good afternoon I'm lieutenant Tina Jones a Pio with the Portland Police Bureau we are here today to celebrate a momentous point in our journey with the city and DOJ settlement agreement and first I want to take just a minute to recognize media for attending and coming on short notice I know that we started the day with a flurry of media interviews with chief fresh and we appreciate you know the quick turnaround for this this is big news and we want to make sure that we have the opportunity to share some information with you so first I am pleased to introduce mayor Ted wheeler thank you appreciate it well good afternoon everyone as you've just heard today is a very important day for the Portland Police Bureau and for me as police commissioner my vision for the Portland Police Bureau has been consistent over the years to strengthen and enhance policing to encourage the Police Bureau to be more reflective of the community and to help the Police Bureau to become more accountable to the public that it serves well today's announcement doesn't end our work it represents a major milestone on the path towards increasing accountability after years of hard work the city of Portland has just received a letter from the Department of Justice which indicates the city is in substantial compliance with the DOJ settlement agreement why is this significant as former police chief Daniel outlaw said on many occasions substantial compliance represents a significant milestone for the city achieving accountability this accomplishment represents the city taking specific concrete steps to address community concerns about use of force training supervision management and accountability we've arrived at this point after six years of hard work on the part of the City Police Bureau and the community at large as a city we've all worked tirelessly together to embrace and enact the settlement agreement some background all the way back in 2011 at the request of the city of Portland and community members the United States Department of Justice agreed to investigate the Portland Police Bureau the city in the Department of Justice developed a plan to address the findings and to improve ppb's provision of services to the community this resulted in a negotiated settlement agreement approved by the court in 2014 the Department of Justice initial findings letter concluded while most force used by officers in Portland is appropriate DOJ found reasonable cause to believe ppb engaged in a pattern or practice of using excessive force in encounters involving people with actual or perceived mental illness and officers used the Taser in numerous instances in a manner contrary to ppb policy the DOJ found deficiencies in policy training and supervision and deficiencies in the overall mental health delivery system the DOJ concluded gaps exist in the state's mental health system which led to an increase in police encounters with people with mental illness issues including people who are in crisis these gaps still largely exist today as mayor and police commissioner I take the work on this agreement very seriously the DOJ made well over 120 specific recommendations for improvement including having all officers receive crisis intervention training work on de-escalation techniques and increased community engagement and ppb went immediately to work the true test of any organization or any person for that matter is how they respond to the challenges at hand especially one that can be difficult to hear or to acknowledge when challenged to do better be better and evolve the Portland Police Bureau answered the call among other things ppb has revised its force policies improved its force training and implemented a rigorous after-action supervisory review process ppb has increased the number of supervisors on the street and increased supervisor training ppb created the Behavioral Health Unit and expanded the Behavioral Health Unit mobile teams to five they proactively addressed accountability by creating new systems to audit all uses of force and to track other performance dimensions and at my direction the P SEP which is the Portland Committee on community engaged policing has been created to replace the old co-op I'm very happy to report the piece up is actively pursuing efforts to increase community outreach and engagement the goal of piece up is to improve community trust in the police even with all of these changes I want to underscore there is more work that needs to be done we need to collectively provide more services and support to people experiencing mental illness and we need to continue to explore ways to reduce uses of force including deadly force we also know that we have work to do to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system the city and ppb a-- are committed to continuing to do that work as am i in conclusion I'm extremely proud of all the work that's been done to achieve this recognition this recognition by the Department of Justice I want to thank the hard-working members of the Portland Police Bureau for their professionalism on implementing the agreement I want to thank my colleagues on the City Council both those who are currently elected and those who have previously served on the City Council and all of our partners at the City Attorney's Office especially Tracy reef Thank You Tracy and of course US Attorney Billy Williams and his team at the United States Attorney's Office I also want to thank they'll Bynum ministerial Alliance and the Portland Police Association for their support and involvement in the imitation process I want to thank my staff who've worked tirelessly to help accomplish this goal my chief of staff Kristen Dennis policy director Nicole grant former senior public safety adviser Burk Nelson and senior policy adviser Robert King have all helped my administration on our work to accomplish this important goal and finally I want to thank every Portlander who's helped with the implementation of this agreement been patient with us as we've made these significant improvements thank you thank you Mary wheeler next I have the pleasure of introducing chief Jamie fresh yeah thank you all I met with many of you this morning so I appreciate you coming back on such short notice today is an important day for the Police Bureau and I want to start out by thanking many people first and especially to the men and women of the Portland Police Bureau who have embraced changed over the course of several years change is not always easy and we have made substantial changes over the years which means Bureau members have had to learn new skills be open to critique be held accountable at increased level and continuously strive to improve also internally I would like to thank I would like to thank the ppb ppb DOJ compliance team as well as members of our professional standards division training division community engagement unit Strategic Services policy team and countless Bureau members who have worked tirelessly on many initiatives which have made us successful I'd like to express my appreciation to the members of the Department of Justice assigned to the settlement agreement and the Portland compliance officer community liaison our partners at the City Attorney's Office and US attorney Billy Williams and his staff to our community thank you thank you for working with us often through difficult conversations your input and support throughout these changes and moving forward are critical to our success oftentimes I feel as though these changes are reported as ppb versus the community when in fact it is a collaborative effort through our work with the Department of Justice and with the community we have made significant changes to the Police Bureau these Changez have increased our ability to hold ourselves accountable and to assess our own performance and to see where we need to make further changes moving forward the changes we have accomplished will continue to have positive impacts directly in our community there are many many critical and important accomplishments but I want to highlight a few we made substantial changes to many of our policies including our use of force policy we implemented those changes only after significant feedback from our community we also changed the process to review and revise our policies and to increase transparency and provide greater opportunity for public input we made training we made changes in training as well where we already provided and continue to provide every officer with crisis intervention training we added de-escalation equity implicit biased and procedural justice classes for all officers we also created a specialized group of volunteer officers who have received enhanced crisis in event intervention training and who responded with specific to specific calls involving those experiencing mental health crisis we created the Behavioral Health Unit with mobile teams pairing an officer with a trained clinician from Project respond to work proactively with individuals experiencing mental illness who have multiple or high-risk contacts with police we restructured and expanded our accountability systems creating a force inspector and adding force auditors who now audit all uses of force additionally we track and audit all use of force involved involving persons experiencing mental illness or in mental health crisis those functions are now overseen by an inspector general who reports directly to the Chief of Police internal affairs investigations are also more timely and the majority are now resolved within 180 days we have increased our transparency on our website we provide quarterly reports on force for anyone to read we also have an interactive dashboard historical reports and summaries of officer-involved shootings including investigative files and grand jury transcripts a common misconception is that substantial compliance with a settlement agreement will result in zero officer-involved shootings being in compliance means that we have done everything to minimize using force on those experiencing mental illness we will continue to seek ways to minimize the use of deadly force particularly an interactions with those people experiencing mental illness and we share the community's desire to reduce and ideally avoid all uses of deadly force it is also true that police officers must be prepared be prepared to protect others and themselves in dangerous dynamic and chaotic situations this sometimes means officers find themselves in situations where they have to use deadly force to protect themselves or others we take any use of deadly force extremely seriously and all such uses of force are thoroughly investigated for example when a use of deadly force results in death or serious injury we conduct a criminal investigation and for the case to the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office for consideration to convene a grand jury to determine if there is any crime related to the officer's actions we also have a robust internal administration review process which includes civilian participation to determine if the officers conduct was within policy in addition all officer-involved shootings are subjected or subject to an external audit by oír group and we take their recommendations for improvement very seriously we understand that we are here to serve all Portlanders and we cannot effectively do that if we do not have a relationship with the members in the community we are committed to widespread and meaningful community engagement especially at a time when many people in our community feel vulnerable we created a community engagement plan with goals and strategy strategies this includes reaching out to historically marginalized communities as well as building back up many of our advisory groups we are grateful to the Portland Committee on community engaged policing for their contribution to our community engagement plan and we will continue to seek their advice and feedback substantial compliance is a great accomplishment but as mentioned our work is not done there is no finish line I have been to I have been asked countless times by community members I have met since my promotion what do you need and how can we help this is my answer publicly support us engage with us do not rush to judgment help us promote the excellent work of the Portland Police Bureau and recruit the next generation of officers and I will continue to commit to working together on what our community wants and expects of its Police Bureau thank you Thank You chief brush we have time for a few questions if anyone has any that they'd like to pose and if we could just ask that you introduce yourself and say which outlet you're associated with we appreciate it no questions guys I've spent all day with us he can't learn next in October the he said one of the co-chairs of the piece that looked a young actor Ian Begley had presented a resolution for the committee saying that the city compliance officers finding similar findings that the bureau is in substantial compliance was premature and that it goes along with you're the chief statement today I mean he's questioning how do you measure the impact of these reforms if police shootings are continued to be up people who are in crisis so how do you measure the fact that there have been reforms there's changes in training changes in policy but what's how do you measure the impact on the street as the chief indicated this is not a guarantee that there will be no use of force or that there will be no mistakes made by the Portland Police Bureau and carrying out the important work that they do in the community what this is about is ensuring that they have the training the supervision the practice and the protocols to minimize the possibility of use of force that's not compliant with the policies of the Bureau or the training that people receive within the bureau and so if you look at the totality of each of the recommendations each and every one of them is about training supervision policy directives use of force best practices measurement of how we're doing with regard to accountability and transparency and reporting the public or engaging the community in a substantial way and what this substantial compliance finding by the US Department of Justice indicates is they believe we have done all of the things that they have asked us to do to increase the opportunities for good outcomes by the Portland Police Bureau but again it's no guarantee and I just want to underscore the point that both the chief and I made you'll notice we're not coming in here and celebrating even though this is a very important milestone along the path towards improving accountability of the Police Bureau we have both said that there is work that needs to continue to be done I have pledged that the Portland Committee on community engaged policing piece up is not going to go away after the settlement agreement achieved substantial compliance I hope it continues for a long long time after I'm gone whatever that might be I intend to keep this as a tool throughout the remainder of my administration as a community engagement tool and I hope future mayor's will do the same because it's proven to be a very very important public engagement tool for the Portland Police Bureau yes ma'am Rebecca from OPP um maybe you don't technical questions but substantial compliance did that mean for their parts the agreement that you guys haven't met or is that just sort of a term to say ticked off all the boxes legal question I asked Tracey this very question this is Tracy Reese from our City Attorney's Office and that I think so substantial compliance is the standard of compliance that set forth in the settlement agreement itself and what it means is that the city has in essence complied with its obligations under the settlement agreement the reason it uses the term substantial compliance is simply that there could be some you know out of a hundred and however many paragraphs it's a very long settlement agreement there are a lot of nations and it could be that your 99.5% compliant with something but in some way there's some very minor technical non-compliance the term substantial compliance is similar to really not to be too technical but a settlement agreement is in essence a contract and in any contract when you're measuring whether the terms of the contract have been fulfilled that's essentially the standard it's whether or not you have materially complied and it just means that if somebody has done 99.5% of what they're supposed to do they fulfilled their contractual obligations so it's lawyerly that's why the term is used all right thank goodness we have the lawyers and I have who got that other way all right any final questions my turn okay so obviously there's been a change in process of all the Trane additional training that police officers have received what is going to take place now in the decision that an officer makes before using force on someone is there a step-by-step process reviewing their training as they go through this situation that they're in where they may have to use force are you asking if after the event has occurred do we go back and look at what training was made or what decisions were made right that's where so as officers arrived on scene that's where all of the training is going to come is going to come full circle right the de-escalation training the procedural justice training the implicit bias training tactics while we're talking we're continually looking for new and better less lethal options all of that stuff is taken into effect and it can happen in a matter of seconds so everything that the officer is trained to do and that's why we repetitively train on things because when you're placed in situated in stressful situations you revert right back to your training so that's why it's an ongoing training and like I said all of those things are taken into consideration your surroundings the type of call it is have you interacted with this person before what are my less lethal options how many other officers are around all of that stuff is taken into effect in the blink of an eye basically and then all of that is reviewed at a very very fine level a question for the chief there are some people and I think Portland Tribune there been some people on the police accountability community that have looked at this and said this is a tremendous amount of energy and focus that maybe has sapped energy and focus away from areas that would have been more productive to make reforms I wonder do you agree with that and if so what are the reforms or regardless what are the reforms in accountability that you would like to focus on now specifically no I don't think this has been negative at all I think this has had a great impact on the bureau and our ability to hold ourselves accountable and on our ability to show the public how we hold ourselves accountable I don't think this has been negative in that manner in any way and I think we're going to continue to look for ways to to show the community what we do and why we do it and to be as transparent and as accountable as possible I just want to again thank everyone for your attention we also are recording this so we'll post it online if anyone missed it but again thank you and thanks to everybody who is able to show up today and to our teams who made this day possible thanks thank you everyone