Tigard safety board collaborates with police department

The Tigard Public Safety Advisory Board was created as part of the city’s anti-racism action plan. The board reviews police department practices and makes recommendations to city leadership. The board and the police department have been working collaboratively. They worked together on body camera policy and the board is drafting other proposals. We hear details from Tigard Police Chief Kathy McAlpine and Jimmy Brown, a member of the Public Safety Advisory Board.

The following transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on O.P.B. I’m Dave Miller. About a year ago, a new group in Tigard had its first meeting, the public safety advisory board. It was created to give members of the public a chance to weigh in on the policies and practices of the Tigard Police Department. This was in the wake of the George Floyd murder when all across the country, there was a huge increase in questions about what policing should look like. One year in, we thought we would check in to see what the board has done. Jimmy Brown is a member of the board. Kathy McAlpine is the Chief of the Tigard Police Department. They both join me now. It’s good to have both of you on TOL.

Jimmy Brown: Afternoon, Dave.

Miller: Good afternoon. Kathy McAlpine, first, I want to start, maybe you could say before the beginning, what led to the creation of this board?

McAlpine: Well, David, [as] you stated, I think everybody across the country was shocked at the murder of George Floyd and all of your elected officials were looking at, could this happen in my jurisdiction? And so, our Tiger City Council was no different. And so under the larger umbrella of the city’s anti-racism action plan, they developed the concept of a public safety advisory board, so that they could look directly at the Police Department’s policies and practices, with an equity lens, to see if there are things that we could do better, or if we’re doing things that unintentionally disenfranchises one particular group. And really just get that feedback for me to see if there’s any unintended consequences, or ways we could do things better.

Miller: Before that, was there any formalized system or citizen body that provided anything similar?

McAlpine: No. I believe the prior chief had a chief’s advisory group, and I’m not sure how they conducted business. But when I came 4.5 years ago, I did not continue that practice. And so this is really a newly created public entity.

Miller: Jimmy Brown, why did you want to be on this board or the first iteration of it?

Brown: Well, Dave, you know, I’m a 27-year resident of Tigard. I had plenty of professional experience in criminal justice policy, and probation and parole services in the city of Portland and Multnomah County. I felt that between my lived experience and the fact that I have grandchildren and children in this community and I’ve seen over the [past] 27 years the community become more diverse, ethnically diverse. I felt I had some things that I could bring to the table, in terms of working toward developing stronger community, and police and municipal services relationships.

Miller: It seems like you’re talking about both professional experiences with the public safety world, as well as personal ones. Have you had interactions yourself over the last 27 years with members of the Tigard Police Department?

Brown: In full transparency, certainly I’ve talked with chief about this as I was exploring and getting engaged with this.  Actually when I first met chief, it was 20 years ago that I had a rather unsettling experience with some officers from the department. [It] ended up in litigation and it was settled. I had years of experience working with police officers across the metropolitan area and the country. And so rather than leave this community that I love, my choice was to stay in this community and work across a number of venues to ensure that not only did I feel more comfortable, but folks who look like me feel more comfortable.

Miller: You feel free to share or not share whatever details from what happened 20 years ago that you feel comfortable. But If I’d asked you 20 years ago, what do you think of the Tigard Police Department, what would you have said?

Brown: I had a good relationship with the chief at that time, Chief Goodpastor. I felt that I had a good relationship with him and other members of the department. I had worked with Tigard police officers when I was involved with the state youth gang task force. So you know, I had some familiarity, and plus, as I said, I was living in the community. I had heard of incidents where folks were saying that they had been stopped by the police and felt that they were treated inappropriately. And my counsel was always, I think you need to connect with the chief’s office and see what steps they will take to deal with your particular situation. Again it wasn’t uncommon in any of the local police departments for that to happen in terms of engagements with communities and individuals of color. I had not, personally, at that point in time had any particular issues that made me concerned. So when the initial incident happened in July of 2000, I was shocked beyond means in one respect, and then in another respect it was like, it doesn’t matter what your education is, it didn’t matter what my professional background was.

I have been subject to what I felt was inappropriate treatment. And at that point in time I went and spoke with the chief and he indicated that they would do some investigations. And once the investigation was completed I said, ‘okay, I’ve done what I need to do and I’m going to go on about my business’. Then some incidents came up later on, which required me to say I need to take this a step further. And so we went into a civil process with the city and the department. Then that culminated with an arrest of myself in 2002. Upon further investigation, it was determined that there were some real challenges with the officers that were involved in that, resulting in termination of one, suspension of another, and a settlement. I went on back to living my life. To say that that did not have a chilling effect on what I did while I was living in the community of Tigard would be untrue. Because I changed a number of my own social and personal activities because of that particular incident. And here I am, I’m 69 years old now and I still have dealings with that. But I also have to look at each administration within the department and what kinds of changes have occurred. And I can honestly say, the culmination of the last four years has certainly given me great consideration and honor and respect for the work that Chief McAlpine has been doing. I’ve always believed that things that can happen in smaller cities in this state, and in this country, can have a larger impact on the community at large than what we see in our brothers and sisters across the larger metropolitan areas in the country.

Miller: So chief, let me, let me go back to you because now we’ve gotten a deeper sense for the genesis of this board, both society-wide and also personally in the story of Jimmy Brown. The board doesn’t directly create policies that govern the workings of the department. It puts out recommendations that then go before eventually the city council and they can approve them or not. What would you point to to say ‘this is what the board has done and what has changed because of the board over the last year’.

McAlpine: And really the first opportunity, is [that] the recommendations go to me first, which I appreciate that ability. Because I’m in these meetings, I’m listening to the thoughtful dialogue, and if it makes sense, and they propose their recommendations, it can stop right then and there, and I can implement their recommendations. So it can be very fluid and very quick. One of those was the body-worn camera program, which was an expansion for us. We only had seven deployed. In our January 2021 officer-involved shooting, we didn’t have any body-worn cameras, we had some dash cameras, but our vehicles were far enough away that really didn’t capture anything significant. I brought that issue to the board, my concerns. It’s expensive to expand that program, but the board quickly thoughtfully supported it, [and] wrote up an official recommendation. It went to the council and of course the city manager. Everybody was on board, but it allowed it to happen very quickly. And by May we have full deployment of body-worn cameras and upgraded dash cameras that are also tied into our tasers when they’re pulled out of their holsters. So it’s a top of the line product that hopefully will bring just additional transparency and peace of mind even for the officers. So that was one of their significant ones. And then I’m sitting on three recommendations they just did the last meeting that I’m reviewing now.

Miller: Recently my understanding is they’ve been looking at hiring and training. Use of force is another big issue. Jimmy Brown, an advisory board: they run the gamut in terms of the extent to which they’re paid attention to and listened to and taken seriously by different government agencies or bodies. Do you feel like your concerns as a member of the board and the board as a whole, that they’re being taken seriously?

Brown: I do. I think it provides a lot of continuity to have the Chief and other command management, command structure, staff engaged in those meetings, as well as line staff or supervisory staff that are part of the board. I think one of the things that makes this work well, is that we get an opportunity to, as we call it, see the journey of a new police officer or recruit through the entirety of coming in from either another department or from minimal law enforcement history, to come in and work within the Tiger Police Department. A lot of people in the community, and not only in our community but in communities across the country, really don’t have the idea or the concept of what it takes to actually go from being a recruit to being a sworn police officer. And so this knowledge about the the journey of becoming a sworn police officer helps us as non-law-enforcement personnel to understand what it is that they go through, what it is that the department is trying to do in terms of ensuring that their their staff followed the mission, the values and the the goals of the department. Secondly – and I think this is as critical as understanding the police officers journey – is for the department and it’s staff to understand the road that the community walks, as they take a look at the police department. So you end up having really this two-way dialogue between community members and police officers. You get a chance to hear what the members of the board are saying to the department, as it relates to their engagement within their own personal networks, relative to how people view the police.

Miller: Jimmy Brown and Kathy McAlpine, thanks very much for joining us. I appreciate it.

Brown/McAlpine: Thank you Dave for having us. And I appreciate it very much. Thank you.

Miller: Jimmy Brown is a member of the Public Safety Advisory Board in Tigard. They have been meeting for just about a full year now. Kathy Mcalpine is the Chief of Police of the Tigard Police Department. We’re going to end today with more of your voices.

Yesterday, we talked about a proposal from the teacher’s union at Portland’s Public Schools. The union has been saying that teachers and students are at a breaking point, and so they’re asking the district to reduce the amount of in-person class time for the rest of the school year. We got a WIDE variety of responses via our voicemail line from parents and teachers and other folks. Here are some of the responses that came in:

“My name is Emily Schultz. I am a PPS parent of a second grader at James John Elementary School in North Portland and I’m also a former PPS middle school teacher who resigned in October of this year. The academic and behavioral needs of students are challenging in a normal year, but this year I saw, heard and experienced things in my middle school classroom that I have never encountered before. And even with over 10 years of experience, I struggled just to keep up with the day to day. The only way that I was able to plan for my day to day job was hours and hours of my own unpaid overtime. And as a mother of two young children, this time came from my own family. So I resigned my position. If PPS does not listen to educators, many more colleagues will follow in my path. We already have an extreme staffing crisis.”

Lindsay Obermeyer: “My name is Lindsay Obermeyer. I have seen first hand how the shutdown and how the remote teaching of our children negatively impacted both of my own children. I am frankly disgusted that the teachers would want to put them through more of that self-taught, self-led learning at home.”

Amy Jeffrey: “My name is Amy Jeffrey. I am the parent of a senior at Grant High School and she has an IAP to receive special education services. This has been an incredibly hard year. While I understand that many parents are not excited about the idea of a virtual learning day, that really what we need is our teachers to be well and they’re not.

Caller: “I’m a parent of two students at Portland public schools, a middle schooler and a high schooler. I would fully support having the district talk with the county about increasing funding for nonprofits that offer mentoring, and after school programs to increase their hours so that the teachers could have more planning hours and the children could stay in school with instructions.”

Jenny Richardson: “My name is Jenny Richardson and I have a high school student with all of the arts programs that recently closed. There’s an opportunity to meet the needs of teachers and students by doing larger collaborative community projects, really being able to hire any qualified teacher with an MFA and some teaching experience. There’s a lot of us that are under-employed at the moment and we’re highly qualified educators and would love to do that: hire artists for the afternoons, allow teachers to have the mornings for prep and students to have study hall, which allows students to sidestep, having to be self-directed while their parents work.”

Caller: “We have been so grateful for our school teachers. My kids love being back in person for five days a week. These teachers we have this year are so resilient. They can bounce back to this five day a week teaching. I know it probably is hard for some educators to get back to the classroom five days a week, but they can do this.”

Jennifer Coin: “My name is Jennifer Coin. I am a middle school teacher, in Portland Public Schools. I have had so many students this year with emotional issues, family issues, a variety of mental health issues. I feel like I am constantly referring students to the counselor, trying to set up sit meetings for students who might need to have 504s or individual education plans. Like I said, there’s just a lot going on and you need time to be able to talk with parents, fill out the forms for students to get them the referrals wrote [that] they need to meet with counselors and other teachers to find out what’s happening and I just feel like there’s never enough time.

Eileen Carlin: “My name is Eileen Carlin. I have three grandchildren in Portland Public Schools. Attendance in school is so very important to their social life and your emotional well being. I’ve been a firsthand observer of the stress that families have been under when children were schooled at home.”

Danny Cage: “This is Danny Cage. Grant High School student. I think that if the district doesn’t take a PhD proposal, then the district needs to find other mitigation strategies to help our teachers and our students because our current systems are beginning to fail.”

Miller: Thanks very much to everybody who called in. There are a lot of ways you can get in touch with us if you have comments about what we’ve done or questions or suggestions for what we should cover on Facebook and Twitter. We’re at OPBTOL.

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