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Auditors find faults with city gang team

Portland Tribune - 3/28/2018

Police not showing effectiveness of traffic stops that disproportionately impact African-Americans to fight gang violence.

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The effectiveness of Portland's Gang Enforcement Team was questioned in two audits released by the City Auditor's Office on Wednesday. One report said the Portland Police Bureau cannot document the results of traffic stops conducted by team officers that disproportionately affect the African-American community. The other said the team has not correctly managed all of its investigations and overstated its 2016 clearance rate.

"Research from other jurisdictions has shown that this kind of targeted patrol can be effective in reducing crime, but the practice can negatively affect relationships between the community and police, according to the Criminal Justice Policy Research Institute at Portland State University," the first audit said.

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Mayor Ted Wheeler, who is in charge of the bureau, agrees that the collection and analysis of information related to the team's activities need to be improved. But he also defended much of their work, noting that gang violence is disproportionately committed by African-Americans - and that most victims are African-American, too.

"The skewed demographics of gang-related shootings demand a heightened understanding of the activities of the Gang Enforcement Team. Accordingly, the (team) must be able to justify its practices through accurate and thorough data collection," Wheeler wrote in a March 23 response letter, which also noted that two people have been killed in suspected gang shootings so far this year.

Wheeler also said that an anti-racial profiling bill approved by the 2018 Oregon Legislature will soon require all law enforcement agencies in the state to conduct the additional data collections and analysis called for in the audit.

The Gang Enforcement Team is a specialty unit of the bureau that patrol streets and neighborhoods around the city. Its mission is to reduce criminal activity related to street gang violence. The team also investigates violent crimes with a gang connection. It had 28 sworn members as of December 2016 and costs about $6 million to $7 million a year to operate.

The audit on traffic stops is titled "The Police Bureau must show that traffic stops are effective." It found gang team officers frequently use traffic stops justified by minor traffic violations to interact with known or suspected gang members and associates in vehicles. The team recorded 1,300 such encounters in 2016, an average of about six encounters a shift. Most happened in neighborhoods where a disproportionate number of African-Americans live.

According to the audit, gang team officers said that such patrols effectively prevent shootings by resulting in the confiscation of illegal guns, the arrest of people who may be on the verge of violence, and by creating a visible police presence that acts as a disincentive to people who may otherwise engage in violent activity.

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But the audit found the bureau cannot demonstrate the stops were effective because it did not require team officers to record the reasons why they made them and analyze the results, such as how many stops led to gun seizures or arrests. Officers also did not record how many stops led to contacts with people who were involved in gangs.

"Without this data, the Gang Enforcement Team cannot analyze or explain the overrepresentation of African Americans in its stops. The team also cannot show the effectiveness of its practices," the audit says.

The audit on investigations is titled "Lack of accountability and transparency reduced the community's trust in police." It found gang team investigations were not evenly distributed among the officers, and that the team did not accurately track its case clearance rate. Although the bureau told the City Council it had cleared 25 percent of its cases during the last fiscal year, the audit found the rate was actually 19 percent.

The audit also found that although the bureau did away with its longtime gang membership list last year, it continued to maintain a list of "most active gang members" not covered by any rules or revealed to the public.

"Because police officers potentially use the most active list to give more scrutiny to people they encounter - for example, making extra efforts to detain and search them - the bureau needs to be accountable and transparent to the public about how the list is created and used," the audit said.

In a March 20 response letter, Police Chief Danielle Outlaw thanked City Auditor Mary Hull Caballero for the audits and her recommendations, several of which she said were already being enacted. Her response included a four-point summary of how the bureau is responding or will respond to the recommendations.