Late last year, Mayor Charlie Hales convinced his city council colleagues to spend more than $500,000 hiring 11 new background checks investigators, which Hales said were needed to fill dozens of vacancies in the police bureau. Police Chief Larry O'Dea has been trying to plug holes and reduce overtime expenses by rotating officers into patrol shifts they're not used to. And the Portland Police Association (PPA)—not without controversy—has been posting billboards around town blaring the message "Having Enough Police Matters."
The PPA, Portland's rank-and-file police union, isn't content on letting that sentiment stand. The union this afternoon sent out the results of a survey—filled out by 82 percent of its nearly 800 members—suggesting Portland cops are deeply dissatisfied with how things are going in the police bureau.
"Morale in the Portland Police Bureau is as low as I've ever seen it in my 24-year-career," PPA President Daryl Turner wrote in the release, "in large part because of catastrophically inadequate staffing levels. Chief O'Dea has ignored my message."
Among the findings from the survey, which appears to have been crafted by union leadership:
•96 percent of respondents believe "overall morale" at the bureau is below average or poor
•97 percent believe that's because of low staffing levels
•93 percent disagree with O'Dea's new practice of rotating staff into police patrols
•85 percent of respondents feel police bureau leadership is below average or poor
According to a report in the Oregonian in December, the PBB had 40 vacancies a month ago, with nearly 90 officers eligible to retire by spring.
Mayor Charlie Hales is taking the union's strident rhetoric in stride, apparently. Hales has been tasked with overseeing the city's settlement with the US Department of Justice over a lawsuit detailing abuses by Portland police, and has consistently pointed to O'Dea as helpful to that process.
"I picked Larry O'Dea as chief of police because he’s a change agent," Hales said in a prepared statement. "When you make change, you make waves."
Among changes Hales says O'Dea's overseen:
