May 10, 2003
Mayor and City Club Spar Over Report on Community Policing
Yesterday, The Oregonian reported on a new report by the City Club of Portland on community policing, and the reaction of Mayor Katz:
Community policing in Portland is faltering from Chief Mark Kroeker's weak leadership, a drop in neighborhood activism, and budget cuts and poor planning that have thinned the patrol division, a City Club report concluded.
Mayor Vera Katz, who also is police commissioner, said she was befuddled by the report's findings, and questioned the committee's motives.
"Quite frankly, I don't know what planet they're on," Katz said. "It's not a fair report. I just question the credibility of the rest of the club's reports if this is an example of their objective analysis."
Nice to see that rather than respond substantively, the Mayor has opted to simply disparage the City Club's motives instead.
The report also questioned Katz's commitment to community policing. The committee said it found little evidence that Katz or council members have a "comprehensive vision" for the program, nor actively promote it.
Katz retorted, "They don't give credit to all the initiatives we started. I use the 'community policing' word a lot. They don't happen to be at the right places where I'm talking about it and promoting it. Of course budget cuts have cut into some of these programs. But I don't understand the intellectual honesty of their conclusions."
I'm still working my way through the report itself (pdf), but even early on there is some indication that one of its concerns is that "the 'community policing' word" is indeed used a lot -- it's just that the report doesn't believe the policy is exercised enough in practice.
It's also, perhaps, important to note that the members of the City Club committee responsible for the report were screened beforehand in order to weed out participants who might have strongly-held biases towards or against the Portland Police Bureau.
Meanwhile, Chief Kroeker's response to the report is available as well. Or, rather, it's supposed to be, but as of this writing, that link leads to an error.
And parenthetically, although not without relevance, according to the City Council agenda for May 14, Portland is about to accept "a $75,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services for the Creating a Culture of Integrity Initiative project."
Judging by an old press release from the DoJ, the "Creating a Culture of Integrity initiative provides up to $125,000 to law enforcement agencies to develop new, community-conscious policies and practices regarding traffic stops, the use of force by officers, civilian review boards, community-representative recruitment and hiring, and other issues that affect public confidence in law enforcement."