Find answers to common questions related to the Monitorship of the Settlement Agreement.
Arising from a Department of Justice investigation that started in 2011, the United States of America filed a Complaint against the City of Portland in federal court in 2012 alleging that the Portland Police Bureau engaged in a pattern or practice of using unlawful force against individuals with actual or perceived mental illness, in violation of their constitutional rights. In 2014, the United States District Court for the District of Oregon entered as an Order of the Court a Settlement Agreement between the United States and the City of Portland. Among other things, the Settlement Agreement requires sustained reforms to policies, programs, and procedures in, and oversight of, the Portland Police Bureau to ensure that PPB delivers police services to the people of Portland in a manner that effectively supports officer and public safety, and complies with the Constitution and laws of the United States.
The Settlement Agreement contains a number of provisions with which the City must demonstrate substantial compliance, as assessed by the Independent Monitoring Team. Major areas of focus amongst these provisions include Use of Force, Training, Community-Based Mental Health Services, Crisis Intervention, PPB’s Employee Information System, Officer Accountability, and Community Engagement. Once the City has successfully demonstrated compliance, provisions will move from being assessed by the Monitor to being assessed by the City itself, in accordance with a self-monitoring plan created by the City in consultation with the Monitor. The City will then report on its own compliance with these provisions, and the Monitor will evaluate those reports. Once the Monitor finds that the City has demonstrated maintained substantial compliance with these provisions of the Settlement Agreement, they will be subject to termination. This process will continue until all remaining provisions of the Settlement Agreement have reached termination.
The primary role of the Independent Monitoring Team is to assess the City’s compliance with, and implementation of, the Settlement Agreement. The Monitoring Team operates independently of the City (including PPB) and the Department of Justice, and it will report its findings directly to the United States District Court for the District of Oregon. This independence allows the Monitoring Team to be objective and impartial in conducting its required compliance assessments. These assessments will be conducted semi-annually, with the first period of assessment running from July 1 – December 31, 2024. On May 1, 2025, the Monitoring Team will publish a draft of its report to the Court in order to receive public comments and feedback. After considering of the public’s input, the Monitoring Team will finalize its report and file it with the Court by June 30, 2025, which is also when the next period of assessment concludes (and the process continues).
In addition to its compliance assessments, the Monitoring Team must: develop a Monitoring Plan to help ensure that its evaluations are completed reliably; conduct semi-annual qualitative and quantitative outcome assessments to measure whether the implementation of the Settlement Agreement’s provisions is achieving its intended goals; identify barriers to compliance with the Settlement Agreement and provide recommendations on how to overcome them. The Monitoring Team must solicit feedback from community stakeholders throughout Portland regarding matters related to the Settlement Agreement in order to ensure that the assessments it makes are informed by a diversity of voices and perspectives. In furtherance of this, the Monitoring Team is responsible for holding town hall meetings twice a year, and we are committed to maintaining robust community engagement throughout the Monitorship.
The Monitoring Team has only the role, responsibilities, and authority conferred by the Settlement Agreement. It does not, and is not intended to, replace or assume the role or responsibilities of any City or PPB employee or official. It is also not the Monitoring Team’s role to change either the scope or the terms of the Settlement Agreement.
The Monitoring Team, duly appointed to its position by the federal district court in Portland, carries out its role independently of the United States and the City of Portland – the two Parties to the Settlement Agreement. The Monitoring Team does its work pursuant to the terms of the Settlement Agreement and does not operate under the direction of either Party. This independence allows the Monitoring Team to make objective assessments of the City’s compliance with the Settlement Agreement and to report its findings to the federal court and the public without any undue influence from either Party.
The Monitoring Team will be appointed for a term of two years, which may be extended for additional two-year terms if the City and the Department of Justice jointly request, and the Court approves. The City and the Department of Justice will consult with the Portland Police Association (PPA), Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform (AMAC), Mental Health Alliance (MHA), and Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing (PCCEP) and will consider their input before seeking to extend the Monitoring Team’s appointment for additional two-year terms. In deciding whether to extend the appointment, the Court will give deference to the request of the City and the Department of Justice, and will consider public input, including that of the PPA, AMAC, MHA, and PCCEP, and the Monitoring Team’s performance under the Settlement Agreement, including whether the Monitoring Team is completing their work on time, within budget, and in a manner that facilitates the City’s ability to achieve substantial compliance with the Settlement Agreement.
In its compliance reports, the Monitoring Team relies on roughly the same standard to assess whether the City is in Substantial Compliance with each paragraph of the Settlement Agreement as has been relied on during the previous decade. The one change the Monitoring Team made to that standard was to add to it the specific language from Paragraph 249 of the Settlement Agreement that helps describe what it means to attain Substantial Compliance. The standard relied on by the Monitoring Team to determine Substantial Compliance is as follows:
Relying on its collective expertise in police accountability, the Monitoring Team considers several factors in determining whether or not an issue that it finds while making its compliance assessments is systemic. These may include whether the issue affects only a singular or isolated aspect of compliance with a particular provision of the Settlement Agreement or the entire effort toward compliance with that provision; the frequency with which the issue appears across a sample of reviewed cases; whether similar issues recur across different PPB units or periods of time; the presence of policy gaps or institutional practices that may contribute to repeated deficiencies; and the degree to which the City was previously aware of the problem but failed to respond effectively. By contrast, a single deviation—even if it involves a relatively serious issue—or a handful of minor errors that are clearly unrelated to each other and do not reflect an identifiable pattern may not amount to a finding of systemic non-compliance. For each compliance assessment that it conducts, the Monitoring Team carefully considers all of the relevant evidence it has gathered, including any deviations it finds, before reaching a compliance finding.
Depending on what is called for by each paragraph of the Settlement Agreement, the Monitoring Team relies on a combination of City/PPB sources to conduct its compliance assessments. These include, but are not limited to, the following: completed investigations into uses of force and allegations of misconduct; in-person observations of training; internal audits; directives and standard operating procedures; calls to emergency dispatchers; demonstrations of internal accountability systems; and body-worn camera video recordings. For more detailed information, please see the Methodological Plan that is available on the “Documents” page of the Monitoring Team’s website.
The size of samples used by the Monitoring Team in conducting its compliance assessments is determined by the number of cases needed to attain a statistically sound sample based on the total number of cases provided by the City/PPB; it may include oversampling for rare events that are part of the assessment. For instance, when the Monitoring Team draws a sample from the population of PPB use of force events, it is selected using stratified random sampling, where the strata consist of elements including, but not limited to: precinct where the involved officer is assigned; actual or perceived mental health status of the subject; and level of force used (i.e., Category I, Category II, etc.).
The Monitoring Team acknowledges that larger sample sizes are preferable to smaller ones, particularly insofar as the former allow for the review of a greater number of cases and, therefore, greater precision in making compliance assessments. In selecting samples for its compliance assessments, the Monitoring Team strives to balance this position with other relevant variables including, but not limited to, the sample sizes used in compliance assessments conducted prior to the Monitorship, the time and resources available to the Monitoring Team as it completes its assessments, and the type and amount of material the Monitoring Team needs to review for each case in a given sample (such as use of force reports, training materials, and body-worn camera videos, for example).
As required by the Settlement Agreement, the Monitoring Team provides recommendations to the City/PPB on how to achieve and maintain Substantial Compliance for each paragraph that is assessed as not having achieved that status during a given Reporting Period. Additionally, in some instances where the City/PPB was determined to be in Substantial Compliance with a particular Settlement Agreement paragraph, the Monitoring Team offers recommendations intended to support ongoing compliance into and beyond future Reporting Periods. These recommendations should not be construed as detracting from the City’s/PPB’s achievement of Substantial Compliance with the associated paragraph. Finally, irrespective of compliance status, the Monitoring Team makes additional recommendations about some Settlement Agreement paragraphs that are intended as technical assistance and/or general suggestions for improvements to the City/PPB; following these recommendations is not required in order for the City/PPB to comply with the Settlement Agreement.
Prior to the Monitorship, the City’s compliance with the Settlement Agreement was reported on quarterly by the Compliance Officer/Community Liaison (COCL), with the final COCL report covering Q1 2024. The Monitoring Team’s compliance assessments are conducted semi-annually, with the first report covering Q3-Q4 2024. This means that no independent assessment of the City’s compliance with the Settlement Agreement was conducted covering Q2 2024.
Shortly after the Monitorship was initiated, the City notified the Monitoring Team that the Parties to the Settlement Agreement (the United States and the DOJ) had agreed to forego a compliance review for Q2 2024 given the transition that was taking place from the COCL to the Monitoring Team. Additionally, because the Monitoring Team had not yet begun its term during that quarter, it had no authority or ability to conduct many of the activities that are required in order to complete comprehensive compliance assessments, such as observations of training, meetings with community stakeholders, and reviews of changes to PPB policies and/or procedures. The Monitoring Team’s first semi-annual compliance report therefore coincided with the first six months of the term of the Monitorship.
As part of the City’s self-monitoring of compliance, and pursuant to the requirements of the Settlement Agreement, the City must create self-monitoring plans in consultation with the Monitoring Team that emphasize assessments to evidence continued substantial compliance. Those plans (also described as “Compliance Assessment Materials”) can be accessed via the “Documents” page of the Monitoring Team’s website as well as on the City’s website. Subsequently, the City must prepare semi-annual compliance reports that the Monitoring Team will evaluate to determine whether the City has maintained substantial compliance in accordance with their self-monitoring plans.
The Monitoring Team is not authorized to receive or investigate complaints of misconduct against member of PPB. If you wish to submit such a complaint, please refer to the resources found on the City of Portland’s website, here.
The Monitoring Team welcomes input from the public to help ensure that the Monitorship is informed by diverse voices and perspectives from across the Portland community. The best way to reach us is by sending an email here. Please feel free to get in touch!
