Police Oversight: What's Next

Will Portland’s new police oversight board be an “abject failure?”

Stephanie Grayce, a Lewis & Clark Law School grad, was invited to educate the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing about traumatic brain injuries but was allowed to hide her own criminal history as a felony sex offender.

She told a city-sponsored Town Hall on brain injuries that she had committed “a nonviolent Class C felony” after her car was rear-ended. She blamed the crime she committed on a brain injury she suffered in that crash. (See “A New Get-Out-of-Jail Card.”)

At the time of her lecture, Grayce didn’t say what her crime was. PCCEP staff didn’t include it in her bio. She declined to answer Portland Dissent’s inquiry. A check of Oregon state and federal criminal records turned up nothing for Stephanie Grayce.

That’s because she was Stephanie McCrea when she committed sexual abuse against a 15-year-old boy in Vancouver, Wash. She pleaded guilty to four counts of third-degree rape of a child and one count of tampering with a witness. (Thanks to a Portland Dissent reader who knew the truth.)

Would it have mattered to the police oversight audience who listened sympathetically to Grayce as she recalled her unpleasant encounters with law enforcement? Investigators didn’t believe her crime was related to a brain injury from a car crash in 2012.

When she was arrested in 2015, McCrea, then 35, was working as a drama teacher at Evergreen High School. (The age of consent in Washington state is 16, but teachers are prohibited from any sexual acts with a student.)

Her story is revealing in light of the new police oversight system that Portland is headed towards. In some respects, Grayce would be the kind of member the city is looking for to sit in judgment on the cops. (She is currently a member of the city’s Fair Housing Advisory Committee.)

As stated in the ordinance approved last week by the Portland City Council, membership on the new Community Board for Police Accountability must include representation by “those with diverse lived experiences, particularly those who have experienced systemic racism and those who have experienced mental illness, addiction, or alcoholism.”

Grayce’s traumatic brain injury could qualify her as having experience with mental illness.

The ordinance also requires that members “must pass a criminal background check.” What exactly does that mean? There is ample wiggle room.

While the ordinance doesn’t specifically mention fingerprints — a gold standard in nailing down a criminal history when it is  easy to change names — Deputy City Attorney Sarah Ames, said the code includes fingerprinting after the City Council appoints someone but before they begin serving on the police oversight board.

Another loophole: “The Chief Administrative Officer or Deputy City Administrator assigned to the Oversight System will make the final determination as to whether an applicant has passed a background check.” That seems subjective. Does the person have a criminal record or not?

Again, what does it mean to pass a criminal background check for the city of Portland?

In the past decade, “ban the box” laws became popular to help level the playing field for felons seeking employment. In 2014, Portland removed a box from formal job applications asking whether a candidate had been convicted of a crime. Then-Commissioner Steve Novick (now running for the new, enlarged City Council) bragged that Portland had banned the hell out of the box.

Portland’s latest ordinance governing police oversight is filled with contradictions. It calls for members of the Community Board for Police Accountability to be “unbiased,” yet bias is written into the fabric of this new board — bias against police.

Who is restricted from serving on the Community Board for Police Accountability? Anybody who has ever been employed by a law enforcement agency or is related to anybody who has ever been employed by a law enforcement agency.

While the city will open up membership to the Community Board for Police Accountability to folks who have experienced mental illness, drug addiction and alcoholism, these same people will be required to sign a “confidentiality agreement” not to divulge any information they learn through their newly acquired access to police records.

If a board member with “lived experience” involving criminal behavior (e.g., drug-related crimes) maintains ties to that world, could he or she misuse access to confidential information?

That particular question has not been seriously explored, despite all the public hearings that have been held on Portland’s latest foray into citizen oversight of police.

After almost two terms in office, Mayor Ted Wheeler finally admitted last week what he fears about Portland’s new police oversight board: It could go back to where Portland was — “COAB. I still have nightmares about what it did to this community. … It was an abject failure.”

How many Portlanders even know what the acronym COAB stands for or what happened?

It stood for Community Oversight Advisory Board, and it was hailed in 2015 by then-Mayor Charlie Hales as a potential national model in how to pursue police reform. Instead, it became an embarrassment.

COAB came about after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) found that Portland police had used excessive force against the mentally ill. Black activists coat-tailed on the findings, charging that they hadn’t been treated much better. The city entered into a settlement agreement with the DOJ promising to make changes.

These settlement agreements with the DOJ have become common in American cities and have even led to a growth in the police-monitoring business.

While many cities use court-appointed or independent monitors to oversee the settlement agreements, Portland wanted something different. Mayor Hales and the City Council opted for “community oversight” with the creation of the 15-member Community Oversight Advisory Board comprised of a psychiatrist, clinical psychologist, ER doctor (Sharon Meieran, now a county commissioner), black political leaders and various citizens representing a deaf pansexual, a transgender, the suicidal, etc.

Five members of the Portland Police Bureau could sit on COAB but could not vote.

If you want to see what COAB devolved into, check out this clip of a meeting held at the Portland Building. Activists claiming to be mentally ill took over the meetings. Even the mental health professionals on COAB couldn’t handle them. (The clip was posted by Robert West, a convicted rapist who served time in Pelican Bay State Prison in California.):

One of Wheeler’s first acts as mayor was to end COAB. However, he replaced it with another group and another acronym — the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing (PCCEP). It was comprised of 13 members, many who had encounters with police and wanted to impact how police do their jobs. PCCEP also keeps track of how the DOJ settlement is going, and members appear regularly before U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon to offer input. He has praised their work.

At Simon’s most recent review a couple of weeks ago, PCCEP objected to some requirements the new oversight board should have to meet. Among them, that members should be unbiased towards the police.

There were also objections that police oversight members should be required to go on a police ride-along; it would be too traumatic for some people to be in the same car with a police officer.

Simon let the requirement for ride-alongs stand, saying it would help those doing police oversight to learn what officers do on the job.

But he acquiesced to former City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty. She objected to how members of the board would be nominated and asked that the appointments be delayed until a new 12-member city council is seated next year.

The city and DOJ disagreed. They are on a tight schedule to meet deadlines of the settle agreement. The mayor feared the new board would not have time to get up to speed if appointments aren’t made until 2025. Thus, his concern that the new board would end up like COAB.

Judge Simon suggested they file an appeal — which isn’t practical given time constraints.

For the past two decades, Portland has had some form of citizen oversight of police, with multiple groups overlapping. The new oversight board will have the broadest powers yet. It can subpoena, discipline — and even fire — police officers for allegations of misconduct, which can be filed by anyone. Complainants will even have city-provided advocates to assist them in filing complaints.

How did it come to this?

As Hardesty will gladly tell anyone, 82 percent of Portland voters approved her Ballot Measure 26-217 after she convinced her colleagues on the City Council to place it on the November 2020 ballot. (See “The Dream of a Ridiculous City.”)

Hardesty designed Ballot Measure 26-217 to turn police oversight into a new bureaucracy, giving it a budget equal to 5 percent of the Portland Police Bureau.

Last week when the city council adopted an ordinance creating charter code changes for the new system, it initially failed because Commissioner Rene Gonzalez voted no. As an “emergency” ordinance it required a unanimous vote.

The emergency designation was removed, and the ordinance passed. It returns for a second reading Wednesday morning.

In voting no, Gonzalez said Judge Simon had capitulated “to the most radical anti-police members of our community. Last week that judge chose to interfere … at a time when Portland is fighting tooth and nail every day to recover, to rebound, at a time where public safety is so central in Portlanders’ minds.”

Portland in 2024 is a very different place than the fall of 2020 when Hardesty’s backhanded efforts to defund police were embraced by Portlanders. By 2022, she lost re-election to Gonzalez.

The new Community Board for Police Accountability will replace the Independent Police Review and Citizen Review Committee (CRC).

All these group names and acronyms are confusing, perhaps by design. Over the years I’ve attended meetings of the CRC, COAB, PCCEP and PAC (Police Accountability Commission). There are also smaller groups like FITCOG (Focused Intervention Team Community Oversight Group).

Citizen oversight of police has practically become a cult in Portland. The city has a chronic shortage of police officers, but no shortage of citizens who want to tell them how to do their jobs.

A brief rundown:

CRC: At 20 years in existence, the Citizen Review Committee has been the longest running police oversight group, handling citizen complaints of police misconduct. For years, its membership was diverse and professional. Later, under the leadership of then-chair Candace Avalos meetings could devolve into gripe sessions. (See “Lynch Mob Targets Vadim Mozyrsky.”)

COAB: For what it was like before it became Wheeler’s nightmare, see a “A Gang of Police Reformers” and “The Tail Wagging the Police Dog.”

PAC: The 20-member Police Accountability Commission was appointed by the city to bring Hardesty’s successful ballot measure to life. Many of the members were social justice activists wanting to change police but less concerned about criminal offenders. (See “The Anti-Cop Crusade.”)

PCCEP: With the new Community Board for Police Accountability waiting to take over, why even have PCCEP? Members are convinced they are needed. PCCEP asked the city to codify their existence, and make the group permanent. Wheeler has said he wants to do so by December.

Although their meetings are supposed to be public, PCCEP held a private meeting Aug. 21. All they would say is that the topic was “group cohesion.” Deputy City Attorney Sarah Ames insisted the meeting didn’t have to be public.

Attorney Josh Marquis, who frequently comments here at Portland Dissent, contacted Ames on our behalf: “As you are well aware, the so-called “Oregon Sunshine Laws” are intended to make the operation of policy making done with public funds transparent. Your proposition that  PCCEP is free to meet secretly and render secret recommendations to the Mayor because his position is a singular one is not well founded in law. It’s all the more reason Ms. Fitzsimmons wants to know what ‘group cohesion’ means. Are PCCEP members expected to all be on the same page? If so, how credible are their recommendations?”

Marquis asked for “any written, audio, or video  transcript or record” of the Aug. 21st meeting.

In reply, Ames said no such record exists.

“(I)t seems clear we have different perspectives on the law, as lawyers may, and I hope that we can respectfully agree to disagree,” she told Marquis. “I do appreciate that you and Ms. Fitzsimmons raised this concern to our attention.”

I got the impression that the City Attorney’s Office didn’t know what PCCEP was up to.

Who’s watching all these police oversight groups comprised of citizens who may have ulterior motives for wanting to weaken law enforcement?