Thread by @JoAnnPDX

Last week the Oregonian Editorial board sent each Council office a series of important questions in advance of an opinion piece they published on Sunday about Portland's response to gun violence and community safety.
portland.gov/hardesty/news/…

This is an incredibly important conversation & these questions have complex answers. For the sake of transparency and so Portlanders know how I'm thinking about these issues, I wanted to share the entirety of my answers, which can be read below.
portland.gov/hardesty/news/…

I don’t believe PPB has a staffing crisis; I believe they have a recruitment crisis. PPB currently has over 100 vacancies.

During the last budget, Mayor Wheeler and I wrote an amendment to expedite the hiring of new officers, with a restriction that the money could only be used for that purpose. I was told the other day that we have not hired a single new police officer because of this amendment.

What would adding millions of dollars to PPB to create more empty positions they haven’t proven they can fill do to promote public safety? It will simply take resources away from other vital City services and give PPB another slush fund for their excessive overtime.

We need to fill PPB to its current allotment of positions while fully understanding the impacts of a transforming community safety system before we can even have the conversation about adding more FTE positions to PPB.

Police have an important role to play in solving crime, but we need to better understand how the average PPB officer spends their day and how the bureau is allocating its current resources.

On gun violence, metrics we need provided by PPB on a weekly basis include: How many guns were taken off the street, number interactions related to gun violence PPB had, the demographic breakdown of those interactions, and how many cases are headed to the DA for prosecution.

If we got this info each week, we could evaluate PPB’s effectiveness in solving gun related crimes. I’ve asked Director Myers for an assessment about the daily activity of police and why it appears officers are responding to so few incidents per day.

Only with good data can we ask follow up questions to determine if PPB’s current staffing levels are appropriate.

I’m committed to doing what I can to transform PPB’s culture, so they are an attractive employer for Portlanders that hold our progressive values.

This Fall we will be creating an RFP to get moving on a Truth & Reconciliation process between the community and PPB. This will help us understand how Portlanders want to be policed and provide a roadmap for transformation.

PPB is currently unresponsive to the Department of Justice, unresponsive to the City Council, and unresponsive to the Police Commissioner. I can not in good conscious add people to a rouge bureau with a dysfunctional culture without seeing some serious changes.

Portlanders are constantly being told by police they can not assist them or do anything in situations where that does not make sense. We saw this when a PPB officer blamed “Obama” for being unable to peruse a criminal suspect...

...we see it reported in the media, and my office hears from constituents all the time that all they are getting from PPB is a shrug and excuse. We need to start hearing solutions and hearing what PPB officers actually do.

We had every single officer on duty for the August 22nd Proud Boys rally and yet they still refused to intervene and prevent violence as it was occurring. This doesn’t add up and it’s unacceptable.

I also want to see a bigger vision from PPB than rehiring retired officers. This doesn’t move the bureau forward or bring new energy to the bureau, it just cements the current problematic culture.

Clearance rates don’t go up by adding police, they go up when community members respect and trust the police.