If you haven’t spent your good-karma dollar on a Street Roots yet this month, there’s another cover story on Portland’s Private Police, well worth reading.STREET ROOTS: Refusing to let the issue lie…or sit…

Street Roots reporters found that Portland Patrol Inc. (PPI) gets paid $439,824 a year by the Portland Business Alliance (PBA) to provide order maintenance services in the downtown core, but when they asked to see the contract between the PBA and PPI, they were refused, despite the city’s contract with the PBA stating that “contractors and subcontractors shall make all records relating to the contract available to the city.” So a supposedly public contract is being kept under wraps.

As we reported in the Mercury on May 10, Street Roots is working with Sisters of the Road and the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center to develop a complaint system for PPI and other private security agencies downtown, because the city is unwilling to step up and provide oversight of its own. Meanwhile your safety lies in the (murky) hands of the private sector, while the PBA claims to be “winning the perception battle” on public safety.

Question for the PBA: How does refusing to divulge details of a supposedly public contract on private policing help the public’s perception of your motives?

To its credit, the Oregonian ran an editorial by Street Roots director Israel Bayer a few weeks ago. But it is still yet to do any serious reporting of its own on the issue, although perhaps that’s linked to the fact that PBA boss, Sandra McDonough, used to be a reporter there. For shame…