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  NEWS ITEM

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 23, 2014

LONG-TIME POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY GROUP DENIED MEETING WITH MAYOR

Portland Copwatch, an organization promoting police accountability since 1992, has been denied a meeting with Mayor/Police Commissioner Charlie Hales after three months of back-and-forth with his scheduler and police liaison. Although the group has met with every Chief and Mayor since its creation, the current Commissioner seems to be shutting out the organization, after meeting with them a year ago on July 22, 2013.

Portland Copwatch (PCW) is known for "doing its homework," and has had representatives on several official City committees over the years dealing with police oversight and racial profiling. PCW also brought attention to the Joint Terrorism Task Force issue in late 2000, when Mayor Hales was a City Commissioner and eventually was the only member to vote against renewing Portland's collaboration with the FBI.

While other groups such as AirBnB buy time with the Mayor, Portland Copwatch, an all- volunteer non-profit educational group, gets no such deference.

The email thread beginning with the April request has been posted below .

For context about the requests from the Mayor's police liaison, (Officer) Deanna Wesson Mitchell, note that PCW was vocal upon her hiring that an insider from the Bureau who would be able to rejoin the force at any time is not the appropriate person to liaison between the community and the police. PCW stands by this analysis.

In the midst of ongoing anti-homeless policies, revived crackdowns to target "gangs" (read in Portland as "all African American young men the police see"), more shootings of people in mental health crisis despite the pending Department of Justice settlement agreement, and the overturning of two egregious policy violations by Capt. Mark Kruger, the group is hoping that public pressure will help convince the Mayor it's time to sit down and talk police accountability.

For more information contact PCW at 503-236-3065 or copwatch@portlandcopwatch.org.

THE EMAILS (April-July 2014)

  • Initial request-April 18
  • First Reply from Scheduler-April 21
  • First Followup by Portland Copwatch-April 22
  • Second Followup by Portland Copwatch-April 30
  • Next Note from Scheduler-May 21
  • Third Followup by Portland Copwatch-May 21
  • Note from Scheduler-June 10
  • Fourth Followup by Portland Copwatch-June 11
  • Next Reply-(Officer) Wesson Mitchell-July 16
  • Fifth Followup by Portland Copwatch-July 17
  • (Officer) Wesson Mitchell Denies Meeting Request-July 17

  • Below is the full set of email exchanges between Portland Copwatch and Mayor Hales' office attempting to set up a meeting with the Mayor, between mid-April and mid- July 2014. Note: Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch (PCW) sits on the AMA Coalition's steering committee, but is not to point person for contacting the Mayor's office about meetings with the Coalition. While the concerns of the AMA Coalition are similar to those of PCW, PCW's long history gives us a perspective on many other police issues which we have been discussing with every Mayor/Police Commissioner since PCW's creation in 1992 including in our initial meeting with Mayor Hales in July 2013.


    INITIAL REQUEST (including policy analysis): APRIL 18

    From: Portland Copwatch [copwatch@ portlandcopwatch.org]
    Sent: Friday, April 18, 2014 4:39 PM
    To: Dietz, Susan
    Subject: Requesting a meeting with Mayor Hales

    Ms Dietz
    Hi-- I'm Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch. I met you briefly at the AMA Coalition meeting with the Mayor last week.

    Our organization, Portland Copwatch, would like to request a meeting with the mayor about police issues including the Joint Terrorism Task Force, oversight issues, and the questionable policies listed in the below email, which we sent the Mayor this morning.

    We've heard that Sen. Dingfelder is in charge of policy issues around homelessness now, if so, can you see if she can be part of this meeting as well (or at least forward this email to her)?

    Thank you
    dan handelman
    --Portland Copwatch

    Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 11:21:37
    From: Portland Copwatch
    To: Portland City Council -- Commissioner Amanda Fritz , Commissioner Dan Saltzman , Commissioner Nick Fish , Commissioner Steve Novick , Mayor Charlie Hales , District Attorney Rod Underhill
    Cc: Deanna Wesson-Mitchell , Community Allies , News Media
    Subject: OPEN LETTER Urging and End to Closed-Door Policy Making for Police Actions

    Portland Copwatch
          (a project of Peace and Justice Works)
          PO Box 42456
          Portland, OR 97242
          (503) 236-3065 (office)
          (503) 321-5120 (incident report line)
          copwatch@ portlandcopwatch.org
          http://www.portlandcopwatch.org

    OPEN LETTER Urging and End to Closed-Door Policy Making for Police Actions

    April 18, 2014

    Mayor Hales, District Attorney Underhill and members of City Council:

    We are writing to urge the City and the District Attorney to end their recent behaviors of staying behind closed doors when creating public policy issues involving police and human rights. There are at least six programs that have sprung up in the past 10 months, most of which are targeted against homeless people, which were created either by the Bureau, the Chief, the District Attorney (DA), and/or the Mayor's office, but none went through a public discussion at Council.

    1) Chronic Offender Pilot Project (COPP): This program, which was created by agreement between the DA and the Bureau in the middle of 2013, ostensibly was to target people committing otherwise low-level offenses such as littering and urinating in public, upping the stakes by charging them with "Interfering with a Police Officer" if they were caught a second time. As was reported in the media, the DA "accidentally" included the sidewalk obstruction ordinance (aka Sit-Lie 4.0) in the list of offenses. As a result, 17 of the 19 people arrested under COPP were wrongly brought in for sitting in the wrong place on the sidewalk and now have misdemeanor charges on their permanent records. Defense attorneys have noted, and we can't agree more, that giving officers the power to say "if I catch you doing this behavior again, I will charge you with a more serious, but unrelated, crime" opens the door to serious civil rights violations. We would argue that such violations already took place under this project. We had heard that COPP phased out in early April, but the Portland Mercury reported on April 17 that it has been expanded by the DA to cover camping and "erecting a structure" in a much broader geographical area.

    2) Prosper Portland: While media reports indicate that the Chief created this project, and the Mayor questioned the wisdom of letting the Bureau make policies around homelessness (which we agree with), it's not clear how much of the Chief's plan is being enacted anyway. On top of the clearly hypocritical concept of helping people "prosper" by breaking up their living spaces and tossing away their belongings, this program was designed by the Thetus Corporation, a consulting firm with ties to the CIA. This corporate entity offered its services for free in hopes of padding its resume to bring such anti-poor-people programs to other cities.

    3) "Quality of Life" program. A new unit with no name was announced in early April that includes nine officers, a sergeant, and All-Terrain Vehicles, to focus on so called "quality of life" issues downtown and in the Hawthorne and Lloyd districts. It is fairly clear this program is also set up to criminalize homelessness in Portland.

    4) Neighborhood Involvement Locations (NILoc): Rolled out on March 25, this program encourages officers to get out of their cars for 15 minutes at a time to interact with community members in 20 different locations. Portland Copwatch has already received information that a team in the Kenton neighborhood kicked a young African American man, prompting local business owners to question whether the increased police presence is a deterrent to be in the area, rather than a deterrent for crime. This appears to be the same program described in the Portland Tribune in December as "stop and talk," which on its face is a thinly veiled version of New York's failed-- and racist-- stop and frisk program.

    5) Private security camp sweeps: A contract with Pacific Patrol Services went into effect April 1 for "campsite cleanup." This contract was able to avoid Council discussion, as its $35,000 pricetag doesn't trigger the automatic Council review for contracts over $100,000. We wonder whether the settlement of the anti-camping lawsuit in 2012 envisioned turning over police functions to private entities, since complaints against PPS employees can't be made through City structures such as the Independent Police Review Division.

    6) Portland Police as private security: The revival of police overtime contracts to act as security guards at the downtown Target store, despite the incredibly limited way in which such a presence might benefit anyone other than that one corporation, points to a further blurring of the lines between private and public safety officers. Much like the three officers whose salaries are paid by the Portland Business Association, this kind of contract indicates that the wealthy can buy more protection than average or poor Portlanders. The way things are supposed to work is that everyone pays their fair share of taxes, and then there is a public discussion and decision by elected lawmakers on how that money will be spent.

    PCW fears that the proliferation of all of these programs in the shadow of an Agreement with the US Department of Justice indicates an attitude by the City and the Portland Police, which can be summed up as: "Yes, we'll start figuring out ways to be nicer to people with mental illness, now we'll have to take out more of our aggressions on poor people and people of color, and using police to benefit businesses only."

    We note that there are a number of programs, including the aforementioned Sit-Lie 4.0, the Illegal Drug Impact Areas (IDIAs), and the Gun Exclusion Zones which have come before Council for discussion in the past. However, only the Exclusion Zones have come up in a report to Council in the past year, as statistics, reports, and an oversight committee for Sit-Lie were terminated in late 2012, while the IDIA reports, once sent to Council regularly by the DA, seem to have stopped. (We are looking forward to the promised discussion on the one policy issue which seems to be generating concern from the Council, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, later this year after Mayor Hales finds out about his security clearance.)

    In short, we are urging the City to put a halt to these potentially harmful and discriminatory practices and require that the Bureau bring such plans before Council for a full discussion with community stakeholders and elected officials. The District Attorney shoult attend these hearings and be part of the discussion. The vacuum in which the policies are created shows what happens when people make decisions without fully seeking out input to think of unintended consequences. (Or, intended consequences which are an affront to human dignity.)

    Please let us know when the above-mentioned programs will be coming to Council for discussion, and/or confirmed as "dead on the vine" (as Prosper Portland was called on the Portland Mercury blog on March 26, then reversed days later). As noted above, the city must stop making these important public policy decisions behind closed doors.

    Thank you
    Dan Handelman and Regina Hannon (and other members of)
    Portland Copwatch

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    FIRST REPLY FROM THE SCHEDULER (asking to wait until June)- APRIL 21:

    On Mon, 21 Apr 2014, Dietz, Susan wrote:

    Dear Mr. Handelman:
    Thank you for your email, and reaching out to me. It was a pleasure to meet you briefly, and glad that I can be of assistance to you.

    I will gladly take a look at the calendars, and make some recommendations for a meeting. At this time, due to our budget season, the Mayor's calendar won't be available until late May or early June. However, our chief of staff, Gail Shibley and Policy Directors, Deanna Wesson-Mitchell and Jackie Dingfelder, to go over these items you have included.

    Please let me know if that will work with you, and I will continue to work on scheduling the meetings as necessary.
    Best,
    Susan
    Susan J. Dietz
    Executive Assistant
    Office of the Mayor
    City of Portland
    1221 SW 4th Ave., Room 340
    Portland, OR 97204
    Desk: (503) 823-1125
    Email: susan.dietz@ portlandoregon.gov

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    FIRST FOLLOW UP BY PORTLAND COPWATCH (OK'ing a June meeting) - APRIL 22

    On Tue, 22 Apr 2014, Portland Copwatch wrote:

    Ms Dietz
    Thank you, one of our members who is well versed on these issues will be out of town for a while and it would be best if we can speak directly to the Mayor, so maybe after June 10th if anything is available. While these matters are of great importance they also have been going on for a while.
    Perhaps we can hear from the members of the Mayor's staff their thoughts on these issues. Interestingly, Ms. Wesson-Mitchell told us in January that Sen. Dingfelder was working on homeless issues in the office but Sen. Dingfelder wrote to us late last week saying she is not.
    Thank you
    dan handelman
    --Portland Copwatch
    http://www.portlandcopwatch.org

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    SECOND FOLLOW UP BY PORTLAND COPWATCH - APRIL 30

    From: Portland Copwatch [copwatch@ portlandcopwatch.org]
    Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 7:26 PM
    To: Dietz, Susan
    Cc: Wesson-Mitchell, Deanna; Shibley, Gail; Dingfelder, Jackie
    Subject: RE: Requesting a meeting with Mayor Hales

    Ms Dietz
    I'm just writing to clarify that although we're interested in the feedback we've begun to get from the Mayor's staff, we do still want to set up a meeting in Mid June with the Mayor and whomever else he thinks would be appropriate. I know I wrote that in the April 22 email, below, but when we did not hear back from you directly we wanted to write again just to be clear.
    Thanks again
    dan handelman
    --Portland Copwatch

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    NEXT NOTE FROM SCHEDULER (confusing PCW with the AMA Coalition)- MAY 21

    On Wed, 21 May 2014, Dietz, Susan wrote:

    Dear Dan,
    I would like to coordinate the next quarterly meeting, along with Dr. Bethel, AMA Check-in, potentially mid-July. I will be gathering some date options and send them your way. Do you have any forbidding dates between July and August, just in case we would have to extend options further out?

    I appreciate your patience and feedback, and look forward to working out a time that fits everyone's schedules.
    Best,
    Susan J. Dietz
    Executive Assistant
    Office of the Mayor
    City of Portland

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    THIRD FOLLOW UP FROM PCW (clarifying we're not the AMA Coalition) - MAY 21

    From: Portland Copwatch [copwatch@ portlandcopwatch.org]
    Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2014 9:21 PM
    To: Dietz, Susan
    Subject: RE: Requesting a meeting with Mayor Hales

    Ms Dietz
    You need to keep coordinating the AMA Coalition's meetings with the Mayor through Dr. Bethel. We were asking for a meeting between members of Portland Copwatch and the Mayor in June...
    dan h

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    NOTE FROM SCHEDULER (following a voicemail from PCW, turning over scheduling to Ms Wesson Mitchell) - JUNE 10

    On Tue, 10 Jun 2014, Dietz, Susan wrote:

    Dear Mr. Handelman,
    Thank you for your voicemail and continued patience in requesting a meeting. I'm cc'ing Deanna Wesson-Mitchell for you to contact and coordinate your specific meeting objectives, and obtain the key people to the next meeting.

    Please contact Deanna for initiating the process so we are on one accord to continue this scheduling procedure. From there, Deanna will work with me on identifying the time. Thanks again!
    Best,
    Susan J. Dietz
    Executive Assistant
    Office of the Mayor
    City of Portland
    1221 SW 4th Ave., Room 340
    Portland, OR 97204
    Desk: (503) 823-1125
    Email: susan.dietz@ portlandoregon.gov

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    FOURTH FOLLOW UP FROM PCW (re-asserting discussion points) - JUNE 11

    From: Portland Copwatch [copwatch@ portlandcopwatch.org]
    Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2014 4:28 PM
    To: Dietz, Susan
    Cc: Wesson-Mitchell, Deanna
    Subject: RE: Requesting a meeting with Mayor Hales

    Ms Dietz and (Officer) Wesson-Mitchell:

    We believe we have been clear that our intent is to speak to the Mayor about numerous police policies which are of concern to our organization and others in the community, including but not limited to:

    Chronic Offender Pilot Project (COPP) (and/or its successor)
    Prosper Portland (to what extent its components are being implemented)
    "Quality of Life" program (on Hawthorne, Lloyd District, etc)
    Neighborhood Involvement Locations (NILoc)
    Private security camp sweeps
    Portland Police as private security
    Joint Terrorism Task Force
    Oversight issues (IPR, CRC, Police Review Board, etc)

    to which we would specifically also add

    Videotaping of first amendment activities vs. ORS 181.575

    It's not clear why our previous emails outlining these concerns are not sufficient to establish a meeting with the mayor and appropriate staff. We made our initial request in April and it is now June 10th. We appreciate that the Mayor was busy with the budget during some of that time, but have never in 22 years of existence encountered so many hurdles to setting up a meeting.

    As it happens, one of our members will now be out of town between June 14-24 so setting up the meeting after the 24th would be preferable.

    Thank you
    dan handelman
    --Portland Copwatch
    (a project of Peace and Justice Works)
    PO Box 42456
    Portland, OR 97242
    (503) 236-3065 (office)
    (503) 321-5120 (incident report line)
    copwatch@ portlandcopwatch.org
    http://www.portlandcopwatch.org

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    NEXT REPLY FROM THE MAYOR'S OFFICE (Wesson Mitchell) - 5 WEEKS LATER - JULY 16

    On Wed, 16 Jul 2014, Wesson-Mitchell, Deanna wrote:

    Hi Dan,
    Hoping to schedule a meeting with you and other Portland Copwatch representatives to discuss the below items for which you have concern. Due to a fair amount of misinformation or mischaracterizations regarding almost all of these issues, I would like to meet with you to ensure we are working from the same set of facts.

    Tuesdays mid-day, Wednesday mornings, and Thursday afternoon are usually the most flexible in my schedule. Let me know what dates/times might work for you all.

    If you send me a more specific list of concerns, I can be more sure to have specific answers or invite the appropriate people. Can you also let me know who all plans to attend? Thanks.
    Deanna
    Deanna Wesson-Mitchell
    Policy Director
    Office of Mayor Charlie Hales
    1221 SW Fourth Avenue, Suite 340
    Portland, OR 97204
    Phone: 503-823-4277
    E-Mail: deanna.wesson-mitchell@ portlandoregon.gov

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    FIFTH FOLLOW UP FROM PCW (asking for documentation of "facts" and reasserting meeting request) - JULY 17

    On Jul 17, 2014, at 7:54 PM, "Portland Copwatch" wrote:

    Ms Wesson Mitchell
    We have discussed this matter internally and feel that if there are misunderstandings about the programs we've raised questions about, your providing documentation to clarify what you think we got wrong will suffice. We're aware that the media doesn't always get everything 100% correct but we also are able to read, analyze and bring our historical knowledge to bear on the policies we raised concerns about.

    We put in a request to talk to the Mayor back in April and we feel that the vague accusations about "misinformation or mischaracterizations" you perceive in our perspective, which might differ from yours or the Mayor's or the Chief's, are unnecessarily causing a delay in scheduling a meeting.

    So, please schedule a meeting with the Mayor and, in preparation, send us, in writing, anything you can that documents:

    --Chronic Offender Pilot Project (and its successor)
    --"Quality of Life" program (Hawthorne/Lloyd districts)
    --Neighborhood Involvement Locations (and officers' 15 minute "stop and talks")
    --Private security camp sweeps*

    --lack of reporting on "Illegal Drug Impact Areas" and Sit/Lie (Sidewalk Management)

    We began asking for a meeting with the Mayor in April but were willing to wait until June due to his schedule being tied up with the budget process. It is now mid-July, and we hope to have a meeting scheduled within the next few weeks that will include any appropriate staff who can speak to the above-mentioned issues.

    thank you
    dan handelman
    for Portland Copwatch

    *note that since we sent our original letter in April, the Citizen Review Committee began hearing an appeal involving private security at a camp sweep, in which the security company refused to talk to IPR investigators.

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    MOST RECENT EMAIL FROM MAYOR'S OFFICE (Wesson Mitchell denying meeting request and providing scant information) - JULY 17

    Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 21:19:48
    From: "Wesson-Mitchell, Deanna"
    To: Portland Copwatch
    Cc: "Dietz, Susan"
    Subject: Re: Requesting a meeting with Mayor Hales

    Hi Dan,
    Actually, since late Spring the Mayor's meeting scheduling has been in the process of becoming more judicious. Staff is taking more meetings and reporting back. The goal is for the mayor to actually have some time during the 12 and 14 hour workdays to accomplish work besides attending meetings.

    Again, I will be happy to meet with you regarding these matters.

    Please select from the time periods below. Let me know if none of them
    work.

    I will quickly address the simplest topics here:

    --Portland Police as private security (Target store, etc)

    - Yes, Portland police officers continue to be able to work events and spaces open to the public through contracts with the PPA (like Target, Moda Center Events, etc.). As has been publicly reported, these fee rates are gradually increasing to cover all direct and indirect costs.

    --Prosper Portland

    - Was simply a presentation of an idea at a LPSCC meeting. It did not go further than that.

    --the status of the Mayor's security clearance/Joint Terrorism Task Force

    - The Mayor will not apply for or receive a security clearance as is actually standard throughout the nation.

    - I will check into the issue being raised at CRC about the clean-up contractor.

    Looking forward to getting a meeting date set.
    Deanna
    (Sent from my iPhone)
    Deanna Wesson-Mitchell
    Policy Director
    Office of Mayor Charlie Hales
    1221 SW Fourth Avenue, Suite 340
    Portland, OR 97204
    Phone: 503-823-4277
    E-Mail: deanna.wesson-mitchell@ portlandoregon.gov

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    Portland Copwatch
    PO Box 42456
    Portland, OR 97242
    (503) 236-3065/ Incident Report Line (503) 321-5120
    e-mail: copwatch@portlandcopwatch.org

    Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.


    Posted July 23, 2014

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