Advocates for accountability over private security guards have taken their case to City Hall with a set of recommendations to bring private security guards under public oversight.
Portland civil rights attorney Adam Arms, homeless advocate Patrick Nolen with Sisters of the Road, and Israel Bayer, director of Street Roots, have authored a set of actions that they say “will ultimately make Portland safer for all residents and visitors, especially the most vulnerable and disenfranchised.”
“It’s a very sensitive and important job that these folks are doing,” said Arms, the legal advisor with the Western Regional Advocacy Project. “They have a tremendous amount of power. And with great power there is a great danger for misuse or abuse of that power. And we’re asking the city to hold them accountable.”
Numerous private security companies have guards patrolling property in downtown Portland, but the issue of public oversight has come into focus over the monitoring of public parks and downtown sidewalks by Portland Patrol Inc. PPI is employed by the Portland Business Alliance, a private entity, which is paid by the city to provide security downtown as part of the business organization’s Clean and Safe program. PPI is the only private security group authorized to issue park exclusions, and in the past year it has issued more than 1,500 exclusions in the city’s parks. However, the city has no public oversight mechanism over PPI. PPI guards also carry sidearms and wear uniforms almost identical to Portland Police Bureau officers, leading to confusion among people on the streets when stopped or questioned.
“They carry guns, and in people’s minds they have the full force and effect of police officers, and a layperson on the street is probably not going to understand the subtle but important differences between PPI and the Portland police officer,” Arms said. “So a PPI officer has tremendous power over folks on the streets. They look like law enforcement. They’re talking the talk. Who watches the watchers in this case?”
The recommendations’ authors say they believe that most security guards carry out their duties responsibly and do not intend to harm or target homeless people. “But we also believe that oversight is crucial to ensure that individuals’ rights are protected and that the public remains safe – and that the current system is deficient in this regard,” the proposal states.
The recommendations include:
“We hope that with the recommendations that we can have a productive conversation around creating oversight in a way that’s not adversarial,” says Bayer. “It might be hard to believe but we have a tremendous respect for the PBA and the job they have to do, but we want to ensure that when private security guards overlap with public policy and the citizenry – on public property – that there is appropriate public oversight to their actions.”
Matt Grumm, Parks and Recreation liaison for Commissioner Dan Saltzman’s office, says the commissioner is comfortable with the city’s contract to use private security guards via the Portland Business Alliance. As liaison, Grumm receives monthly reports on guard activity in the parks, as well as any complaints from the public that are passed on by the Independent Police Review Division, which does not handle security guard complaints. If people have a problem with how they have been treated, they can also go directly to their elected officials, Grumm said, however, the complaints are few.
“Commissioner Saltzman is tentatively open to the idea of more oversight, but he doesn’t sense that there is a huge problem in the community,” Grumm said. “Commissioner Saltzman is not moving forward on this issue. If the mayor or other commissioners waned to have a conversation, he would definitely be a part of that.”
Jamal Folsom with Commissioner Erik Sten’s office has reviewed the recommendations and said the concerns about public oversight and private guards issuing park exclusions have merit.
“All the recommendations that deal specifically with enforcement with city policy, seem reasonable, and in my opinion merit discussion and possible consideration,” Folsom said.
Currently, people who have a complaint against a PPI guard are told to ask for a card with contact information from the guard, and then report that complaint to PPI or the Portland Business Alliance for investigation. The other option is to report to the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training in Salem, which does not investigate civil rights complaints.
“Putting the burden on the individual to ask for the card — and I’ve heard some people say some security guards won’t give them the card, or tell them that they don’t have one — I don’t think that’s a good way to do it,” says Monica Goracke, a homeless advocate attorney with the Oregon Law Center.
The DPSST isn’t much of a suitable substitute, according to Goracke. “It’s not something the ordinary person is ever going to know or figure out,” she says. “I’ve looked into their process. If they get a complaint about a security guard, they forward that complaint to the employing agency. Their jurisdiction over matters of officers is limited.”
