September 06, 2003

(Updated) Albina Ministerial Alliance Report Slams Portland Police Bureau, District Attorney

Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.

Well, this is going tobe a tough one, because the actual report itself apparently will not show up on the Portland Copwatch website until sometime next week, leaving me only with the Executive Summary distributed at this afternoon's meeting and my notes from same.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the report's recommendations, various pieces of literature give a count of either 34 or 35, while my notes seem only to have 33. And even then, they aren't verbatim from the report, since (as stated) it's not actually out.

So, as of this moment, I'm not prepared to post a real item about today's meeting. For now, I'll just offer what the Executive Summary presents as the report's major findings and conclusions:

Officer Scott McCollister lied. There are significant discrepencies in the testimony of the officers on the scene, what happened when Kendra James was shot, May 5, 2003. Changes in testimony from before and after the officers dined together at Applebees' restaurant, the flaws in the re-enactment video; the report from the State Forensic Lab; Eyewitness accounts and the tradition of non-indictment of Portland Police Officers; leads us to conclude that members of the PPB, colluded in a cover-up of the true facts.

Officer McCollister was in GROSS VIOLATION OF THE USE OF DEADLY FORCE POLICY when he shot Kendra James. The same discrepancies in testimony and failure of the PPB to use pertinent evidence, combined with an attempt at a cover-up leads us to this conclusion.

The District Attorney partners with the PPB to cover-up police criminal behaviors. There are important questions regarding the District Attorney Office's special treatment of PPB members involved in a fatality resulting from the use of Deadly Force. Officers are granted privilege not extended to ordinary citizens. We have concluded that this practice, intentionally or not, supports any effort by an officer to be less than honest or to hide the real facts of a case.

The findings of State Forensic Lab did not support the findings of the Portland Police Bureau's investigation. While giving considerable weight to the altered testimony of officers at the shooting scene, the PPB ignored the findings of the State Forensic Lab. In addition, there was a profound difference in the level of inquiry when interviewing the police as compared with interviews of the independent witnesses. We conclude that the difference in the levels of inquiry were done to support the cover-up of the true facts of the case. We conclude that in addition to the officers at the shooting scene, other members of the PPB are culpable in the cover-up effort either by being dishonest about what happened or ignoring policy and best practices when investigating the case.

It's important, as this plays out, to recognize that one's perspective on this report's findings as compared to those of the official investigation is -- or should be -- separate from one's consideration of the report's 30+ recommendations. Many of those recommendations, as it turns out, echo many of those already seen in the PARC report, although they were drafted prior to that report's release.

Not that this should be at all surprising, since so many of the PARC recommendations are (as I've stated previously) mere common sense. And as such, of course a citizen committee would generate similar observations.

I'm not altogether satisfied with the quality of my notes on the report's recommendations, so I'll hold off for the moment on posting details about them. I'm not entirely satisfied with holding off, either, but I need to see if my notes are solid enough to produce an accurage reflection of the recommendations here.

So, there will either be a preliminary look at the recommendations, based upon my notes, as an update to this post sometime this evening, or it will wait until I get my hands on a copy of the report itself and can pass them along verbatim.

Posted at 08:57 PM | PermalinkComments (1) | TrackBacks (1)
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