The record · Transcript
Council Session — 2025-07-15
Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (16,285 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, July 15 (transcript identifies the date as July 15th; stored record lists 2025-07-15), convening at 2:31 p.m. and adjourning at 4:11 p.m. Roll call and a statement of conduct were read, followed by acknowledgment of community pain surrounding the death of Damon Lamar Johnson. The first agenda item was a Portland Bureau of Emergency Management presentation on FY2025-26 budget and staffing, covering internal capability assessments against national emergency management accreditation standards, three newly funded positions (operational planning, training/exercise, and alert/warning), hiring timelines, and gaps in areas such as continuity planning, incident management, and 24/7 alerting capacity. Questions from committee members addressed staffing levels, functional area improvements, and budget context. The second item was the 2024 Portland Police Bureau Annual Report, presented by bureau representatives covering body-worn cameras, crime statistics, staffing, training, use-of-force data, traffic stops, and search practices. Extensive Q&A covered topics including overdose deaths, homicide clearance rates, traffic stop benchmarking methodology, air support unit use, narcotics unit staffing, and overtime practices. Public testimony was heard from four registered speakers addressing report transparency, stop-data benchmarking, and community trust. A motion to refer the annual report to full City Council was made and seconded; votes occurred, with outcomes recorded in the vote ledger.
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.
0 It's fine. I. Like to hear. Thanks for.
1 Good afternoon. I call the meeting of the community and public safety committee to order. It is Tuesday, July 15th at 2:31 p.m. Rebecca, will you please call the roll?
2 Morillo here.
3 Novick here.
4 Zimmerman. Smith.
5 Here.
6 Canal here. Christopher, will you please read the statement of conduct?
7 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 wwe Portland council agenda slash community and 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, 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're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent and virtual testifier should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name. Thank you.
8 Thank you. Today's meeting has two items on it. We're going to hear a presentation from Portland bureau of emergency management on their staffing and budget. And then we'll receive and consider the 2024 annual report for the Portland police bureau. Before I go into that first item, I did want to just note, although it is outside of the scope of any of the items today, I want to recognize that there's a lot of pain in our community right now around in particular this week due to the death of damon lamar johnson. And I think as we are talking about this issue, we're going to be hearing a lot of different pieces of information over time. Things often move a lot slower than anyone would like. And but what's important to remember is, you know, obviously, first and foremost, our condolences to the family and those who knew mr. Johnson, and also to recognize that there is a really deep pain right now. And in particular, I think for black portlanders, for people of color, as the only man of color on this council, I am very uniquely aware. And I hear that pain and I feel it as well, and I want to acknowledge it. Before we get into any of the other items on today's agenda, rebecca, will you please read the first item?
9 Portland bureau of emergency management fy 20 2526 budget and staffing.
10 Thank you. I believe we have here and I'll pass it over to you, sir. Thank you.
11 Thank you. Perfect. So we'll start with slide two. So good afternoon everyone. My name is richard narwhal for the record, and I serve as the chief resilience officer at the Portland bureau of emergency management today. I also have a few team members joining me online and in person, who are available to address any specific questions that we might get today. Today, I'll be sharing how pbem plans to use the additional capacity, resources, and or funding that are awarded that is awarded to us in this fiscal fiscal year's budget to strengthen city's emergency preparedness and response capabilities. Before discussing these new resources, I'd like to start with a brief recap of what we have presented to the council over the past few months to guide through how we are planning to improve on those items. So next slide please. So since February of this year, pbem has conducted several assessments, some internally and some at the direction of the council members and to identify the most significant gaps in our emergency city's emergency management capabilities and to determine whether additional where additional resources are most urgently needed. The slide in front of you shows the same assessment we have shared with the council several times since February. It highlights our core programs using a standard that I'll I'll just I'll talk about in next few seconds to indicate how well each area, each of our functional area or programs mee. National emergency management standards program marked in red represent critical gaps where our capabilities are most limited. As you can see, there's a lot of red, but there's also programs that are slightly better that are at risk. And then we have one program that's that's in yellow. So there are no programs that pbem runs right now that meet that standard. Now, you also heard pbem talk about emergency management accreditation program standards in past. I'll briefly recap that as well before we dive into how we're planning to improve it. So next slide please. So emergency management accreditation program is a nonprofit that certifies emergency management agencies meet nationally recognized standards. Now I would like to note that pbem is not accredited. So the assessment that you saw of our programs was internally done to present to the council. However, it is a goal of pbem to become e-map accredited to ensure consistency, to ensure consistency and accountability. In our reporting to the council. We'll continue to use these standards as our benchmark and show how we can slowly but consistently improve on these. These standards provide a clear framework to guide improvement across all functional areas. Next slide please. So you see how pbem programs were outlined in those several functional areas that I showed. So that's mitigation preparedness response and recovery. Now imap emergency management accreditation program calls out certain functional areas. So what you see in front of our 13 or 14 function areas that each have several components in it, that's where our program fits. So a single program like for example, our neighborhood emergency team program can fit into multiple of these functional areas. So it's just just not assigned to one. It could it could be assigned to multiple function areas. And so does our staff. So a single staff can even if for example I am working planning I could also in my with training and appropriate resources I could also support incident management. So there is that kind of crosswalk that can happen between resources and current programs that we have. So previously on the slide that I showed that listed all the programs. What you see now are imap functional area categories. Each of these programs on the first slides now can fit into several of these buckets. In our internal assessment. Most of these areas remain at a critical stage. So that's why you see a lot of red on here. And then there's some programs that are at risk. So we are doing relatively better on those programs. But we are still no where we where we need to be moving forward. So next, for the rest of the presentation and also future presentation for the council will use these functional categories and we can provide more detail about this, these functional categories if needed. So we'll use this as a benchmark new new resources that are assigned to pbem in this new fiscal year budget will help us make progress towards meeting imap standards in these in the areas that you see in front of you. In the next few slides, I'll share what functional functional areas we are hoping to improve on with these new resources. So next slide please. So this year this fiscal year we have been we're given three position alert warning was in the mayor's proposed budget. And then the council awarded us for 483 roughly $483,000, which we are planning to use for two positions. What you see in front of you are three positions. That or three programs that will be supporting these positions. The two positions that the council has awarded us, the first position will be using us to support our operation plan. So this planner would focus on updating and maintaining emergency management, preparedness and response plan for the city. Many of the plans that we currently have are out of date and require substantial revisions. While we are not so substantial revision both because they're out of date, but also city structure has changed quite a bit in last years. So with the council structure changing and also how bureaus are aligned and how several programs within the bureaus have changed. So all these, all these plans and operational guidelines need to be updated. So that's where we'll be focusing first with one of the positions that has been assigned to pbem. Now several times. We have also been asked to support the cei hub conversation that with, I believe, a different committee. While we are not funded directly in this, this in this particular allocation to support city's emergency management response for cei hub, pbem will continue to participate in the work that is leading right now for the cei hub, and I'd highlight that we'll continue to update our hazard plans, that some of them have a risk associated with cei hub. So, for example, city's earthquake plan that has a cei hub component to it. What we don't have right now is a dedicated plan for cei hub, and we're not likely to get to it. This position will likely work on plans such as basic emergency city's basic emergency operations plan, and several operational guidelines that we currently use for our day to day emergency emergency operations. Now, the second position will we are planning to use for training and exercise. So this would be a position dedicated to this this program. Right now we have about 0.2 fte dedicated to this whole this whole program. So this is this is a going to be a significant investment into our program. And thank you council for helping us get this. So we'll be using this position to build internal capacity and improve readiness across readiness across all programs. To start, this position will focus on training. So think of it right now. We don't have very very many updated up to date plans. So we can't exercise those plans. So we'll we'll start with the training program and improve on that. And that includes starting with the credentialing of city employees to support emergency management operations center in compliance with national incident management system and national qualification system. These are all FEMA standards and nationally recognized standards. I can talk more more about it if needed. So that's what we'll start with training. And in terms of training, eventually our hope is that we can use this position position to pivot to more connecting, more city wide exercises as well. And the training also includes training for city employees, including council council members. Now the third position alert morning, which was in the mayor's proposed budget. For us right now, we don't have a dedicated staff focusing on alert and warning. And the goal. Once this position is filled, the goal will be for them to manage city's emergency management alert and warning operations. This includes management of city's alert warning systems. Right now that's everbridge. And soon we'll have we're onboarding a new system as well in partnership with the with the state, including emergency management, alerting templates, and also maintain maintaining city wide communication protocols, citywide emergency communication protocols. Now with these positions, pbem definitely will be better positioned to close some of the critical gaps that are highlighted in previous slide, previous slide and built a more, hopefully built a more resilient m program. Now, I do want to highlight before I go to my next slide, that the hiring process for these position right now we are looking at about at minimum four months. So it is not like we can quickly start. So as we'll hopefully do more of these presentations to inform the council on how we're doing. So please do want to recognize that that this would be this is the long term improvement plan. Not not even for this fiscal year. It will take us time to build and develop our capabilities in these areas that that have been awarded to us. So it's four months at minimum, but could could very well be between 4 to 6 months before a candidate is able to start start at the job. Next slide please. So this is a slide I wanted to highlight. I think the bottom part got got cut. But so this is what we're hoping to achieve with the new positions that have been awarded to us. So what you see is a side by side comparison of where we are right now and where we plan to be with these new positions in by June 2027. So this slide shows how we intend to strengthen our capacity. The blue highlight that you see in the in the first column, imap functional areas where we are dedicating these new resources operational planning, communication and warning through alert warning position and training and exercise. As I said in my previous slides that like for example, if you improve on operational plan. So let's say you update a plan and you improve it, there's definitely some benefit that trickles down to other functional areas as well. So you will improve on program administration as well if you improve one area. So there's definitely that correlation that I've reflected in this assessment. And again this is a goal of ours. We realistically will will will continue to update the council on how we're progressing on these items. So on on the rightmost rightmost column you see where we intend to be by June 2027. So you'll see direct improvement in the areas that will be that that the resources will be assigned. So operational planning hopefully will move from critical. So right now no one having no one doing their job. So we'll slowly work on improving and getting those plans up to date and having people train on these plans and exercise. So we'll we're hoping to move to we'll still not meet the standard with one planner, but we'll definitely hoping to see some improvement in that program area. Same goes for communication and warning. You see still at risk with a dedicated position. I do want to highlight that to get so there are several factors that you or there are several indicators that you have to factor in. That's when the program kind of moves from one category to another. We still will not have a 24 over seven capacity to issue an alert. It's a position that will help us maintain the program better. So we still lack in terms of that 24 over seven alerting capability and recent texas flood and the california incident. Are still, you know, make us very, very concerned about that capacity, about that capability. But but yeah. And so same goes for training and exercise. We'll hopefully with the position that we have that we'll get. And when will they start. We'll start building training and exercise program for the city and hoping to improve on those key areas as well. So that's the end of my slide. I can give in more details about what these positions will be doing as as needed, but I'm happy. I'm happy to take any questions as well.
12 Thank you, mr. Noel. Before we. So at this point we do have some time for q&a. So I'll ask colleagues to get into the queue if they have any questions that they'd like to ask. Of pbem. I have a couple myself, but I'll just see if anyone else gets into the queue first. Okay. Could you go back to slide seven on the screen, please? This is that comparison. First off, thank you for doing this. I think this is a helpful framing device for us as we look at what the impacts that are expected for a decision are. And I would encourage maybe not this exact assessment method, but this two column comparison is a very clear way to look at that. I also appreciate your insight as to why program administration would be supported by. That is the intention. So I have two questions on this slide. One is as it relates to the planners, you explain why operational planning would improve continuity. Planning is just not expected to be part of that. First, that next person's job. Is that why that isn't improving?
13 Yeah. So right now we have no resource that doing the continuity planning. And it is a program in itself. You there will be enough work for this one planner to focus on before we get to continuity of operations. So that's why I have with the current resources that we have, we're not likely to see significant improvement there because I know like if you have to, if I have to write a work plan for this new position, continuity is not going to be a priority. We have three plans, at least that I can list that are high priority. That needs to be updated asap.
14 Thanks. The other question I had was around incident management, so I just want to point out, you know, pbem put together for council a what would you need to be simply reverse the years of cuts that you've taken, not even to get fully to where you all think you need to be? And that was, I believe, 12 or 13 positions. And it was a very helpful framework. And we were only able to get three in this year's budget. So I'm very happy we were able to do that. But I just want to contextualize this as if people are wondering why there's not more yellow, let alone Green, on here it is. They got a quarter of what they asked for that base level. So incident management, can you talk through what that would need to get to the level of maybe not a bare minimum but but functionality. So I guess in this case we're talking about yellow.
15 Yeah. I'd like to invite chris kerry, our ops.
16 I saw him back.
17 There to chime in more on this before I start.
18 And please introduce yourself for the record.
19 Sure. Good afternoon. Hi, I'm chris kerry, I'm the preparedness and response manager for the Portland bureau of emergency management. As far as getting our our incident management. Specifically to your question, the incident management team, the incident management framework, how we're getting that up and what it would take us to get from red to yellow. So as I am I'm not specifically familiar with the imap standards, but I can tell you the path that we are on is getting is getting to the point where we can have a single citywide emergency operations plan, which I think we've been getting in some great practice and some great reps. And we are moving toward certainly moving in that direction, especially with our police, fire boec public works partners as well as the rest of the city team. Secondly, it's not just kind of doing that in that ad hoc fashion. It's also kind of assembling the team beforehand, training and exercising that team so we can show up. Drop of a hat, ready to go. So we're we're building the administrative system. We're building the personnel to use that administrative system. And then we're also building just the administrative framework to support that system, because let's say we get a true joint team together from the entire city. You could have someone from Portland fire bureau running operations, someone from Portland bureau of transportation running logistics. You know, we could be running finance and administration. And there was just within the different roles. Those are all different funding streams. Those are all different processes. Those are all different, you know, agreements that we would need to work out and refine.
20 Yeah. And also I'll just add to that to kind of simply address it, the functional areas that you see, we need to improve on a lot of these functional areas to get incident management to a point where we can comfortably say it's at least yellow, at least 4 to 5 positions. So having a contingency plan or dedicated as a dedicated position, having trained. So we used to have a training coordinator and an exercise coordinator. So having those two positions separated out. So there are 3 to 4 or 4 to 5 positions in the ops. Additional will help us get there if that. Yeah.
21 And would Green require probably having that 24 over seven capability as well.
22 I yes that definitely. Well so again the aspr imap standards there are certain things they do. So I would I don't want to say something that's inaccurate. That does. Does the imap standard require us to have a 24 capability to make it Green. But to have for a city the size of Portland, that is an ultimate goal of ours. So the internal exercise that I talked about previously had an end goal of close to 54 positions of. And for context, how many do you have now?
23 Right now we have 11 or 12. I could be wrong. And we got three. These three positions more. So yeah. So we are still that's why I thank you for pointing out there's still not we're far from Green right now.
24 Yeah I do want to just commend because I believe it's in your team. Mr. Kerry. The net program is the one yellow on. I think it's slide four.
25 I wish I could take credit for that, but that is mr. Noel.
26 Well, and for those watching at home, you should consider becoming a neighborhood emergency team volunteer. I'd be remiss if I didn't flag that. But yeah, I did want to commend that. I think I'll pause here just to see. And I see councilor Novick has a question.
27 Yeah. I just wanted to give you a chance to talk about some of the things that we need and don't have. The one, the 24 over seven watch capacity and coordination and response capacity, where we had asked for additional resources and weren't able to get them. But if you could just remind us of what those two things mean and why they're why it's important.
28 Yeah. So 24 so the reason again, the communication warning bureau in here is not improving even with the dedicated position to alert. Warning is not going yellow or Green is we don't have capacity to do. A kind of know know like know notice alert that someone's not waking up and making that assessment. It's still someone needs to be woken up. Someone's not monitoring 24 over seven within m department. I'm not speaking about other bureaus. So that's what that's what we the intention with those 54 position is to have a system like watch command that that other cities, some of the other cities have that I believe are assessment is like I could be wrong. Up to six positions. So that's that will help us run where someone is actively monitoring all scale of incidents so small to big or in magnitude. So they're monitoring 24 over seven. And that's enough consistent staffing that people there will be someone on call all the time so that that's that's how many positions that we have identified that that is that will help us get there. And that that's a key component to improving communication and warning piece of things. And if anything, this texas incident has highlighted, I mean, there were other things going on with texas. I don't want to say this was the only thing, but definitely has highlighted the need for that.
29 And there was also you talked about the need for coordination and response personnel to coordinate functions, communications and operations for people, both internal and external involved in the response. I think you still don't have people dedicated, dedicated, dedicated to that.
30 Roger, sir. And that's one of the things that kind of as I believe you were saying a little bit earlier, kind of each one of our team members has at a minimum that second half. So normally if there's like a 24 hour operation right now, richard and I are working opposite sides of the clock, and that would just kind of help facilitate relieve stress on staff with high operational tempo and also make the city more efficient and make the team work teams work a little bit better together.
31 Thank you.
32 Thank you. I'll just ask one more time if anyone has any questions. I imagine councilor Zimmerman can't be here. I'm going to guess he will have some things he might want to follow up with you on as well. I know this is an interest area of his. So I think we're looking that the ask here. What's really interesting is the remaining ask that was unmet in the budget is in the ballpark of, I think, under $2.5 million, which is a literally small price to pay. We're not a lot of what we're talking about here is 24 over seven and capacity, not just for pbem, but we have these conversations with 311. We have these conversations with Portland street response. And a lot of it is this is not a city that never sleeps. It's a city that I think if we had 24 over seven capacity and all these things would be able to sleep better. And so I'm hoping that that's a conversation we're able to bring up. I also just wanted to shout out not only pbms work, but everyone's work at bringing the system closer together so that we can stop being 27 bureaus in a trench coat as a city, and get closer to being first for service areas in a trench coat, and eventually one unified city on things like the citywide emergency management plan that you mentioned. So we'll wrap it up here. Thank you so much. I can't imagine this will be the only time we talk about pbem staffing in the near future, but I appreciate your time and thank.
33 You, thank you.
34 Thank you.
35 Rebecca. While folks are switching at the dais, will you please call the second item?
36 Item two, accept the 2024 Portland police bureau annual report.
37 Thank you. Colleagues, we are in the process of hearing the annual report for 2024. We will unlike the previous item, which was a discussion, there is the need to take an action today, which would include the possibility of referring the item to the full city council for its consideration and approval. We have several speakers here. I will pass it to assistant chief mcmillan. First. Thank you.
38 Good afternoon. I'm going to have everyone here, all my colleagues here joining us introduce themselves.
39 I'm rob simon. I'm the commander of north precinct.
40 Amanda mcmillan. I'm an assistant chief counsel.
41 My name is brian hughes. I'm the commander of central precinct.
42 Good afternoon. My name is derrick foxworth, captain of east precinct.
43 Great. As you said, I'm here today to present the Portland police bureau's 2024 annual report. Last month, chief day presented some of this information at our public meetings. We received substantial support from residents who want to engage with police and help address public safety issues. We recognize that 2024 seems like a lifetime ago at this point, and we wish we could have been here months ago, but this process does take considerable time. We were actually able to move it up by several weeks this year. If it's any consolation, the process includes to get it to this point, gathering the data from 2024 that can take into the first quarter, obviously, to retrieve all that and have all the reports submitted, then our team writes and designs it with the chief's input, then ultimately review it internally before submitting it to pccep. And then pccep has several weeks to review it before their meeting where they give feedback. We take that feedback and incorporate that into the final report. Then we have our public sessions at each of the precincts to present the information. And so this is our next to the final step before, as we're required to do, to present to the full city counci. Before I really launched on on all of this, I wanted to say, you know, just how proud I am of both our sworn and our professional staff at the bureau, the resiliency and commitment that they continue to show day to day. I just want to say thank you for the amazing work that they do, the professionalism they show, compassion. They demonstrate every day. I really am proud to serve with the people that I serve with at the police bureau. Next slide. When chief day began his tenure, he really focused the organization around three goals transforming the dynamic between the police and the people we serve, reducing crime and the fear of crime, and then focusing on organizational growth and development. These goals remain with us today, and they're really woven into everything that we do and everything we focus on. This presentation will first focus on these three goals. Next slide. One of the biggest changes in 2024 was the implementation of body worn cameras. By the fall, all of our sworn members were trained and had them. This was a years long effort that got stalled due to many factors. Pbb has been wanting these cameras for a long time and we truly believe it will enhance the community police relationship. It means all stakeholders, police and community will have greater accountability and we'll have more transparency when it comes to critical events in the area of community engagement, our behavioral health unit continues to be a tremendous resource for the city and for the bureau. They facilitated 43 trainings and outreach events last year. These events have included community members, businesses and outside agencies. Public safety support specialists. Our ps3's, as we call them, also participated in more than 40 hours of community engagement. Additionally, our PPB cadets who volunteered their services participated in more than 81 community events. Our office of community engagement once again connected our advisory groups with the bias crimes detectives. This has been proven to be a successful model that improves crime prevention and the fear of crime. Also, sharing public awareness about these crimes, bias, crimes and bias events can be difficult to understand. These complexities were shared with our culturally specific advisory groups such as the muslim, latino and asian pacific islander, American councils and finally, walking beats were implemented again during the holiday season. This is a priority for us. We wanted foot patrols to create a visible presence in the downtown core during the holiday season and during the ncaa volleyball tournament brought thousands of visitors to the city. A visible president presence can go a long way to reducing the fear of crime. Next slide. Last year, the city of Portland saw some successes in the area of crime reduction. Reported person crimes decreased by 4%. Any loss of life is too much. Homicides, however, did trend down 8% last year. As you know, gun violence really soared in recent years, but last year's shooting incidents fell by 22% for the second year in a row. There's still twice as many shootings as we had in 2019, however, PPB seized more than 1400 firearms. That's a 17% increase, and we actually seized more illegal guns than seattle and oakland, which is a great accomplishment. We continue to work collaboratively under the ceasefire model with our partners in violence prevention. I also periodically through this report, because we are halfway through the year one highlights of 2025 statistics, just for reference, and hopefully just for a little bit of education on where we are so far. To date, there has been 19 homicides in the city this year. Last year at this time we had 43. Gun violence remains down. We've had 320 shootings so far this year, which is down 31% from last year. Next slide. So now we'll chat a little bit about property crimes. We know these can have a huge impact and do have a huge impact on our community. We saw a decrease of 12% in 2024 in property crimes. We also saw 34% reduction in stolen vehicles. We really continue to make great strides in this area as a result of our data driven missions. We still see a rise this year in shoplifting reports, but we believe this is due to our efforts and continual work with retailers encouraging reporting so that we can really highlight where it's happening so that we can bring resources to bear in those appropriate areas. Next slide. We continue to focus on mission work and believe that is what is driving down many of our crime categories. Earlier this year, we provided council with the bureau's crime reduction plan that included information on these missions, including the related data and the costs of those missions. Some of that material was woven into the annual report because it was and continues to be, our focus. East precinct's data driven missions were what kicked off our evidence based policing model. We continue the stolen vehicle operations missions and all the precincts conducted crime suppression or retail theft missions in 2024 as well. This year, we have continued these missions. East precinct so far has conducted six stolen vehicle missions and recovered 31 stolen vehicles. Also of note, we continue to work collaboratively with surrounding agencies and have involved six area law enforcement agencies to help us in this work. Portland has seen one of the largest decreases in stolen vehicles in the nation, and in February recorded a ten year low. We also conducted missions around illegal street racing and street takeovers. Some of these are resource intensive, including a multi-agency one last August that was focused on deterring a large event planned in Portland. And, as stated, retail theft missions continue in all of our precincts. We routinely seize illegal firearms, locate stolen vehicles, and find people with warrants involved in all of these crimes. In 2024, we conducted 14 human trafficking missions. This crime greatly impacts neighborhood livability while also being connected to illegal guns and drugs. We hear pleas and concern from the community, particularly in the 82nd avenue corridor around this issue. There are schools, businesses, homes, families all deeply impacted by this crime. All of these, all of these missions have made a major impact on our crime reduction. Next slide. In 2024, there were 274 overdoses reported to PPB. We're pleased to see this trend downward, but we know there's still a lot of work to be done here. Our central bike squad has been engaged in regular missions downtown to address crime and livability issues, including drug dealing, unlawful weapons possession, stolen vehicles, graffiti and other vandalism. We offer deflection services to those that meet the criteria as well. In 2024, we also strengthened our narcotics and organized crime unit, adding personnel to work on these multi-level investigations that focus on large scale drug busts. So far this year, we have seen 123 overdoses reported. Last year at this time, there was 177 new slide. 66 people died in traffic crashes in 2024. We're working closely with our partners at the Portland bureau of transportation and focusing on high crash areas. And while this is down from 75 traffic fatalities in 2023, this remains a very concerning issue. Our traffic division continues to use grant funds for special regional missions that focus on things such as speeding and driving while impaired. To date in 2025, 16 people have died in traffic crashes this year. Next slide. Our staffing shortage remains a top priority and we're still challenged by it. We hired 74 sworn members and 35 professional staff in 24. This included 11 public safety support specialists. Our hiring remains consistent. We're doing well as compared to some of our regional partners who say they're they're having more difficulty attracting candidates. We received 1437 applications for police officer and conducted 577 officer background investigations in 24. However, we did process 78 sworn and 39 professional staff separations. So we're essentially breaking even there. The last few years, we've seen large numbers of our sworn personnel retire. In 2025. We aren't facing any of those retirement cliffs, and we're looking to this as a year of growth. In addition, we have almost 90 officers in training and many of them will be finished with probation this year. That will help bolster our patrol ranks for sure. We still have about 87 vacancies that we are working toward filling. Our recruitment efforts continue to be robust so far in 2025. Those efforts are really starting to gain traction. This year. We're averaging 151 applicants a month, which is about 40 more each month than last year. We currently have 387 candidates in the pre background phases. Our recruitment team will be at approximately 38 more events planned this year. That includes in the Portland, specifically, greater Oregon and the neighboring states as well our recruitment social media platforms and join pbb website are some of the prime law enforcement recruitment accounts in the country pertaining to activity and new material. Next slide. So just a few words here about our facilities. We face maintenance related to aging. And all of our precincts. And our team spent a lot of time last year working on reconstruction efforts on the justice center, specifically following the ice storm of January 2024. So that took a lot of resources. We also continue to try to find the most effective workspaces for our specialty units in regard to fleet. We need to replace about 100 of our patrol vehicles that are past the replacement period. We're also launching electric patrol vehicle program. Pilot program. But first we have to build the infrastructure to make that work. Each precinct is being outfitted with that infrastructure so we can move forward with the use of electric vehicles. The good news this past year, we were able to replace very aging mobile precinct. These vehicles are typically used at crime scenes, major scenes, critical events, homicides, community engagement events, or if there's areas that have increased crime. Next slide. The bureau's training is always a top priority. Training is a critical part of our continued growth and improvement. We have revamped our training since hiring a civilian dean of training, and we rely on this division to do a tremendous amount of work. Training has a number of academies occurring at any given period, including ones for our new hires, advanced academies, cadets, public safety support specialists, specialized training, and more. Next slide. Now we'll talk about use of force and deadly force. All uses of force are tracked, and we work to ensure our uses of force are appropriate through review and training. We hold officers accountable when they act outside of policy. We emphasize our overarching principle regarding the use of appropriate and constitutional force and training, as well as in our force policy, which you can read here on the screen. Next slide. There were six uses of deadly force in 2024. Three were fatal and three were non-fatal. There was also one in-custody death. We understand that applications of deadly force impact our community, and I want to assure you that these cases were thoroughly investigated by PPB and the district attorney's office and all uses of deadly force. We follow a stringent process, which is reflected in directive ten 1010. With the advent of body cameras, we have re-emphasized our commitment to transparency by releasing video within 14 days of those incidents that occurred for the last three officer involved shootings and in-custody death. We also have a series of these incidents in every deadly force incident since 2010 on our website, and we encourage everyone to look at them on our open data portal. Next slide. As I said, uses of force. All uses of force are tracked in 2024. Community members are visitors initiated. Just over 209,000 calls for service. These calls resulted in a use of force 0.17% of the time. Of these calls, 238 resulted in a use of category 2 or 3 for 2 or 3 fourths, 0.11% and 120 of those resulted in a use of category four force at the 0.06% compared to last year. There is a reduction in category four force, which is the lowest level of reported force. Recently, the bureau did implement a change in this policy to recategorize recategorize control against resistance and resisted handcuffing. Next slide. In 2024, officers initiated 61,334 calls for service. Of these calls, 176 resulted in a use of category 2 or 3 force. That's 0.29% of those calls, and 39 resulted resulted in a use of category four force 0.06%. Next slide of the. Just another way to sort of break it down. Of the 13,297 custodies in 2024, 5.9% resulted in a use of force. Category 2 to 3 force was 4.55 of those, and category four accounted for 1.33% of those. Once again, everything on the website, including our quarterly force reports for review. Next slide. Stops data. This is also all on the website. Portland police bureau's been collecting data on traffic and pedestrian stops since 2001. In 2024, PPB performed 24,182 driver stops, a 41% increase over the previous year. Most of the increase can be attributed to traffic division being active the entire year after being previously disbanded. However, most of the other divisions also saw increases as well. Next slide. 40% of stops occurred in east, 33% in central, and 26 and north precincts. No perceived race or ethnic group of drivers that were overrepresented were overrepresented compared to the injury collision benchmark. Similarly, the Oregon criminal justice commission 2024 stops report found no differences in the rate of stopped drivers by the bureau using the veil of darkness methodology. Next slide. In 2024, 98% of drivers were stopped solely for traffic offenses. Speeding was primarily the primary offense observed by traffic officers 44.2% of the time with missing or expired license violations is a predominant stop for non-traffic personnel. 39.8. Next slide. In 2024, approximately one out of every 158 stops included a discretionary search, and the majority 60.8 of those resulted in contraband being located. Next slide. In our precinct meetings, we continually remind folks that stops and searches are governed by the us and state constitutions as well as Oregon law. We really want to continue to discuss with community members the rights and responsibilities that, when stopped, community members have a responsibility to comply with an officer's direction. Next slide. In 2022, PPB implemented new practices to ensure compliance with legislative changes that were coming. Officers created a record of their request to search and provide a written explanation of the right to refuse. Ppb policy goes beyond the minimum of the new state law requirements. The 2024 search rate, 0.6 percent, is the lowest on record for the PPB, only 0.4% of drivers, 90 in total, were asked to consent to a voluntary search. No disparate search patterns based on perceived race or ethnicity of the driver have been identified. Next slide. We actually require officers to provide a card that explains, in five languages, a person's right to refuse to a consent search. The card explains to people that they have the right to say no when asked for, searched for consent to search, and to withdraw their consent at any time during the search. These steps do not affect existing authority, of course, to conduct a search without consent if the officer has legal basis to search a car or person, they may still do so even if the person refuses in those instances. Next slide. The bureau remains committed to bias free policing. Our directives require officers to engage in bias free policing. These requirements go beyond what is explicitly required in state law. All board members have been trained on implicit bias as well. Okay, I know I ran through that really fast. We'll take any questions. And one last closing thing is you all know we're required for the doj agreement with the city. We have to present this in front of full council, and we're scheduled to do that on August 6th. So we also will have an opportunity to answer questions then to if they come up. So.
44 Thank you, chief mcmillan. We're going to open this up for questions. Please feel free to get in the queue. I'll try to do a couple rounds of this. We actually do have this is the only other item on our agenda today. So I might ask you to pause and let your colleagues get in to the queue. And then we'll we'll circle back around. So we'll start with councilor Morillo and then go to councilor Smith after.
45 Hi everyone. Thanks so much for your presentation today. I was wondering if we could go back to the slide where we talked about the traffic stops and some of the data around that. I was curious about the methodology. It says, I think, oh wait, go back. I think we were on that one. There we go. Stops data. Yeah. So it's I was kind of surprised to see this. It says that there's no perceived race or ethnic group of drivers that were overrepresented when compared to the injury collision benchmark. So I was wondering if you could outline that a bit more and explain what the veil of darkness methodology is to come to that conclusion. That's my first question.
46 Yes, I can give you a very high level layman's understanding of the injury collision benchmark, which is the rate at which collisions happen based on race or perceived ethnicity. We're comparing that's the benchmark by which we're comparing is how our. Division.
47 Oh okay. So benchmark. So it's about collisions not about the stops being broken down by.
48 So they compare. So they use the collision rate as a benchmark. So as the standard against which they're comparing. Does that make sense. No no.
49 I can I.
50 Yeah yeah.
51 Go ahead. So there's in the stops data collection report. And I think we can try to pull one up just to show that the table it has a table where one column is the percentage. Each row is a racial category, one column is the percentage of stops that were of drivers of that racial category. The other column is the benchmark by which you compare that to. And the percentage used there is the is it's called the injury collision benchmark. And I'm not sure about this last part, but is it the percentage of total people involved in a injury collision within the city who are of that racial category? It's I'm going to pull this up. I have we you put out a report every quarter or so.
52 Yes. I don't have it in front of me. So I would defer to the report and or we would, you know, come back to speak to it with one of our strategic services folks that could break down the benchmarking and statistical analysis, which is well beyond what I would be able to relate here.
53 Okay. While councilor Kanal pulls that up, and maybe that will be more enlightening if I see it in a table. Can you explain why we're not just breaking down the stops data based on population and then percentage based on race like we used to? I feel like we used to have a much more simple breakdown of like, okay, you had 52% of stops were black portlanders, our population in Portland of black people is like around 6%. So obviously we saw that there was some disparity in that breakdown. Do we have any updated information on that? Because I don't think I saw that in this presentation.
54 My understanding is it's a number of years, and I don't want to misquote on how many years, but it's been quite a few years that we've used this benchmark. Now, the other numbers are out in the in the world or get spoken to, because everyone can look at.
55 That was a long.
56 Breakdowns and whatnot because it's just out in the public sphere. But this is the and again, our strategic services folks would be able to bring the science behind their statistical analysis.
57 Yeah, I feel like for a presentation I would like to have that broken down. I think the methodology is important. I don't really understand the collision benchmark and why that's being used as a metric. When I think in the past we had very simple presentations that explained this number of people of this race were pulled over in a city that is majority white. So I have some questions about why we are now having a much more. And maybe I'm just not a statistical genius, but I feel like it shouldn't take a statistical genius to understand the race breakdown of our police stops. So if someone could break that down for me later, or if you could bring that person in since we have some time, that'd be awesome. But councilor Kanal, I don't know if you've pulled up that chart yet.
58 I'm still looking, so.
59 I will pass it off to the next person to ask some questions while you take a look.
60 Great, councilor Smith, you're next in the queue, followed by notebook.
61 Thank you. Co-chair canal. Thank you all for your presentation. That was great. I had a couple of clarifying questions. You say there are 100 new officers in the queue, and there's 87 vacancies. So is that 100 a part of that 87 or that 87 is after we bring in the new 187.
62 After we bring in the folks that are already hired are being counted. And so the vacancies persist after that.
63 And I know you all are not data researchers and that kind of thing, but when I look at 274 overdose deaths in the city of Portland, that's kind of high to me. And I don't know what is contributing to that. I don't know if. I mean, we have talked about. Getting, you know, the drugs off the street in downtown area. But I would like to see if there is a way to desegregate the data to show where those deaths are coming from, if it's coming from east Portland, if it's coming from west Portland, that would be great to really know. And it's kind of along the same lines that the councilor is asking for. Morillo. And I just want to get a sense, because if that is in downtown Portland, we could probably estimate, you know, what that's from. But I don't know if the overdose death, if they also cross with the homeless deaths as well. Are they categorized twice because some homeless folks, they they have drug addictions and they, they use drugs and so is their death based on them not being housed? Or is it because of their, their drug use and or abuse?
64 We can we can definitely dig more, present more on overdose deaths, more in depth on overdose deaths.
65 If you could do that and see how they cross with with folks who are homeless, see how if what percentage of those 274 were they homeless or not?
66 Okay.
67 Because then that makes that makes a difference when we're talking with the county and the joint office about how we spend our resources, we have put an incredible amount of money into the homeless continuum. And so I want to make sure if there are ways in which we can save lives in the city, that we figure out how to do that and how to attack this number. Thank you so much.
68 Thank you, councilor Smith. We'll go to councilor Novick next.
69 I have a series of disconnected questions. I'm counting on the chair to shut me up when he thinks I've asked too many. We can move on. One is to follow up on councilor Smith's comment just now. What? What how many of the homicides are or the victims? Houseless?
70 I didn't have it.
71 I don't have it off the top of my head, but I can certainly get it for you. Okay.
72 Because that obviously is of interest. I mean, people who are houseless are in various ways more at risk. So to find out how that affects the homicide figures would be interesting. On the traffic stops, how much of a correlation is well, here's the general question. And then more specific ones, how much of a correlation is there between the kind of things people are stopped for and the kind of things people die from? Like if we are we stopping people for speeding? Are we stopping people for running red lights? I know we're stopping people for dui to the extent we're stopping people for expired plates, etc. That's not to say that that's not important, but it's not life threatening. So one thing I'm curious about is what balance should we strike in terms of doing traffic enforcement between like speed cameras and red light cameras versus more cops on the beat? So could you elaborate on what kind of things people are stopped for, and what impact do you think that has on fatalities and injuries?
73 I think, well, I think the numbers bear out that the vast majority of stops conducted by our traffic division, for example, who are, you know, very dedicated and focused on reducing traffic fatalities on the streets in Portland. And they're out there targeting serious moving violations like speeding and certainly red lights and things like that as they see those, but speeding in particular and then impaired driving. So there and those are things that are don't have the numbers in front of me, but I'm comfortable putting it out there largely, very significantly related to a lot of the traffic fatalities that we see. We're going to see impaired drivers and we're going to see speed contributing both or one or the other in the vast majority of crashes. So, yeah.
74 If there's any way that that's kept track of that would be great to see. Like what percentage of stops involve speeding? What percentage of stops involve running red lights, perceiving impairment, etc?
75 I thought they were broken down in there. I might be wrong. I'll have these guys correct me by moving and nonmoving, and that would be probably the line that you're.
76 Looking.
77 You're looking for is somebody staying in their Lane, running a red light, speeding. That's going to be in our moving violation. That's how we would refer to those versus nonmoving violations, which is you have no headlights or brake lights or you have expired license or registration, things like that.
78 Another big a big broad question is we hear periodically from constituents about there's a certain kind of crime that happens in this location every damn day, like at bottle return facilities. People, you know, come in and return their bottles. And sometimes they're like, you know, they only open up some parts of the week and then people get their money and the drug dealers are right there and accepting the money. So the people like in the central eastside are asking, can't you just have the police there, you know, several nights in a row to put an end to this open air drug dealing? Now, my guess is the response to that. There's probably like thousands of places in the city like that. You just don't have the resources to cover all of them. But I'd like to hear an answer just so I can, like, give an answer the next time I hear a complaint like that.
79 Yeah, I can speak a little bit to that. That's a fairly significant issue that we have in in east Portland. It's something I hear fairly regularly from community members. And so it's striking the balance of making sure there are people that are legitimately using the bottle drop for a variety of reasons. So making sure that our strategies that we implement aren't disproportionately impacting those folks. And so we do a fair amount of focused patrol work in and around those areas to get the drug dealers and also to hopefully try and connect folks that unfortunately may be suffering from drug addiction, to get them connected with resources. We do that with limited resources when we have additional time and ability to do that, but it is something that we're doing on a regular basis.
80 Thank you. I said I was going to jump around a bit. I hear people complain about the plane. Guy I know says the plane flies around all the time. God knows what it's doing. It's always in north Portland, annoying the hell out of us. Why do you have the plane and why is it annoying us?
81 North rob you want to feel that he said north specifically.
82 So with our air support unit is used for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's surveillance, sometimes it's activities related to street racing missions. So for example, on Sunday night, we had it out flying over a street racing event that was happening on Sunday night in north Portland. So that's one reason why we have it. They're also involved in a lot of the follow up investigations for other divisions, whether it be homicide or major crimes or those falling around suspects and witnesses and trying to corroborate where people are. We also use it during our criminal interdiction missions, our stolen vehicle operation missions as a deterrent to traffic pursuits. There are a way that we use it to alleviate the police from having to engage in vehicle pursuits, which are inherently dangerous for the city. We use the plane as our de-escalation tool, so the driver is making their own decisions, how they drive without police ever being present.
83 So, okay, elaborate on the last one. Does that mean that you're not you're just sort of being there so people are aware of it or is it involved? Or is the plane always involved in a particular mission?
84 It isn't. We ask. The plane is involved in several of our missions specifically for stolen vehicle operations. Missions. We want the plane involved. So when the officer initiates a traffic stop and the subject in the suspect vehicle flees in the vehicle, we don't want to engage in traffic pursuit as best we can on city streets, depending on time of day, obviously, but we use the plane as a deterrent tool to be flying overhead to track that stolen vehicle. When it either goes to ground, it crashes at parks, the guy gets out and runs and then we can track him there.
85 Okay, so when you talked about okay, when you talked about it's to track a specific vehicle, it's not just sort of flying around as a general deterrent.
86 Oh no.
87 No. All right. So it it sounds like what I might be able to tell by that. Well, actually, he's not a constituent he's got I know is that the plane is not sort of randomly flying around doing patrols. It's always up there for a specific mission driven reason.
88 Yeah, it's mission driven. It's mission driven tool. Yes.
89 I pause you there. Yeah.
90 Thanks. Not not because of the length, but because I think it's a good pause point. And I have a question on this issue, too. On April 5th, there was a large protest downtown. Is was the hands off protest either that night or the next day, I had a sit along at a boec 911 center. There was a report of. There were two reports that night of drivers evading, which is a good use of the plane. Right. You would use the plane as far as I understand it, this is how it was explained to me by the telecommunicators to ensure that a police officers are not involved in the pursuit, but at some point that car is going to stop somewhere and then police officers can go to the scene where they are and apprehend without a high speed pursuit, right? Yes. I was told that in this particular case, the plane was unavailable because it has exceeded its maximum flight hours or potentially needed refueling because it had been surveilling the protest downtown without commenting on. Because I don't want to put you on the spot about that specific day three months later, and I would like to understand, is that one of the uses I have two questions on this is that one of the uses that the plane is regularly assigned to.
91 To the protest environment.
92 Correct?
93 Well, I'm not I'm not a crowd management incident commander. I don't I'm a critical incident commander. So I manage more of the cert team and swat team side of things. Sure, that question may be better. Much better suited for crowd management. Incident commander. Who's in charge of the incident? I know in the past they have requested them for specific reasons. I don't know the answer to the question though. Commissioner or councilor Sorry. Whether or not they're doing it on a regular basis. I don't believe that they are. But again, that would have to be something I'd have to follow up with.
94 Okay, when officers are. Are working on that particular assignment for the plane, are they working overtime usually. Is that a is that one of the responsibilities that might that would that would usually or always be okay.
95 I can speak to that. We don't have we have two sergeants assigned to air support. And so those are only full time personnel assigned to that. Most of the work, the extra stuff that gets done, the missions and things around the police bureau are on overtime because we don't have enough humans to address the work within a 40 hour workweek. And or it's come up short term, you know, short. So yes, our pilots and our flight observers will be operating unless they've adjusted a shift. I couldn't speak to a specific day necessarily. I would have to research that. But generally speaking, it's overtime to accomplish those missions because they have a regular, you know, they have a day job. Basically, this is an extra job that they've agreed to take on in the police bureau to get trained on and, and participate in. And so they're doing their regular work, whatever that may be, around the bureau. And then they would go and do that work additionally as needed.
96 That is really helpful for me to know and I appreciate it. And also takes maybe I am interested in that particular day just because I happen to be doing, you know, I'm doing ride alongs and sing alongs around the public safety area, but it takes off some of the concern because this council did adopt a budget note as part of the budget process that directs the use of overtime to prioritize things like threats to life and safety, and to deprioritize the use of overtime on protests. So I am content knowing that that will be a prioritization shift that has already been directed by council. And by the way, sort of tangential to that. I did want to take the opportunity to I did do a ride along with fit, and I appreciate many of those officers are also part of xt, and I appreciate their hosting me on that ride along and appreciate the conversations that we had. I've directed it to them specifically, but I just wanted to say that publicly as well as well as, of course, the boec telecommunicators I mentioned earlier. I will stop here and kind of go back around the circle and come back around when the time gets to me. So I'll go back to councilor Smith.
97 Thank you. That was that was legacy. Are there any things that that are critical to your work that you were not able to get either one enough of, or to be able to be funded in this last budget cycle that you would like to see going forward?
98 Certainly, funding is what drives us, as we know.
99 And or policies to.
100 Policies out of.
101 The policies and resources and appropriations.
102 I think that to continue to do the work we're doing.
103 I see director cozzie is.
104 Is he jumping up and down?
105 He's no, he's he's breathing really hard. He he went.
106 Right now.
107 He looked like he wanted to come up to the table to. Yes.
108 I have something he wants to answer this one.
109 Like a dca kind of question. So thank you so much.
110 There you go.
111 I know I'm in the right place. If I see his face getting red. Yeah I know, it's like.
112 Good afternoon. For the record, I'm interim dca bob cozzie overseeing the public safety service area, and we've had some conversations already. And as I have sat in this seat for a little bit over a month now, what I'm recognizing are some similarities and differences between pb and boec, because that's where I have the most experience. And one thing that I'm trying to figure out is how we might be able to have a full grasp on the overtime requirements for pb and shift away from the overreliance on using vacancy savings to fund overtime. So when we talk about, you know, future budget, I want to be able to say we have funding for x number of fte and we have funding for x amount of overtime. And here's exactly what that overtime is dedicated for, particularly when we think about, you know, backfill overtime for precincts. We also look at any special operations. There's overtime tied to that. And recognizing the need for staffing at the same time and not conflating the two so that we're relying on vacancy savings to pay for overtime usage.
113 Okay, okay. So I hear what you're saying. You're just looking from a global standpoint and you haven't dug really deep about what you're going to do for next fiscal year, because I'm already on next fiscal year. In terms of my thinking.
114 We're trying to get the lay of the land so that we can really know what we need for next fiscal year by the time we start the budget process.
115 Okay. Excellent. Thank you so much.
116 Thank you.
117 Thank you, councilor Smith. We'll go next to councilor Novick. And then I have an update for the traffic stop thing after that. Thank you.
118 Continuing randomly jumping around, I have one question that sort of relates to whether a prejudice I have is accurate. I saw that 11 of the traffic deadly traffic crashes involved motorcycles, four involved bicycles. My working assumption is that there's a lot more bicyclists than there are motorcyclists in the city, so that would tend. If that's true, it tends to suggest that motorcycles are dangerous things people should think twice about driving them. But I could be totally off base. I just wanted to know if any of you have. Am I just speaking based on prejudice? Or is it true that driving a motorcycle is unusually dangerous?
119 I don't have any statistics off the top of my head to tell you about percentages of vehicle usage in the city? I think as a parent, I would like to emphasize that motorcycles are in fact dangerous, particularly in the hands of folks that maybe are not as well trained or familiar with how to operate them, or just really excited to go way too fast on our city streets. And so, I don't know, we see a lot of, you know, we see a lot of crashes, unfortunately, and they really run the gamut of types of crashes. So I don't have a any further comment on how, how much or which way.
120 So I wanted to ask a question about an area of spectacular success over the past few years, which is the reduction in motor vehicle thefts. And I was wondering, what do you attribute that to? Did you break up a number of sort of organized motor vehicle theft rings? Were all the kias and hyundais stolen? So there were none of the left to steal? What do you think some of the factors are in that spectacular reduction?
121 Yeah, I can speak a little bit to that. It goes back to about three years ago. We were provided a grant, $800,000 grant by the doj and partnered with the OHSU cancer institute. And to start really looking at evidence based indicators of what a stolen vehicle, some of the factors surrounding that. And then we push that information out to our officers. So they would have that information available. And then also I want to highlight just the partnerships with our other law enforcement agencies. And we were able to develop a model and provide specific information to officers that would increase the likelihood of identifying a stolen vehicle. And so that program is gaining national notoriety. And other cities are looking at how they can implement what we have incorporated here.
122 So it's not just I mean, it's not just breaking up rings, it's simply identifying individual stolen vehicles and getting better at that.
123 Correct. There have been some rings that we have identified throughout the course of that program, and that's definitely one component of it. But it's also the increase in correctly and accurately identifying like this is a stolen vehicle and then getting it stopped.
124 I have to say, I've heard some satisfied stolen vehicle customers in the past few months saying that they're very pleased with the response they got and got their vehicle back. Another question I have is about homicide solve rates, which I think that the most recent data you have is about 56%. Now that seems incredibly low. I know it's part of a national trend. I'm curious what you have to say about why that trend has been so bad across the board in the past, like 30 years, but also, and this might be an impossible question to answer. Are there a lot of cases where you think you have a pretty good idea what happened? You just don't have a provable case or most of the unsolved just we have absolutely no idea who killed this person.
125 Fairly rare, I'll say. We generally, obviously the majority of the time have a suspect in custody. What happens through the justice system is other things. But and then there are a percentage of cases that we have a suspect identified, but we don't have enough to viably make that arrest or take that to trial with a reasonable expectation of a successful conviction in that case. And so pending additional statements, witnesses, evidence coming to light, they won't push forward a prosecution in the case of a homicide that is iffy, right. They're going to put through cases that they know that they have a case, that they can get through the system beyond a reasonable doubt. And so and, or information exists that indicates this might be the person, but it is not able to be substantiated. Simply someone saying that's who did it isn't enough to take a case and launch through the justice system. So myriad of factors, the lesser though, are the complete whodunnits of it's a complete mystery. Generally speaking, homicides involve people upset with each other who know each other, and there's a reason, an identifiable reason, not a random act of violence. Generally speaking, there's always exceptions to that. But more often than not, we know you know where it's happening, who's involved in that. And then it's just about putting that case together effectively. Yeah, I would say our solve rates this year are I don't have it off the top of my head. I wish I did are quite high this year, 2025. But what you're also seeing and what plays into that in some way, shape or form is rates of homicide. So our homicide rate is lower this year. And so that allows our investigators, who are limited in the number of hours a day that they are able to work, can devote more time to the cases they have. We've also had a number of cases where operations is right there or able to shortly thereafter make an arrest and that so our and we would consider consider there's a lot of work that still needs to go into the case. But you know, that's a that's a win for us. That's a clearance for us.
126 So one explanation I've seen for the nationwide decline is that a larger percentage of homicides are committed with guns, and it's sometimes harder to solve gun related homicides because maybe people aren't like, carrying a bloody knife around. Is the is the solve rate higher for non-gun than gun homicides or is it about the same? Do we know.
127 I don't know, the breakdown of, you know, solve rates as it relates to mechanism? Yeah, yeah. I don't know that.
128 Last question I have and I actually talked to commander hughes about this last week, but I. How many people are in the narcotics unit? Their job generally is to chase down drug dealers and. And seized and seize drugs. As opposed to, I mean, like, so high level drug dealers as opposed to like, you know, trying to sort of break up, break up the supply of drugs rather than like sort of livability, you know, open air drug market arrests.
129 Narcotics and organized crime unit is primarily trying to take on organization level or that higher level. So not street level. That's not to say that they don't participate in those missions. They do. Certainly we focus them on those missions as appropriate, but or occasionally or as needed or as identified. But generally speaking, they are working higher level investigative cases where they're trying to get more to supply and before interrupt it, before it gets onto the street.
130 And how many people are in that unit?
131 Golly, I would have to look to know off the top of my head I'd be making it up at this point.
132 Is that, I mean, is it closer to 20 or 10 or.
133 No, I think 12.
134 It's closer to ten.
135 11 or 12.
136 Yeah.
137 I mean, what do you mean? I think there's a lot of people who would argue that trying to interrupt the supply of drugs, even though the high level detours might be really bad people, is trying to drain the pacific with a teaspoon and interdiction don't really reduce the amount of drugs on the street enough to affect things like the overdose rate. Is that what I mean? Is there evidence to show that that is or is not true that you're aware of?
138 I think it's difficult to prove a negative, but I think when we take pounds of my personal belief without a statistic to prove it is that when we take pounds and pounds and hundreds or thousands of doses of fentanyl or meth out of the supply chain, that that is a good thing for the city of Portland to not have those drugs ultimately end up on the streets, that is, that's sort of the core of their work. And I do believe that that has a positive impact. It's really difficult to quantify if that drug had made it to the street, what is the potential impact of that? How many ods? I don't know how to substantiate that. I would want to start to point things like our really high overdose rate and are really low numbers in our narcotics and organized crime unit. And when those two things were existing and now we've bolstered that unit and we're seeing ods coming down, are those directly related? I don't know, statistically, over time we could certainly work to analyze that. But to me, that that is anecdotal evidence that we are moving in the direction we should.
139 I mean, that's something I think would be really interesting to see comparisons of other jurisdictions. Are there jurisdictions that have seized a ton of drugs, and they still have some of the highest rates in the country? Are others that don't seize any at all in their overdose rates are lower, and that seems like it is subject to some possible statistical analysis. Thank you.
140 Thanks. Just to get back to the stops data question, and I think we found it's the most clear on the 2021 one. So if christopher, if you could put that up on screen and the reason it's the most clear in 2021 is this is the PPB open data presentation from 2021, in which it's on a single table. In the other cases I'll use c will show you 2024 in a second. It's on two different tables, and it's up to the reader to sort of compare. But this is the traffic stops for 2021. On the right side is the percentage by racial category, perceived race. And so for example, for black and african American drivers, it's 472 stops, which is 12.7% of the stops. And then this additional column, the middle one here of injury collision benchmark is provided for comparison. I think that's a fair assessment. Right. And the percentage that is being given is based on the injury collision benchmark, of which 15.1% of the people involved in injury collisions were black or african American. And so that is the basis for the comparison that leads to this sentence. In the bottom left traffic officers did not display any differential treatment based on the perceived race of the stopped driver. In fact, 12.7% is less than 15.1%. If one were to use a different benchmark, that could lead to different analysis. There is 6 to 7% of the population of the city that is black or african American. I don't know the number for 2021. That's why I'm giving a range here. And so 12.7%, if compared to that would show a very large disparity. And so I think that's where the controversial and I say this from the perspective of having previously supported pccep, where many people have brought this up in, in the meetings that this this particular benchmark. Benchmarking process has been, I think, a pretty big topic when there's the quarterly and annual reports presented to pccep for stops data specifically for non-traffic, it's violent crime victimization statistics, which is another a different benchmark than population does that does that make sense? So if one is saying 12.7% is less than 15.1%, one could say there is not overrepresentation in stops of black drivers. If, on the other hand, one was saying 12.7% is more than double 6%, that is going to lead the viewer to say there is a very high overrepresentation of black drivers in traffic stops. And so the choice of benchmark matters for how a reader understands it. So I'll give it back to you if you have any questions there. Councilor Morillo on on this particular one. And while you're doing that, if you could pull up the 2024 data because we are talking about the 2024 report.
141 I don't have any questions. I think you broke it down well. I think it's just important for this to be I think you laid it out well. It doesn't have to be that complicated, to be honest.
142 Yeah, I the way I wrote my question leading into this is when will the PPB change the benchmarking standards? I think if, if every year you've heard it I, the late Dan handleman would bring this up every year in the pccep meeting that it is in particular the violent crime victimization rate to justify non-traffic. It seems kind of I don't know that population. I think PPB has this this analysis in the in the long form of the stop data report that explains why population has a limitation to. And I want to acknowledge that there are reasons why that is not used. But I can tell you from doing community engagement that it it often comes across as obfuscation when it is that that particular benchmark is used. And so I would love to ask if that is something that strategic services could work with. Pccep. But certainly I think there's some interest in council to develop something that, you know, because certainly people don't always drive at the same there's geographic deployment of where PPB is doing traffic stops. That's going to matter for the demographics of the people that might be driving in that neighborhood. There's reasons why it's, you know, I can see the argument for why population might be not ideal, but my question is if that's something that strategic services would be willing to do an open process and get changed, because for four years now, I've seen this debate at pccep and, and also in some of the precinct meetings around this report. I don't want to make you respond to it right now, but I want to give you the chance if you want to.
143 Well, yeah, I'll take it. Certainly take it back and we'll discuss it again. My benchmarking statistical analysis is, you know, not my not generally in my wheelhouse, but certainly. Yes.
144 Fair enough. It might be helpful to have someone from ssd for the full council. And I don't know what our seven colleagues who aren't here would ask. I want to pause this here, because we do have four people who are signed up for public testimony. So I will ask if we can go to that and then come back. We do have another 35 minutes of this committee meeting to discuss. So we have four testifiers. There should be some time for that. Thank you to our presenters. Thank you. And I'll ask because there are four and we have four seats up here. Rebecca, if you'd be so kind as to just call all four together.
145 Corinne frechette, odelia zuckerman, philip kochka and jason renaud.
146 And not seeing corinne, I'm hoping she's online. Okay, well, feel free to go ahead, adelia. And then maybe by the end, if she is available, we can get corinne back on. Thank you.
147 All right. Thank you. Hi. My name is odelia zuckerman, and I'm co-chair of the pccep, which was just being discussed prior. I first want to say thank you for acknowledging the in-custody death of damon lamar johnson. Psa will be hosting a community listening session on this next Wednesday, the 23rd at the Portland building and on zoom from 6 to 9 p.m. Also want to thank a.c. Mcmillan for including detailed information about the stop seat in the presentation we saw today. I do want to acknowledge that none of that information appears in the report itself, which informs the comments I'm about to share on. It is if the purpose of the annual report is to inform the public about progress and challenges at PPB, it should include more information about the ongoing challenge of ensuring police stops are free from any form of racial profiling. As the councilors may know, pbb releases a separate report entirely about stops data, including the nature of stops and racial disparity analysis using the injury collision benchmark and the crime victimization benchmark, per ppb's 2024 stops report. A benchmarks value depends on the extent to which it can help explain alternative reasons why stop rates might be different among different groups of people. Quote the reason PPB says it uses injury, collision, and crime victimization as a benchmark essentially is because drivers are different. Races are more likely to experience traffic collisions. So therefore PPB stops drivers of different races at a higher rate because they are, according to ppv, worse and more dangerous drivers. Pccep has also considered this data practice to be confusing at best and problematic at worst. It's difficult to grasp why we wouldn't instead use readily available census data. Pccep has long questioned this practice, and last year we recommended to PPB that they utilize an additional analysis called veil of darkness to improve confidence in the results. Ppb rejected this recommendation, though we do appreciate the PPB has committed to referencing referencing the state's veil of darkness analysis moving forward. In their reports, we believe more could have been done. Again, I want to emphasize that pccep has taken issue with the injury collision benchmark for many years, and still fails to understand why the stops are not compared to baseline census data, even with the current benchmarking analysis pbb stops showed concerning racial disparities for 2024. Although PPB says there are no disparities, the numbers tell a different story. 46% of the focused intervention team are fit stops for black people, and 21% were latino. Out of all ppb's non-traffic stops, 22% of people stopped were black. This even exceeds the injury collision benchmark the PPB uses, where black people made up just 13.6% of collisions versus 22% of stops. I strongly encourage this committee to hear a separate presentation about stop state in this forum. Pccep also welcomes discussion with all of your offices about our long standing concerns and its impacts. Thank you.
148 Thank you. Odelia philip.
149 My name is philip toshka. I'm with Portland copwatch we continue to be disappointed at the in the precinct and council presentations of these reports as a reminder that us doj agreement paragraph 150 requires the bureau to make the annual reports that educate the public about its efforts to in community policing in regards to use of force about ppb's policies, laws and governing pedestrian stops, stops and detentions and bias free policing, and include a civilian's responsibility and freedoms in such encounters. These items should appear in the report, which may encourage the bureau to properly address them in public meetings. I did notice that the presentation and the summary did include some of that, but it's not actually in the report itself. Given the concern or concerns over the last 25 years where police data show black portlanders being stopped at 2 to 4 times the rate of the representation in the population, it's shocking that this report, in this report, there is no analysis or data from the strategic services division about the use of force stops, arrest data or bias free policing. The ssd handles stop data reports and instead of providing a summary or analysis of the data, the annual report linked in their website at the annual report linked in their website and left it to the readers to do their own research about ppb's state of affairs. As a result, the 2024 annual report appears to be out of compliance with the settlement agreement. In the 2023 report, some information was given about the focus intervention team stops but doesn't address race or ethnicity. In the 2024 report. It includes only stops related to anti-street racing. Special missions. In his cover letter for the 2023 annual report, the chief listed transparency and accountability as secondary goals, and this year, he doesn't mention those goals. And in various places, that accountability is mentioned in the report. It barely touches on holding officers accountable for violating policy. Once again, data about internal affairs do not show how many violations were found, nor how many forms of discipline were imposed. The annual report makes no mention of new oversight system that was negotiated in 2024. We'll give the bureau a pass in omitting this information, since it's designed designed to be independent of the police. There's in the report itself, there's no mention of deadly force incidents. It's they mention it in the presentation, which is not in the report. We need that in the report. Also use of use of force is barely mentioned. Once again, there's little information about the use of force. Like last year, the behavioral health unit section talks about I'll skip that. One last thing. Homeless and houseless people are part of the community, and the report itself makes no mention of poverty or homeless or houseless people. Thank you, thank you.
150 Thank you. Philip. We'll go to jason next.
151 Jason renaud I'm with the mental health alliance today. Mental health alliance is amicus to us d.o.j. Versus city of Portland. Thanks for being here. I'd like to start by saying thank you to councilor Kanal for. Expressing condolences for the family of demar, damon, lamar johnson. That's a first. We have advocated our organization. And then later, after much persuasion argumentation, the pccep joined us in asking prior administrations to express their condolences. And it had been a fight all the way along and it never occurred. It's a first. Thank you. In response to the annual report, just the response to the first point of the first item about trust and how trust gets broken so quickly and so expensive and takes so much time to repair. I want you to think about for a moment the thought of a family member or a neighbor of a person in a mental health crisis using 911 tonight. Are they going to do it? Are they going to make the call? Are they going to delay when that trust is broken? Our whole emergency services system collapses and doesn't function for that community. That where the trust has been broken, that repair can be done, but it relies on good partners. And I'd say we've had 2 or 3 important things that have happened just in this one case. One is the proof of the use of body worn cameras. Suddenly we have a new tool brought by a lot of labor on the part of the police department and a part of this council to bring body worn cameras to existence. Thank you so much to commissioner Chief de and his predecessors for making that happen. But now we have documentation of what occurred. Sometimes it goes one way, sometimes it goes the other. The second is that I think in this case, we have an instant recognition by everyone that we need to send the right response. And police are not always the right response. And the city has struggled for a long time to create the right response to send as an alternative to police. That's almost there. Not quite there. Much more work to do, but we now see the value of Portland street response and similar alternative responses. Hope more effort, more integration to do here and to avoid these tragedies in the future. Thank you.
152 Thank you. Has corinne frechette arrived by any chance or she online?
153 She's not okay.
154 Thank you. I assume.
155 That concludes testimony.
156 Great. Thank you. All right. We're now in committee deliberation. I'll reopen the queue if there's anyone who'd like to say anything or ask anything. Okay. Councilor Smith, is that a legacy?
157 It's a legacy. Okay.
158 So I'll make the motion, I guess, to move to refer the Portland police bureau annual report to the full council for consideration. And may I have a second, please?
159 Second.
160 Thank you, counselor Smith. Seconded. Is there any discussion on this motion? Okay. I'll note here I'm going to try to just telegraph. I have a few questions that we didn't get time for, but that don't affect my consideration of the report as a whole. So I will I'll probably email those to follow up. The one that that I would like. The folks, the presenters at pb to potentially be ready for is a little more information on clearance rates. I think that might be helpful for colleagues to understand the working definition and for the public, certainly the working definition of clearance rates and where that's at for me, that is one of the tables I'd like to see as a category by category breakdown. I think that's a metric that we should be trying to support increasing over time. And by we I mean not only PPB. I think part of that is our responsibility as council in the remainder of the executive branch as well. And I'll also commend the inclusion of the statistic on 1425 firearms seized, the body worn camera information that's been included, as well as the information around recruitment, not only because it's good to have the information, but because the information about recruitment is good. And then the only other thing that I'd like to highlight, I think it was brought up in testimony, is I think it would be helpful to have a little bit more information. You know, the death in custody last year was not noted as it was in the presentation, but not in the report. And to get a little bit more information as to pbs's perspective, it's PPB report on the deaths of matthew greer, nicholas thorn, richard sean perez and matthew horne, who were the four people that died in some sort of incident involving police last year. Just for transparency sake, I think that would be helpful. So I'll leave it there. Any other comments before we go to a vote?
161 Okay.
162 So this is a motion to refer a yes vote sends it to council. Rebecca, will you please call the roll Morillo.
163 I'll make my comments brief because I know it's before a vote. I really appreciated the testimony today from folks who came to talk about the report, and I don't think that I can in good conscience vote yes to move this to full council, given the death of damon lamar johnson this past week, I think it's pretty unacceptable that this police report does not have a comprehensive, understandable analysis of racial disparities. I'm also concerned about the missing pieces of the use of force, and this just continues to be an issue in our city. And it has been for years. And so I just don't think that this report is sufficiently addressing the community concerns and needs of black portlanders, latino portlanders, portlanders who are people of color, who are targeted by police in different ways. And I think we have a lot of work to do. So I vote no.
164 Novick I.
165 Zimmerman Smith,
166 I.
167 Canal thank you.
168 Thank you. I share many of the concerns around the comprehensiveness of the report. I view these, as I've mentioned, administrator jordan, in the context of his reports, as an iterative process, and this is our first one. I also note this is a motion to refer for consideration by council without. And I think I'm I'm hoping that the conversation at the full council allows for us to evaluate it in its. In its fullness. That's not the right words, but I think you know where I'm going. So with that I will vote I. The motion carries.
169 The motion carries three. Eyes, one nay one absent.
170 So. And the Portland police bureau annual report will move to the full council. That concludes the second of two items. I did want to flag our next meeting. So this meeting is the June 10th meeting that was rescheduled to the middle of the month. We do have our regularly scheduled meeting next week. We are hoping to discuss informational presentation on the settlement agreement that was referenced today between the department of justice and the city. Also, a discussion of the hiring process and philosophy for high level public safety service positions, including a review of the recent fire chief hiring process. And I'll just take the opportunity to note that I did talk about a few ride alongs I have gone on. I haven't gotten to fire yet, but I'm looking forward to doing that between now and our next our next meeting next week. So with that, the meeting of the community and public safety committee is adjourned at 4:11 p.m.
171 Thank you.