Portland Police Shootings Review Finds Problems, Offers Solutions

PORTLAND, OR – A new study of shootings by Portland Police officers finds that the police bureau, while making progress, still has a lot to learn. The report released by the city auditor looked at nine shootings between June 2014 and May 2017.

It's the sixth report by the California-based Office of Independent Review Group, which was hired by the city to study police shootings. This new report brings to 50 shootings that the group has studied.

The report includes 40 recommendations, all of which received positively by Chief of Police Danielle Outlaw.

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In the 109-page report, investigators paint a picture of a police bureau that undermines its own credibility.

"The Bureau has a positive record in recent years of conducting criminal and internal affairs investigations that are thorough and fair," the report states, adding that those reviews often "identify and document some significant performance issues."

The report says even when the bureau identifies and documents "significant performance issues," investigators found "it is apparently the rare case when those internal recommendations are subsequently formally considered, let alone implemented."

The report studied nine shootings:

June 12, 2014 – Nicholas Glendon Davis;

March 22, 2015 – Christopher Healy

July 5, 2015 – David Ellis

November 6, 2015 – Michael Johnson

May 24, 2016 – Timothy Bucher

December 5, 2016 – Steven Liffel

February 9, 2017 – Quanice Hayes

February 9, 2017 – Don Perkins

May 10, 2017 – Terrell Johnson

The report says that "while there is no one broad unifying theme of this report, the cases we review here share similarities."

These include: in three of the nine, subjects approached officers with a potentially deadly weapon, causing the officer to stumble or fall, placing the officer at greater risk; in three of the incidents, the subject fired at the officer first, in two of the incidents, the subject had a realistic looking replica weapon.

They also found that in what has become a trend in Portland, there is evidence that in four of the nine incidents the subject was trying to end their own life.

Investigators write that they no longer use the popular term "suicide by cop" because it implies the outcome was inevitable and there was nothing that an officer could do.

"We were pleased to note that the Bureau did not use this language in connection with these more recent cases," it says in the report.

The theme of trying moving away from the concept that the shootings were often is inevitable is one that runs through the report.

"We did see articulated in review documents the persistent notion that there was nothing officers could have done to change the course of events that ultimately led to the officers's use of deadly force," according to the report.

Investigators say that's just not the case.

"It is rarely true that officers and their supervisors had no alternative courses of action in the time leading up to the shooting that are worth consideration," they wrote.

Among the recommendations in the report:

• In officer-involved shooting investigations, the Police Bureau should video record interviews of involved and witness officers.
• The Police Bureau should ensure that the administrative investigation of every officer-involved shooting includes an explicit review of pre-shooting tactical decision making and require express findings from the Commander and Police Review Board on whether an officer’s tactical performance was consistent with training and policy.
• When an officer uses deadly force, the Bureau’s review of that incident – by the Training Division, Commander, and Police Review Board – should consider any prior uses of deadly force and evaluate whether there are significant parallels between the officer’s tactical decision making in the incidents.

Chief Outlaw wrote in her response to the report that she accepts and agrees with all 40 recommendations.

"I'm proud to say many of your recommendations had already been recognized by the Bureau, and many solutions have already been implemented," she said. The use of deadly force is a very important issue in the Bureau and in the community we serve.

"We acknowledge the the need for continuous evaluation and improvement in this area."

The OIR Group will hold a community meeting on Tuesday, February 5 at 1:00 pm in the Lovejoy Room at Portland City Hall to answer questions from the community about the report.

The next day they will present the report to the city council.

File photo via Colin Miner/Patch.