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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 25, 2017)
October 25, 2017 Page 5 Less Force, More Empathy Terence Keller C ontinueD from f ront small step in the right direction.” Some parts of the report praised Portland Police’s progress in best practices, such as local officers conducting meetings with mental health service partners to gather input from them on how to deliv- er services. The consultants wrote that they “have been continuously impressed by the collaborative and respectful nature of the meetings.” The consultants’ report comes as a requirement of a 2014 settle- ment agreement between the city of Portland and the U.S. Depart- ment of Justice after a 2012 inves- tigation found that police were us- ing too much force against people with mental illnesses. High profile cases like the police shooting death of James Chasse, who had a mental illness, and other officer-involved shoot- ings, served as a catalyst for the investigation. After the death of Aaron Camp- bell, a suicidal black man who was unarmed when he was shot by po- lice outside his northeast Portland apartment in 2010, national civil rights leader Jesse Jackson came to Portland and called for the De- partment of Justice’s intervention. The city hired Rosenbaum & Associates, a Chicago firm rec- ognized as experts in assessing police behavior and best practic- es, to help it improve its practices and comply with the settlement terms to reduce crisis encounters between persons with a mental ill- ness and police. The report found that Port- land police were often confused about the difference between what’s called de-escalation and force-mitigation techniques. De-escalation can involve us- ing calm and empathic commu- nication before resorting to force, whereas force-mitigation can rely on commands and warnings as a first resort to stop a conflict from escalating. Many Portland police were found to be using force-migration techniques when de-escalation would be more appropriate, the report found. Portland police say they want to incorporate the consultants’ rec- ommendations into their training. Portland Police Captain Bob Day, who was appointed in July 2016 as the new head of training at the Police Bureau, says he un- derstands the consultants’ call for better de-escalation training and is “very supportive of that,” but told the Portland Observer that the desired instruction presents some obstacles. There are only 40 hours per year allotted to officer refresher training courses and many of the core classes, like traffic training, A full Service Realtor • List & Sell your House • Find your New Home • Help you Invest • Find you the Best Loan • Help with Pre-Sale Prep • Hold Open House to sell your home Photo by D anny P eterson /t he P ortlanD o bserver Captain Bob Day oversees Portland Police Bureau training. He supports the findings of a new report finding officers need better de-escalation training to avoid conflicts, but says he also has to figure out a way to add the training to a curriculum that is already packed into a 40-hour schedule each year. domestic violence response, etc. are too important to cut out, Day explained. “You know, at the end of the day, it just becomes a capacity issue. Organizationally, we are going to have to reflect and priori- tize,” Day said. Day said he does not have a dedicated, formal de-escalation class, but now plans to integrate the consultant’s recommendations on de-escalation “as a thread” throughout the police training cur- riculum. Dan Handelman, a member of civil rights group Portland Cop- watch, told the Portland Observer he believes de-escalation should be given a dedicated class, in light of the recent report. “I think they should have a sep- arate training for de-escalation for sure. In the same way that they have a class about a weapon that says ‘here’s how to use a weap- on,’ they should have a class about de-escalation that says, ‘here’s how to use de-escalation’ and then integrate it,” Handelman said. He cautions that Portland Po- lice have made reform promises in the past, but haven’t always fol- lowed through on them. “The city had a plan to elim- inate racial profiling in 2009,” Handleman pointed out. “Here it is in 2017 and there’s still ra- cial profiling in the city. We can’t keep waiting for them to fix these things when the community is be- ing mistreated,” Handelman said. According to an independent police report, 2016 marked a peak of community complaints about use of force by Portland Police. There were 143 use-of-force in- stances which is higher than each of the last five years. At least six police shootings in Portland since 2012 were at individuals thought to be experi- encing a mental illness. Though officer-involved shootings overall dropped from six in 2015 to two in 2016, conduct and force com- plaints have increased substantial- ly in the same period. Portland is my Town Call Terence Keller 503 839-6126 Liberty Group Realtors Inc. terencekellersr@gmail.com • Oregon License 200306037
