Editor’s note: This story discusses suicide and police violence, including incidents where police officers have killed people.
Since 2010, the OIR Group of Los Angeles has been an integral component of the city of Portland’s police accountability system. Composed of nationally recognized experts in criminology, law enforcement practices, police administration and constitutional policing, OIR has been repeatedly commissioned by the city to review the most serious and consequential uses of force by the Portland Police Bureau. OIR has authored nine extensive reports examining in-custody deaths and deadly force incidents involving PPB officers, as well as a tenth in 2022 focused on the police bureau’s organizational culture.
Each report presents a detailed summary of the underlying facts, culled from homicide investigations, Internal Affairs Division reviews, findings of the Use of Force Review Board, unit commander assessments, and, in some cases, evaluations by the chief of police. Their primary sources are created by police. The reports also assess whether personnel issues influenced the force incident or the subsequent investigation, provide a full timeline of events and conclude with policy and practice recommendations aimed at reducing future harm.
Yet despite their depth and rigor, these reports share a fatal flaw: they arrive far too late to matter.
This delay is not incidental; it is structural. The city of Portland has treated OIR reviews as something to be deferred until all criminal and civil litigation has concluded. The consequences of this choice are starkly illustrated by the very first OIR report, issued in 2010, which examined the 2006 killing of James Chasse. Chasse, an innocent man with schizophrenia, was brutally beaten by Portland police officers in front of dozens of witnesses and died shortly thereafter. City leaders didn’t think to commission a review from OIR until years of litigation was resolved, a delay that included a years-long postponement under then-police Chief Rosie Sizer.
By the time the OIR report arrived, Sizer was gone. The officers involved had already been criminally and administratively absolved. Whatever truth the report contained, whatever lessons it offered, and whatever recommendations it made arrived after the window for accountability had firmly closed. The report became an historical document rather than a tool for change.
The ninth OIR report, released in January, follows the same pattern. It is a complex, durable document that may be valuable to scholars. But once again, it is late. The report examines 10 use-of-force incidents, including two officer-involved fatal shootings, four non-fatal shootings, and three other serious force encounters. Perhaps the most troubling case involves Tai Tran, a man with mental illness who died by suicide while surrounded by officers, an incident that remains deeply unsettling.
The earliest of these 10 incidents occurred in 2019, seven years and four police chiefs before the report was issued. That is far too late to inform discipline for individual officers. It is far too late to shape policy, training or directives in real time. It is far too late to build or repair community trust. It is far too late to meaningfully understand the harm done to those injured or killed, or to their families and communities. In every sense that matters, it is too late.
Justice delayed is justice denied. The city should contract with OIR or another similar operation to provide contemporaneous reports, independent of police-created information, and irrespective of ongoing criminal or civil proceedings.
In his response to OIR’s 2026 report, PPB Chief Bob Day in part agrees.
“The Bureau recognizes the advantages of reviewing these critical incidents quickly in order to timely address identified gaps in policy or training,” Day wrote in his response. “However, the public dissemination of this type of analysis while cases remain in pending litigation or subject to future claims can complicate litigation, particularly if there are inaccuracies in the description of the events that occurred. The Police Bureau requests that a draft of such cases in litigation be reviewed by the City Attorney’s Office prior to finalizing reports to allow for discussion and confirmation of the accuracy of factual summaries.”
Okay, that’s a good compromise. Chief Day moves us forward.
To understand how this delay persists, it is useful to examine the broader landscape of police accountability mechanisms that exist alongside the OIR process. Many of these mechanisms operate far outside Portland itself. The U.S. Department of Justice, for example, investigated the city of Portland and PPB in 2013 and found a pattern and practice of excessive force against people with mental illness. That investigation resulted in ongoing litigation and federal oversight that continues today.
The DOJ has vast investigative capacity and access to information from PPB far beyond public reach. It possesses detailed records of thousands of use-of-force incidents, including those involving Portland police and surrounding jurisdictions during the 2020 protests, as well as force used by federal officers that same year. The DOJ is fully capable of holding individual officers accountable. Examples: Convictions of five Memphis police officers in the 2023 beating and death of Tyre Nichols, and of Louisville police detective Brett Hankison for firing into Breonna Taylor’s home during a botched 2020 raid. Rare — but possible.
At the state level, the Oregon Department of Justice also has the authority to investigate misuse of force by state-certified officers, but largely declines to exercise that authority. By contrast, the State of Washington created an Office of Independent Investigations explicitly designed to investigate police use of deadly force. OII’s stated mission is to “conduct fair, thorough, transparent, and competent investigations,” grounded in the belief “that all investigations of police use of force will be free from bias and trusted by everyone.”
Multnomah County’s District Attorney is charged with determining whether each use of deadly force by law enforcement constitutes a crime and, if so, prosecuting the responsible officer. Despite dozens of investigations over decades, no Portland police officer has been fully prosecuted for use of deadly force since 1970. This outcome is not mysterious. District attorneys are embedded within the law enforcement ecosystem. Their attorneys and investigators work daily, side by side, with police officers. Their determinations cannot reasonably be described as free from bias or broadly trusted by the public.
To be clear, Multnomah County district attorneys, past and present, have made important contributions to accountability by releasing grand jury transcripts in deadly force cases. These records are valuable and appreciated and frustrating. Their purpose is narrow: to determine criminal liability at the apex moment force was used. They focus on the “how.”
Facts are easy. But defining the “what happened” by the apex moment is misleading. What the community needs answered is the “why.” Answering the why questions is what an independent and impartial report — checked for accuracy by a city attorney — can deliver.
Why was Damon Lamarr Johnson, killed by Portland police in July, seemingly housed without adequate and supportive services for his mental illness and addiction? Why did the Bureau of Emergency Communications dispatch armed police officers to his home for a psychiatric medical emergency when no crime had been committed? Why was Project Respond, Portland’s high-acuity mobile crisis response team, not deployed? These are not legal, criminal or civil questions, but they are essential ones to making sure another person with mental illness doesn’t die in police custody.
Johnson’s crisis likely began hours or days or even weeks prior to the apex moment. An institutional focus on criminal or civil liability misses the opportunity for an earlier upstream solution in the future.
The questions communities ask after a death or serious injury extend far beyond the scope of a grand jury, beyond any single agency, and beyond any single level of government. If Portland is serious about reducing misuse of force, it must confront the “why” questions, not just the “how.”
With the release of the 2026 report, 75 people who were harmed or threatened by PPB with deadly force have now been reviewed by OIR. This will likely be the final report commissioned through the City’s Independent Police Review. That office is winding down as the new Community Board for Police Accountability is established, a reform mandated by a November 2020 ballot measure approved by 82% of Portland voters, just sixty-two months ago.
Notably, the problem of delay was identified at the very beginning of this process. In its first 2010 report on the killing of James Chasse, OIR explicitly recommended that future reviews of officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths should not be contingent on the completion of civil litigation.
Then-City Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade agreed.
“Timely reviews are essential if they are to be meaningful and relevant to City officials, the Police Bureau, and the public,” she said. “Their primary purpose is to identify improvements in police practices, tactical decision-making, and oversight mechanisms. Civil lawsuits, which often drag on for years, undermine that goal when they dictate the timing of expert reviews. OIR recommended—and the Auditor concurred—that outside reviews should occur at the close of investigations, regardless of litigation timelines, subject only to the availability of resources.”
Sixteen years later, Portland fails to follow Griffin-Valade’s guidance.
The Community Board for Police Accountability may, or may not, change this practice of delayed reporting by an outside consultancy. But the practice they develop will arrive months if not years from today, after more predictable use of force incidents occur, after more people die.
Jason Renaud is an activist who coordinates the work of the Mental Health Alliance.
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This article appears in January 28, 2026.
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