A federal judge Wednesday approved a two-year appointment of a new independent monitoring team to oversee the city’s progress on police reforms to reduce use of excessive force against people suffering from mental illness.
The team starts July 1 and has a big agenda ahead of it, including monitoring the rollout of body-worn cameras to all police precincts over the summer, calls for the city to expand the non-police Portland Street Response program and creation of the future independent community oversight board for police.
The nine-member group — called MPS & Associates — is led by Mark P. Smith, the current Los Angeles Police Department’s inspector general, and includes one Portland resident, veteran community leader Antoinette Edwards.
Most of the other members are from outside of Portland, including the police auditor for the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, a retired deputy police chief from New Mexico, the senior adviser to the Los Angeles mayor on homelessness, the UCLA police chief and a forensic data specialist.
U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon, who has presided over the settlement since it was drafted in 2012 between the city and the U.S. Justice Department, said he believes the entire monitoring team will approach the new job with fairness and care.
“I do see progress, good progress,” he said, reflecting on the past 12 years. “There’s more work to be done.”
Smith said the team will provide “independent, objective assessments” of city and police compliance with the remaining pared-down requirements of the settlement. Those include police accountability, community oversight, officer use of force and the accurate reporting of police use of force.
He will leave his police inspector general’s job of more than six years for this new role but remain based in Los Angeles. His current deputy inspector general will remain in that job but serve as Smith’s deputy monitor for the Portland settlement.
“We will overall commit to ensuring professional and constitutional policing that is durable and accountable to all members of Portland’s diverse communities,” Smith said.
The team initially proposed a first-year budget of $837,500 for its work, but the city is starting to negotiate the contract, said Chief Deputy City Attorney Heidi Brown.
The city agreed to allow an court-appointed monitor to oversee a pared-down number of settlement reforms so the city and police could focus on attention on where reforms are most needed. Previously, the city anticipated a cost of about $1 million annually for a two-year monitor’s contract that could be extended another two years.
Members of the Mental Health Alliance, which advocates for people with mental illness, urged that the team include someone with expertise on Oregon’s complex web of mental health systems. It’s not clear if that will happen.
Many people praised Edwards’ involvement, saying the team needs to understand the unique challenges in Portland, including community mistrust of police, and the city’s history of racial inequality and displacement.
Edwards, a former director of the city’s Office of Youth Violence Intervention, is coming out of retirement to take the role as an associate monitor with the team.
She called herself, a “homegrown, hometown girl.”
“This is really personal to me, this fight, this struggle, this opportunity for justice, for healing,” she said.
Some members of the public, including former City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty who addressed the court, were critical that team members all aren’t from Portland.
Amanda Lamb, a lawyer representing the Mental Health Alliance, said she hoped the appointment of the monitoring team wouldn’t be just “a way to get this agreement resolved quickly but instead an opportunity to maintain forward momentum toward durable solutions and improved outcomes.”
Lawyers from the city and Justice Department also updated the judge on key issues remaining in the settlement:
POLICE BODY CAMERAS
The Portland Police Bureau concluded its 60-day body camera pilot program in mid-October. The bureau has installed needed recording and storage hardware in all of its three precincts, its training facility and the Penumbra Kelly Building, where a few police specialty units are based.
The city also has completed a contract with the camera provider, Axon Enterprises, after the council voted in December to approve up to $10 million to buy and operate the camera program over five years.
Officers from Central Precinct and the Focused Intervention Team that works to reduce shootings will receive refresher training and start wearing the cameras again in late June. Officers from that precinct and team both wore the cameras as part of the pilot.
Cameras will roll out to officers in the bureau’s two other precincts and specialty teams over the summer and they will be operating throughout patrol by the end of the summer, Brown said.
“I know your honor has been asking for those for a long time,” Brown said.
Simon, who had urged the city to equip officers with body cameras a decade ago, said the full rollout will be a “win-win for everybody.”
The city and Justice Department didn’t reach agreement in mediation, but will continue to discuss the federal agency’s desire to have immediate access to body camera recordings through evidence.com. The Justice Department also wants the independent monitoring team to have immediate access to the recordings.
Justice Department lawyer Jonas Geissler said he hopes the new monitor will help resolve the dispute. If not, the Justice Department could come back to the court to request the judge’s intervention, he said.
PORTLAND STREET RESPONSE
Leaders and members of the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing and others urged the city to expand Portland Street Response to a seven-day-a-week, 24-hour operation. Under the program, mental health professionals and emergency medical technicians assist people in crisis on the streets instead of armed police.
Committee co-chair Ashley Schofield asked the city to secure ongoing funding and remove restrictions on the responders to allow them to help people who are inside buildings, not just outside or on the street.
Brown said Mayor Ted Wheeler has proposed maintaining the city’s current level of funding and moving the program out of the Fire Bureau and into the city’s Community Safety Division.
Simon said he’s not going to micromanage the program.
The city and Justice Department are still mediating whether expansion of Portland Street Response is required to meet the settlement’s requirement for suitable crisis triage.
FUTURE POLICE OVERSIGHT BOARD
Representatives from the Albina Ministerial Alliance and the ACLU of Oregon blasted the city and the Portland Police Association for what they view as an attempt to gut the voter-approved Measure 26-217, which called for an independent board to investigate and discipline officers accused of misconduct.
The City Council has proposed scaling back some of the proposal, suggesting moving most investigative hearings to closed-door executive sessions, prohibiting any person with a demonstrated “bias for or against law enforcement” from becoming a board member and placing three police representatives on a committee responsible for nominating board members.
The city has a newly drafted proposal that it will make public after conferring with the Justice Department, Brown said.
The ACLU also is challenging in court a new ballot title for a measure that the police union is separately pressing to place on the ballot for voters in November that would make further changes to the police oversight board.
The union changes would bar the board from directly imposing discipline on officers in favor of having the board make recommendations to the police chief. The measure also would remove a requirement that the board include people who have experienced mental illness, addiction or systemic racism and remove a requirement that the board receive 5% of the police bureau’s operating budget.
Hardesty, the former city commissioner who was behind Measure 26-217, said she’s considering suing the city if it doesn’t put in place what 82% of voters supported.
-- Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, mbernstein@oregonian.com, follow her on X @maxoregonian, or on LinkedIn.
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