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The Oregonian Attorney General Jeff Sessions to Meet separately with Federal, Local Law Enforcement in Portland By Maxine Bernstein September 17, 2017 U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be in Portland Tuesday to meet separately with federal and local law enforcement, an administration official confirmed Sunday night. Sessions will discuss multiple subjects, including immigration, violent crime, drug enforcement and the opioid epidemic, the official said. Sessions will not be making any public appearances, said the Justice Department official who asked not to be named because he's not authorized to speak for Sessions. Oregon's U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams, who is among the federal law enforcement officials expected to meet with Sessions, did not return messages on Sunday. Portland City Commissioner Nick Fish wrote on his Facebook page Saturday that Sessions would be in town this week. "We need to let him know that Portland stands with our Dreamers,'' referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the Obama-era program that has shielded almost 800,000 immigrants from deportation who were brought here as children. The young undocumented immigrants are known as "dreamers.'' Willamette Week first reported on Saturday Sessions' upcoming trip to Portland. Earlier this month, Sessions announced the Trump administration would phase out DACA, calling it an "unconstitutional exercise of authority by the Executive Branch,'' while President Donald J. Trump urged Congress to come up with an alternative. Sessions also has spoken out publicly at least twice about the local case of Sergio Martinez, a "serial immigration violator,'' who was in and out of Multnomah County's jails six times since December, after the local sheriff and his jail refused to respond to a request by federal immigration officials to be notified of Martinez's release in December. Martinez is now in custody in Portland, accused of attacks on two women in late July, charged with sodomy, sexual abuse, kidnapping and robbery. In an address in Miami in August, Sessions blasted Multnomah County's refusal to alert immigration officers of Martinez's release from jail in December. "How can these politicians hear this story and do nothing?'' he asked. "By protecting criminals from immigration enforcement, cities and states with so-called 'sanctuary' policies make all of us less safe.'' On Friday, a federal judge in Chicago issued a nationwide injunction that blocks Sessions' attempt to deny certain funding to so-called "sanctuary'' jurisdictions, such as Portland and Multnomah County that refuse to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Local activists have planned a protest to coincide with Sessions' visit to Portland. Portland's Resistance, the political group Milenio.org and nonprofit Voz Hispana Cambio Comunitario have set up a Facebook page that reads, "Jeff Sessions You're not Welcome Here!!'' The protest is planned for 10 a.m. Tuesday, but a location has yet to be determined, according to the Facebook page. Portland Police Still Can't Measure Effectiveness of Response to Mental Health Calls, Consultants Say By Maxine Bernstein September 15, 2017 Portland police still lack the ability to track whether officers are using less force against people with mental health issues three years into a federal settlement that was supposed to improve their response, outside consultants say. "We do not believe the PPB has the data systems in place to adequately measure the effectiveness of their unique system," the Chicago-based consultants wrote in a report recently filed in federal court. The city-hired consultants, Rosenbaum & Associates, tried to evaluate the bureau's Enhanced Crisis Intervention Team of officers who receive more than 40 hours of training to handle mental health crises. They work regular patrol, are scattered among the bureau's three precincts and go to mental health-related emergency calls if they're available. A U.S. Justice Department investigation found in 2012 that Portland police used excessive force against people with mental illness. The negotiated settlement with the city, approved by a federal judge in 2014, calls for changes to Portland policies, training and oversight. The agreement recommended a different method of crisis response modeled after a strategy Memphis police started that has a team of trained officers respond to mental health crisis calls as their full-time role. The team reports to one high-ranking supervisor. "PPB continues to operate with a modified Memphis model but has yet to produce data to demonstrate its effectiveness and responsiveness to the Portland community," the report said. The consultants say they suggested that the Police Bureau track frequency of mental health calls, adequacy and availability of the specially trained officers by precinct and shift, outcomes of the calls and differences in outcomes when enhanced crisis intervention officer can't respond. The bureau had been using a special screen that pops up on an officer's mobile computer to fill out information on all interactions with people who exhibit mental illness. But police halted the practice after the District Attorney's Office advised them that the information must be shared with defense lawyers if the people faced criminal prosecution. To address the district attorney's concerns, the bureau switched to a different type of screen that an officer completes only if the call requires a written police report, to make the information more accessible for sharing with the defense at prosecution. But that means the information no longer reflects all police contacts with people suffering from mental illness, consultants Dennis Rosenbaum and Amy Watson found. Data the consultants reviewed from March 2016 through Jan. 31 showed that 10 percent, or 18,748, of Portland police calls had some type of mental health element involved. Of those, 6.3 percent, or 1,179, were considered of a type that should draw an enhanced crisis intervention officer. Of those 6.3 percent of calls, the officers with the extra training responded nearly 70 percent of the time. The consultants asked the city Bureau of Emergency Communications, which dispatches police to 911 calls, for more detailed information on mental health calls, but the bureau said it didn't have the staff to perform such data extraction or analysis. The consultants said the Police Bureau also has access to the information, but it also said it didn't have the staff to provide a data review. "This significantly limits (both bureaus') capacity to analyze trends and assess the adequacy of their mental health response system,'' the consultants said. Mary Claire Buckley, principal management analyst who works on the Police Bureau's Department of Justice compliance team, said the bureau is working to compare the outcomes of responses to mental health calls by enhanced crisis intervention officers versus other officers. She said she anticipates that analysis may be available next month. Justice Department lawyers also noted in a report this summer, "Our team has repeatedly heard from officers, on ride-alongs and in the (enhanced crisis) training, that they are frustrated by repeated contacts with known individuals ... who they take to the hospital only to be released, over and over without any answers from PPB about what they should do.'' The consultants also found that the bureau has failed to embrace computer tracking to identify at- risk officers or patterns of problems that would allow for early intervention, as required under the federal agreement. The consultants said police supervisors who oversee the system have resisted their recommendations "time and again." Police supervisors have told the consultants that the system's setup meets the settlement's requirements. It does track supervisors' performance reviews of officers under their command, and the rate that the officers use force as a ratio of their arrests and compared to that of other officers on their shifts. The Justice Department expects more, the consultants said. "We have seen little in the way of meaningful progress during this review period. ... After two years, we believe more progress should have been made and urge PPB to make substantive changes," the consultants wrote in their quarterly report, covering July through December 2016. The Police Bureau says the Employee Information System is intended to allow a "comprehensive review" of an officer's performance on the job, benefit the bureau and officers by "facilitating professional growth" through feedback from supervisors -- but may not be used to make decisions about discipline, transfers or promotions. The consultants said they'd like to see the tool used to " help save officers' careers and encourage good policing in general." The system flags officers in the computer database if they have used force in 20 percent of their arrests in the prior six months, if they have used force three times more than the average number compared with other officers on the same shift, if they receive two or more complaints with similar allegations or if they have received three or more complaints within the prior six months. The consultants said the system should track much more information over a longer period, including complaints against officers, their total number of responses to 911 calls, their use of force overall and compared to force used by officers by shift and precinct, ratio of force to arrests and ratio of force used to suspect injuries and officers injuries. They also recommended that the system track the type of complaints, sustained complaints, ratio of complaints to interactions on the job, tendency to engage in car or foot chases after suspects, their use of sick leave, how frequently they charge a suspect with resisting arrest and how that compares to officers by shift and precinct. About 90 percent of the flags that arose from the current system aren't forwarded to an officer's direct supervisor, but reviewed by the system administrator, the report said.

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