NAACP Portland Declines Meeting with Portland Police Association
Branch cites union’s long history of railroading basic changes in policing
Recently, the Portland NAACP 1120-B Branch was contacted by Portland Police Association union head, Aaron Schmautz, for a virtual or in-person get together to discuss the state of the community.
We have declined this invitation, because of -- not in spite of -- our commitment to public safety and community well-being, which are critical to achieving Black health and wellness.
We remain steadfast in our goals to prioritize models of safety that center community wholeness, over aiding a union that has seemed to prioritize punishment of our community, the impunity of officers, and the growth of their department. Our priorities were reiterated in our statement on the Fall BMP.
In a state that holds a deep history of institutional violence towards Black residents, we ask our community to consider the role of the Portland Police Association, the oldest functioning police union in the country, in ongoing outcomes like the following:
Oregon holds the fifth worst incarceration for Black people, despite being only 2% Black
Black Portlanders make up nearly 20% of traffic stops, despite being about 6% of the city’s population
Of the 40+ fatal shootings from PPB since 2003, a disproportionate number of those have been suffered by Black Portlanders. None of the officers involved have been indicted. Of those officers that have been put on leave, often paid, almost all end up back on the force or transferring to other area departments
Black people make up about half of the PPB’s reported use of force incidents
Amid the urgent George Floyd uprising in Portland last year, Portland Police Bureau committed 6,000+ documented uses of force, including the indiscriminate use of poisonous CS gas, more commonly referred to as tear gas
Also, it is not lost on us that basic reform efforts have been railroaded by the union, whether it be a community-oversight board, dissolving problematic specialty units, or simply shifting money from their quarter-billion dollar budgets into non-law enforcement responses.
Schmutz has already stated publicly that his goal is to hire 800 more officers over the next 5 years, which would nearly double the force. At what cost to Portlanders? Consider how hundreds of millions will be poured into increasing the number of police responding to our most vulnerable neighbors experiencing mental health crises, houselessness, and struggling with diseases of addiction, despite community-based alternatives to police intervention and overwhelming evidence that has dispelled the myth that more cops make safer communities.
We are little more than a year removed from last year’s George Floyd protests that shook the globe. One thing that certainly wasn’t chanted amongst our masses for 100 consecutive days was, “Hire hundreds more police!”
It is clear our demands are not the priority of the Portland Police Association. We want more than body cameras to be a first-person witness to ongoing injustice with impunity. We want investment in our communities. We want an end to Qualified Immunity.
We want real community influence, not after the fact input, to police negotiations, police accountability, and police transparency. We do not see the Portland Police Association in sync with the vision and priorities of the NAACP Portland 1120-B Branch and do not see what a ‘conversation’ would accomplish at this time. We will agree to sit down with the union when we see them committed to actively acting as vanguards of public safety rather than the guardians of the status quo.