The Clackamas Democrat is championing a slate of police reform measures aimed as much at character as procedure
In the charge toward police reform in the Oregon State Legislature, Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-Clackamas) is leading the way. As chair of the House Judiciary Committee, she has sponsored or co-sponsored a slate of bills intended to raise the bar on police accountability.
Among them are bills to create a public-access statewide police misconduct database, require officers to report a colleague’s misconduct, and initiate new state screening criteria to investigate a person’s character for racist behavior before certifying them for law enforcement.
In a conversation with Street Roots, Bynum said the overall intent is to elevate the profession of policing.
“A lot of people, especially officers of color, decided to get into the profession so that they would be able to pass on better experiences than what they had,” Bynum said. “That’s the approach that we’re taking with all of the bills.”
Here’s an excerpt from the rest of our conversation with Bynum.
DeVon Pouncey: Before asking about some of the bills in particular, I want to kind of keep a victim-first mentality here. Have there been any cases that have influenced, and I’m speaking more so to the state of Oregon obviously, that have influenced some of the slate of bills that have been proposed?
Rep. Janelle Bynum: One bill we have is about munitions and tear gas, rubber bullets, all of those sorts of non-lethal weapons used especially in crowd control. We have people who were injured in crowd response situations this summer. And I started to ask the question, do we know if police even knew what they were using? Do we know if they were using the right follow-up policies?
For instance, when we deploy tear gas, when I looked at the sheet that contained all the information about what chemicals were in there, there were also medical instructions for what should be done after a person was exposed to tear gas. And my question was, are we doing that? Do people have that information? Do emergency rooms have that information? So that’s where the bill on making sure that people who were arrested in those crowd control situations had access to medical treatment.
I think another bill that we had was about the Use of Force report. We’re trying to figure out how much force were people using, how often was it being used, was it being recorded as it should be. In Portland, were captains or people in the line of command following up on that use of force? Was it the right thing? People in the public were weighing in; they were watching it live on TV and responding as quickly as we could.
Pouncey: I want to talk about how House Bill 2929 that you sponsored, that would make it an officer’s duty to report misconduct and requires the law enforcement unit to investigate reports of conduct. Is this not required now, and also, would this apply to all law enforcement, state, city and county?
Bynum: We do have the duty to intervene right now. What I asked about was, did we get the bill right? So sometimes when you’re in the middle … and that bill was passed late summer, early fall, if I remember right. My question was, did we get it right?
We have the case of Mr. Elijah Warren, who was just a citizen standing out on the street who was clocked upside the head by an officer. And I asked the city of Portland — and I still have not gotten a robust response — about whether the officers who were standing there and saw that who responded in the moment like, “he’s not a protester,” if anybody reported it. And is the law working? And so this bill follows up with that and says did we get it right? Did we make the penalties for not reporting stiff enough, and did we cast the net far and wide enough? So a lot of the bills are meant more to stimulate the conversation so that we can refine the language, and, what I think is really important, so that the public can absolutely weigh in. They can weigh in by writing, or they can call. They should absolutely explain their experiences.
Pouncey: This bill also directs the Bureau of Labor and Industries to establish and maintain form and database reports of misconduct and to investigate certain reports of misconduct. Would this be public record that anyone could look at, or would there be guidelines on discipline with this?
Bynum: That’s why the misconduct database came in. And there’s kind of a balance that we’re working through. While something is being investigated, is it helpful to have public eyes on it? Maybe, maybe not. With (Bureau of Labor and Industries, or BOLI) what we were trying to look at was certain types of civil rights violations. So the jury really is still out, because we had the hearing today, the jury really is still out on whether (BOLI) is the right place to have these investigations when someone has reported something, or whether the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training is the right place, or whether the Department of Justice is the right place. So that’s what came out in the hearing today.
Pouncey: On to the next bill. House Bill 2936 would create a task force to develop a plan for removing police officers who have discriminatory sentiments that will violate the rights of protected classes. Can you tell me more about how this would work?
Bynum: I’m not as familiar in terms of how departments are rooting out white supremacy in their own ranks. Now, they will tell you that they have done a good job. But I think there hasn’t been a lot of attention to how to really ask those questions and how to create an environment where that’s not OK. And that’s the purpose of this bill. So where you have homophobia, Islamophobia, racially biased people, white supremacy — all of those things, in my opinion, in many departments, have not been able to be adequately addressed. That’s what this bill is working towards. And again, it will take community conversation for us to figure out how to write the words very narrowly so that we send a message as the state that if you’re interested in discriminating against people and you work in a police department, a law enforcement agency, you are not fit to wear the badge.
Pouncey: I think the general concern is that if the misconduct is a part of the culture, how effective would the reporting requirements be, based on the history of these departments. Do you ultimately think that with these bills that have been proposed that a culture change will happen in these police bureaus?
Bynum: It’s already happening. You can feel it from where we started back in the early summer to now and how I’ve guided the conversations. You can see where there was once a lot of fear from law enforcement that things were going to be done to them. Now you start to see the people who were very concerned about the trajectory of the profession really starting to step up and say, “well, here’s a problem.” Because I’m not a law enforcement person, I don’t know the intricate details of the profession. But those inside, I think in a lot of ways, they were silent and they didn’t have an outlet. So now they’re coming forward and saying, “Representative Bynum, you should do it this way. You should do it this way. This, you don’t need to worry about. This part, this is an issue.”
Pouncey: Let’s move on to House Bill 2930 , which would establish a commission on statewide law enforcement standards of conduct and discipline, to adopt uniform standards of conduct for law enforcement officers and disciplinary standards. I think some people would be a bit surprised that this doesn’t already exist. It would also remove the discipline guide or matrix from mandatory subject of bargaining. Can you just speak to more as to why HB 2930 would be significant?
Bynum: It would be a bold change. Right now, individual contracts are negotiated by department, and so there’s much more local control. Which is, in some respects, an Oregon value. But when we look at law enforcement, and we think about what are the state’s values, that’s where this proposal is going. So what do we see as a state is the minimum standard for someone who is allowed to wear the badge and carry a service weapon.
The other part of it is having a patchwork of disciplinary actions around the state means that in one jurisdiction you could sock somebody in the nose and that’s a minor violation of that department’s policies versus that’s a terminable offense in Multnomah County, for instance. So it’s pretty bold.
Pouncey: House Bill 2930, among other things would let civilians bring civil action for damages incurred as a result of a police officer’s failure to report or intervene in misconduct, and it will provide for the award of attorney fees. How is this new, and what kind of impact do you expect from this liability on police officers and departments?
Bynum: From what I understand, some cities believe that officers are immune. I don’t know if believe is the right word. In some cases, you can’t sue; you can’t get any remedies. So we’re putting on the table that people who have been injured, who have a claim, should be able to seek some sort of remedy. But right now, cities around the country, or municipalities around the country, are paying; they’re paying out for police violence against their own citizens. And what they will do is they will issue debt to Wall Street. They’ll say, “Wall Street, can I borrow some money?” And Wall Street says, “Yes, I’ll tack 3% on that.” So the city’s residents are paying 3, 4, 5% to fund settlements for police brutality. And the more we can get a handle on how much we’re paying, the more we can make sure that people who have not in the past been able to sue for remedies, the more they can get access to it, the more we’ll have a better idea of how much this is literally costing us. So it’s not only costing us mentally; it’s costing us financially in our cities.
Pouncey: How much does the role of police unions influence the development of some of the aforementioned bills?
Bynum: In the past, it has influenced a lot. I don’t know that people were brave enough to have honest conversations. I think people were afraid of sick-out, walkout. One thing to note is that police in Oregon, I believe, don’t have the right to strike. And so that has made a big difference in the type of conversations that we’ve been able to have. There’s just a legacy in this country of well-intentioned labor laws being utilized in ways that haven’t produced the best for the public.
Pouncey: If there’s anything else you’d like to say that maybe we didn’t touch on in regard to police accountability, go for it.
Bynum: I think most important in these conversations is that we recognize each other’s humanity. And that is a personal value of mine in any piece of legislation that I’m writing, that I’m sponsoring, that I’m supporting or opposing. If we forget that the person on the other side is a human, then I think we are getting further and further away from a just society.
I think when you combine that with, like, greed and addiction to money — you just look at our houseless population right now and what we’re using the police for. Those policies get us further and further away from humanity. And I just think that, my prayer is that, as we move forward with this legislation, this slate of bills, with the BIPOC agenda, that we get closer to seeing one another as humans again.
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