to eliminate the flagrant criminal behavior that is pervasive in this city. In my almost 20 years of living in new york, I only had to call the police once. I have lost count of how many times I've called them here. Nobody ever trespassed on my property. I rarely saw broken glass on the street. I, I don't recall ever being threatened with violence, nor do I ever recall seeing anyone use hard drugs or dealing deal drugs in public. Before I arrived in the city three years ago, my condo was broken into. That was my welcome to Portland. Since then, I have been threatened unprovoked. On three separate occasions, I regularly see smashed car windows. I often catch people trespassing in our fenced backyard. I see public drug use daily and frequently witnessed drug deals, including while this was going on outside my window. Most of most of what I have described, I've seen from my windows in a residential area directly across the street from a school. I and the people in my community should not have to worry about being assaulted and stolen from, and nobody should have to watch people dealing drugs and doing drugs, especially school children. Yet this is our reality. When people with a criminal mentality are allowed to get away with crime in the public domain with perceived impunity, it encourages yet more crime. So when I consider that the Portland police bureau allocates its resources, I'd like to see more resources allocated to the street crime. I see every day. Thank you for your time. And. That's all I have. Thank you.
175 We're now at 430, but I understand that we might be able to go a little longer and hear the remaining testifiers of the rest of the committee is okay with that? Yes. Thank you.
176 Michelle miller.
177 Thank you. Councilors. I live in the stadium neighborhood. District four. Safety is a basic human right and shared foundation for any functioning city. Without it, nothing can thrive. The stadium neighborhood has experienced firsthand what happens when safety resources are stretched too thin, delayed response times, diminished trust, and a sense that we're out here on our own. We need officers not only to respond, but to prevent. And that means engaging with our communities, walking the blocks, addressing the current and persistent public safety issues. Councilor Kanal thank you for walking our neighborhood and seeing the conditions firsthand. Councilor Zimmerman, thank you for taking the time to meet with us in person and engaging directly with us on the emergency declaration. We are pursuing. These collaborations are valuable because they are on the ground, not behind bureaucracy. And in the same vein, the allocation of pb time should reflect the needs on the ground. That means more time spent on the field, in the field, on foot, on patrol, engaging with our communities. The bike squad is a tremendous asset and has made an impact in our area, and we appreciate that those are the things that we need more of. We want to work with the pb alongside the pb to co-produce safety. So what does that look like? We need to know that there present, engaged and empowered to act. I urge you to support chief day's recommendation to sustain the momentum behind current recruitment efforts. And please allocate pb personnel time toward rebuilding trust through visibility, responsiveness and consistent support in our neighborhoods. And thank you for this opportunity to engage.
178 Next up, and I apologize if I mispronounce this name, estela burnham. Thank you.
179 Thank you. Very welcome. Unlike a lot of people here, I didn't prepare a speech or anything. So I'm going to speak, as you guys say, off the cuff. I've been in Portland for three and a half years, and out of the time I've been here, I've been in two situations, one of them involving a stabbing at the bar where if I hadn't been the first one on scene, the person would have bled out. I've been at another situation with the police coming with us, being at a protest, leaving a protest, seeing a lady have a mental. Being in mental crisis. And about 6 or 7 cops immediately pull up on this lady. Guns drawn. One of them has. I think it's like a 50 millimeter cannon. I was able to de-escalate that woman by my will. I had somebody else there with me, but me and this other community member. We were able to de-escalate this woman to the point to where she would comply with police. When they were ready to shoot her, they was not ready to give her the opportunity to comply. They were they were quick to violence, as we have seen time and time again. So when I hear other people talk about, excuse me, white people talk about how oppressed they are, I would really like to just clarify. You can't you can't talk about being oppressed when you have white privilege, when you have a privilege that I'm not afforded. When you live in a community where police will respond to when you live in a community where black people like me are afraid to call the police, I can tell. I can tell everybody in this room, there will never be a day that I would never call a cop, because if I do, I'm afraid I'm going to get myself killed or get somebody else killed. We. When you talk about community safety, it actually has to be a community. It actually has to be a people willing to stand up for one another and not rely on a system that we know is broken or working as it should. I yield the rest of my time. Have a great day!
180 Next up we have karen gray online.
181 Okay, there we go. Okay. Hello, my name is karen gray. I'm a business owner in downtown Portland, and I'm speaking as a concerned business owner and a member of the stadium hood community. I want to express my deep worries regarding the potential loss of the central bike squad and the neighborhood response team units, which play an indispensable role in our ongoing fight against crime in this area. Over the past week alone, I have witnessed firsthand the alarming rise in criminal activity that threatens not only our businesses, but the very fabric of our community. In just seven days, I experienced four shoplifting incidents and attempted tagging of my business that I fortunately intercepted, and my employees face threats of violence. We had vandalism with a man carelessly throwing a recycling bin onto my property with content strewn about. I even had to extinguish a fire set right next to my building. And to add insult to injury, a drunken patron of the bar desecrated our space and I discovered multiple instances of drug use right on my property. It's not just a series of unfortunate events. It's a distressing pattern that showcases the urgent need for increased support and resources for our law enforcement agencies. The central bike squad has proven to be an invaluable asset to the Portland police bureau and to the safety of our downtown area. Their presence provides not only a deterrent to criminal activity, but also fosters a sense of security and community trust. We cannot afford to lose this vital resource the safety of our businesses, our employees and our community members hangs in the balance. I'm thank you.
182 Next up we have brian kotloff, followed by bob weinstein.
183 Good afternoon.
184 My name is brian kotloff. I live in district four and I'm a parent of three young children. My wife and I have chosen to raise our family in Portland because we love this city. But like so many parents, I'm deeply concerned about whether Portland is doing enough to ensure that families of all backgrounds can continue to call this city home. Public safety isn't just another budget line item, it's foundational. It's the difference between families choosing to stay in Portland or leaving for a nearby suburb. It's the difference between kids walking to school with confidence, or parents feeling they need to drive them. It's the difference between a thriving city and one where businesses, families and visitors slowly start to disappear. Right now, we are failing to meet even the bare minimum level of public safety. Portland has fewer officers per resident than nearly every comparable city. Response times are too long. Community policing needs needs to drastically increase. When families don't feel safe, they leave. And when families leave, schools close, businesses suffer, and portland's future dims. An increase in police staff is not about policing for the sake of policing. It's about ensuring that when portlanders call for help, someone actually shows up. It's about making sure that families feel safe enough to keep choosing Portland as home. I urge you to fully support chief day's recommended staffing levels. We can't afford to let public safety become an afterthought. The future of this city depends on it. Thank you.
185 Okay. Good afternoon, committee members. My name is bob weinstein, northwest Portland. I'm here today to underscore the urgent need to prioritize public safety in the city's budget decisions, the fiscal challenges that you and we face are not just budget line items. They're matters of life and death. The stark reality is that despite a recent decline from the peak in 2022, portland's homicide rate in 2024 remained alarmingly high, three times the pre-pandemic average and dramatically exceeding the rates in comparable cities like seattle and san francisco. These are not mere statistics. They represent lost lives, shattered families and a community living under the shadow of persistent violence. Consider the following one. Portland ranks near the bottom among the 50 largest u.s. Cities in terms of police staffing. The chronic understaffing is not just a bureaucratic shortfall. It's a direct threat to public safety. Fewer officers mean longer response times, reduce community presence, and increase vulnerability. For every Portland resident, two a comprehensive 2022 study revealed a need for six new fire stations to address the city's evolving democratic demographic landscape. This isn't just about expansion, it's about equity. Currently, response times vary dramatically across different neighborhoods, creating a dangerous lottery system where zip codes can determine whether emergency medical help arrives in time to save a life. Portland street response has demonstrated a tremendous potential. It should be expanded to 24 over seven to increase its impact, and, in coordination with the police bureau, to provide much needed resources to address crises more effectively. You and your colleagues face difficult budget decisions. Protecting core public safety services must not be up for debate. The budget is not just a document, it's a statement of community values. You can send a clear message public safety is not negotiable. No neighborhood is disposable, and no resident is expendable. Thank you for your time, your service, and your commitment to public safety.
186 That completes the testimony.
187 Thank you. Next, thanks to everybody who testified. Our next meeting.
188 Tuesday, April 8th. This meeting of the community and public safety committee is adjourned.