The NW Constitutional Rights Center works with the community to hold the police accountable.

By Alejandro Queral

Earlier this spring, the Portland Police Bureau released traffic stop data that revealed the extent to which race plays a part in an officer’s decision to pull over a driver. If you are a black or Latino driver in Portland, you are two times more likely to be pulled over than if you are white. And if you are a black driver in downtown Portland, located in the central precinct where two percent of the population is black, you are 3.9 times more likely to be stopped. Compare this to the relative stop rate in the northeast precinct (2.3 times more likely) where blacks constitute 20 percent of the population. Similar comparisons among the other precincts reveal the same trend: The smaller the proportion of blacks in a given area, the greater the chance that a black driver will be pulled over for being black.

Race-based policing is nothing new in Portland. In 1999 the Police Bureau, along with other law enforcement agencies, signed the Law Enforcement Non-discrimination Resolution, which pledged to work “against the practice of race-based profiling or any other type of discrimination within the scope of the daily contact with individuals in communities, or anyone driving or moving about roads, highways and neighborhoods,” according to the Bureau’s Web site. Seven years later, minorities in Portland continue to be held to a different standard than whites.

The Northwest Constitutional Rights Center (NW Center) is concerned about this unequal treatment of minorities by the Portland police and is committed to holding the police bureau accountable and finding realistic solutions to this problem. We have partnered with Oregon Action, the Center for Intercultural Organizing and other community groups to organize a series of listening sessions between the community and police officers. The sessions, which were envisioned as a first step to address the problem of racial profiling, have provided a forum for community members to share their experiences in dealing with the police.

“The numbers released by the police confirm the community’s perception that police conduct stops are based on the race of the driver and occupants,” says Jo Ann Bowman of Oregon Action. “These sessions give us an opportunity to put a face to those numbers and to give important feedback to the Chief and commanding officers of each precinct.” The community feedback will be an integral part in developing a report that analyzes the Bureau’s current policies and identifies necessary policy changes. It is already apparent that those recommendations will likely address officers’ training, hiring and recruitment practices and cultural issues confronting officers. The NW Center expects to release this report in the fall.

The use of race as a basis for conducting traffic or pedestrian stops (which the current police data does not include) is illegal and must be stopped. Legal action can be a powerful tool to hold police accountable and the NW Center will litigate cases of racial profiling whenever it is strategically wise to do so. However, litigation is an expensive process that is generally inaccessible to those who lack the necessary resources and is, therefore, not the best long-term strategy for holding police accountable.

Issues like police racial profiling must be fully investigated by a citizen-based committee with real investigative powers in order to address the roots of the problem. Although Portland’s Independent Police Review Division and the nine-member Citizen Review Committee have the authority to investigate and make policy recommendations, their power to conduct independent investigations and make sound policy-recommendations is, in practice, very limited. One result of this is that the community rightly perceives the police review system as ineffective and biased in investigating and resolving complaints, and believes that it does not address other concerns related to policing effectively. While the community listening sessions are an important first step in addressing racial profiling, this issue will continue to be a problem so long as there is no effective police oversight system in Portland.

Law enforcement accountability in Portland is one of the most urgent priorities for the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center. Our primary goal is to strengthen the oversight system already in place by empowering it to conduct fully independent investigations and by requiring that policy recommendations be binding. We believe these are essential steps to ensure that all Portlanders are treated with equal dignity and respect.

Alejandro Queral is the executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center. The NW Center is a local not-for-profit organization actively protecting the constitutional rights of people being unlawfully targeted by law enforcement. We work predominantly with communities of color, the homeless, recent immigrants and political activists. The majority of our financial support comes from donations made by individual community members. To join in the efforts of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center you can make a tax-deductible donation and help us achieve our 2006 campaign goal and ensure police accountability. To learn more visit us online at www.nwcrc.org.