Danielle Outlaw tells Street Roots staff and vendors that police are chasing the radio while getting blamed for problems they cannot solve
Danielle Outlaw has been thrust into the spotlight. The first African-American woman to serve as chief of the Portland Police Bureau, she’s been faced with multiple high-profile challenges since taking over in 2017.
Her bureau’s handling of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office’s occupation, clashes between Patriot Prayer and Antifa and officer-involved shootings have grabbed headlines while Outlaw’s public statements and her representation in the press have become news items of their own. It’s been quite a quagmire the 42-year-old former Oakland, Calif., deputy police chief has contended with during her first 14 months on the job.
Beneath the surface, however, Portland police are drowning in endless calls for service involving the city’s homeless population as the Police Bureau continues to grapple with the longer-term issue of how to respond to those incidents.
While the bureau faced widespread criticism following The Oregonian’s report that the majority of arrests in 2017 were of people experiencing homelessness, police union President Daryl Turner argued police had become a scapegoat for what are really the city’s failed policies.
At last count, there were 4,177 people experiencing homelessness in Multnomah County, up 10 percent from 2015. About 60 percent of those counted self-identified as having a disability, including mental health and substance abuse disorders, further complicating the bureau’s role as the city’s main point of contact with its houseless residents.
The bureau is still working to fulfill a settlement it reached with the U.S. Department of Justice over how the police treat people with mental illness. The Justice Department in 2012 found the bureau “engages in a pattern or practice of unnecessary or unreasonable force during interactions with people who have or are perceived to have mental illness.”
At Street Roots, police interactions are a regular topic of conversation in the vendor office, so we sat down with seven Street Roots vendors who have had recent interactions with Portland police while they were experiencing homelessness.
While the nature of their interactions and opinions of the bureau ran the gamut, several patterns emerged. Most sitting at our roundtable said they did not feel as though the bureau was there to serve them and that they did not feel comfortable calling the police for help. They also said they felt the bureau overresponds to incidents involving homeless folks, sending more officers to the scene than are needed, often overwhelming the person they’re contacting, who in some cases appears to be in a mental-health crisis.
We questioned Outlaw about these concerns during a recent interview at our office in Old Town. Our editorial staff was joined by Street Roots vendor Sean Sheffield for a wide-ranging interview about her first year on the job and her plans moving forward, particularly regarding how the Police Bureau deals with individuals experiencing homelessness and mental-health issues.
Street Roots reporter Emily Green: Reporters at The Oregonian found 52 percent of arrests in 2017 were of people experiencing homelessness. Many of the arrests were for nonviolent, livability-type crimes. While we understand the bureau may dispute that percentage, it’s harder to dispute that these findings do show that there is a significant amount of police resources going to the policing of people experiencing homelessness. When you read that article, what went through your mind?
Portland Police Chief Danielle Outlaw: The biggest takeaway for me is that we have to find a way to address the root cause of the issue. Because the calls for service aren’t going to stop on our end. We don’t have the luxury, when someone calls the police for service, to say, “We’re not coming.” And a lot of times, we don’t know what we’re responding to.
I’ve heard a lot of criticism, and constructive feedback also, when the article came out, saying, “Look, we understand that people call the police, you have to show up, and there might be crimes evident there, but it’s the low-hanging fruit, and does that create a disproportionality with how you police and provide service to the community?”
As a result of that, I did request the Independent Police Review out of the Auditor’s Office to take a look at our policies to see if there was something systemically that we were doing to create these disproportionalities outside of what we saw in front of us, meaning the calls for service and being reactive to what’s there.
Now, when we do make an arrest, it doesn’t necessarily always mean it’s a bad thing, meaning that someone goes to jail and they remain in jail. It could also mean that they get services that they need, or after our interaction we make referrals to partner agencies or they may even be referred to our service coordination team to get housing.
Green: Is part of the problem that residents are calling police because there’s nobody else to call? I know on the police log it’s like, “Unwanted person, unwanted person, suspicious person, suspicious person,” and like you said, you have to respond to these calls. Is part of the problem that the city isn’t providing another avenue for people to deal with the issues that they’re seeing?
Outlaw: Is it the city? Is it the county? Whose baby is it?
There needs to be a shared understanding of the services that are needed and who is responsible for providing these services.
You asked me a question, but I agree with you – in that PPB, we’re at the forefront of the issue because we’re first responders. We’re 24/7. You call dispatch; you know we’re going to come because aside from the fire department, we’re the only ones that are available in that capacity.
It would be awesome to have another entity of some sort available to respond to what these needs are. But when you have the vague details of “unwanted person, suspicious person,” and there is a perceived nexus to a crime, we have to come to investigate.
In the meantime, on a very short-term basis, we have placed a sworn resource at the (911) dispatch center to assist with triaging some of these calls, to help dispatchers determine whether or not this really is a call for PPB or this is a call that needs to be referred to services of some other kind with a nexus to mental health needs or some other things.
We just started it (in November), so I don’t have the ability to report out on how effective it’s been, but the whole purpose of that is to see if there are other ways on the front end, we could figure out ways to get the right people in the right places at the right time.
Green: Can you give us a couple of examples of the types of calls that your bureau has been getting a lot of that you would like to divert somewhere else?
Outlaw: Calls without a criminal nexus would be a good start. On its surface, you might get someone posted outside of a business, right? And it might detract potential customers from coming inside a business, or someone might have been sitting on the sidewalk in front of someone’s home, not really bothering anybody. Clearly they’re in need of services, but if there is a perception by that resident that there’s a need for them to be in fear, they’ll call the police. When we respond, if we learn that this person really isn’t doing anything or committing any crimes, they are just present, but they need services of some sort. Is there another way to ascertain that without us having to respond to make that determination?
Street Roots reporter John Emshwiller: How would it work then, if you get a call like that and your sworn personnel say, “Well, this is not really a police call”? Who do you then send it to, to get out there in any kind of timely fashion?
Outlaw: Well that’s the key – you asked “timely fashion.”
I share with folks, even our new officers that come in, I say look, policing is changing, folks, and we’re adapting and we’re learning, but the nature of our calls are becoming far more complex, and we’re taking longer in our calls. Once officers get there, we’re training them to identify partner agencies to refer them to. And that can take time, either to get responses back or to find availability for whatever it is they’re looking for, to abate whatever that issue is that we were called for in the first place. If there is no crime there, they’ll make a police report and document in the report basically that this is in need of a referral, and then our behavioral health unit folks will come out after and follow-up with folks and try to identify services.
FURTHER READING: Homeless arrest investigation should focus on real solutions (Director's Desk)
Street Roots vendor Sean Sheffield: Behavioral health services – why aren’t they doing a ride-along with police, because especially when you talk about mental-health situations, the uniform, a lot of times, triggers that response of freaking out or whatever, that a lot of times escalates to something more serious. Where I’m from – I’m from Phoenix, Ariz., and we actually had behavioral health service people ride along with police. If it was more of a mental-health thing, the police didn’t react; they stayed in the car and let the behavioral health service person interact with it. That de-escalated a lot of things because they weren’t talking to a cop; they were talking to what they perceived as a doctor or a nurse or something along those lines. Is that something that could be used, maybe in the future?
Outlaw: When I first got here, I learned that the way the behavioral health response team was set up, it’s with an officer and a clinician – a lot of the response was after the fact; it was follow-up.
Where I come from, it was exactly what you’re talking about: It was a clinician and an officer, but they responded to actual calls. When they heard the call come out, they would take those calls, and the impact, for the most part, was exactly what you just described.
We are moving towards a more hybrid model so that we can have both, and we’re not just follow-up.
The issue for us is getting enough clinicians that are willing to do that.
In the short term, our officers all receive crisis intervention training, and then we also have a cadre of officers that had enhanced training that goes beyond the regular training, and we’ve been working very diligently in the last year to make sure that the ECIT (Enhanced Crisis Intervention Team) officers are dispatched to more of these calls. And we’ve been able to increase those numbers by working with the dispatch center.
Sheffield: The police response when it comes to a homeless individual – an example would be, police are responding to a domestic disturbance in a housing situation: There is one maybe two cop cars that show up. But I’ve seen myself a couple arguing and there are five or six cop cars, and like eight or 10 cops around two people – who are homeless, or maybe not even homeless but a couple having an argument out in the street. Is that police procedure, or is that just something police have done in the past that they are still enforcing today?
Outlaw: That’s a really good question. It’s a fair question, and unfortunately I don’t have a definite response to that because the answer is: It depends. Our response is dictated by what we know and what we don’t know.
There’s no cookie cutter. We train to ensure the safety of everyone involved. If you have something out in the middle of the street: What time of day is it? How many people are around? Are there bystanders? Are there other people that can be impacted by what’s going on here? If that’s the case, if it’s a busy street, if there’s a lot going on, if it’s a main thoroughfare, we might have more officers there to contain the situation and allow the primary responding officers to work directly with those who are involved. But I understand, optically, it can look like you got this little altercation in the middle of the street with two people, and you’ve got 16 officers here. But they might be there to be handling other things on the perimeter. Now, I would become concerned if you’re saying you got two people in a dispute and you have 16 officers standing around these two people.
Sheffield: That’s generally what it turns into.
Outlaw: Again, it depends on the circumstances of the situation, the history of the people. But, with all of that said, when you asked about what our procedure is, our training and my expectation in alignment with that training is that once we know what we have, we begin to peel back the resources that we have once we realize either the situation is de-escalated or a threat is no longer present.
Sheffield: And that’s what I’ve always seen in other cities, and other communities, is de-escalation – we gotta control this, gotta pull back a little bit.
To be honest with the stuff I’ve seen at my campsite, I have yet to see the Portland police do that. In fact, I have seen the opposite. I see more come in once they see it’s a homeless person. A good example is the other night at my camp, somebody was talking to my girlfriend and our camping buddies, and he just passed out. And there were four cop cars there before the fire department even got there, and this was more of a medical thing. It was one of my camping buddies who called 911, and he even said on the call, “We need the fire department and an ambulance.” Instead, four cops came, and then they called the fire department.
Outlaw: And that’s an example of a call where we’re dispatched, and ultimately, it was something that should have been handled in another way. And that would be the type of call as well, depending on the rest of the circumstances, where the person sitting in dispatch would be able to say, “No, it doesn’t sound like it requires a police response at this time; this is solely a medical call.”
Street Roots Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl: Another (Street Roots) vendor, C.W., wanted to be here. He actually had a housing meeting at 9 ‘o clock, so it’s good he’s not here.
I’m going to preface his question, and it’s kind of a philosophical question, but it reflects a little bit what you told Oregon Public Broadcasting in that when growing up in Oakland, you felt the police weren’t there to help you.
Seven months ago, C.W. was attacked. He’s homeless, and he was attacked. He woke up to a guy beating him with a bottle. He called police, and he said he waited about a half-hour – no police. He started packing up his bags. It got to be like 45 minutes; no police showed up. This was downtown, in the Pearl District. He had been assaulted and was bleeding, and he waited at the spot for the police to show up. After 45 minutes to an hour, he left. A couple of blocks away, there were four police officers, and he was just incensed. He wants to know: Do you serve the affluent and the few, or the many and the poor?
Outlaw: Last year, I had just gotten here and immediately delved into our budget asks. When I presented the first time at Council, I attempted to paint a picture of why we needed more officers. I tried to start off with a call – it wasn’t allowed to be played – but it was an emergency call. It was a carjacking that had just occurred downtown, near the South Waterfront area, near that 7-Eleven over there, and what I was going to do was play the call, and then leave it.
And then, an hour and 20 seconds later, I was going to step back in after the presentation’s answers and questions, and I was kind of hoping that people would have forgotten that I had played the call in the beginning, and say, “Oh by the way, an hour and however many seconds has passed. That’s how long it took for officers to respond to this person that had just been a victim of an armed carjacking. And the dispatcher told them somebody would be right there.”
What had happened in that call is there were officers not very far from where this victim was, but they were tied up on another critical incident right down the street on Naito Parkway.
Our response times are getting slower and slower, and it’s not because we’re out here dragging our feet. Everyone has the same criticism and complaint, quite frankly.
You might only need to call the police one time, and if I need you that one, good time, I need you here – and if you don’t come? My impression of the police forever will be a negative, or it will be: You didn’t come because I am a (fill in the blank).
So the answer is no. It’s not that we only provide services to the certain demographics – the rich people or whatever – because the folks that are rich have the same complaints.
As the city grows, population-wise, the trend lines are going in opposite directions; the city is growing, but the number of officers is going down.
And I’m not saying as officers that we need to be this occupying force; it’s just to handle basic calls for service so we can get there in a timely manner to answer the needs for demand.
(Editor’s note: Portland Police Bureau’s average response time to the 87,400 high-priority calls it received during the past 12 months was nine minutes; to the 81,400 medium-priority calls, the average response took 18 minutes; and to the 112,400 low-priority calls, 46 minutes.)
Zuhl: I know you are starting on your five-year strategic plan. What efforts are you making to engage with the homeless population to be a part of this plan?
Outlaw: The steering committee is representatives that pretty much cover almost every demographic possible, or have contact with (those demographics). The whole point was to make sure that it’s not just one segment of our community here that’s speaking on behalf of everyone. That’s the core of the process. They’re providing the perspectives through their various lenses to make sure that all the avenues are covered.
(Editors note: According to the list of membership the Police Bureau provided Street Roots, the Strategic Plan Steering Committee includes representatives for immigrants, refugees, sexual minorities, young adults, the NAACP, the Latinx and mental health communities, the mayor’s office and the Portland Business Alliance. That’s in addition to members of the Police Bureau. No known homeless representative was listed.)
Zuhl: We had a roundtable with several of our vendors, telling them we were going to be talking with you, and while each vendor had particular experiences, there was a sense that there was a definite “us versus them,” and I’m sure that is indicative of police forces across the country. Are you aware of this perception, and how do you think it can be changed?
Outlaw: Yes, I’m aware of the perception. And that’s a tough one. I know it won’t be changed overnight. A lot of it is through our actions and relationship building, but I think there also has to be an understanding, and a management, of expectations of our roles and what we’re responsible for, and what we do and why.
We still have jobs to do, and we are law enforcement. The question is in the areas where we have discretion, where and when and how do we use that discretion and what does that look like? If we have a situation, where we can make an arrest, for example, but we choose not to, who are we working with to make sure whatever that issue is that drew us there in the first place is abated? Because otherwise, the cycle continues.
You have some folks that are like, “We’ll only trust the police if the police leave us alone.” It doesn’t work that way because if there is a crime that’s been committed, there needs to be something done about it. The question is just how.
The same way those in the houseless community have concerns, there are citizens that equally complain on the opposite end who say we’re not doing enough.
After the (Oregonian) article came out, I heard a lot of, “Why aren’t the numbers higher?” or “There is an encampment outside of my house, a big one, you know I’m getting gas stolen, there’s feces left in my driveway. This is ridiculous. I call the police; if and when they do come, they don’t do anything; they just move them right along, and they come right back.”
The complaints, I’m getting them from both sides. So my response to everyone is how do we get to where we need to be without addressing what the true cause of the issue is?
We can give somebody a citation. What does that do? It doesn’t abate the problem. They’re still there. Are you going to come to court? Probably not because all your belongings are here, and if I leave, when I come back, are my belongings still going to be here? It might turn into a warrant. Now I got a warrant hanging over my head; it snowballs.
Zuhl: That happened to one of our vendors yesterday. He got a ticket for jaywalking that he has no money to pay. It’s only going to make it worse for him.
Outlaw: I don’t know the circumstances, but we still have a job to do, and I think folks need to understand that. We’ll never be in a place where we’re completely hands off all of the time.
But I think it begins with opportunities like this when we all come to the table. What helps us, what helps me and what helps officers is when we peel all this stuff off and I get a chance to hear from you.
I know about sites and warrants and belongings and people telling me, “I got assaulted in an encampment. I wanted to call the police but I was afraid to call the police because when we call the police, the police might see other things around in plain sight and now somebody gets arrested or things get confiscated and, really, we just wanted you to come and take care of this person that assaulted me.”
You’ve got to be open to looking at things a different way.
We think about our responses when we do these things and say, “OK, are there some other ways we can maybe approach this issue, because I wouldn’t want that to be me if I was in that situation.”
But it can’t continue to be, “We are anti-police; can’t stand the police because of my experiences, so I won’t even sit at the table.” That’s been told to me: “I won’t even sit next to you at City Council.” I never even met the person. They know who I am, obviously, because I am the chief. But there is no willingness to even sit down and agree to disagree, and that’s the only way we move forward.
Green: In places experiencing opioid epidemics across the country, there is a lot of conversation about safe-injection sites. The Denver City Council on Monday (Nov. 26) approved a pilot project there, although it does need legislative approval. A lot of times, the district attorney and police chief get brought into these conversations because whether or not they support such an idea bears a lot of weight. Would you be supportive of a safe-injection pilot project in Portland
Outlaw: You know someone mentioned it in a command-staff meeting that we had Tuesday. I can’t say either way right now because my follow-up question to that person was, where has it worked before? Tell me the implications around it. I just don’t know enough information about it to say either way. I’m certainly open to hearing more about it.
Green: The police chief in Ithaca went up to Vancouver, B.C., where they’ve had safe-injection sites for a couple of decades now. Is that something that you’d be willing to do?
Outlaw: I would be willing, but then, you know, that can turn into another criticism. Not to be facetious – another criticism about the chief not being here and traveling. When I’m not here, that’s why I’m not here. It’s for reasons like that. I certainly would be open.
Zuhl: Downtown is well-represented with police and private security companies. But in the outskirts of the town, there aren’t the foot patrols, there aren’t the walking beats. There are lots of SUVs speeding down streets but not the actual community engagement that we understand is a part of this five-year plan that you want to develop. What is your plan to change that? Because it feels like a different kind of policing in the outer areas versus downtown.
Outlaw: Strategic plan aside, that’s just an issue, period. Deputy Chief Bob Day, he’s responsible for day-to-day operations, meaning the operations side of what we do. He tasked some staff to do a study of how we deploy according to where the greater need for service is, according to calls for service and making sure that we have the right number of officers.
For example, if there are more calls downtown than in North, why do we have more officers assigned to North Precinct than we do downtown? Or if there are more calls out East Precinct, why do we have more officers assigned to downtown and less officers assigned out east?
We will be looking at how we shift and deploy our resources. Because it is about being smart about what we do with what we have.
Zuhl: How often do police officers walk down the Springwater Corridor or the 205 corridor?
Outlaw: I know they do it every now and again. But whether it’s the corridor or anywhere, the answer is that it depends. Going back to the budget, when I was talking about demand and responding to calls for service. The other reason why I asked for additional bodies is to allow us to have more discretionary time during our shifts so an officer is not chasing the radio, meaning they’re not going from call to call to call, because you still have me saying, “I want you to get out of your car and walk at some point throughout your shift.”
I tell folks that I play a police officer now on TV. I’m not a line-level officer anymore, but I was at one point. And I know that there has to be some feasibility discussion around that. Like, “Chief, that’s great. We would love to get out of the car and walk and smile and hand-hold and just be able to have fellowship with folks outside of the regular enforcement actions. But I’m chasing the radio all day. If I do that, it’s at the expense of something else.”
When you have additional officers, it frees up time to allow them to get out of the car.
Zuhl: Multiple mayors and police chiefs and a community oversight board have come and gone since the DOJ settlement around the interaction with and use of force on people with mental illness. How are you going to move the needle forward in a way that improves the lives of people with mental health issues and their interactions with the police?
Outlaw: I want to be realistic and work within our lane.
Monday, we had a meeting with all of the partners that are involved in the settlement agreement. When I got here, I started convening these meetings to make sure we had dialogue amongst ourselves before we showed up in federal court and were hearing things from each other for the first time. The whole point of these agreements, in my opinion, is to have all of the involved parties working together. We don’t have to work against each other because we’re all working towards the same goal. When the Mental Health Alliance stood up, what they mentioned was their concern about having more drop-in centers and having peer-support specialists for those who are sitting on PCCEP, the Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing.
We’ve made progress. The amount of force used against those who are mentally ill, the use of force to arrest ratio, the percentage are very small.
I think at this point, it’s in our role, showing we sustain the efforts made and that we’re not just doing this because the DOJ was here. A lot of the stuff for us is going to be trust building.
Zuhl: What do officers tell you that they find challenging when responding to calls where mental health is the issue?
Outlaw: Just getting folks the resources that they need in a timely manner.
Zuhl: And the resources aren’t there, or they can’t connect them to the resources?
Outlaw: Both. If somebody needs housing and they’re spending the time calling the different places, and there’s none available, that can be an issue. And then just having an understanding of what our role is. Officers are very passionate about the work that they do. But because we’re on the front lines, we’re the ones who get the criticism without the same amount of criticism – if there is any that needed to be given – to others that are part of the system, because we are just one part of the system.
You hear a lot, “Why are we getting picked on? Why are we getting pulled into the bushes for things we’re not even responsible for?” A lot of it is around education awareness around really what our role is in the criminal justice system, and what we can and can’t do.
Sheffield: You said in the past that when it came to (Portland Mayor Ted) Wheeler, you didn’t think that doing sweeps was an effective tool. Being a homeless camper myself, I see sweeps almost on a daily basis, and the recurring question I hear asked all the time is when homeless people are packing up their camps, they look at cops and say, “Where are we supposed to go?” And the cops response is “I don’t know, just not here.”
I don’t see that as an effective tool. If you’re punishing someone for breaking a law, I understand that is your job, but it is also part of the job, too, to apply resources so that doesn’t happen again. It’s just a cycle. There’s no end to this. Would you agree with that? And if you do agree with that, I guess the follow-up question would be, take it to the mayor’s office, take it to City Hall to sit there and be the voice of reason saying, “This ain’t working. Why are we doing this?”
Outlaw: We cannot clear out folks solely because they’re sleeping on the street.
It would be really helpful to have everybody at the table at once because the mayor shares my sentiment. He doesn’t believe that the way to fix this is through just going up and doing sweeps.
Sheffield: Publicly it didn’t look like that a couple of months ago.
Outlaw: No, it’s not true. The sweeps, from my understanding, from what I’m told by the city, we’re only called in to do the sweeps when it’s to help further something the city is trying to do and we need that area cleared out.
It’s a waste of our time. It’s a waste of our resources to come in and continue to do things when we know it’s going to pop up again.
I think what needs to happen is that it needs to extend beyond just Chief Outlaw and Mayor Wheeler. It has to be a conversation had by everybody, the entire City Council – all of the commissioners – so it’s understood, the gravity of this issue.
He is the mayor who happens to be the police commissioner, and then I’m the police chief. So the bulk of it is directed towards us. But this really needs to be a collective discussion.
Zuhl: What does the city need to do to create that roundtable where everyone gets together?
Outlaw: I think we all need to have a clear understanding within the city what our role in this is – regardless of what it is. There are so many different stakeholders when it comes to this, and we all need to come around the table and just say, OK, here’s the issue. And I actually think that’s going to happen because a huge part of this upcoming budget is earmarked toward dealing with houseless issues. So, it’s going to happen; it just has to happen. And it has to be collective.
GET INVOLVED
Do you have feedback you’d like the Portland Police Bureau to consider as it works on its five-year strategic plan? Go to portlandoregon.gov/police/76887
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