The Northeast Coalition of Neighborhoods hosted a criminal justice forum on Monday. Here are notes taken by one attendee, Katy Wolf of Boise:

Offices represented:

-Multnomah County, Probation Office

-Multnomah County, District Attorney’s Office

-City of Portland, Office of Neighborhood Involvement, Crime Prevention Program

-City of Portland, Police Bureau, Gang Enforcement Team, North Precinct

 

Representatives:

Sgt Duilio (Doolio) of North Precinct

Dylan Arthur, Gang Enforcement Team, North Precinct

Mary Tompkins, Crime Prevention (Mayor’s office)

Jenna Plank, DA

Officer Zoeller, Neighborhood Response Team

 

Dylan Arthur – Community Supervision

• 9 years as parole officer, recently consolidated under one roof/manager. Definition of parole has changed a bit – used to be you go back to prison if you screw up. Basic premise is to not see any new victims. Extensive risk assessments. His specialty is sex offenders. Coordinate on social issues. Also have: mentally ill offenders, Gang Team, gender-specific (women’s only), domestic violence. Misdemeanor division has huge case loads.
• 7,000 offenders in Mult Co in any given day
• 33,000 offenders processed through Jail
• Came from 11 years with juvenile side – 3,600 referrals/year. 300 make it to formal supervision. 1,000/year in detention facility. 440 admitted to detention, see judge to see where they go from there.
• Average field PO – 40-80 offenders per PO being supervised any given day. They are often required to come to their office, weekly to monthly, bi-monthly. Work w/treatment providers. Most offenders are in substance abuse, mental health, domestic violence.
• A lot of field work, for several reasons. Meet w/family, neighbors. Make sure they live there.

 

Jenna Plank – DA

• Currently assigned as Neighborhood DA to Lloyd – office is across from Holladay Park. Mostly livability crimes, from traffic to graffiti, car prowl, auto theft. Mostly misdemeanors, which are the most common types of crimes to affect most neighbors. Also have some gang and homicide.
• Person crimes are higher in NE than rest of city. Still down this year compared to recent years overall and person-crimes.
• Auto theft is up. Car prowls are up. May be because they’re harder to prosecute because of changes in law. 1-2 people can account for a lot of those crimes.
• County entering new phase in dealing w/property offenders. Working w/probation on new approach. Reduce # ppl going to prison. Funnel prison building money into prevention.Also – average property offender, if they went to prison, after 3rd prosecution, recitivism rate is high. Wasnt fixing the problem. Program is too new to say how effective yet.
• Have felony unit dedicated to home break-ins. PPB has detectives assigned to just burglaries, which are steady.
• If there is livability issue like stolen cars or drug house, she can look them up and connect to probation officers and detectives. Can do creative resolutions for repeat offenders like bundling with others.
• 900-1000 PPB officers. 70 DAs. It’s easy to get lost in the system, so contact her directly.

 

Mary Tompkins – Crime Prevention Coordinator

• NE area. Supposed to be 12 coordinators but due to budget cuts will be 11.
• Respond to livability issues like drug houses, squatter houses, organize foot patrols. Mark Wells does all Foot Patrols and Neighborhood Watches. Stephanie does coordination and communications.
• Did two Watches in King, also had forum at King after the shootings. Got trauma counselors from PPS. Talked to teachers, students, parents. Response to lockdown. 2 arrests made, which was good outcome due to good police work.
• People thought people on 9th and Alberta were loitering and were part of the problem. Did CEPTED and talked to managers and tenants, found that they were innocent of anything, and also wanted more security. They did CPTED improvements w/management.
• Do lots of training and activities. Music at Holladay Park, park host, activities, M-F. Partner w/Lloyd, PPB, DA. Received an award for the park. Park hosts will walk in 2s. Will have outreach people. Guy that punched a ranger was ID’d and arrested.
• 9 outreach workers. Just received an award.
• National Night Out – Can help organize them.

 

Anthony Zoeller – PPB

• Neighborhood Response Team – 1 sgt and 6 officers (1 officer been out injured last 6 mos) for N/NE area.
• Non-essential so don’t respond to calls, can do their own thing. Staffing shortage overall. They now get plugged into specialty units that are understaffed. Also last minute support for patrol.
• King has been #1 for a long time. Been NERT officer 4 years.
• Helped remove people from problem house, got it boarded up. Managing intake of complaints, look at biggest effect.
• Been dealing a lot with homelessness and criminality. On front lines of Hazelnut Grove and Forgotten Realms.
• Most is suspicious activity, drug houses, code and livability compliance
• Work with Crime Prevention to communicate what theyre planning to do

 

Duilio – GET

• GVRTs – Gang Violence Response Team
• Numbers in 2010 doubled from past years. Since then shootings and stabbings.2015 numbers doubled from 2011-2014.
• GVRT callouts – of those 185 shootings (73 gang shootings). Recovered 200 guns
• Day unit – detectives and undercover, afternoon unit – contacts/stops – 100 guns. More than half were convicted felons.
• 2016 numbers have been about same as 2015. Last May: 25 shootings (most ever). Got add’l 6 officers and supervisor last year. 2016 day shift and afternoon shift worked together on 2 week mission to focus on the big offenders, made key arrests and gun seizures. Saw dramatic decrease in shootings.
• Now more common to see multiple shooters together. Now targeting those groups. New program is called NIBEN, started in Jan. Changed from 9-12 months to 5 day turnaround on bullet casing analysis. Now have tons more info.
• WIll see how it goes rest of summer. One area of concern is staffing shortage. Patrol is #1, response to 911 calls and respond to citizen calls. If nearby the GVRT helps but they dont do patrol. Shortage is due to bad projection years ago. Hiring is slow process. We can’t catch up overnight. Pay isn’t great. Mayor wants to retain and attract – proposed a raise for police officers. Usually its the union. Can’t compete with the counties.
• Potentially all the specialty units could go away. Acting Chief is meeting with all special units leaders to get bare boned essential needs. 65 officers will need to go from special units to patrol. May try to keep cops about to retire. Can’t lower standards.
• Work closely w/DA, probation/parole. They have zero tolerance – try to prosecute with repeat offenders. Gang crimes are very hard to solve. Witnesses are intimidated.
• Can make a traffic stop and make an arrest. Put a detainer on a guy on probation.
• Work closely with Gang Outreach under office of Youth Violence Prevention. Connect with gang involved people, make a difference. Through them they have Youth For Real program. Get them young when they’re starting to get into it, or older people who are out on probation and want to move on and start a family. Check boxes on each person, send it to outreach workers, who contact them and offer resources.
• Buzzwords: intervention, suppression, prevention
• Seems to be improving in this area. Majority of gang violence pre-2011 was in inner N/NE. Since then it’s gone to east side, 82nd and east. Historic turf is still here – Woodlawn Park Bloods, Unthank Park Hustlers. May change in 20 years.
• Stops are targeted, not random or profiling. They’re going after the right people. His unit is passionate and cares about people.

 

Questions:

• Eileen – for Dylan – what strategies/techniques do you use with people who are pathological liars
  • Response: most have to comply with polygraph, every 6 months, in compliance with supervision. Polygraph is not end all/be all since some people can beat them. Can also do special issue polygraphs. Also talk to other people that live with or near them. Veteran POs are skeptical/savvy.
• Eileen – for Dylan – what about people with personality disorders
  • Response: Do periodic trainings on different types, such as psychopaths. Also have a mental illness special unit. Work with POs with those types of offenders.
• Eileen – for Dylan – Does GPS work?
  • If offender is going to cut it off, then they know the need to do other types of contacts and tracking. Works with certain people. Some is trial/error. If you’re not compliant, we’ll check on you frequently, or you’ll go back to jail. Set out condition to get the offender where they want to be – earn back your freedom, maybe through GPS.
• Byron – What impacts from the DOJ settlement? Concerned at how the Community Oversight Advisory Board has gone.
  • Officer Duilio – DOJ wants to standardize policing across country. Any use of force gets an investigation. From supervisor perspective, its a lot of work but its a good thing. You’ll now know if you have a rogue cop. His job is to reassure officers to use necessary and minimal amount of force. Fear of being controlled by DOJ is more perception than reality, affecting officer morale. Other things is a lot more documentation, record keeping, stats. Constant changes for officers to deal with for those that have been around a while – computer system, cars, uniform, etc. Basics of police work hasn’t changed in 20 years. Probably good to have more oversight now.
  • Officer Duilio – Re: COAB – negative perception from rank and file, some decisions taken from them. From his perspective there are some positive outcomes. Report writing is much better – more thorough. Takes longer but product is better for different audiences, not just DA.
• Police exams are long and boring process. Lose people that way. We also have a lot of officers ready to retire, need to keep them.
  • Duilio – it is long, it’s thorough because its important. More than half the force will retire in the next 10 years. Mayor is doing the right things, need COuncil to act, and next Mayor to carry it through.
• Work tends to be reactive. Is there anything we can do to make Portland more inhospitable to crime?
  • DA: Holladay Park activities are great example.
  • DA: What NY did was the broken windows theory. They made arrests for minor things. IMO, front line of defense is NERT and afternoon GVRT, patrol.
  • Zoeller: NY can afford to do officer foot patrols, we can’t. Can address problem locations. Vacant houses are crime magnets. Shutting down houses is done through Bureau of Environmental Services. Can’t use the old Chronic Nuisance policy from 10-15 years ago. Talked to Chad Stover on Thursday about the policy work on zombie houses, they are still working on it.
• Negative perception of cops
  • Duilio: When body cams come, it will help. Centra has a pilot program to have body cams, not sure when all PPB will get them for every officer. Need server capacity for all the video files.
  • Zoeller: Also, having people to look up the videos for public record requests, and watch them in response to arrests.
• What can I do to help?
  • Duilio: Advocate for more police. We need 200 more officers, we need to be where Seattle is just to provide service that public wants.
  • Dylan Arthur – gangs are generational, good evidence that kids will be in gang too. Juvenile dept needs to intervene early on. Residential Treatment works with 8-12 yos that makes a huge difference but we can’t retain those workers because they pay so low.

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–If you have questions, contact us as info@kingneighborhood.org and we’ll try to get them answered.