“It wasn’t productive, it wasn’t a discussion we were going to engage in,” said Portland Police Association (PPA) chief Robert King (pictured above, left) this afternoon of the Mayor’s commissioned series of racial profiling community listening sessions, which began in May. “We cannot step onto a playing field where we’re being perpetually accused of being racist.”

King, whose union chose not to participate in the racial profiling sessions (which if you’ve not been following, you can read about in chronological order, here,here,here and here), said the PPA will continue to work with Police Chief Rosie Sizer on the issue because it respects and trusts her, but that “although [the mayor] did not technically say we’re racist, it’s impossible for those watching on television and reading in the newspapers not to conclude that officers are acting in a way that’s racist or racially motivated. I don’t see how we respond to that without feeling we’re labeled racist.”

Mayor Tom Potter responded by referring King to his opening remarks this afternoon: “I said police officers are good, ethical people who want to help people. Nowhere did I say you are racist. I said there is something not right and that the numbers don’t add up. I know you, Robert, and you’re a good man. Tell me what we could do as a city council to really begin to address how the community feels about many of the police.”

King, and his colleague Mitch Kopp (pictured above, right) responded that there needs to be a more neutral setting for racial profiling dialogue. “I didn’t think the listening circles [were] that,” said King.“I may have been wrong, but I didn’t go.”

Commissioners Sam Adams and Erik Sten challenged the pair based on the earlier testimony of another officer, Sergeant Dave Hendry, who had attended the sessions. “It seems like when Officer Hendry went, something happened,” said Sten. “I wasn’t there either, but I feel something happened.”

“People would like to believe we are racist,“said King. “We’ve worked very hard, but what we see playing out with the Chasse case and with racial profiling is an implicit apology by the police bureau-and that’s a stage we continue to find ourselves on.”

The exchange took place after the report’s author, Jo Ann Bowman of activist community group Oregon Action had presented the report alongside Alejandro Queral of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center. “I share Commissioner Leonard’s concern that, if we delay the work of the racial profiling commission, ‘racial profiling might get lost in City Hall’s digestive system,’” said Queral.

The Mayor surprised many observers by promising to return to council within 60 days, with a timeline for setting up a racial profiling commission. City Hall rumblings earlier this week suggested he might have delayed matters by waiting until the new Human Rights Commission is convened, next year. Also crucial to the process, Police Chief Rosie Sizer (pictured below, left, next to the chairman of the racial profiling sessions, Clayborn Collins, outside City Hall) conditionally agreed to the monitoring of individual officers’ traffic stop data, as long as a privacy statute can be drafted in the Oregon State Legislature, to protect the identity of those officers from release to the media under public records requests. She had been publicly resistant to such a measure before the hearing. After the hearing, Bowman said she was “disappointed” in King’s testimony. “Clearly he’s trying to act as an obstructionist to a process which has involved the whole community,” she said.

Chief Sizer responded:”One of the things that is a shame is that in the listening sessions, those perspectives were shared. In many ways, this council hearing acted as a community listening session of its own. I think not voicing that perspective doesn’t make it go away. It was a good thing for [King] to have shared his perspective today.”

“My sense is that minority communities and the police have a pervasive sense of being stereotyped,” she added.