On 12 Sep 2012, Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division investigators released Findings of patterns and practices of constitutional violations by Portland, Oregon police. On 26 October the DOJ and the City of Portland released a draft Settlement Agreement, negotiated behind closed doors and without public input. It was presented to Portland City Council just five days later, allowing no time for deep analysis. The rush to presentation prevented community organizations from review cycles, which would have allowed those bodies to take studied positions. On 1 November, massive mobilization produced scores of individuals willing to testify on the document, in its first reading.
Two weeks later, Council released a revised, proposed Agreement. The Mayor allowed each member of the public 120 seconds of testimony … on a 77-page document they had not yet seen. Council then – without amendment – unanimously approved a plea deal they’d negotiated with the Feds, in order to avoid trial.
In December 2013, Federal Judge Michael Simon released the signed version of the Agreement.
We post it here.
Until this point, the parties have been posting various versions of the Agreement, including the poorly-conceived initial proposal.
UPDATE: CLICK HERE to read of our peers report to the 9th Circuit Court the content of their intended testimony at a Federal Hearing in February 2014.
Click HERE to read an analysis of deficiencies to the proposed Agreement, as advanced by the Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform.
United States of America v. City of Portland, Case No. 3:12-cv-02265-SI
I feel we need to follow the example of Rialto, more cost-effective than paying lawsuit settlements for excessive force & profiling.
“The Rialto study began in February 2012 and will run until this July. The results from the first 12 months are striking. Even with only half of the 54 uniformed patrol officers wearing cameras at any given time, the department over all had an 88 percent decline in the number of complaints filed against officers, compared with the 12 months before the study, to 3 from 24.
“Rialto’s police officers also used force nearly 60 percent less often — in 25 instances, compared with 61. When force was used, it was twice as likely to have been applied by the officers who weren’t wearing cameras during that shift, the study found. And, lest skeptics think that the officers with cameras are selective about which encounters they record, Mr. Farrar noted that those officers who apply force while wearing a camera have always captured the incident on video…
http://carloz.newsvine.com/_news/2013/07/19/19560742-study-police-force-where-12-of-officers-wear-mini-cameras-see-88-drop-in-citizen-complaints-those-so-equipped-use-force-60-less-often
We post the report on the Rialto PD experiment here:
Watching Police for Socially-Desirable Outcomes.
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