good afternoon I'm lieutenant Tina Jones the public information officer with the city of Portland Portland Police Bureau today's press conference was convened in order to share the outcome of the findings of an investigation involving lieutenant Jeff Nia the chief and the mayor will be sharing some information they will we will take some questions first I would like to introduce chief Danielle outlaw good afternoon thank you I'm here today to share some information about the investigation and findings related to communications between lieutenant Jeff Nia and Joey Gibson and other demonstration organizers I want to first start off by acknowledging that when these text messages were initially released to the public that there was a very huge impact on our community not just our external community but our internal community here in ppb as well and most specifically lieutenant Jeff Nia and this family and his family and I'm hoping that given that this investigation this portion of this investigation has concluded that were able to move forward from this chapter and move forward to work towards healing together as a bureau and a community to provide some background this all stems from two very narrowly tailored public records requests where documents were released in February of 2019 specific to text messages between lieutenant Jeff Nia and Joey Gibson there were a series of news articles and stories covering some of the information released this generated a lot of concern in the public realm about possible bias or alignment with a particular group and Lieutenant Nia the Independent Police Review team conducted an investigation after these concerns were shared three specific allegations were considered related to this investigation the first allegation was whether lieutenant Nia engaged in unprofessional behavior during his communications with Joie Gibson related to directive 3 10.00 professional conduct and courtesy the second allegation investigated was whether lieutenant Nia engaged in unprofessional behavior during his communications with Joie Gibson related to HR rule 11.0 one statement of ethical conduct and the third and final allegation was whether or not lieutenant nia inappropriately disclosed information to joey Gibson that allowed individuals to avoid arrest related to directive three one 0.70 dissemination of information IPR concluded that there was no evidence of a policy violation and any of these three allegations subsequently there were several layers of review the file was then sent for a captain and Commander for review and I'll go back I PR concluded their investigation and they came back with a recommended finding of not sustained the file was then sent for a captain and Commander review the captain concurred with IPRs not sustained finding for all three allegations the file then went to an assistant chief for review at this point the assistant chief determined the findings were exonerated which generated a referral to the Police Review Board which is comprised of community members and Bureau members the police review board then reviewed the investigative files and concurred with the findings of exonerated for allegations one and two and not sustained for allegation three the material event came to me for review after reviewing all of the materials my finding for all three allegations was unfounded I determined unfounded was the most appropriate finding because the language in the investigation very clearly states there was no evidence to prove any of the allegations considered given there was no evidence to support the allegations then the allegations were devoid of fact and there were no credible basis for a possible violation perception appeared to be a very strong determining factor during the initial investigation and subsequent levels during the review however perception while extremely critical in earning and maintaining trust within our internal and external communities is not tangible evidence for the purposes of an administrative investigation while the investigation was ongoing internally we identified several opportunities to strengthen and improve which we decided to implement without waiting for the investigation to be completed we immediately directed all working liaisons to attend training but we quickly learned that there was no formalized training for liaisons here in the United States after searching for training options for our liaisons and determined there was no formalized trainings we sent personnel to Canada in June of this year for training specifically about crowd crowd control liaisons from that training our staff developed an internal training for crowd liaisons which was created and we've provided actually to those liaisons before the August 17th demonstrations on August 14 we also formalized the expectations of the crowd liaisons with the standard operating procedure was which was not in place before we approved new uniforms for transparency and increased communication the new uniforms were also rolled out for the August 17th events we are also undergoing a holistic review of our demonstration response and this is being done by the National Police Foundation they are reviewing ppb's response to demonstrations to assess our tactics communications policy and anything else that would fall under the umbrella of police response to major demonstrations this investigation will take a look back all the way to protests beginning in 2017 to the present the IPR investigation determined that there were no policy violations but recommended formalized training in line with what we had already identified and implemented some key takeaways here the public records requests were very narrow in scope and it did not contain an entire picture of the work being performed by lieutenant Nia and his role as a liaison additionally they did not have context which is extremely important in this instance the investigation looked at more than 11,000 text messages which includes communications about events with organizers from a variety of backgrounds and beliefs and as I stated before while perception is not tangible evidence it is absolutely critical when it comes to trust in different capacities in law enforcement we engage with people and we build rapport in various ways to achieve a law enforcement or Public Safety objective for example in communications with homicide or child abuse suspects our communications are done with the purpose and should not be construed as alignment or agreement with an individual's acts or beliefs I'd also like to note that the lieutenant lieutenant Nia and the peepee CoA the Union we're in full support of the public disclosure of the information within the investigation that we're releasing today in order to help restore public trusts to further the understanding of the liaison role and to very openly share that there was nothing to hide given the very public nature of the coverage of the information I concurred that it was important to also publicly share the outcome of this investigation lieutenant Nia has demonstrated professionalism and full cooperation with this investigation which is very much appreciated this investigation has helped to shed light on his commitment to facilitate the freedom of speech and assembly for many with the overarching goal of maintaining Public Safety we will be posting documents on our website today including transcripts from interviews and communications between lieutenant Nia and a number of event organizers so the public can review the material in a very transparent manner now mr. Ted wheeler mayor has some comments Thank You chief as mayor and police commissioner it's my goal to make sure that our Police Bureau always represents Portland and the values that define who we are as a city it's also my job to recognize the bureau's good work but also hope to hold the bureau accountable to the public that it serves here's a brief recap text messages were released those text messages at face value and without much context were disconcerting to many and as you're all aware the public reaction was Swift we were all reacting and operating without the full context at the time perceptions that time is not based on facts but it still plays a crucial role in either building or destroying trust that's why I ordered an investigation I did this because I knew at the time we did not have a complete picture of what was going on and that's why I believe the investigation was critically important and the independent investigation revealed that there were no sustained policy violations in part because lieutenant Nia was talking with people on all sides of the demonstration that exhaustive investigation concluded that the allegations of possible bias were not sustained the lieutenant did his job to the best of his abilities in my opinion and it turns out he did so with out much formalized training it's important to note that lieutenant knee had demonstrated utmost professionalism and full cooperation throughout this investigation the investigation did reveal a series of shortcomings in training and protocol the bureau even before the investigation concluded realized these shortcomings soon after the texts came to light that's why the bureau immediately went ahead to provide clear direction and the implementation of formalized layers on training want to thank chief outlaw for her and her team's proactive approach so to wrap this up here's the good that I believe has come from this first of all the allegations related to lieutenant Nia were not sustained training and protocol gaps were discovered the bureau took immediate steps to address them many of the changes that were made as a result of this were also put into action in the field that led to many of the successes that we all witnessed during the demonstrations on August 17th the chief and I held a series of listening sessions just for our officers that resulted in what I believe or more Frank and more productive communication the deepened our understanding of the needs of the bureau and as a result I believe my relationship with the Portland Police Bureau is stronger than it's ever been officers are tasked with a job that is difficult it's frequently thankless and it's often dangerous they often risk their lives to serve and protect our community from harm and to protect everyone's rights so I'm relieved to know that lieutenant Nia has been cleared of misconduct and that the Bureau has addressed the training and protocols gap and I'm proud of the work that our sworn and non sworn personnel do day in and day out in the Portland Police borough and I want them to know they have my complete support thank you Thank You mayor now we have time for a few questions related to the information that's been provided here Blair and can I'm sorry for the questions can you state your name and which organization you're associated with please so that is information that was looked at in depth and will be released in the documents today as well so we're providing kind of a high-level overview but I would encourage you to once the information is released to look at that because it's it would be too lengthy for me to go into details about that right now did you have a question again the text messages were released there they were a narrow representation and narrow sample of all of the text messages that were released there were articles written based on those narrow text messages the public reacted to those text messages and I believe that my statements and my call for an investigation were appropriate at the time sorry I'd be happy to and thank you for the question I serve a unique role in this city and it may be unique amongst mayors nationally I'm both the mayor of the city and I am the police commissioner so on one hand I am the Police Bureau's major proponent on the city council and during budget negotiations on the other hand I'm also primarily responsible for holding the bureau accountable to the public that it serves so there is a what I would describe as a challenging balancing act that has to be done fairly when the text messages were first reported there was an immediate public reaction I believe it required my response as both the mayor and the police commissioner in this city now having said that I've had many months to think about this I like to think that I approach this job with a desire to understand how I can always do the job better I like to think that I approach this job with humility and in retrospect what I would have preferred was that I would have preferred and this is based on the conversations that I've had with many of the officers in the Bureau and sharing their feelings and their desires and their expectations in retrospect it would have been better had I been more overt about giving lieutenant Nia the benefit of the doubt and I would go further to say lots of officers are under an investigation at any particular time that's the nature of policing that's the nature of policing accountability and I believe all officers deserve the benefit of the doubt so in my conversations with lieutenant Nia I expressed that I said that looking back on this I wish I had been more overt about giving you the benefit of the doubt and making that clear [Music] [Music] why does that not relevant context well first of all I believe that we needed more context and that's why I called for the investigation and even the information that my staff would have had at that particular time would have still been a sliver of the overall context and the only way to iron this out and to resolve it is filet for a full and thorough vetting so what you're getting access to today isn't a few text messages it isn't a couple of dozen text messages it's not access to a few conversations with staffers which may or may not have reached my attention you're getting 11,000 text messages and the entire dialogue of a thorough investigation and I believe that is the best way to be completely transparent and forthcoming in retrospect I believe that my comments while accurate and reflective of my perceptions at the time would have been more fair had I been more overt about giving lieutenant near the benefit of the doubt we have time for one last question in the back place sorry telly on their 80 news one of the things the public product during public discussion was about how this these text messages were focused on patriot prayer and Joey Gibson and I know you guys mentioned today that there were other comments or text messages between other groups as well can you tell us who those other groups are and content so here's what I can share about that we will be releasing a large volume of information today these will include interviews with people with information over 11,000 text messages and I'm not going to sit here and identify different groups or ideologies it's not appropriate because the focus is really on these are event organizers it doesn't matter who they associate with and the liaison role is to interact with those folks with a purpose and so I'm not going to get into that but I will say that the volume of information that will be released is pretty staggering and I think that will help you to have a much broader context as well as the public [Music] talking about certain of that can you say whether or not they were talking to me counter-protesters of that I I can't speak as to specifics of that but I will say that there I've reviewed the materials as well and there's a broad variety of organizers from a whole swath of different backgrounds so you'll just have to read the information for yourself thank you for attending and we appreciate your time we'll be putting out a press release as soon as we're able with links to the materials that we referenced thank you ma'am thank you [Music]