Police Bureau 2021 Audit Status Report

Police Training Division: Progress made, but evaluating impacts on officer performance must be improved

Report published March 3, 2015 | Follow-up report | Contact Martha Prinz

Since 2015, the Portland Police Bureau has fully implemented recommendations to have the Training Division play a bigger role in assessing policy changes and effects, and to improve weapons check-out procedures. The Bureau is still working to implement some recommendations, including to provide more roleplaying scenarios as part of training, to not use profanity or demeaning language, and to use more actual cases as part of ongoing officer training. A recommendation on less-lethal weapon ammunition storage was no longer relevant due to an operational change made by the Bureau.

On this audit there were six recommendations implemented and six in process.

We recommended upgrading query capabilities in the training database. The Bureau had a new database, but there were still some kinks to be worked out. It was only minimally customizable, so there were some work-arounds anticipated, and it was unclear whether all types of training would be reflected there. (Police Training Division: Progress made, but evaluating impacts on officer performance must be improved)

We recommended improving the formatting of semiannual training reports. The Bureau published their first formal Needs Assessment in 2015. The substance and timing of reports to the Chief were not well documented and needed improvement. (Police Training Division: Progress made, but evaluating impacts on officer performance must be improved)

We recommended that the Bureau be mindful of the need to consistently provide role-playing scenarios for training. Scenario-based training was limited for some of the time period since the audit. No specific training on disengagement, although the topic was covered elsewhere to some degree. (Police Training Division: Progress made, but evaluating impacts on officer performance must be improved)

We recommended providing training on not using profane language, demeaning labels and making inappropriate comments. We could not find evidence that this topic was addressed other than indirectly, especially profanity. (Police Training Division: Progress made, but evaluating impacts on officer performance must be improved)

We recommended providing in-service use-of-force training that is more focused on lessons to be learned from actual cases as well as Bureau policy. The Bureau said they would like to do more of this but there was so much required material to cover that it was difficult. (Police Training Division: Progress made, but evaluating impacts on officer performance must be improved)

We recommended expanding efforts at training program evaluation to all important policy changes and Bureau initiatives that become part of training division responsibilities. Training Division said they did not have the staff to do more evaluations, but wanted to do more. The Chief wanted them to do more. (Police Training Division: Progress made, but evaluating impacts on officer performance must be improved)

We recommended adopting official policies and procedures for collecting and disseminating information about people with gang relationships. Instead of adopting a new standard operating procedure for the Gang Enforcement Team, the Bureau began developing a directive on managing criminal intelligence files that will apply to all divisions. The Bureau circulated a draft of the directive for public comment in October 2018. It anticipated completion in October 2019. (Gang Crime Investigations: Lack of accountability and transparency reduced the community's trust in police)

We recommended ensuring that policies related to collecting information about people's gang relationships included certain information. The October 2018 draft directive included a requirement for reasonable suspicion, safeguards for completeness and accuracy, access and security safeguards, records retention, and regular review, as we recommended. But the draft did not include a statement of purpose and description of the type of information to be gathered and analyses and documentation of reasonable suspicion. (Gang Crime Investigations: Lack of accountability and transparency reduced the community's trust in police)

We recommended that the Bureau track the clearance rate for gang team investigations, set a goal for the clearance rate, and publicly report outcomes. The team revised a standard operating procedure in April 2018 to address this recommendation. It had a clearance rate goal of 30 percent for 2018 and 2019. Investigators said they cleared 41 of 140 cases (29 percent) in 2018. Caseload appears more balanced among detectives. The Bureau has not yet publicly reported the clearance goals and actual results for the team. (Gang Crime Investigations: Lack of accountability and transparency reduced the community's trust in police)

We recommended that the gang team require its officers to document the investigative reason for their traffic stops. The Police Bureau should regularly analyze the data and publish the results. The team still does not document investigative reasons for most stops. The Bureau said it plans to write a new directive to address this recommendation. (Gang Enforcement Patrol: The Police Bureau must show that traffic stops are effective)

We recommended that the gang team set goals to measure the effectiveness of patrol stops, and record whether a stop resulted in contacting a criminal gang suspect. The Bureau should regularly analyze the data and publish the results. The Bureau has not set effective goals for the Gun Violence Reduction Team's traffic stops. The Bureau wants to hire a consultant to analyze Fiscal Year 2018-19 data. The Bureau said it cannot track if stops resulted in contact with criminal gang suspects because gang designations no longer exist. (Gang Enforcement Patrol: The Police Bureau must show that traffic stops are effective)

We recommended that the gang team regularly monitor stops data and the percentage of encounters recorded as "mere conversations" and provide training to officers on when this classification should be used. The team has not monitored data on mere conversations, which are interactions in which a person has not been detained. Gang Enforcement officers received training on how to enter stops data. The Bureau still has no comprehensive data on mere conversations, because some interactions are captured as such and some are not. Mere conversations coded as such decreased: The Bureau reported 637 in 2016 and 191 in 2017. The Bureau said it was reviewing the feasibility of capturing more data on mere conversations in the future. (Gang Enforcement Patrol: The Police Bureau must show that traffic stops are effective)

We recommended that the Bureau evaluate the effectiveness of suppression operations by the Gang Enforcement Team by continuing review of crime trends and by reviewing arrest outcomes. Since March 2017, the team has carried out five suppression operations. The Bureau has a draft analysis of three of them. It does not, however, review whether those targeted by the operations were arrested. The Bureau said it was committed to reviewing the effect of future operations on crime. (Gang Enforcement Patrol: The Police Bureau must show that traffic stops are effective)

We recommended that the Bureau improve overtime data collection. It developed a new overtime dashboard with a publicly viewable version online and an internal version that supervisors could use to monitor individual officers' hours. It included the shifts during which overtime was worked, a unique code for tracking overtime for street protests, and the sergeant who approved overtime. The Bureau was still working to track whether training attendance that caused overtime was discretionary and which supervisor authorized overtime. (Police Overtime: Management is lax despite high overtime use)

We recommended that the Bureau develop useful reports so that supervisors could identify officers who worked and sergeants who authorized extraordinary amounts of overtime. The new overtime dashboard included total hours worked by officers within relevant periods and the ability to break down hours indicating when it was caused by report-writing and calls that came toward the end of the officers' shifts. The Bureau could not develop reports about sergeants who authorized extraordinary amounts of overtime because shift scheduling is performed collectively by all sergeants assigned to a shift. However, the Bureau developed a report to show which shifts had extra leave and overtime. It also plans to develop a report about overtime used to backfill discretionary training after it creates a way to track it. (Police Overtime: Management is lax despite high overtime use)

We recommended that the Bureau limit the number of overtime hours an officer could work. This recommendation should be addressed in ongoing contract negotiations with the Portland Police Association. (Police Overtime: Management is lax despite high overtime use)

We recommended that the Bureau revise and document the approval process for off-duty work so that the Chief's Office conducts the primary review of contracts instead of precinct commanders or the Portland Police Association. The change was intended to ensure consistency and that contracts met Bureau standards. The Assistant Chief of Operations reviewed all secondary employment contracts starting in September 2019. The Bureau said the new procedure would be included in a pending update to the secondary employment directive. The Bureau does not plan to revise this directive until contract negotiations with the Portland Police Association have concluded. (Police Overtime: Management is lax despite high overtime use)

We recommended that the Bureau track contracts that were not approved and record the reason why. The Bureau didn't yet have a policy for tracking denied contracts but said that the new secondary employment directive would include one. The Bureau provided an example of a contract that had been denied. (Police Overtime: Management is lax despite high overtime use)