01-03-2024 CRC Meeting

Citizen Review Committee Meeting

01/03/24

DELEGATO: All right. Good evening, everyone. Welcome. This is the January 3, 2024, meeting of the Citizen Review Committee. This is our first meeting of 2024, and I apologize for any background noise. I’m sitting in my office here, which is right by the MAX Light. So, let’s get started with just some introductions. If everyone wants to go around the room and say who they are they and their preferred pronouns. I think GAYLA’s gonna put the Director’s Report in the chat there. Thank you very much. So, my name is YUME DELEGATO. He/him and I am the Chair of the Citizen Review Committee. I’m dialing in from southwest Portland. Why don’t we go to GREGG and then MICHAEL and CHRIS?

GRIFFIN: Awesome. GREGG GRIFFIN, north Portland, he/him pronouns. CRC member, thanks.

WALSH: Yes, hello. I’m MIKE WALSH, he/his/him and I’m a CRC member and I am on the very border of north and northeast Portland.

PIEKARSKI: CHRIS PIEKARSKI, he/him pronouns, CRC member, southeast Portland.

KATZ: Good evening, everybody. JESSICA KATZ, she/her pronouns, CRC member calling in from northeast Portland.

DELEGATO: And then, ROSS and GAYLA, if you wanna introduce yourselves.

CALDWELL: Sure. Hey, everybody. ROSS CALDWELL from IPR.

JENNINGS: And GAYLA JENNINGS here, also from IPR.

DELEGATO: All right. Wonderful. Well, thank you, everyone, for attending. We do not have an appeal tonight, so this will be a fairly short meeting. I do want to do a little bit of sort of planning and intention setting for 2024, in addition to, sort of, normal business. And we have somebody lined up to come and talk to us in February, which we’ll talk about a little bit later. So, looking at the agenda, let’s take a look here. I think we start with a review of the minutes. Did everyone have a chance to take a look at the minutes before this evening’s meeting? Okay. Oh, and while we’re doing that, I will invite the attendees to go ahead and introduce themselves in the chat if - it looks like the chat is open, I believe. If not, I’m sure one of our attendees will raise their hand. So, feel free to introduce yourselves in the chat. In the meantime, we’re gonna get into the minutes here. So, if everyone’s had a chance to review the November 1, 2023, minutes, I would entertain a motion to approve them, or if anyone has any amendments.

PIEKARSKI: I move to approve.

GRIFFIN: Second.

DELEGATO: All right, perfect. CHRIS and GREGG. And, since there are so few of us, I think we’ll just keep it simple and do individual votes here. So, I vote aye. GREGG?

GRIFFIN: Aye.

DELEGATO: CHRIS?

PIEKARSKI: I’ll abstain since I wasn’t there.

DELEGATO: Okay. JESSICA?

KATZ: Aye.

DELEGATO: And MICHAEL?

WALSH: Aye.

DELEGATO: Oh, whoops. All right, so the minutes are accepted and then, GAYLA, I’m not sure I have the option to change the chat function here. Would you be able to set it so that -

JENNINGS: Yeah, I think I just set it for the attendees can chat with everyone.

DELEGATO: Okay, perfect. If that’s still having an issue, DAN or MARK or BARBARA or CAROL (ph), just let us know. All right. So, let’s get into the Director’s Report.

CALDWELL: Thank you. Hey, again, everybody. Hope everybody had good holidays. First off, just wanted to say thank you to GAYLA for covering this meeting for DAVID. DAVID is out of the country for his wedding, actually, and he’ll be back before the next meeting. So, thank you, GAYLA, for stepping up for this, obviously, and for a whole bunch of other stuff that GAYLA is taking over for DAVID in the interim. We’re a pretty small team, as you all know, so one person being out for a bit is a big deal for us. So, much appreciate that extra effort. So, just a couple of things. I didn’t have a chance to get all of this in the written Director’s Report. Obviously, in the written report, you can see there that the body cam pilot has ended. So, we still were having some cases trickle in, complaints that we were investigating where we had body cam videos, even after the pilot was done and I just cannot emphasize enough how night and day the difference is when you have body cam videos versus when you don’t. We only have them at - you know, it was the FIT Team and it was central and it was only for 60 days, but we miss them already. So, it sounds like it’s gonna be a while, while they work out the contract and a bunch of other things before those roll out to all the PPB officers, but we are very much looking forward to that. It kinda felt like we got to have like a teaser for the movie and now we have to wait for the movie to come out, you know, to say it in a very primitive way. But, you know, as those of you that have - I think you’ve all been on a bunch of PRBs and, you know, reviewed cases. You either have that information or you don’t and, sometimes, just hearing the tone of voice in which an officer speaks to somebody can be really telling information and it’s the kind of stuff where, you know, absent that, we can go interview the complainant, we can go interview the officer and they’ll give us two different versions of something and we don’t really have a definitive way to prove something. But with body cam video, you do. You do have that opportunity. So, it feels like a - even though we’re just sort of teased by it, it still feels like a big loss. But we’re looking forward to that coming back and I hope it happens quicker than things normally do in Portland, so that we can get those back as soon as possible. And we’ve obviously, you know, had two officer involved shootings recently. It would be wonderful if we had body cam videos for those. So, anyway, I don’t need to keep banging on about this. I think everybody gets it, but it’ll be nice. Next thing I wanted to mention is, obviously, there’s fewer CRC members than there were just a few meetings back. We have a recruitment underway, so we are trying to get some reinforcements for you all. But appreciate all the work that you do. At some point, we will need somebody to sit in on interviews and be part of the interview panel, so we’ll be bugging you about that once we have some candidates. And also just wanted to say thank you again for everybody that’s been volunteering for Police Review Boards. I think we’re pretty much caught up with the backlog on those. There was a pretty big backlog that had built up and I think we’re pretty much caught up with that now. So, that’s a big step. But obviously more will come and, as I said, just two officer-involved shootings recently, so those will both have to go through the PRB someday. Other than that, I just wanted to note that there’s an RFP out there for the monitor. Obviously, it was gonna be a status check hearing on the settlement agreement that was kinda turned relatively late for how those things are scheduled into a fairness hearing for the changes to the settlement agreement that would create the monitor. So, now they’ve actually got that RFP turned around pretty quickly and that’s out there in the world. I wanna say that closes on January 19^th, I think, so hopefully we get good applicants and, you know, then there will be a whole selection process that I think was spelled out in the settlement agreement. So, if anybody has any questions about that, I don’t know the most about it, but I can get you an answer or I think, you know, if we could have somebody from the City Attorney’s office get you a more in-depth answer, so we can talk more about that in a bit. And then, other than that, we are just trying to pay attention, as much as possible, to steps toward implementation of the new accountability system because that’s gonna, you know, impact how long we’re doing our work and when we move on to something else and I think now that the PACs work is wrapped up and the, you know, City Council is taking their shot at things, now they’re talking to DOJ and the various police unions about this, it sounds like, at some point, we’ll be needing to work on a transition plan from us, you know, taking complaints and starting investigations to this going to the new body. I know that’s still a ways away but, you know, implementation is always the hard part, so it’s something that we look forward to being part of that conversation as soon as we can get to it. Other than that, the rest of the report is kind of pretty standard. We do have some more cases that are represented here. This is a snapshot from the first and I know we’ve opened I wanna say three or four since then. I think it kind of slowed down over the holidays, but there’s been some people that have contacted us since then. So, there’s more cases than there normally are - more cases in here. I think, generally, we’re seeing kind of an uptick in cases recently, it feels like. So, hard to tell a trend from kind of small numbers like that, but something we’re keeping an eye on. So, I think that’s all I got. If there’s any questions, I’d be happy to try to answer them.

DELEGATO: Thank you, ROSS. Committee members, any questions for ROSS about the Director’s Report? Okay.

PIEKARSKI: Is there anything that we’re seeing kind of in common in terms of the uptick in the complaints, in terms of kind of what’s underlying it or if (inaudible - 00:10:33) trend?

CALDWELL: You know, anecdotally, I think what we’re seeing more of is something that, when I first started here, which was not long pre-pandemic, we had a lot of these types of cases and then they kind of went away in the pandemic and they seem to be coming back. And they seem to be people that kind of make a lot of repeated complaints and people that, I think, some of them are experiencing various challenges and maybe come into a lot of contact with PPB. We haven’t really seen an uptick yet from anything to do with, like, clearing camping sites or anything like that. That’s something we’ve been keeping an eye out for because whenever the city has changed their policies around that in the past - and people that have worked here longer than I have have told me this is the case too, that that always generates some complaints. But I think we’ve been seeing a lot from people who kind of are frequent users of our system and then another category we’ve been seeing more of are the internal cases in the Police Bureau, which are kind of the - they’re often sort of HR issues and I find them a little frustrating because they’re the kind of cases where this would be a complaint if you worked at Target, you know? It doesn’t really have anything to do with anybody being law enforcement. It’s kind of, you know, complaints about a manager or complaints about not being promoted or complaints about things like that and those can fall into our - sometimes IA does those, sometimes we do those. We have to work with the Bureau of Human Resources on those. But we were getting a lot of those. They seem to be kind of steadily ticking up over the years in 2019, and then 2020, kind of everything became all about the protest response. And now, it seems like - and we would still take those complaints if we got ‘em, so it just seemed like people were focused on other things, maybe. And now it seems like those are coming back in a lot more, so not sure what to quite make of that. And, again, they’re small numbers. It’s hard to see a trend but they seem to have gone away for a year or two and now they’re back and they seem to be coming back in significant ways, I guess. But we’ll keep an eye on it. Something we would maybe try to do a policy review on if we can, you know, get better analysis on something like that.

PIEKARSKI: Thank you.

DELEGATO: Thanks, ROSS. I think, DAN, I appreciate your question. I think we’ll maybe tackle that when we get to public commenting here. So, jumping into the Chair’s Report, you know, I think we have not seen any substantive changes in the state of the CRC since our November meeting when I took over as chair. I think we are in a good place, although we are understaffed, which I think we are all very cognizant of. And I think that’s very much to the credit of the people that are currently on this committee and KIRA (ph) and everyone else who was not able to make it tonight. We are, I think, doing a very effective job of marshalling our resources to meet this current moment. You know, in prior times, we have seen CRC be understaffed as a result of internal discontinuity or, I think, protests against things that are going on in the city and I think, at some level - I don’t wanna put words in the mouths of some of our former members, but I think, at some level, that this current moment is actually a reflection of the inverse of that, right? Which is that we had several people who felt comfortable stepping down because they knew that there were people that were gonna be able to continue doing this work. We had a couple other people who were unable to continue because they no longer met the eligibility requirements. So, that presents a challenge. Filling those spots is a very important challenge for the CRC going into 2024. I know that ROSS and IPR are working on that very diligently. The biggest challenge with that is, in order to have a robust recruitment process, it does take time. And so, these next couple of months, as we continue to meet our Police Review Board obligations and maintain our capacity to hear timely appeals, I don’t wanna put too much on our plates, but I do want us to be thinking about some broader goals for CRC in 2024 and just making sure that we’re marshalling our resources effectively. So, that is gonna be kind of the theme for the discussion tonight. I’m not sure that we’re gonna make any big, sweeping decisions today, but I want us to start having that conversation and start looking to the future because we are not going to have this small number of people, right, you know, forever. Right? But I do appreciate all of you. Everyone has really done a great job of stepping up to hear PRBs. Despite the fact that we’ve had kind of low staffing, you know, we have been not only maintaining our own obligations for Police Review Boards, but we’ve been also helping out with the non-CRC PRB pool and taking over some of the caseload for those people. So, hats off to all of you for that work. Looking to the future, couple of things that I wanna talk about. I wanna talk about workgroups. You know, ROSS and I have mentioned this at past meetings. I think the mission or the scope of what CRC needs to be looking at is changing as we see a rise in PRB caseload and, as we also see other agencies that are starting to take on the work of the transition and community engagement. Right? And so, I wanna make sure that we’re not standing up a workgroup, just for the sake of standing one up, right? I want that work to be targeted and meaningful. And so we’re gonna have a little bit of discussion about what that should look like. I also think that we need to be directing our attention to the transition, right? CRC does have a role in monitoring what comes next, making sure that we are active partners in that transition process, and, you know, that may be an area where our ability to weigh in on matters of policy is still relevant, right, in terms of talking about what that transition looks like. And I apologize if you hear the MAX in the background there. It’s my commitment to mass transit. So, I think that’s something that I wanna talk about a little bit tonight. To that end, we have invited the staff of the City Attorney’s office. I believe ROSS said that - did you say that they confirmed?

CALDWELL: Yeah, they’ll be here at the February meeting.

DELEGATO: Okay. So, at the February meeting, mark your calendars, we will hear from the City Attorney’s office. I think HEIDI BROWN’s gonna be joining us to give an update on what’s going on with the transition, with the changes that have been made to the Police Accountability Commission’s proposals. Obviously, having served on that body, I wanna make sure that we are, sort of, getting a neutral perspective on that, not just my own. So, we’ve invited the City Attorney’s office to kind of give us an update on that and to answer your questions and then I think that may inform some of the work that we choose to take on. So, I have a couple of suggestions that I wanna make for work group assignments, and I’m kind of shifting into our new business discussion here. One is that I think we need to make sure that the recurring audit workgroup is sort of re-staffed, now that some people have resigned and I think it makes sense for us to potentially look at standing up a transition workgroup that is more focused, less on wish lists or reports and more focused just on engaging and monitoring that transition process. So, I think those are two workgroups that I’m gonna suggest we stand up. That doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be a third, depending on other people’s appetite for that work, right? So, I think those are sort of the policy objectives that I see for the CRC. Mostly, I wanna make sure that we don’t burn anyone out and that everyone has time to come to these meetings and help us make quorum and then, also, that we continue to staff the PRB. So, one of the other things that I think we might look at, if we do sort of empanel some new workgroups for 2024, is looking at the frequency with which those groups meet, ‘cause I know that sometimes making sure that you come to a monthly CRC meeting and then come to a monthly workgroup meeting can start to be a burden if you’re also doing 10,000 pages of, you know, case review in a given month. So, before we make any decisions about that, and we may not make those at this meeting, depending on what people express, but I’d like to go around the room and just ask each of you, if you have thoughts on it or if you have ideas, if there’s any goals that you personally have for CRC this year, for your service on the CRC, and if you have any ideas for work that, you know, we should undertake as a collective body of if we should empanel a workgroup. I’d like to hear those, too, and I think we can just have that kind of discussion. Maybe that will inform where we feel we’re at before we make any decisions. So, I’m not gonna call on anyone yet. If someone wants to volunteer to start this process, I would appreciate it. If no one does, then I will start calling on people. So, I think I’ve said my piece, in terms of, I think we should have two and I think, you know, those groups should maybe try and look at meeting more consistently, not necessarily more regularly. Okay?

GRIFFIN: I’ll chime in for you there, YUME. I have not actually thought about this too hard lately, but now that you’ve put it out there, I’m really thinking about what we should be looking at. So, I think I’ll have better information next meeting.

DELEGATO: Thanks, GREGG.

WALSH: YUME, what was the first one, the first workgroup you were thinking of? I missed that part.

DELEGATO: The recurring audit.

WALSH: Recurring audit.

DELEGATO: Yeah.

WALSH: Okay. Since I’m new, I’m not familiar with that one. So.

DELEGATO: Well, and I think one of the difficulties that recurring audit has had is that there’s not a ton of institutional knowledge about -

WALSH: Oh, okay.

DELEGATO: - like, best practices for recurring audit. ROSS, would you maybe be able to speak a little bit about the mission? Off the top of my head, (inaudible - 00:21:33).

WALSH: That would help, yeah. Thanks.

CALDWELL: Yeah. My understanding is that it’s been just kind of a - I think this is something that was part of CRC way back, even before the settlement agreement and I think it was an effort to just kind of look at our case handling decisions and take a look at, like, a sampling of some of our cases and just see, you know - what I would think it would often be is something that’s kind of similar to what, you know, COCL and DOJ do, which is, all right, show us all your closed cases. Let’s see if you’re closing cases appropriately. Are you following your SOPs? You know, does it look like you’re looking everywhere? So, I think it’s just kind of quality control for cases, would be my understanding.

WALSH: Thank you. And the second one was transition assistance, basically, right? Yeah. So, that would - for me, I mean, that seems like the big - I don’t wanna say obvious, but I mean, it’s like the big lift for this year, right, is to help with that transition. I love the idea of, you know, facilitating communication and, you know, having something set up ahead of time and thought out is gonna just make that happen so much better and help the city out. So, I’m only validating what you’re saying, YUME, but I think that’s a spectacular idea.

DELEGATO: Well, thank you, MIKE. And I will note, just kind of piggybacking on what ROSS said, we’ve had some community members, DAN HANDELMAN in particular, who have shared their knowledge of recurring audit and had some suggestions for things that subcommittee or that workgroup could look at. I think the issue has been staffing and then also bandwidth. And so, one of the things that I might ask, as we start thinking about workgroup work for this year. KIRA is currently the chair of that workgroup, but I don’t know that they’ve had a chance to meet, at least in the last couple of months. So, potentially having someone who would be willing to step forward and maybe be a co-chair with her would be, I think, an ask for this group.

GRIFFIN: I was gonna say, we have not had a chance to have a meeting yet, so.

DELEGATO: Yeah. So, I think it’s time. It’s time. And like I said, I think it would be better to maybe look at having so these groups meet more consistently, but not necessarily more regularly. So, maybe it’s, you know, every other month or once a quarter, but, like, making sure that that actually happens, especially for recurring audit because maybe you’re gonna be reviewing case files, right? So, either at the end of this meeting or the start of the next meeting, depending on people’s appetites, I’d like to ask people to maybe kind of re-sign up for one of those two committees or three or four, whatever people decide they want, and then, you know, work off-line to make sure that those meetings get scheduled and start looking at agenda. CHRIS or JESSICA, do you have any reflections or wishes for the organization this year that you wanna share?

PIEKARSKI: I don’t have anything in particular. I was just thinking in terms of your ideas, I think they’re good ideas but, in terms of my particular skill set, I think I’m good at information processing and crunching stuff and that sort of thing, compliance and so I might be a natural fit for your recurring audits side of thing, if that’s where I get funneled. And my consistent goal here has been to step in where I’m asked to step in and not complain and do a good job. And so hopefully I can continue to do that, in some way or another.

KATZ: It doesn’t seem like it’s probably the time and space for, like, big new ideas for, like, generating new workgroups, so I would concur that I do have things I’ve been historically interested in looking up that could be really encompassed in a transition workgroup, just around remedies and discipline and, just, you know, taking a deeper dive there into what works, historically, and what’s been done elsewhere. But that seems like that could be encompassed in a transition workgroup.

DELEGATO: Yeah. And I’m not adversed to big picture ideas, I just can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to implement them immediately. We may have to wait until we have some more people. So, if you’ve got a great idea, let’s hear it. Okay, so that’s kind of where we’re at. I think I’ll just open the floor. If people would like to maybe start volunteering for those workgroups, it would be great if we could look at, maybe, having some inaugural meetings in February. I think the transition workgroup in particular, after hearing from the Attorney’s office, might be able to, you know, start, you know, looking at some questions and stuff. I would like to be on that workgroup. I do not wanna lead it, ideally because I think that’s something that’s a little bit of a conflict of interest and GREGG, if you’re still interested in being on the recurring audit workgroup, it might be good if we could get someone to join you or if you wanna be on transition, we can, you know, shuffle things around, but it would be nice if we had one or two people who might be willing to either chair or co-chair one of those groups. So, if someone feels like they’re ready to, you know, make that volunteer ask today, that would be great. And if not, we can make that decision at our February meeting.

GRIFFIN: So, I was gonna just co-chair with that group then, as it is now, because we haven’t got around to actually doing anything but I’m really looking forward to actually looking into those cases and reviewing what we can, to see what we can help - where we can actually make some suggestions.

DELEGATO: Okay. And CHRIS, were you saying that you would be interested in being on that group or would you prefer to do transition?

PIEKARSKI: I think I’m a better fit for the recurring audit.

DELEGATO: Did you say recurring audit? I’m sorry, my - okay. All right. Whoops. GREGG, can I ask you and CHRIS to get in touch with KIRA and maybe just kind of re-poll yourselves on what times work well and then get something scheduled so we can do it in February?

GRIFFIN: Yeah, I’ll follow with KIRA this evening and then see what - I thought she sent out something earlier, but that might have been someone else as well. But I’ll follow up with her this evening.

DELEGATO: Okay. JESSICA and MICHAEL, I know you were both on the past and future transition teams.

WALSH: I could do the transition.

DELEGATO: Would you be interested - okay. Would one of you be willing to chair that subcommittee?

WALSH: I mean, I’m a newbie, so I defer to JESSICA, but I’d be happy to do it if JESSICA doesn’t want to, but, you know, I’m kind of a newbie to the CRC, so.

KATZ: I would gladly accept your willingness to step in to do that ‘cause I do - thank you, MICHAEL.

DELEGATO: Okay.

WALSH: Yep, I can do that.

DELEGATO: So, MICHAEL and GREGG, I’m gonna entrust sort of the convening duties to both of you, in terms of just touching base with JESSICA and I and with CHRIS and KIRA about what schedules look like and then please let GAYLA and DAVID know, so that we can start publishing those times on the website and putting up the public notices and whatnot. So, let’s not make too much work for ourselves and try and do this in January. I think let’s be deliberate about when we do it but maybe shoot for early- to mid-February, okay? That way, I want us to set commitments that we can meet and I think workgroups, sometimes we’ve bitten off more than we can chew. So, I want us to be deliberate about this and maybe talk about cadence as well. Doesn’t seem like monthly is working for recurring audit and I’d rather you’d meet quarterly than try for monthly and not meet at all. So, figure out what cadence works for you and, MIKE, I would say the same for transition, figure out what works best on that front. As we move into 2024, there may be other things that come up that you wanna bring back to this body. We always have new business every month. Very few people avail themselves to that, but it is always an option, so JESSICA, you know, if you have that big picture idea and you want us to re-visit that, especially as we get more people, hopefully in the spring, let’s continue to keep an eye on that and that may also apply to transition, right? If we decide that there is a policy position that we need to weigh in on or if there’s specific things that are really relevant to CRC’s review, then we can tackle that, either as a sub-committee or as a whole.

WALSH: Yeah, and just real quick, I’m really glad you brought that up, ‘cause the only other idea I was thinking of was, like, a policy advisory committee, but I kind of assumed transition - it sounds like that’s what you’re saying is transition would be able to do that essentially.

DELEGATO: I think, you know, just as a refresher, right, these workgroups can include public in a way that the CRC meetings don’t always do, which MICHAEL and I know firsthand.

WALSH: Yeah.

DELEGATO: That no one cared on crowd control. But the disadvantage to that is that they cannot make decisions for the full group.

WALSH: Oh, got it.

DELEGATO: So, they can sort of figure out policies, do fact finding, et cetera, and they can recommend, just like we’ve done in the past, they can recommend, you know, a report or a finding or, you know, legislative or lobbying action that the CRC can do as a whole and then we can deliberate on that. So, I think it’s important that we be cognizant of that opportunity. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to exercise it every time, right? Fundamentally, you know, we want this new system to be successful, though, and so I think looking for ways to make sure that that does not get derailed is useful and I think looking for ways that we can support that transition is useful. And we are also getting to a point where - and IPR is obviously doing this on a daily basis for us, but we are getting to a point where we now need to be monitoring what actually gets decided and when it goes into effect because that impacts our work here.

WALSH: Right. Great, thanks for that clarification.

DELEGATO: Perfect. Okay. So, obviously, we do not have any workgroup updates. I guess I gave all of them, on behalf of the CRC. Any other items of new business that we want to bring before the CRC tonight? Okay. So, if there’s no new business, I am going to open it up for public comment. GREGG, are you ready for your -

GRIFFIN: I will - got it down.

DELEGATO: I guess technically this is KIRA’s job now. I forgot that we’ve had a shift of responsibility.

GRIFFIN: Right.

DELEGATO: But if you wouldn’t mind, that would be awesome.

GRIFFIN: I got it.

DELEGATO: Okay. So, I’m gonna open it up to public comments. As a reminder, you have three minutes to comment on anything before the CRC’s purview and I’m gonna start with DAN HANDELMAN here. Okay. All right.

HANDELMAN: Hello, can you hear me?

DELEGATO: Yep, we can hear you.

GRIFFIN: Got you, Dan.

HANDELMAN: Oh, great. Thanks. Happy New Year, everybody. This is DAN HANDELMAN, he/him pronouns, from Portland Copwatch. I’m glad you’re meeting and I’m very concerned and interested that some of you are sitting in instead of the pool of Police Review Board members on the Police Review Board hearings. My understanding was there was a pool of 15 people who were cycling through there and that the, you know, six or seven of you who still remain are needed when there’s that many other people to be part of that. Maybe there can be more of an explanation. During Director’s Report, I posted a question that the Director mentioned, in the report, that the body camera pilot program is still being evaluated, but the City Council voted to, first, put aside $2.6 million and then they voted to add another 7.4 million on top of that, for a total of $10 million for body cams, at two different council hearings, based on the fact that the body camera program had been evaluated and had passed with flying colors. So, I’m a little confused about the status of that. I’m wondering if you’re going to be presenting your report on transition, past and future, to City Council. I think that was your plan. I’ve been hearing discussion of that. I’m hoping that you do get a chance to do that at some point. I just wanna point out that the Portland Police, you know, you heard also from the director that there was two shootings recently. Portland Police had gone for three and a half years without shooting any young black men in the city. Then they started in November of 2022, and, since that time, they’ve now shot at four young black men, killing three of them. And very troubling. I don’t know if that’s a policy issue you can take up. And I guess my last comment for today - well, I do wanna always offer whatever I can help, in terms of the transitions stuff, being a former PAC member and also somebody who’s been following your exploits since the beginning, so please do keep me posted about your meetings. So the last item on my comment list is the new People’s Police Report, our Copwatch newsletter, comes out three times a year, was published last week and we’re gonna have it online sometime in the next couple of days and I’ll let you know when that happens. Thank you very much.

DELEGATO: Thanks. All right, thank you, DAN. So, I can speak to DAN’s question about the PRB pools and then I might ask ROSS to talk a little bit about the body cam issue. Obviously, DAN, we do hope you - I’m fairly confident that you will be with us next month, when the City’s Attorney’s office is here to talk about the new plan and definitely hope that you will be able to keep us up to date when we empanel our transition workgroup. With regards to the PRBs, so a little over a year ago, the City Attorney presented a couple of code or administrative rule amendments to City Council, one of which was to actually allow PRB members to sub in for CRC members. This was at a period of time where we were having a little bit of trouble ramping up and getting all those PRBs staffed. That measure or that item was actually taken out of the proposed co-changes back in 2022, partially with a little bit of push back from the CRC and the CRC vice-chair and also Commissioner HARDESTY. About a year after that - and ROSS can correct me if I make any factual errors here. About a year after that, though, I think, as a result of some of the good work that this team has done, the Attorney went to Council and actually asked for the reverse of that, which, as they said, A, we have had a real drop off in our PRB pool. We are often able to get CRC members. We sometimes are not able to get a PRB member. Can we have two CRC members sit on some of the PRBs? So, I know CHRIS and I did that once and it was actually a really interesting experience ‘cause I don’t normally get to be in these with other CRC members. So, I don’t think that’s the ideal. Right, that’s not what we’re shooting for, but right now, we are trying to make sure that those cases still get heard and, thankfully, you know, CRC’s been able to step up and do that, even with our limited number. So, huge hats off to everyone who’s doing that. I do think that there is value in having separate pools. That’s why the system was set up that way and I really agree with that, but I think, given the options that are available for us and given the, to a certain extent, rigor that CRC members go through, in terms of having a public facing position, which is much more public and much more subject to scrutiny than the PRB pool, I don’t think that’s a necessarily bad outcome, although that’s just my personal opinion. So, hopefully that answers the question on that front. ROSS, do you wanna say anything in regards to DAN’s question about the, sort of, how things have been implemented with the body cameras?

CALDWELL: Yeah. I’m not sure. Like I said, I don’t know the most about this and that’d be a question you could ask HEIDI next month because she probably does know the most about it. There was an evaluation period. I’ve been told they’re working on the contract. I don’t know why it takes so long to get them, you know, back on the officers. I know there is some tech implementation that I’ve heard a lot about. I’ve been in a bunch of meetings where they talk about having enough outlets for the chargers and making sure that they upload properly, but there is a lot of just kind of tech build-out requirements, but I don’t know why it’s taking so long. You know, I’m assuming that if they - you know, I know they’ve allocated that money for the body cam program to Axon, so that is a strong indicator that the review is done. I didn’t really think - I thought we were going into the pilot and there was, like, a brief period and then it was gonna be full implementation. So, I’ve been pretty surprised to hear, and the rest of the folks at IPR, to my understanding, have been pretty surprised to hear that it was gonna be such a long delay. But, you know, who knows? Maybe they’ll speed it up.

DELEGATO: Thanks, ROSS. Okay. Any other public comment? All right, going once. Going twice. All right. Well, thank you all for attending our first meeting of 2024. Like I said, this was a short one. I do think we’ve got work ahead of us for this year and so I’m glad that we’ve kind of gotten these groups empaneled. I’m gonna ask y’all to think about what you want your workgroups to do, so that when you do get to February, any of those meetings, you hit the ground running. CHRIS and GREGG, I know that DAN provided quite a bit of background information to KIRA in terms of some of the things that have gone before recurring audit in the past and he had some feedback or some suggestions about cases that CRC could take on. I think, if you have a shorter meeting cadence, that will - or a longer cadence between meetings, that will maybe allow you to actually take some time and, you know, review a case file or take a look at that. And, obviously, GAYLA and DAVID and ROSS can tell you what things need to be done in executive session, right, and what things can be done in a public meeting. But we’re placing our faith in you to get that done. JESSICA, MIKE and any members of the public that wanna be part of the transition workgroup, I think a lot of our discussion is gonna come after we meet with the City Attorney’s Office. Obviously, I know what’s going on, but I think it’ll be helpful for the two of you to get up to speed and then we can start talking about priorities for CRC, maybe invited speakers that we wanna talk to. We can definitely, I’m sure, get people from the PAC to come and talk to you, but let’s tackle that at the February meeting, get that first meeting started. So, thank you, again, for coming. Looking forward to working with you in the new year. A lot of us are up for re-appointment in the spring and I remember, you know, being the newest person on this body and, when JULIE’s replacement is in place, JESSICA, GREGG, and KIRA and I will be the oldest people, or the longest serving people, on the CRC. So, welcome to veterancy. All right. Happy New Year, everyone. It is 6:16 PM and this meeting is adjourned. Have a great night.

KATZ: Thanks, YUME.

WALSH: Thanks, YUME. Thanks, everybody.

GRIFFIN: Thank you.