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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2021
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APPEAL TRIBUNE
‘Undetected or
unaddressed’
Address: P.O. Box 13009, Salem, OR 97309
Phone: 503-399-6773
Fax: 503-399-6706
Email: sanews@salem.gannett.com
Web site: www.SilvertonAppeal.com
Whitney Woodworth
Salem Statesman Journal
USA TODAY NETWORK
The agency tasked with training and
certifying Oregon law enforcement is
limited in its ability to hold officers ac-
countable for misconduct and lacks
oversight of field training, according to
an audit released Wednesday by the Ore-
gon Secretary of State’s Office.
Every newly hired police officer in
Oregon must attend a four-month train-
ing at the state Department of Public
Safety Standards and Training in Salem.
The agency is responsible for regulating
all public safety professionals in the
state, including county, city and tribal
police officers and city and county cor-
rections officers.
Officers who fail to meet moral fitness
standards may face decertification by
DPSST.
But the audit found that while the
agency has improved its procedures to
hold officers accountable, local control,
narrowly-defined administrative rules
and gaps in the certification review proc-
ess limit its ability to hold more officers
accountable.
“As a result, officers whose conduct is
worthy of decertification may go unde-
tected or unaddressed,” auditors noted in
the report.
The audit pointed to, as an example,
the 57 officer-involved shootings and in-
custody deaths from 2004 to 2018 in-
volving the Portland Police Bureau. Of
these 57, only one officer’s actions may
have met the standards for a DPSST pro-
fessional standards review.
The audit also found that while the
agency has developed training that com-
plies with state laws and includes an evi-
dence-based curriculum, only a small
portion of law enforcement officers have
received this training and DPSST’s abil-
ity to train officers further evaporates
once they leave the academy and go into
the field.
“The agency’s ability to provide police
training and to certify and decertify offi-
cers is hindered by staffing and technol-
ogy constraints,” auditors said.
The audit was conducted with the
purpose of examining how the agency
responsible for regulating officers ap-
proached police training and account-
ability.
HAR
OR K
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“Recent years have been marked by
much-needed attention to racial injus-
tice, inequity, and the actions of law en-
forcement agencies,” auditors said in the
report. “As the debate on police reform
intensifies and with public trust in law
enforcement waning, it raises questions
about the ability of these agencies and
the State of Oregon to hold officers ac-
countable for misconduct.”
The audit singled out George Floyd’s
murder by a Minneapolis police officer in
2020 and the 100 days of protest in Port-
land that followed as driving the calls for
police reform.
Each state has an officer standards
and training commission to establish
standards and training requirements.
Most oversee the certification, decertifi-
cation and ongoing training for officers.
Since 1961, Oregon’s system has
evolved into DPSST to provide basic
training, certify officers and monitor
compliance with professional standards.
The audit noted that the DPSST board
does not have control over law enforce-
ment agency operations and instead
deals with individual officers.
“Holding local LEAs (law enforcement
officers) accountable is ultimately up to
publicly elected leaders, including city
and county officials,” auditors said.
Currently, 5,620 police officers,
20,935 private security professionals
and 6,974 firefighters are certified
through the agency.
The DPSST board can deny or revoke
an officer’s certification. In 2019, 71 certi-
fications were revoked. Last year, 49 cer-
tifications were revoked, four were de-
nied and two were suspended.
These revocations are triggered by an
opening of a professional standards in-
vestigation after something like an offi-
cer’s arrest, conviction, separation of
employment, falsified documentation to
DPSST, dismissal from the academy or
public complaint.
The audit found the agency and its
board are implementing rules to improve
officer accountability but face high work-
loads and staffing constraints.
The audit also found the agency
comes second to employment actions
made by local agencies.
“Neither DPSST nor the board have
the authority to overrule employment or
disciplinary decisions made by local (law
enforcement agencies) as long as they
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Staff
News Director
Don Currie
503-399-6655
dcurrie@statesmanjournal.com
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comply with the board’s standards and
requirements,” auditors said. “Although
DPSST’s certification process is sepa-
rate, it relies on local LEA investigations.”
The audit included 15 recommenda-
tions to the agency, including:
h Increasing workforce capacity to
conduct more in-depth investigations.
h Evaluating whether Commission on
Statewide Law Enforcement Standards
of Conduct and Discipline rules on un-
justified or excessive use of physical or
deadly force merit changes to moral fit-
ness standards.
h Implementing a certification proc-
ess for field training officers, which in-
cludes initial and ongoing training re-
quirements.
h If funding is available, develop and
implement processes to assess police of-
ficer performance post-academy.
h Formalizing a policy and process
that enables DPSST to request the Ore-
gon State Police conduct and share na-
tionwide criminal records checks of an
individual when necessary.
Officials with DPSST agreed with 12 of
the 15 recommendations.
“The department was pleased with
the overall results of the audit performed
during 2021 and intends to continually
evaluate all the recommendations to fur-
ther the mission of the agency,” DPSST
director Jerry Granderson said in a writ-
ten response to the audit.
Granderson said he agrees with the
recommendations that identified defi-
ciencies in staffing and IT infrastructure
and that more resources were needed to
advance the agency’s mission of police
accountability and the legislative intent
of criminal justice reform bills.
He said the agency will develop spe-
cific policy option packages and time-
lines to address the recommendations.
He took issue with three recommen-
dations:
h Taking into account whether the
commission’s rules are both timely and
relevant and working with stakeholders
to address gaps in moral fitness stan-
dards, specifically related to incidences
of excessive use of physical and deadly
force.
h Evaluating whether the rules estab-
lished by the commission on unjustified
or excessive use of physical or deadly
force merit changes to moral fitness
standards.
h Analyzing and projecting the work-
force capacity needed to conduct investi-
gations when local police information is
not available or incomplete.
For the last one, Granderson said the
agency did not find incomplete local law
enforcement information to be an issue.
“The audit showed that out of 103
cases, only three (one per year) did not
have adequate information provided
from the local agency to make a determi-
nation and therefore does not merit addi-
tional resource,” he said.
For the others, Granderson said, it was
too early in the process, especially when
considering the commission was created
as an independent body, to take action.
For questions, comments and news
tips, email reporter Whitney Woodworth
at
wmwoodworth@statesmanjour-
nal.com, call 503-910-6616 or follow on
Twitter @wmwoodworth
Would Supreme Court
ruling on abortion law
impact Oregon?
Connor Radnovich and John Fritze
Salem Statesman Journal
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USA TODAY NETWORK
A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court
signaled Wednesday it is open to up-
holding Mississippi’s ban on most abor-
tions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but
left unresolved the question of how far it
may go to undermine its landmark Roe v.
Wade decision.
However, even if the justices chose to
overturn the decades-old precedent, ac-
cess to abortions in Oregon would not be
impacted.
The Oregon Legislature has enacted a
number of laws securing access to these
procedures, including the Reproductive
Health Equity Act in 2017, which codified
the protections of Roe v. Wade in Oregon
law.
There are no significant restrictions
on abortions in Oregon that are seen in
other states, such as waiting periods or
mandatory parental involvement.
Abortion services are included in
state Medicaid coverage, and Oregon
law requires private health insurance
plans to cover abortions without exclu-
sions or limitations.
A ballot measure in 2018 pushed by
anti-abortion groups sought to prohibit
the use of public funds on abortions, but
Oregon voters rejected the measure 64%
to 36%.
In nearly two hours of debate
Wednesday, the justices wrestled with
the potential impact of overturning Roe
on people seeking an abortion, as well as
how a heavily divided nation might per-
ceive the Supreme Court if it abandons
the watershed ruling from 1973 that es-
tablished a constitutional right to the
procedure.
But while Oregon may not be directly
impacted, the high court's decision, like-
ly to be handed down early next sum-
mer, will have ramifications beyond Mis-
sissippi: Dozens of conservative states
are poised to approve similar bans.
At least 17 states enacted "trigger
bans" or have pre-Roe abortion bans in
place in the event the Supreme Court
overturns the ruling, according to the
Guttmacher Institute, a research group
that supports abortion rights.
Idaho is among those states, which
means the court overturning Roe could
send residents there seeking abortion
into Oregon at higher rates. Since Texas'
six-week abortion ban went into effect
in September, women have been cross-
ing into neighboring states to seek out
the procedure.
The Mississippi case, along with the
Texas ban that is also pending before the
Supreme Court, pushed the issue back
to the forefront of the nation's culture
wars.
Abortion rights advocates say allow-
ing Mississippi's 15-week ban to take ef-
fect would, in practice, overturn Roe by
wiping away one of its central holdings:
that people have a right to an abortion
until viability, the point when a fetus can
survive outside the womb or about 24
weeks into a pregnancy.
Jackson Women’s Health Organiza-
tion, the last abortion clinic in Missis-
sippi, challenged the law in 2018, assert-
ing it conflicted with Roe and a subse-
quent case in 1992 that upheld Roe but
ruled people can obtain an abortion until
viability. Two lower federal courts
agreed with that position, and Missis-
sippi appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court, where conserva-
tives hold a 6-3 advantage for the first
time in decades, surprised observers by
agreeing to hear the case at all. Similar
bans have been struck down without in-
tervention from the nation’s highest
court. The decision to take the case sig-
nals that at least some of the justices
want to say something about the issue.