Police Beat 3/26/21: The week in review.

Wow, we’ve made it to the end of the first week of the Honest Police Project on the web! At the end of every week we plan to roll together the week’s news in police integrity, accountability, honesty, and trustworthiness (read: the complete lack thereof). We will eventually allow you to get these as a email newsletter, so stay tuned for that. Now let’s get down to our weekly Police Beat.

Sunday 3/21/21

• The Portland Police Review Board, an internal group, released their semi-annual report on bad policing. Among the disclosures were police unsecured weapons firing off at random, reports of racist training, and one officer who delayed responses to a burglary call, let a suspect flee the scene, and told witnesses that they were ordered not to pursue by Obama. That officer was fired and the PPA (Portland’s police union) is fighting on appeal for him to be reinstated.
• Portland Mayor Wheeler and Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty announced the consultant firm hired to investigate the recent politically-motivated leak falsely implicating Commissioner Hardesty in a crime. The firm will be investigating broader cultural and criminal problems within the police bureau.

Monday 3/22/21

• Speaking of the (currently) former officer who was fired in disgraced above, The Oregonian’s Maxine Bernstein spoke to the witnesses about their encounter with the crooked cop.

Tuesday 3/23/21

• The Federal Department of Justice has had enough excuses from the PPB for violating their 2014 settlement agreement. At issue is the lack of reporting for PPB’s use of force, particularly during last year’s protests. Things got heated during a public meeting Tuesday night, and OPB’s Jonathan Levinson has the full scoop.
  • The Oregonian also posted their writeup as well about Tuesday’s meeting: Feds want Portland police to produce plan on how they will conform with settlement. City says no.
  • The Mercury: City Blames Protests, Not Police, for Officers’ Inability to Meet DOJ Settlement Standards
  • Note: This is separate than the most recent federal lawsuit that the PPB is wrestling with over their excessive use of force. They just can’t stop beating Portland citizens and covering it up.
• Staring down the barrel of multiple investigations into gross officer misconduct the new (and also a previous) PPA union head, Daryl Turner, has started to tuck his tail and talk the talk of someone who is super duper sorry. Suuuure, Daryl, we totally buy it. Shane Dixon Kavanaugh at the Oregonian has the story.
  • Choice quote: “The remarks are a rare case of rhetorical restraint for Turner, who once famously called Portland a “cesspool” and who routinely launched verbal fusillades against the mayor and other elected officials for their stances on public safety during his tenure as union president, which ended last year.”

Wednesday 3/24/21

• Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell held a press conference about the recent out-of-control cops, some of it covered above. We wrote up our debrief of the conference which includes links to other media coverage.

That’s all for this week’s Police Beat

Many of the above stories were reported on Thursday and Friday, but we’ve posted them in order of events instead of publication to make the timeline easier to follow. As we get our feet under ourselves look forward to future Police Beats adding important bits of national news along with the next week’s agenda for meetings/hearings related to Portland’s police. (Oh yeah, and a newsletter eventually.)

Have a safe weekend, everyone. We’ll see you next week (or sooner if the police make it necessary).