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,
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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
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