Portland says unrest was unprecedented in response to critical USDOJ report
PORTLAND, Ore. — The city of Portland responded to a federal report Friday critical of its handling of last year’s months of unrest by saying the situation was unprecedented.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Compliance Report was released last month and criticized how the Portland Police Bureau handled the unrest.
The DOJ report said there was a lack of analysis from supervisors when it came to use of force by officers. It also said police failed to fill out required reports in a timely manner.
In its response, the city compared last summer’s protests to the global pandemic saying, like hospitals struggling with resources, “PPB’s force use and reporting policies were not developed for a protest event lasting approximately 170 days.”
It called the event unprecedented and unanticipated. The city noted the DOJ’s criticisms focused largely on the response to demonstrations.
In response, the city said, "The conduct of the federal government on the streets of Portland made a difficult situation much worse."
That response went on to speak about the crowds that grew under the response of federal officers.
In an interview with KATU earlier this spring, the director of the Independent Police Review responded to criticism by the DOJ.
“There are real problems with that as the DOJ points out. The people’s memories aren’t as fresh; there’s questions about if everything is actually getting recorded in those reports the way it’s supposed to be. There’s certainly things that we’ve found that didn’t end up in a report that should’ve ended up in a report," Ross Caldwell said.
The DOJ report cited multiple examples of use-of-force concerns, saying in one case an officer pushed a journalist, but the bureau could not identify the officer nor show a completed report for the incident.
The city said it does acknowledge a system failure during these events, which meant there was not the necessary review in response to uses of force.
PPB also addressed this issue with KATU during an earlier interview.
"Due to the volume of incidents and because the same officers were being deployed night after night after night, there was sometimes a delay in the just that first step, that use-of-force reporting. However, they were done relatively quickly," Lt. Greg Pashley said.
In Friday's letter, the city said it is making changes. That includes PPB assigning review sergeants to be at crowd control events, and crowd control training for the entire bureau starting in June.
The city attorney said the auditor also re-assigned staff to address complaints.
The letter went on to say the city acknowledges and agrees with the concern that review through the chain of command should be more critical, and it expects the backlog on protest cases to be completed in the next two months.