In the wake of the COAB chairman's resignation, a pattern of infighting, mistrust and general frustration with a lack of process emerged.
UPDATE June 1, 2016: On the heels of Kathleen Saadat's resignation, COAB member and co-chair of the Mental Health Crisis Response Subcommittee, Alisha Moreland-Capuia, resigned today, stating that she is stepping down, "At this time and under these current conditions."
Moreland-Capuia is a psychiatrist at Oregon Health and Sciences University and director of the Avel Gordly Center for Healing. This news comes less than a week after Mayor Charlie Hales nominated her to the board of the Portland Development Commission. She had also served as the mayor's appointee to the COAB.
Read her email resignation here.
UPDATE May 31, 2016: Following a May 12 meeting that ended in confrontations between erratic public commenters and the COAB about new filming rules, Kathleen Saadat sent a letter to members of the COAB this morning, resigning her post as Community Liaison and Chair. "This work is challenging. I know that the COAB is up to the challenge," she stated in the accompanying email.
Nine months into its existence, the community board put in place by the U.S. Department of Justice to make recommendations to the Portland Police Bureau regarding its use of excessive force has lost one-third of its voting members and one alternate.
Each board member signed up for what was supposed to be a two-year commitment.
These departures – including that of its chair, former Oregon Chief Justice Paul DeMuniz, in April – have complicated what’s already proved to be a daunting and overwhelming task for some members.
In the wake of DeMuniz’s resignation, a pattern of infighting, mistrust and general frustration with a lack of process emerged.
This group of volunteers, known as the Community Oversight and Advisory Board, has an important job to do – and it’s at the center of rebuilding the community’s trust with the Portland Police Bureau.
In 2012, a federal investigation found Portland police used excessive force with people who are or appear to be mentally ill. As a result, in 2014, a settlement agreement was approved, and the bureau was given five years to come into compliance with a long list of Department of Justice requirements that included changes to policy, training and oversight.
The settlement was unique in that it created a board made up of unpaid volunteers selected for the task of making recommendations to the Police Bureau and assisting with oversight of the bureau’s compliance with the settlement agreement.
This board, the COAB, includes 15 voting members representing various factions of the community, five Portland Police Bureau representatives and several non-voting alternates.
“Since we’re focused on the mental health community,” COAB member Bud Feuless said, “we selected members who currently struggle with or who have struggled with mental health, and so that’s unique; it’s special. But it also gives us some very unique and special challenges.”
Of the six members who’ve left the COAB, two were self-identified as having mental illness, however many board members who’ve experienced mental illness did not identify themselves as such during the application process, said Feuless — herself included.
Reasons members gave for leaving the COAB vary. Some cited personal reasons; two resigned from other boards, negating their membership; and others left because the time commitment was misrepresented to them during the application process.
The application said participation would take 10 hours per month, but several past and present members of the COAB told Street Roots they spent upward of 40 hours per month on COAB-related work. Some said they spent 20 or 30 hours per week on the COAB, from research and homework to subcommittee meetings and community engagement.
Sharon Maxwell became the most recent voting member to leave the COAB, and she called for two audits on her way out the door.
Her resignation letter, dated Oct. 7, was sent to the city auditor, committee members, city council members and the federal judge who issued the settlement, among others.
Maxwell served on numerous boards and civic committees, including Groundwork Portland and the city’s Minority Evaluator Program.
Her letter contains a numbered list of 11 reasons for resigning, culminating in what she called a “betrayal to every Portland resident in this city.”
In an interview with Street Roots, Maxwell, a Portland native, said that to heal the broken trust between Portlanders and their police, the settlement process must have meaningful community engagement, but some members think their voices are being hushed and that the COAB was set up to fail.
Maxwell’s resignation letter requested audits of the hiring process for the Compliance Officer-Community Liaison team and its budget.
The Compliance Officer-Community Liaison, also established under the Department of Justice settlement, is an independent agency hired to act as liaison among the COAB, the city, the Department of Justice and the Police Bureau and to conduct oversight of the settlement’s implementation.
The Compliance Officer-Community Liaison is made up of a Chicago-based team, Dennis Rosenbaum and Amy Watson. Locally, the team hired longtime community activist Kathleen Saadat to facilitate the COAB meetings after DeMuniz resigned for personal reasons. Amy Ruiz, former chief of staff to Mayor Sam Adams, was hired to assist Saadat.
Concerns Maxwell laid out in her resignation letter and accompanying email, such as what she said was the Compliance Officer-Community Liaison’s failure to support COAB members, were echoed by former COAB member Kristi Jamison and current member Myrlaviani Rivier during interviews with Street Roots. All three expressed frustration over the lack of process and confusion surrounding the COAB’s role in the settlement and worried the group was ineffective.
Saadat said her greatest frustration has been “the lack of sound foundation being laid for this board” and noted the training and orientation for board members at the outset were not sufficient. But, she said, “it’s getting better. It’s more functional than it was a few months ago.”
In regard to the time commitment required of board members, she said, “some are spending a lot of time, some are spending a little, depending on interest or job status.”
Tasked with serving as mental health support to the COAB is Brad Taylor. He’s a city employee with 15 years’ experience in the social-service arena, and he expressed major concerns about the COAB’s functionality.
(Taylor is also sits on Street Roots’ Board of Directors.)
Among COAB members, rumors circulated that Taylor was sending secret reports to the city about their behavior during meetings. On Tuesday, Taylor’s supervisor, Stephanie Reynolds, program manager at the Office of Neighborhood Involvement, issued a statement to COAB members, stating that these rumors were false.
What Taylor was actually reporting were his concerns about the group environment and recommendations he believed would address issues of mistrust and dysfunction.
In April, Taylor sent an email to the Compliance Officer-Community Liaison stating, “It seems that the COAB was put to work, starting from an already behind position,” and noting it was handed a full agenda before fully understanding what its role was under the settlement agreement, and before its members were able to get an understanding of each other’s backgrounds and priorities.
He was also concerned that much of the communication between COAB members was taking place in private emails.
“If a member of the public were to ask to see what the COAB has been considering, I would need to print hundreds of pages of emails, and the format would be almost impossible to follow.”
Watson said COAB members should be using its website forums to communicate, but use has been sporadic.
“There seems to be sort of less side conversation. For a while, people were getting a bunch of emails, and some of it was unpleasant, to say the least.”
Taylor’s email also stated that some COAB members remained silent during meetings because the environment did not feel safe for differing opinions to be shared, and “the sense of distrust, skepticism, angst and conflict that were present in the first meeting seem to be growing.”
Compliance Officer-Community Liaison member Watson said that her team had numerous discussions with Taylor about how to address the issues and recommendations he outlined in his memos and that some were implemented.
“We have a lot of people who are really passionate about improving things in Portland, but they’re coming with different opinions, different perspective and some variation in priorities, so I think some conflict is inevitable,” she said.
Six months into the COAB’s process, on Aug. 11, Taylor sent another memo to the COCL, once again stating his concerns over the loss of what was, by then, four voting members and one alternate, “three of whom are individuals who had indicated on their initial application that they have lived experience with mental illness,” he wrote.
Nine days later, on Aug. 20, COAB member Rivier, who goes by V, sent a formal complaint against Saadat and Taylor to Rosenbaum and Watson, citing an incident that occurred between her and Sadaat following the Aug. 13 COAB meeting at Portland Community College’s Cascade Campus and voicing her concerns about Taylor’s perceived secret reports.
In a response to her complaint, Rosenbaum issued a response stating, “Nothing about this incident suggests to us that any misconduct or violation of the law has occurred on the part of Ms. Saadat,” and he concluded his letter with the recommendation that “everyone return to the work of the Settlement Agreement.”
Watson said the infighting among parties has taken up a considerable amount of the Compliance Officer-Community Liaison’s time. Members of the team are paid with taxpayer dollars, with Saadat earning the most: $150,000 annually.
In Taylor’s last memo, he noted views expressed to him by members of the COAB indicated many believed “the COAB was created as a public relations move and the seats were filled in a ‘tokenism’ fashion,” and the community board members felt like they were there to observe the process, not to advise it.
When asked if she agreed with this sentiment, Feuless said, “I think most of us operate under both a fear that that could be true, but also we remain here because we are steadfastly and personally committed to doing anything we can to make sure that is not true.”
Feuless said while the process has been a struggle, the COAB is coming to understand its role and is successfully making key recommendations to the Police Bureau.
“Kathleen has brought new focus, but in doing so, she’s brought a very firm hand,” Feuless said of Saadat. “Many in COAB have had their issues with that, including myself.”
Sadaat said her approach has been meeting with board members individually to see what they need, clarifying the COAB’s role, and putting operational structures in place.
What the COAB needs, Feuless said, are resources.
“There are only 15 of us plus five police advisers, and we’re just running out of people for work groups.”
Watson, a Compliance Officer-Community Liaison team member, said: “I think there was some naiveté in terms of thinking about what it would take to really get everything done. Some of the settlements in other cities have multimillion-dollar budgets each year to support all of the work.”
The Portland settlement is funded with $750,000 annually, $458,000 of which goes directly to the Compliance Officer-Community Liaison.
Feuless said the COAB needs help from the community it’s representing.
“We would be welcoming to any community member that wants to engage and have their voice heard and that wanted to get involved in work groups,” she said.
Sadaat said a good place to start for members of the public who wish to get involved is reading the Compliance Officer-Community Liaison’s Draft Second Quarterly Report, then going to a town hall meeting where they can give public comment on it. The meeting is at 6 p.m. Oct. 22 at PCC Cascade Campus in the Moriarty Arts and Humanities Building, Room 104.
“I wish that people would really take the time to understand what an opportunity this is for Portland and the country,” she said. “This is intended to involve the people in Portland who are not elected officials, and I’d like to see the auditorium packed.”
Both Saadat and Feuless said the COAB has become more focused and has generated a dozen substantive recommendations for the Police Bureau.
“There’s a lot of back ground noise, but you should be seeing more and more and more recommendations,” Feuless said. “We came in with our superhero capes on, and we still have that level of commitment, but we’ve found out that we are not the legion of superheroes.”
Portland residents are also encouraged to attend COAB subcommittee meetings. For a complete schedule, go to cocl-coab.org/calendar.
