Westchester Law Enforcement Groups Say Police Need Oversight

After a Portland police sniper on the bureau's Special Emergency Reaction Team shot and killed a man who was on the phone with a hostage negotiator in 2005, a review board urged police to revise its policies on how SERT officers communicate and train with hostage negotiators.

The board wanted the bureau to ensure the officers are property trained before using new equipment, and suggested Portland improve its oversight of SERT by allowing regular independent reviews of its training.

 That was in 2007.

 Five years later, the recommendations have yet to be put in place – one of a number of suggested bureau improvements that have gone unaddressed, according to a city audit released Tuesday.

The city audit, which set out to determine how well Oregon's largest municipal police force tries to learn from past experience, found mixed results.

While the bureau has been responsive to outside consultants' reports over the years, it identified areas that hamper progress. They include excessive turnover of senior managers (three different training commanders since 2007; four chiefs and six assistant chiefs of operations since 2000), lack of annual performance reviews, snail-paced investigations of alleged police misconduct and uneven discipline that often gets reduced or overturned due to grievances or arbitration rulings.

"We believe these issues hinder the bureau from taking full advantage of the learning processes already in place," the audit said.

Further, less than a third of the 366 bureau who responded to an auditor's survey employees (out of 1,221 sworn and civilian employees) agreed that the bureau learns from its mistakes, and fewer members found senior management is attuned to what's happening in the field.

"That's of great concern to us," said Ken Gavette, the city's principal management auditor, of the survey results.

Portland Police Chief Mike Reese, in a written response, called the bureau a "progressive" agency that will consider the audit's recommendations.

City auditors have pointed out for years the bureau's inability to intervene early with officers having problems in the field, or who are the source of many citizen complaints. In a 1993 audit, the city auditor's office urged the bureau to install a computerized-Employee Intervention System to help flag officers needing attention. Design of the computer system began in 2005, but it didn't start operating until December 2011.

"More timely action on this item may have assisted the bureau in avoiding some problems with individual officers over the past several years," the audit said.

The system – which can track officers' use of force, ratio of arrests to force as compared to their shift's average, sick leave and complaints – is monitored daily by a sergeant. But there's no regular sharing of information with senior managers, the audit found. It suggests reports on the system's effectiveness be given to senior police managers.

"No matter how robust the system is, its efficacy depends on police bureau managers using it," said Drummond Kahn, the city's director of audit services.

If an officer is given counseling or retraining after he or she is identified for attention, there's no required follow-up to check if the intervention worked, considered a best practice nationally, the audit found.

Reese and Mayor Sam Adams, who serves as police commissioner, said the bureau is moving forward to adopt several of the audit's recommendations.

Particularly, the chief said the bureau is about to put the police union on notice that it intends to adopt performance evaluations. They would be quarterly reviews, with the final one placed in an officer's personnel file. They were not negotiated into the recently ratified union contract. The city expects to bargain its impact with the union, the chief said.

The bureau also has created a workgroup to create discipline guidelines, known nationally as a discipline matrix, which the audit recommends would guide managers in issuing more consistent discipline for officer misconduct. Boston, Austin, Multnomah County Sheriff's Office and Washington State Patrol have adopted similar ones.

Regarding SERT oversight, the chief said the assistant chiefs of operations, and of investigations meet quarterly with SERT supervisors and critical incident commanders to review past calls. To better coordinate SERT with the hostage negotiation team, the bureau trained critical incident commanders. Police executives statewide are also considering a review of multiple Oregon agencies' SERT or SWAT teams, the chief said.

City auditors say they're not satisfied with the chief's response. "They still don't get what we're asking for," Gavette said, pointing to the audit's language.

"We believe this critical function should be reviewed periodically and regularly by an independent entity," the audit said.