The final version may now be two and a half years late, following the release of a draft back in January, but Police Chief Rosie Sizer finally delivered her "plan to address racial profiling" to city council this morning. The mayor cited the President's recent "beer summit" on the issue at the White House as evidence that Portland is ahead of a national trend on discussing racial profiling. Afterward, Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman commended the chief for "taking this issue on." "It would be easy not to take it on," he said.

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SIZER: DELIVERED SIMILAR REPORT FROM JANUARY, ALBEIT WITH A DIFFERENT COVER...

The chief wants to improve search procedures by identifying officers who don't do meaningless searches, and learn from their success. There has been training on delivery of services with professionalism and respect, there are new hiring goals, and rules on background checks, aimed at increasing the number of officers of color in the ranks. About 40 officers have attended a new training called "tools for tolerance," and there have been numerous community meetings, too. There will be an update "next winter," Sizer told council this morning.

There are areas of contention. Officers have been trained that by handing out business cards, they display accountability and increase community trust—although it's not mandatory, yet. To give you some idea of the bureaucracy around this issue, there was a 30-minute discussion this morning about whether officers should be required to give out business cards during every interaction with community members. Council ultimately forced Sizer to commit to this policy change within two weeks, but not without a fight—after two and a half years of focus on this issue.

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BUSINESS CARDS AND "MICRO MANAGEMENT"

Oregon Action executive director Jo Ann Bowman said she wants the cops to provide business cards to community members in all instances of interaction, not just when a warning or a ticket is given out, as the plan suggested—waiting for a new computer print-out system to be installed in patrol cars.

"To tell the community we have to wait for a half million dollar data collection system before we can print out business cards, the community is not that stupid," she said. "If police want to give out written warnings, I have no problem with that. But I think the mistake is to link that to business cards."

"So any interaction, they should offer a business card?" said Mayor Sam Adams.

"I very much agree with Jo Ann on that," said City Commissioner Randy Leonard.

"And I think in any other bureau, at the end of the exchange, you give the card," said City Commissioner Amanda Fritz. "It's part of community policing."

"It should just be a matter of course in every interaction," said Copwatch Activist Dan Handelman.

The mayor asked the chief to say what stands in the way of doing this.

"I would thank you in advance to not try to micro-manage exactly how we conduct traffic stops," said Sizer.

"Sometimes bureau heads use the word micro-managing to avoid doing anything the council wants," said City Commissioner Randy Leonard. "I think what we're trying to do is manage the issue. The message you heard from council is that on every interchange, at the appropriate time, we want a business card handed out."

"Well, and that's the direction we're taking," said Sizer.

"So let me follow up, for clarity. Is that a management tool you intend to implement, for any interchange between the police and the public?" asked Leonard.

"I'm sorry I can't give you a absolute date, because I am marrying it to the implementation of e-tickets," said Sizer—referring to the new computer print out system.

"We're not," Leonard shot back. "We're asking for something that happens in other city exchanges. How long will it take to hand out enough business cards?"

The mayor asked the chief to return to council in the next two weeks with a date.

"Our current policy would need to be changed in doing that," said Sizer.

"Understood," said Leonard.

Afterward, Bowman said she was "thrilled to see [Leonard] really holding Chief Sizer accountable for what the community says they want on this issue—and if you notice, she kept trying to say, let's wait for the new system."

"I think the chief had a little trouble de-coupling the request," said Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman, afterward. "And it seems there might be some incidental printing expenses, and there will need to be some discussion about, if there is more than one officer present, who takes the lead on that, but I think I agree with Randy that we don't need to make this more complicated than it is."

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GANG ENFORCEMENT/"A COVER FOR RACIAL PROFILING?"

Other members of Oregon Action—a racial justice advocacy group—commended the chief for the rest of her report this morning, although there were also concerns about the plan's relevance, given the bureau's recent gang push in North and Northeast Portland. Robert Merino, who is on the Oregon Action committee on racial profiling, said he was "concerned about the police bureau contributing a quarter of a million dollars a year to the office of youth violence prevention." "Potentially gang enforcement can be used as a cover for racial profiling, and that is not acceptable," he said.

"We are also intensely involved in the area of gang activity," Sizer acknowledged, while presenting her report. "As you know, we are unfortunate to be living in a community that has experienced increased rates of gang violence, and we have shifted from a model that was more reactive to a more pro-active enforcement model. But we have done that realizing that there is some risk that it carries with it allegations of racial profiling. My feeling on this sort of work is that it's a sorting process, and the better you know the community, the more thoroughly you can sort. But I think simply reacting to gang shootings and arresting the perpetrators was not an aggressive enough tactic for us to take," she continued.

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BOWMAN: PUSHED FOR MORE CHANGE THIS MORNING...

"I'm very concerned that we are on one hand raising millions of dollars to eliminate gang activity, and on the other, we have dispersed the responsibility for ending racial profiling among so many different groups," Bowman responded. "It appears that we are buying off community groups by giving them gang dollars, and at the same time ratcheting up our strategies like Operation Cool Down to target those same youth."

"That was pretty charged language suggesting buying off community groups," said City Commissioner Randy Leonard.

"I know that the intentions are to eliminate violence in our community," Bowman responded. "However if we are putting money into specific organizations to intervene in gang violence, and on the other hand, not holding the police department accountable for their interactions with minority youth on the street, then there's a disconnect."

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DRILLING DOWN TO INDIVIDUAL OFFICER LEVEL

The bureau has also put a data collection plan to drill down to individual officer level on hold. "The names of all individual officers in the stop data would be available to the media," says the plan. "This would potentially invade their privacy, make them targets, and eliminate officers' support for the effort."

"I wish there was a way to do it," said Saltzman, afterward. "But it sounds like there isn't a way to do this at the legislative level that the ACLU is happy with, so it seems like we have reached a stalemate there."

Copwatch activist Dan Handelman said he wanted the cops to hold their "hit rate" group on data analysis in public, and not behind closed doors at the police bureau.

Likewise, a plan to find out how individual officers perceive the race of individuals they are stopping has been put on hold until the bureau has updated its computer system—not expected to happen until 2011, at least. Sizer said budget cuts at the bureau had also prevented further work on statistical analysis. Some relationship-building plans to improve officers' relationship with the community have also been halted, "due to community feedback that this strategy would be perceived as a request for 'snitches'," says the report.

Mayor Sam Adams asked Sizer to make a budget proposal on putting dashboard cameras into police cars in the next budget cycle.

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"LAUGHABLE" TRAINING VIDEOS...

Bowman said the bureau's training videos are "videos that the community laughs at—there was a video that was done recently on traffic stops, well the person who was stopped was a pretty blond woman, the police were very polite to her, they chit-chatted, it was a very lovey lovey interaction. But of course that has not been the experience of communities of color."

"I think we can agree to disagree on that matter," Sizer said, when questioned by the mayor. "There were examples of badly conducted traffic stops and well conducted traffic stops, and our intention was to standardize the issue."

Sizer also said the video was just one of several being used by the bureau to train on traffic stops—Bowman disagreed, in the audience.

"Would you be willing to have community experts help review the videos?" asked Fritz.

"Sure," said Sizer.

"It's about flash point," said Adams.

"Point taken."

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RENT-A-COPS AND OPEN LAW SUITS

There were two more issues of note, raised in this morning's session.

The mayor also asked Sizer this morning to look at how much of the report "should apply to armed private security that we give the right to enforce the right of way," the first time he has acknowledged the rent-a-cop issue downtown, in a council setting.

The chief agreed to look into it, but it will be interesting to follow up on this issue.

"We're treated differently not only because of race but because of race and class," said Greg Benton, who sued the police after his home was invaded, based only on an anonymous phone call, back in 2006. "The city still hasn't settled in my case," he said.

The chief acknowledged, presenting the report, that there is a business case for reducing racial profiling because it would stop the city from having to pay out money in expensive lawsuits.