HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States
Portland
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PORTLAND

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WASH., D.C.



Incidents
Civilian Review
Police Administration/Internal Affairs Division
Civil Lawsuits
Criminal Prosecution
Unions

Portland has been touted by some as a community policing model, and its civilian review agency functions better than most examined by Human Rights Watch. Problems do remain, however. Its police force - the Portland Police Bureau - has at times violated the rights of its citizens, and accountability for officers who commit abuses has been lacking in some cases.

The department has made some progress in the past few years. During the 1980s and early 1990s, a lack of trust in the police department developed among minority communities; the department's records on internal review and training were poor and civilian review was ineffectual. In 1985, two Portland officers were reinstated by an arbitrator after they were fired for selling "Don't Choke `Em, Smoke `Em" t-shirts on the day of the funeral of Lloyd "Tony" Stevenson, who reportedly had been killed by a police chokehold. In 1990, the internal affairs unit had a unique record in dealing with complaints of excessive force - of seventy-eight complaints, the division found in favor of the officer involved in every case. The next year, two cases were upheld - out of seventy-six - a sustained rate of less than 3 percent.

During the same period, the civilian review board (the Police Internal Investigations Auditing Committee, or PIIAC) was singled out by national police abuse experts as an example not to follow in creating review boards. Members of the PIIAC resigned in protest because of the committee's ineffectiveness. Said one, "[I]t's a failure because it's not meant to do anything.... It's totally ineffective. It's absolutely ignored."1

According to press reports, between mid-1989 and mid-1991, training was canceled by police officials because they did not want to take officers off the streets.2 There was no training on firearms or on tactics in dealing with combative subjects. Police officers went fourteen months without firearms qualification tests, even as the department switched to high-capacity semi-automatic weapons. The more advanced weaponry was supposed to be used in response to violent gangs in the city, but instead some officers used the guns on the mentally ill and drug suspects who did not comply with their commands.3



1 John Snell and Phil Manzano, "Police watchdog lacks bite?" Oregonian, April 28, 1992, quoting Sandy Herman, who resigned from PIIAC in 1990.

2 John Snell and James Long, "Deadly force," Oregonian, April 26, 1992.

3 Ibid.

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© June 1998
Human Rights Watch