CITY OFFICIALS and Portland's rank-and-file police union were recently on the threshold of a deal that could have changed up Portland's controversial 48-hour rule, but it might be scrapped in the name of budget cuts.
Portland Human Resources Director Anna Kanwit tells the Mercury she'd been talking with the Portland Police Association (PPA) since January on a number of "urgent" issues. Those included: outstanding grievances filed by the union around police scheduling and assignments, a body camera policy the city wants to enact, and a provision that would allow the understaffed police bureau to bring back recent retirees on a short-term basis.
They also included possibly eliminating the so-called 48-hour rule, which gives Portland cops at least two days after an officer-involved shooting before speaking with internal affairs investigators.
The talks were positive enough that the city and union took a rare step, Kanwit says, formally opening up the existing collective bargaining contract to make potential changes.
PPA President Daryl Turner, asked last week about all this, refused to characterize the contract as "open," but did confirm there were talks about changing the document.
The problem? Those talks were contingent on some big money: $3 million Mayor Charlie Hales had proposed for increasing police pay. And amid the recent tussle over Hales' budget proposal, it looks like the money will fall by the wayside.
Kanwit says she's not sure exactly what that means, just yet, but it's possible the current talks will end, and any changes will have to wait for bargaining sessions scheduled for next year.
"If there isn't funding for the full package that we've been looking at, those would all get postponed until January," she says. DIRK VANDERHART
A Portland man will get another shot at his complaint against a police officer who he says unfairly used a Taser on him in 2014, because cops weren't clear on their own rules.
Matthew Klug failed in his first effort, after the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) exonerated the unnamed officer with a "debriefing" (essentially a formal talking-to). On May 4, the Citizen Review Committee (CRC)—a volunteer offshoot of the auditor's Independent Police Review (IPR)—sided with the bureau, much to the chagrin of Klug. He kept arguing that both the CRC and PPB were using outdated Taser policy to clear the officer. He had the copy of the relevant rules with him, but neither the PPB nor CRC would take a look.
"I can say for sure they were using the wrong directive," Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch told the Mercury after that meeting.