AFTER NEARLY two years of a rocky, uniquely Portland marriage, a group of well-paid Chicago academics and the local volunteer board overseeing Portland police reforms appear headed for a separation.
“I got a letter from COCL; they want to divorce us!” said Jimi Johnson, of the volunteer Community Oversight Advisory Board (COAB), at the group’s monthly meeting last Thursday. “If that’s the case, so be it.”
Johnson was talking about a July 11 petition from Dennis Rosenbaum and Amy Watson—two Chicago-based professors hired to serve as the Compliance Officer-Community Liaison (COCL) under a settlement the City of Portland reached in 2014 with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) over police abuses. After months of fractious meetings plagued by audience outbursts and what they say is the COAB’s “blatant disregard” for their authority, Rosenbaum and Watson now say they see no way to successfully work with the board any longer.
The feeling is mutual.