Transcript
Automatically generated transcript. It may contain errors and includes testimony in languages other than English that is not individually marked up for assistive technology.
Loretta Smith
Councilor Novick, this is Councilor Smith.
I'm online.
Can you hear me, Councilor Novick?
Councilor Novick, I'm online.
Kaya Sand
This is Councilor Smith.
Bob Day
I like the hamburger, but we're going to have this one.
Loretta Smith
I'm online.
Steve Novick
Good morning.
I call this meeting of the Tuesday, October 20th, 2026, 9:30 AM meeting of the Committee and Public Safety Committee to order.
Could the clerk please call the roll?
Keelan McClymont
Good morning.
Zimmerman.
Smith.
Loretta Smith
Here.
Keelan McClymont
Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
Here.
Keelan McClymont
Morillo.
Angelita Morillo
Here.
Keelan McClymont
Novick.
Steve Novick
Here.
Uh, could we please hear the statement of conduct?
Unidentified speaker
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Keelan McClymont
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Unidentified speaker
Virtual testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls your name.
Thank you.
Steve Novick
Thank you.
Before we begin, I'd just like to take a minute.
All of our hearts go out to the victims' families and everybody in the community of Bend.
And this is at least the second multiple murder by gun in Oregon in the past 2 months.
2 months ago, 5 people were shot and killed in Forest Grove, including 3 visiting Portlanders.
And I know that all of us here believe in measures to reduce the number of tragedies, that we probably all are hoping that Measure 114 is upheld in court.
Um, I, you know, am pleased that the Portland Police have increased their use of the red flag law.
I have this obsession with smart guns.
But although reducing the number of gun tragedies is important, remember, Albert Camus said that we may not be able to make this into a world where children are not tortured, but we can reduce the number of tortured children.
I wish that this was a country where it was simply a lot harder to get a gun.
And I'd like to ask for about 20 seconds of silence.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Our first order of business is the approval of the Community and Public Safety Committee meeting minutes from September 1st, 2026 through September 15th, 2026.
Um, but this is approved by unanimous consent if there are no objections.
The minutes are approved.
Uh, could the clerk please read the first item?
Angelita Morillo
Thank you.
Keelan McClymont
Item number 2, document number 2026-379, Portland Street Response Committee report presentation.
Steve Novick
Committee, come on down.
You may begin.
Kaya Sand
Good morning, I'm Kaya Sand, and I am the co-chair of the Portland Street Response Advisory Committee.
And Beatrix, do you want to introduce yourself too?
Beatrix Lee
Uh, good morning, councilors.
I'm Beatrix Lee, uh, PSR Advisory Committee member.
Kaya Sand
And Beatrix is going to put the slides up.
Do you all see that okay?
Yes.
Okay, great.
Well, um, thank you to the members of the Community and Public Safety Committee Subcommittee, um, in particular, uh, Chair Novick and Vice Chair Murillo, as well as Councilors Kanal, Smith, and Zimmerman thank you, Councilor Zimmerman.
We have been working on our recommendations as a committee since January, so we're really pleased to submit to you this report of 8 recommendations.
And our committee has been composed of a number of areas of expertise, people with lived experience of homelessness and mental illness, substance use disorder, people with expertise in medical emergency emergency medical service, um, in community health, peer support, policy advocacy, crisis program evaluation, national knowledge of these programs and their history, etc.
And we've approached all of this work really recognizing that this has been a program, Portland Street Response, that people in the city of Portland have built.
There's a real mandate for this program, as well as the fact that Council established the resolution in June of 2025 to create this committee, and then in December of 2026 or 2025 to, um, to create the— to, um, appoint the, the members of the committee.
So I think one of the things I'll just emphasize is that as we look at some structural issues We, even though we're sort of inside looking at the bureaucracy, we are always looking at this as community members who really believe that public safety is something that should be transparent and comprehensible to residents of this city.
And so that guides our approaches.
So do you wanna go ahead and, oh, this is, let me, sorry, we could just go back for a second.
You can see the members of the committee, and I'll just reiterate here what was in the resolution that we were appointed to formally advise City Council on issues related to Portland Street Response and advise on proposed changes to city code related to Portland Street Response.
So the actual draft of that code is in the appendix of the report that, uh, we submitted today.
So today we'll go over our, um, just as the background of our committee and then our recommendations and then take questions for you— from you.
And there's when we were first appointed.
It's not our group in entirety, but it's some of us.
And then we also wanted to indicate a number of different people that have testified, given feedback.
So it's been a really extensive process.
And in fact, all the offices of, of the councilors on this subcommittee gave us feedback, which we are thank you.
We also dug into a lot of reports, a lot of research in this area, and most of this research you can find through our report if you too want to dig in deeply.
And we wanted to just point out that even though this is a new movement, there are a number of really extensive efforts around the nation in academic institutions now to support this work, including at Georgetown Law, University of Chicago, NYU, and Harvard.
And Harvard in particular has been supporting Portland's program.
So we wanted to make sure that as we're talking about ways in which we want this work to be legible to the larger nation, we're really aware of the fact that it's important— Portland— it's important for Portland to take part in this work.
In 2020, well, 2019, when City Council first voted Portland Street Response in, Portland Street Response was following CAHOOTS, which was then in Eugene, now it's just in Springfield, and that was established in 1989.
But other than that, there was Denver STAR and there was Olympia CRU, and that was it.
So now look at this map.
This is quite extraordinary.
There's over 120 mobile crisis programs across the United States.
And I wanna make sure that I explain that there are many, many more mobile programs for mental health, but the way that we define it for this report and for the city is ones that are dispatched by 911.
And that's where CAHOOTS was really the outlier.
There were other programs besides CAHOOTS during that time.
So, Even though we were sort of one of the first, we're definitely now part of a crowded field where there's a lot of opportunities to share.
And so we have 8 recommendations to designate PSR within a distinct bureau, to codify it as a non-enforcement model, to support expansion and organization of call types, To expand it 24/7.
To develop— to continue to develop the training academy budget for recruitment, retention, wellness of PSR staff.
Expand outreach and communications for community engagement.
And codify this committee, which otherwise would expire with this report.
And then in the appendix, as I mentioned before, are our suggested code changes.
So number 1, designate Portland Street Response within a distinct bureau.
And this is, um, one of the recommendations as part of a code change.
This is code— the code change— the code— city code should be changed so that PSR is housed in a new bureau along with Gun Violence Reduction Strategy and the Office of Violence Prevention, creating a co-equal branch of the first response system and led by a director or equivalent.
Position.
Committee recommends naming the bureau Portland CARES.
And, um, you can see there the acronym: Crisis Engagement Assistance Response Engagement Strategy.
And, um, one of the things nationwide is that this movement is often described as community safety.
Um, the other most common way to describe it is using various acronyms or the word itself, CARES.
And we think it is really important to have this kind of public safety, community safety, legible across the nation.
In other words, people can move from city to city and start to recognize that this is a new form of, and widespread form of, community safety.
So the programs that we recommend going into this new bureau are really thank you.
So we wanted to bring together 2 really common programs across the nation to be grouped together, and they're already grouped together.
So we just wanted to show that within the current organization chart, we are simply recommending that community safety be turned into a bureau and recommending the name Portland Cares.
Our committee had some fun as we thought about this and really looked at the kind of echoing as a co-equal branch, which City Council resolved helped to create in June 2025, that in Portland to have a co-equal branch is to create a bureau.
And so Portland Fire and Rescue, Portland Police, and Portland CARES being co-equal.
That said, the other bureaus under the public safety service area, the emergency management and emergency communications, are also bureaus.
So right now, community safety has been kind of a grouped together bunch of programs under a division called Community Safety.
We want that to be stronger and to last.
This is a way of, I think, also being comprehensible and showing and creating trust in our city that this is something that our city considers a key part of public safety, that these different branches can work together.
And that it's going to last, that it's not going to disappear.
It's a really important part of this work.
So this idea of the co-equal branch is not new.
And Albuquerque, New Mexico created the Community Safety Department to be co-equal with its police and fire.
They actually started that in 2020, June.
As you'll note, most of these programs started 2020 and later.
And they decided that they did not want to start with a pilot.
So in other words, they created a structure before they started to build out the programs.
So it's always been a co-equal branch, and it's quite extensive at this point.
They have built a trauma center.
They have built their— they have included in it their violence prevention programs, as we're recommending, their substance use support for overdose survivors.
Thank you.
And people who use drugs.
They have hospital-based support for victims of violence crime, and they have school and youth-focused programs, which a number of the cities also offer.
Durham, North Carolina was the next one to create a co-equal branch.
You know, I wasn't aware until doing this research how unusual Portland is to have a bureau system.
And so most of them are called departments or divisions.
And so North Carolina, their first response that's equal to Portland Street Response is called HEART.
And then they have a number of other related programs, Office of Survival Care— Survivor Care, the care navigation that follows up with people that's really similar to what Portland Street Response's aftercare program is.
They have programs for people released from incarceration.
They have a familiar neighbors program for people that are frequent 911 callers, which is something that I know Portland has been digging into.
So those are really extensive programs.
And I'll say that one of the things that we've really looked at, and as a kind of logic that this is not something that we should be throwing every program into, is that the first response program, in this case Portland Street Response, is the center of the bureau.
And then the programs are they're upstream and downstream from that first response.
They're trying to prevent the need for the first response, or they're following up from the first response.
And to make an analogy in our city, that would be like the fire marshal in Portland Fire and Rescue that's preventing the fires, or it's like the detective in the police bureau that's following up on the first response.
So that's how these programs are organized.
Thank you.
There's another— there's some others that have set up co-equal branches structurally.
Seattle has CARE, which is primarily at this point its 911 system, which is interestingly under it, as well as its crisis responders.
Northampton, Massachusetts has a division of community care.
And then some like New York City that in a sense, like Albuquerque, aspire to that yeah.
Co-equal structure from the get-go, but they haven't yet built it out.
A couple others worth just pointing out are Toronto, Ontario, which has a lot of programs under its community safety and wellbeing, including its citywide crisis 911 dispatch crisis response.
One thing worth pointing out with Toronto is they have a First Nations response team that's for the entire city.
So they have really prioritized one population that is really disproportionately impacted.
And then Rochester, New York, I think is another one that's really helpful to point out.
Crisis Intervention Services is the larger department and the crisis response fits under that.
They also really focus on homicide response.
So they show up for families of homicide.
Thank you.
And essentially, because their crisis team focuses on care, they're able to attend to the family while the police do the investigation.
And then they continue to follow up with those families.
So you can see in different cities, I'll mention Dayton later, there's, you know, different strengths that cities have where they bring to these co-equal branches.
But there's a whole lot to share and learn as we build out this bureau.
And so number 2 is to codify Portland Street Response as a non-enforcement model.
And this is a very important piece of Portland Street Response and of all of these models.
These are all non-enforcement models because they need to have a clear mission, and the people for whom they are serving need to understand that mission and to make sure that it doesn't get murky.
I will say this is this is in a lot of ways trying to remedy a design problem in the sense that we have a 911 system that since it was created in 1968 has shunted programs or shunted issues that come to 911 to the police where they just don't have, they haven't had the correct responder.
This has been a real, this has been a huge reason why the police have grown and really had to deal with lot of things that aren't part of their mission.
So it's a corrective to that.
So, you know, there have been a number of correctives along the way, and a certain amount of them have been inside the police, like crisis intervention training in 1983, and then in the 1990s, the co-response model.
But those are all police-based responses.
This is about creating a different kind of response and I want to emphasize how important that is because actually its efficacy is based in it being a non-enforcement model.
People have choice.
They—.
The responders are able to approach people with calm.
They don't overwhelm people.
So it's kind of, in some ways, it's like the inverse, right, of a kind of domination style.
Yeah.
Of first response.
So that's why it's very important to keep this as non-enforcement.
And so I'm not going to go into this, but this is from a Georgetown report, and I just thought it'd be interesting just to point out, and it's referenced in our, in our report.
But essentially, when I was mentioning before, mobile crisis itself has been around longer But this is called various things, Portland Street Response, nationally Alternative Response, Community Response, Community First Response, on and on, Community Crisis Response.
But that model is different than the mobile crisis because it is dispatched from 911, and it takes— it tends to take a larger variety of calls that we'll get into than the more traditional mobile crisis that's a behavioral health the co-response is a really different model.
So I'm just emphasizing that again, generally dispatched by 911, but it is a police-driven model.
Beatrix Lee
A bit of a housekeeping item.
The report should be viewable through the report for anyone in this meeting.
Kaya Sand
And okay, this 3rd recommendation is a recommendation It's a little bit of a nesting doll that there are some different pieces to it, but support expansion and organization of call types.
So the first part of this is taking that report that this subcommittee received in June that came from the second stage of the call reallocation study, and this is to expand welfare checks.
And that report recommended a number of calls to go to Portland Street Response.
Portland Police responds to about 23,000 welfare checks per year.
An estimated 14,000, or 61% of these calls, can be transferred to Portland Street Response.
It's a tremendous amount, and this really has to do with location.
Expanding the kinds of locations so that people on bicycles, people in parked cars, people in private residences.
So it's really just a small amount that is held with the police that in this report, you know, the violent crimes, the in traffic, cars in traffic.
And we also advocate then that City Council continue to extend call reallocation studies.
Councilor Novick had added as a budget note to extend that one for the welfare checks.
We think that there's a lot more the city of Portland can learn from the rest of the nation.
Dayton, Ohio has a very innovative model called field mediation, and there's a lot of tools now to be able to do this.
Councilor they estimate about 20% of these calls to 911 can be picked up in this way.
In other words, these are relationship problems.
So neighborhood trouble, noise complaints, peace order requests, disorderly subject, juvenile calls.
They actually classify all juvenile calls under this.
Welfare checks, barking animals, a barking dog and then animal, roommate trouble.
And then we also recommend that Portland look at whether it wants to expand yes.
That a lot of cities do this.
So there's countless models to look at.
And with this then, of course, we need to prioritize always PSR and BOIC staffing, training, equipment for expansions.
So just the welfare check report alone would double the amount of calls that PSR responds to.
And there's a roadmap in that plan to do that.
We recognize though, or we want to really emphasize, these calls have to be responded to by someone.
So where it's an expansion of PSR, it's just meeting the calls with the appropriate responder.
And then with BOEC, it's very important always that we look at how Boeck can support all of its first responders.
December 1st, Boeck will start having a Portland Street Response dispatcher.
So this is a big shift, and I'm happy to geek out on that as much as anyone wants.
But right now they have that budgeted.
But I think it's really important as you look at Boeck call response times, which have gone down in, in our recent times, that it is one system, whether it's fire, PSR, or police.
And so the training, staffing, and equipment to meet those needs is always really important.
And then this is getting a little bit into the weeds, but this is, I think, a very important piece.
And that is that PSR calls are coded differently than they were or would be if they're police calls.
Right.
So since from February 2021 to September 2026, PSR codes calls were coded PSR, and now they're starting October 1st, there's 6 call types.
And then according to that welfare check, there could be a 7th recommended.
And so what we really advocate is that, that there is an operational way to be tracking these calls So that we know what they would be if the police responded instead of PSR.
Would they be an unwanted person call, a welfare check, a disorder call?
So I'll explain a little bit why this is so important.
One of them, I'm actually going to go to the report from June that the police bureau issued about its recruitment goals.
And one of the things in that report that they discuss is that their own labor and their ability to meet other calls can be supported should there be diversion to Portland Street Response and other programs.
So this frees up— when the police are talking about their recruitment issues, this frees them up for those higher acuity calls.
Now, that kind of diversion is really important locally and nationally.
In other words, people in this city really care about Portland Street Response.
We all need to know what's going on with our public safety system.
We need to know what kind of calls are diverted from police to Portland Street Response.
So this needs to be tracked in a way where researchers don't have to laboriously crunch data and read through call types as they've had to do so far.
And this is a way we can actually participate nationally.
A number of other cities do this more.
So, you know, this from Georgetown, one of the institutes I mentioned that really emphasized emphasizes or really studies this work.
Diversion rates, the percentage of calls shifted away from law enforcement toward community safety responders, have therefore emerged as one of the clearest indicators of whether a jurisdiction is meaningfully operationalizing alternative response.
And I have here one of the big projects is actually New York University.
They're doing a 12 million calls initiative based on the idea that Minnesota— excuse me, Minneapolis put forward of having 20% of its police calls diverted to its alternative response crisis response program.
If the 100 largest cities do that, which would include Portland, that would be 12 million calls a year.
Portland only can participate in that if we track our data better.
Expand PSR 24/7.
As with the co-equal branch, Council already resolved to do this, so it's just a matter of making it happen.
I do want to point out that our staff has created an expansion plan.
April Roa, who's here today, while she was interim manager, and now we have Ebony Morgan as our program manager.
If you haven't met Ebony, and she's here today, I really encourage you to do so because yes.
I really think that Ebony brings us into the next era with Portland Street Response.
She not only comes from sort of managing the cornerstone of programs, CAHOOTS, but then she moved to create a program in the city of Los Angeles, and that program that she created is 24/7.
So I wanted to make sure that we all know that we really have someone in that position that knows how to make this happen.
And so I think we have a all the pieces in line, and we just, you know, look at— look to Eboni to update the expansion plan, and we want council to support that work.
Beatrix Lee
And a word on the 24/7 expansion.
Currently, PSR responds from 6:00 AM to midnight every day of the week, so it would just be to cover 24/7 and kind of proportional staffing to the volume of calls.
So the next recommendation, we're at 5, is for the city to develop, to continue to develop the Portland Street Response Training Academy.
So the heart of this recommendation is really so that we can equip PSR staff to have all the required, the recommended training to be able to respond to the crises that we see on the streets.
And so currently we have a training academy built through the relationship with Portland State University School of Social Work.
But we are— this recommendation is just to really build out this program.
A strong training academy will work to reduce barriers that might discourage strong applicants from applying.
Looking at this model is also kind of where we're taking a look at the Portland Police Bureau and the Portland Fire and Rescue paid education programs.
There's also extensive academies that are kind of inspired by other cities.
That can be found in this report.
So in this training academy, it's really to build out, you know, bodies of knowledge and tools around public health, first response, mental health crisis expertise, and community health and peer work.
So yeah, we recommend that the training academy can continue to be built out as advised by our program manager.
Thank you.
So the next, the next recommendation is to expand outreach and communications for community engagement.
So cities should budget for culturally responsive multilingual outreach for community education and engagement about PSR.
So, you know, in speaking to just kind of everyday Portlanders, Folks may, you know, have questions around what PSR does and does not do.
They may have hesitations to call 911 for various reasons.
But we really want to build opportunities, outreach, you know, have tabling community events and listening sessions on really empowering and equipping Portlanders to have more confidence, reassurance, and make informed decisions with calling Portland Street Response.
And, you know, fun posters and ads and all of the social media communications can really just help build out public education around PSR.
So with this next recommendation, city to budget recruitment, retention, and wellness of PSR staff, we really just want to make sure we're paying attention to the The wellness and the collective care of staff.
As we know, with this kind of frontline crisis response work, we see a lot of symptoms of secondary trauma and burnout among our crisis responders.
So making sure that we are taking the measures to really consider rest, recovery, and staff wellness, and to make sure that our responders feel like Like they, um, they're, they're just cared for in, in a myriad of ways.
Um, and it goes also into, uh, some recruitment so that it really makes, um, the, the process, the hiring process equitable, um, and accessible for applicants who, um, yeah, would just be great, um, applicants, but maybe there are some, um, financial barriers there.
Um, finally, if I'm, um, if I miss anything, Kaya, Please tap in for this last recommendation here.
So the city leadership should codify and make permanent Portland Shoot Response Community Advisory Committee.
So this committee that we are presently on has been for about 6 months, and so it would sunset.
So we would want to make sure that there is a permanent committee that can make sure That, you know, with these recommendations, gathering community input, being a bridge between PSR staff and community members, that that body of a committee, yeah, stays with us.
So yeah, in the recommendation, it goes into who comprises of the committee members.
So experts in behavioral health, mental health, mobile crisis services, Yes.
So it would include providing resources to those with lived experience and relationship with and represent impacted communities and clients of PSR.
Goes into staffing, stipend, and onboarding.
So it would look like our advisory committee currently help onboard new members.
A report would be published through this committee annually and support with communications and outreach.
And then there's, it just kind of details the tasks that we would like to see and just kind of, yeah, our vision for this committee.
Kaya Sand
Yeah, I'll just add that one of the things we've learned through this process is, first of all, just how important it is that we really figure out how to include people with lived experience in a meaningful way.
And that includes how people are appointed onto the committee.
So that if someone— we're recommending that at least one, that we represent all 4 districts, but also recognizing that homelessness and housing, um, are unstable and that people are moved and placed into different spaces, including outside of Portland.
So really making sure that we can have, um, a, a insight for this committee into how to include people for whom their lives are less stable and it's difficult to come into city spaces.
So with that in mind, we have recommended that the committee meet at least 4 times a year in— and, and once in each of the districts in a space where people who are impacted by Portland Street Response easily would go to.
And so that we're really supporting the program and the bureau with this deep connection to the community so that they can also bring policy ideas to and get feedback and really maintain that meaningful back and forth, right, that has been a part of this program since the beginning because it gen— it was generated within, um, the city itself.
So, um, I think that's, that's all I would add to that.
And then at the end of our report, we have our City code recommendations.
So recommendations 1, 2, and 8 are really the ones that are in city code, and that is to create the bureau, to codify Portland Street Response as non-enforcement, and to create this community advisory committee.
So I know some of this might seem repetitive because you already voted for a resolution that did most of this, not the bureau, Except you did resolve to create a coequal branch.
But this is about getting it into city code through an ordinance.
So we recommend that council use our draft code toward bringing an ordinance forward.
With our other resolutions, they are city council driven, such as the call reallocation work.
Yes.
And also budget-driven.
And we think we have— there's a really strong bureau and program staff who have been incredibly helpful to us.
So we do really encourage City Council to support them in making the bureau and the program as strong as possible.
So now we can turn to questions.
Steve Novick
Thank you so much.
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you so much, PSR, for coming and giving us all this valuable information.
And you all came and presented at my Coffee with the Cop and Community that I do every month, and it was really valuable to let people know what exactly PSR did.
One of the questions I wanted to ask of you, because we added, I think, I think the Portland Solutions, um, we added a homeless bureau, I believe, a couple years ago, and I'm wondering, have you all ever thought about the correlation between homelessness and PSR and maybe being added to the Portland Solutions Bureau?
Kaya Sand
Thank you so much, Councilor Smith.
Um, and I, I will add, we have staff here if they want to join for any of these Thank you for those questions.
So, you know, cities across the nation started for different reasons.
There was a kind of convergence of motivations, and in some ways homelessness was a driving factor in Portland because over half of all the arrests in 2017, '18, '19 were of unhoused people.
Right.
And as, as that issue got untangled, we saw that a lot of them were these kind of disorder calls, unwanted wanted person calls.
So there is a connection, but that is not the entire program.
Um, it is that people are in public spaces and, um, and have a lack of services.
So other programs have started because of, um, of the disproportionate impact on people with mental illness, folks of color, And so all of this comes together, and then we have, as I was describing in Dayton, the kind of relationship issues that drive so many 911 calls.
So I say that to say that I think that it would be dangerous to take one identity or population and pull it out of a community safety, a public safety structure.
And that is, it's, it's a, I think, a more Portland Yeah, and since—.
Loretta Smith
Right, exactly.
And I think that, you know, Portland Solutions, um, it, it involves a number of things.
The, the, the thing that I worry about is that I, I didn't see a number on how much this expansion would cost.
Did you have a number?
Kaya Sand
We do, and we have, uh, someone who has been working hard on that, um, Director Stephanie Howard Good morning, Councilor.
Stephanie Howard
For the record, my name is Stephanie Howard.
I'm the Director of Community Safety Programs for the city's Public Safety Service Area.
And to your question, Councilor, yes, I've been working with the budget team to identify costs associated with these recommendations.
Largely, the recommendations are to maintain the existing structure, but there are 3 potential areas where there would be additional costs.
Okay.
So the first would be if this is a bureau and a director were appointed or, you know, put in that position to lead the bureau, there would be a reclassification of the position I'm currently in, which is a Manager 2 right now, to a Director 1.
That estimated cost would be $36,000 annually.
There would be a reclassification for equity purposes among some of the leadership level of the programs under this bureau.
For the ceasefire program, for OVP and Portland Street Response, we would reclassify one of those positions to be an equal level, a Manager 1, and that would be a $30,000 annual cost.
Loretta Smith
And then— Do you have a, like, a big dollar amount of— I don't want you to have to go through all these different classifications and how you would increase them.
Do you have a dollar amount?
Is it going to cost another $5 million to do this?
Another $10 million?
Tell me a number, a solid number.
Stephanie Howard
Yeah, I can tell you, Councilor, just one more that I just want to say for the record, which is that there, uh, according with this, uh, recommendation, we've asked for the budget, uh, estimates for a 0.5 FTE to help to support the community, if it— or the Community Advisory Committee if it's created.
The total of those is $144,000 per year estimated.
Loretta Smith
Okay, and, and, and where I'm most concerned Councilor Loretta Smith.
My concern is we created a new bureau without any numbers.
And so I'm worried that as we create new bureaus and new opportunities, I heard so much expansion conversation in the report.
I'm worried because we had a $170 million deficit for current operating costs.
Councilmember Loretta Smith.
I'm wondering where are we going to get this money from.
And I'm asking everybody who comes to me for expansions, new programs, tell me what you would take away.
What would you take away if we were to bring this program into line?
What would you take away out of the city budget?
Because I think we need to have this kind of model as a pay-as-you-go model like they do in Congress.
If you're If you're going to bring something forward, you've got to take something away.
So do you have any ideas on what you would take away from our city budget to bring this in?
Unidentified speaker
Councilor, I'll step in on that question right there.
We haven't reached that point yet of doing any deliberations as it relates to what we would take out.
I think we'll go through a prioritization kind of conversation.
As executive arm to kind of talk through if this is the direction that council is wanting to move forward as it relates to what could we offer up as it relates to services or funding or reallocating things to make this doable.
But this is, and I'm with you on this, this will require some additional funding to make happen.
But we would have to have a conversation internally about how we would propose to council of us doing that.
Loretta Smith
And I would also, um, CA Lee, like to hear some conversation from the other, uh, public safety organizations because I heard a lot of expansion in the 911 Bureau, um, would need to take place to, to do this in the way that they have presented it.
And I'm just, I'm just concerned.
I mean, you know, we, we have a lot of people that are in need of services.
Thank you.
We don't know how we're going to pay for what we have next year, but adding new stuff that worries me.
And then it then I have to identify where I want to take away.
But I'm not going to keep all that on my shoulders.
I'm going to ask folks who who are coming in that they want something if they want ongoing money because this sounds like an ongoing program.
If you're going to put together a bureau, then they should also have.
An opportunity to tell me where they would take it from.
Kaya Sand
And I'll just add, Councilor, and this is not addressing what's being taken away, but I did want to mention with the police recruitment report that you provided me, that that has been really helpful as seeing the public service, the public safety service area as one entity.
And so all of these calls are being— need to be responded to by one of the responders.
And so So we're actually just looking at the fact that we'd be, for a city, matching the better responder for particular calls.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
I want you all to give some, some real thought to my question because it is going to be a number of people who will sit in your seat and before us who will ask us for expansion.
And I know that people know that we are in a deficit.
And, and we, we're going to have to figure out how to get that $170 million back again, and we can't keep replacing it with one-time-only money.
And you're asking for ongoing money.
So I would also ask you to come back to my office within this next month to give me some ideas on which ongoing programs you would cut as we're looking at this.
I think what you have is a, is a good idea.
And, um, I think it's helpful, but I also think I need a little bit more assistance with this as well.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you.
Um, thank you so much to the presenters.
It's really lovely to get to see some of you again.
Um, Kaya, we worked together since, uh, you know, back in the day when Portland Street Response was first getting started, so it's really lovely to see you in chambers again.
I'm so Thank you.
Hi, Councilor Sameer Kanal.
Sorry I can't be there in person.
I'm fighting off a perpetual exhaustion cold.
I think something that really stood out to me from your presentation was the discussion that we have often created systems that are putting domination of people at the forefront of how we address their problems, and that Portland Street Response is designed in a different way.
And I know that Portland Street Response does mental health crisis But something that it reminded me of was, you know, studying up on drug usage and forced treatment and how a lot of times people who are forced into treatment actually end up overdosing in the treatment centers because they were not prepared or ready to be in treatment.
And we have so many people that are in need of mental health assistance, drug assistance, all sorts of things.
And we don't even have enough resources for those people that are willing to get into treatment.
And yet we are, we're talking about a system of domination.
So I just appreciated you saying that.
I think that's part of what makes the program unique and special in our system.
And I think that we're gonna, you know, keep running into questions about cost, and those are very fair questions.
I think part of our responsibility as a council is that we decide what the trade-offs are and what the priorities are.
And I think that's part of the problem.
We have the most access to the budget, so that's part of our role.
But something that this committee has discussed a lot, and I know Councilor Novick has discussed a lot, is if the 24/7 staffing model is going to help make us Medicaid eligible, because that would also help us pay for the expansion.
Or where— or if you know where we're at at becoming Medicaid eligible, is that still a resource option?
And maybe that's for the presenters or some of the staff in the audience.
Yeah, I think that's a great question.
Stephanie Howard
Thank you, Councilor.
Stephanie Howard again.
I can take that question.
Yes, 24/7 operation is currently a requirement for the CAHOOTS Act Medicaid funding, and we are continuing to work towards that.
And so that is— that would, depending on what happens with the federal government and how Medicaid is impacted, that would be a source of revenue that we could access.
Steve Novick
So Sorry, Director Harrop, but isn't there a possibility of getting some Medicaid dollars even before— in other kinds of Medicaid dollars than CAHOOTS Act dollars?
Stephanie Howard
Yes, thank you, Councilor Novick.
I'm sorry.
Yes, there is.
It is a lower rate and a smaller amount.
So the CAHOOTS Act Medicaid access is the ideal source.
But yes, we are working towards trying to get any access to Medicaid dollars.
Angelita Morillo
So in essence, there might be You know, a situation where we are having to pay something now in order to get to free up dollars from another resource later, which sort of mirrors discussions that we're having for other things that are more luxury-oriented, I would say.
Whereas I think that Portland Street Response is a necessity.
So I guess as a councilor, that's sort of how I would weigh some of those different discussions.
Steve Novick
And thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you, Chair Novick.
Thanks everybody for being here.
Uh, there's obviously a lot of history to PSR, most of which is captured in Resolution 37709, so I won't go too deep there.
But I did want to just kind of recap.
June 15th last year, we adopted 37709, Support, Protect, and Expand PSR, which created the committee.
Um, it had other advisory roles beyond the code, but as you've obviously mentioned, Uh, December 18th, you were all appointed with Resolution 37728.
Um, 14 members of the 15-member committee were appointed and started meeting this year until last week.
And I wanted to mention that to say that last week you adopted your recommendations unanimously.
Um, so Kaya, Jill, and every member of the committee, um, including Caroline, who I know is a member of staff and was a part of the committee as well, Ocean, uh, Stephanie Howard, April Roa, Ebony as well.
Um, and then I know that you also consulted with, uh, subject matter experts.
I think PSEP came, Project Respond came as well.
So you did the work, and that's really important to recognize.
Um, I've, I've worked in support of advisory bodies, um, at the city on the other side, um, and everybody does the work.
Uh, I don't mean to imply that, that, that some don't, but some do a lot more and go above and beyond.
And I really appreciate how much work that you all put into this.
Um, I also know that colleagues, particularly Councilors Avalos and Murillo on the first resolution, members of this committee on the hiring, and Councilor Novick, uh, on the second resolution, helped make it, uh, successful, as well as Mayor Wilson, CA Lee.
High-profile short-term advisory groups that make recommendations to council rarely receive unanimity at the end of this.
They rarely achieve that.
Uh, more may exist than this.
I'm only aware of 2, the Police Accountability Commission and And so that really deserves celebration and recognition because it requires work to not only get the research done and the recommendations written, but to ensure that everybody's coming along and that their voices are all heard in each and every, you know, hopefully not to the comma level, but at least the word level.
And so that's really important.
I looked at your 8 recommendations and just speaking for myself, I'm supportive of all of them.
I don't think that I need to put any more commentary into 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, or 8, but we'll probably talk about those when we get further.
I did want to dig a little bit into recommendation number 3, because as was pointed out, Councilor Novick has asked about moving welfare checks to better responders to free up police resources multiple times in the past.
And if 60% of those welfare checks which go to police today could go to PSR, that's a huge freeing up of police resources for homicides, robberies, other high acuity calls that really only police are equipped to handle right now.
The call allocation study that was in progress a few years ago was pulled back by Mayor Wheeler in a previous phase out of fear of what it might recommend.
So it's really great to see strong support for that and for continuing expanding that work today.
I really wanted to thank CA Lee and Director Howard.
The PSR-specific dispatch is huge, and the coding is really vital as well.
And I wanted to see if you could give us a little bit more information on those 6 call types, just to kind of indicate what changed.
And just for those who may not know, when something goes to police or fire, it's not coded based on the responder, it's coded based on what the type of issue is.
Yes.
Whereas previous to, I guess, a few days ago, it was coded for PSR just as PSR based on the responder, and that lacked the information that we're about to hear.
So I'm looking forward to learning more.
Stephanie Howard
Yeah, I'm happy to take that.
So as you noted, Councilor, there was one single PSR call type for any call that was— that met PSR criteria.
And so a call taker at BOEC would take that code it, and then it would go to the PSR queue in order to be responded to.
But the piece that doesn't happen in that process that is now happening, well, that will be happening, is that number one, our supervisors were responsible for managing and reviewing that call log continuously and identifying and triaging the calls based on what they saw.
Because there was only one call type, they had to review every single call to try to identify which team Yes.
Should go and the priority for those calls.
Now, without changing the scope of work, having that singular PSR call type broken into 6, our supervisors are able to much more quickly triage the call and send the responders to the most urgent and help to map that out.
What the dedicated dispatcher will bring in December is that the dispatchers will now both identify the call type and be able to dispatch a PSR team directly instead of having to have our supervisors responsible for reviewing and triaging it.
It will add a lot of support, which is the same way that police and fire also receive support from BOEC.
So we're really, really looking forward to that.
That is a change that has been a long time in the making, and Director Maudsley has been a terrific help for us to get that off the ground and really make our operations more efficient.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you.
Um, I guess, could you— do you have the list of the 6 by any chance?
If not, can you—.
Stephanie Howard
Yeah, yeah, I, I do.
I'm sorry.
So yes, so again, it's the same bucket of calls, no change in scope of the PSR-eligible calls, but they've been broken down into a person down and unchecked, which I think is kind of self-explanatory.
There's a well-being call Right now, Portland Street Response can respond indoors in publicly accessible spaces.
So those calls would be categorized under that second well-being check call.
There's a well-being check outside, which is this, you know, similar thing.
And then we have mental health crisis inside, again, in public spaces or outside in, you know, in outside agencies.
And then the 6th call type is the PSR partner agency.
Okay.
So more and more what we've been seeing is even if a call is originally dispatched to a police officer, say, and they get to the call and assess the scene, understand what's going on, and they say this is a better call for Portland Street Response, they can then assign that call type and transfer that call to Portland Street Response to come and respond.
Sameer Kanal
Okay, thank you for that.
That last one, I think in particular, is helpful to have that.
Yeah.
For number 6, I think the question is more for us in the long run about how detailed we want to be in terms of establishing criteria for community engagement standards and integration.
I definitely support everything you said, Beatrix, in terms of the values and goals around it, and I appreciate that.
But I guess my question on your end is, how integrated would you expect broad engagement to be integrated in terms of PSR and the other parts of the proposed Bureau.
I know we talked about the committee piece and you've recommended a PSR-specific committee, but in terms of the broader engagement, do you have thoughts on that, or is there an expectation of any variety?
Beatrix Lee
So was it the recommendation for like retention and wellness of PSR staff, or is it the community engagement outreach one?
Sameer Kanal
The engagement outreach one.
Kaya Sand
Yeah, you know, one thing I think is really exciting and And we were careful to not be speaking for the other programs because we are advisory to one of the programs.
But one thing that's really exciting is the integration.
I mean, even now having the East, the new building or the city building that a number of the programs have come together in, is they can start to work together more.
But also I look at things like in the Safe Blocks program or in some of the other programs where they have education components and they're educating neighbors.
Yes.
Well, this is a kind of community safety that helps people de-escalate situations so they don't have to call 911.
So you start to see how many partnerships that might be possible by having these programs all connected together.
And I— education is one of the ones that stands out the most to me, but I also just think about the ways in which Portland Street Response can be in communication for referring or for receiving information from another program, because we do frame it in that upstream-downstream way.
Beatrix Lee
And part of the outreach and communications can also be driven by the advisory committee.
So within PSR, you know, we would love to see multilingual outreach and communication so that it really reaches our BIPOC and immigrant communities and impacted communities.
But that's just kind of limited to PSR, and we would love to see more of this for all, all programs.
Kaya Sand
I think just adding to what Beatrix said, that mental health crises change over time and, and can have cultural components.
When, say, a community comes in from a war-torn region as a refugee population, our city has to adapt and understand cultural components.
Um, so we can't have a stagnant program when we're dealing with issues of, of personal crisis like that.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks.
And then I don't really personally feel like I need more info on number 8, uh, but I did want to ask Kaya if you can just repeat what you said about people with lived experience being appointed.
Kaya Sand
I think council lacked that awareness last December, and I'd love to have us all be educated about that again by Yeah, I mean, there's, there's so many barriers when someone is experiencing homelessness or other kinds of system deprivations, and one of them is stability of address.
So I think it's really important for council to understand that if we want to make sure that we open the door to people with lived experience, we, we learn more about what the— what they're up against.
People who are homeless homeless clearly have a rotating address.
It could be a corner where they have pitched the tent, but they might get swept or they might be moving to another area.
So they might move to another shelter, right?
So this is a very unstable address.
But also when people are getting supportive services with housing, it's the same thing.
You know, they don't have a choice in getting put into one neighborhood or another.
And when we have a metro-wide housing program, that, that can also mean that they're not even in Portland anymore.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you so much for that.
I'll make sure to clip that for someone else later.
I'll pause here.
Steve Novick
Thanks, Chair Novick.
Thank you, Councilor Kanal.
I have a few big questions.
One is you talked about increasing compensation for PSR staff.
I was wondering if you have sort of information on what comparable staff are being paid by other jurisdictions.
Are we like below market?
Are we above market?
Are we at market?
Kaya Sand
That might be something— should we bring in staff for that?
I think that our recommendation was on a general level with that, so we aren't digging into— in the 6 months that we've been working on this, we didn't dig into that portion.
Beatrix Lee
In the recommendation, it does have a note advised by the program manager.
And so I— it's kind of just to make sure that folks who have the expertise around this are making that decision.
Steve Novick
On the recommendation to start tracking what PSR calls would've been classified as if they go to police, I think that that's a— that sounds really important.
I'm just wondering if it would be complicated and expensive to operationalize it.
Would that mean that like BOEC would have to classify a call 2 different ways?
Kaya Sand
Well, I'm not going to, but I will say BOEC has been doing amazing work with PSR in Scotch taping together things because they've had to use the fire CAD system and radio all along when these calls were primarily calls that were police calls previously.
And that has to do with the CGIS requirements.
So in other words, they've had to adapt something that is entirely not set up for PSR.
So I'm pretty confident that they could do some backend, some backend work on the CAD system.
But that's easy for me to say because I'm a community member who doesn't work for BOEC.
Stephanie Howard
And Councilor, I'm happy to look into that, both of those questions, and try to get some information for Council on those issues.
Steve Novick
This is just a comment, not a question, but I was really interested in what you said about Dayton trying to get to 20%.
I mean, I was kind of surprised when we looked at police calls last year, And the only ones that I, that I could conclude clearly had nothing to do with crime really were the welfare check calls, or about 6%.
So I'm curious about asking BOEC, like, how many of our calls are barking dogs, neighbor trouble, etc., etc.?
Um, let's see, another question.
Kaya Sand
Yeah, I look forward to the results.
Steve Novick
Yeah.
Um, another question I had was, you reference expanded detention, youth crisis something or other.
Uh, can you elaborate on that?
Kaya Sand
Yeah, a number of cities— Albuquerque, Durham actually has an in-schools program, and they go into schools when there's a crisis that the school feels overwhelmed by.
So I don't know beyond that in terms of the work that Portland has done to decide to not take on those calls, but I do know it's widespread across the nation.
So our recommendation is just that the city look at it and decide whether or not this is something else that we could take on.
Sameer Kanal
Thank you very much.
Steve Novick
Councilor Smith.
Loretta Smith
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you so much.
It's good to see you in person.
Um, I want to go back to something you, you said, that, um, homeless folks are not our base clientele at PSR.
But I remember when I was a county commissioner and I saw that Commissioner Hardisty was, was working on this new innovative program and it was PSR.
I was like, that's something that we should be doing because it's about folks who have mental health challenges.
And that's what we do at Multnomah County is to do mental health and homelessness.
That's— this is a program we should be paying for.
Thank you.
Thank you.
But at the time, we didn't have all the shelter money that Multnomah County has today.
We had none of that.
And so I want us to be clear, as clear-eyed as directors, managers, and people, to understand what our book of business is.
And if our book of business is infrastructure, public safety, and what that looks And in regards to your report around youth and crisis, I think we're taking on things that are not our book of business, that we're adding to PSR to make it bigger than what it was originally designed to do.
Which I remember it was folks who are homeless, who are on our city streets, that have issues that maybe Maybe our police should not handle, but someone like in PSR should handle those calls.
And so for me, I don't want you to begin to dream on this.
Mm-hmm.
It sounds like a dream because you've put all your dreams that you want PSR to be.
And PSR originally was dealing with folks who were homeless, folks who had mental health issues.
And I remember having this conversation with my county commissioner And so I want us to be very mindful of this.
And the question that I have for you, how are you planning, or how have you evaluated the success of PSR in terms of our return on our investment that we've put in?
What would you say we've accomplished while we've had it?
Not the expansion, because I hear your expansion needs and wants, but I need you to tell me what have we accomplished and what have we Um, what have we received for our investment?
Kaya Sand
You know, I, I just was hoping to address the, the origin story because I think our origin story of PSR is a complicated one because it did come from advocacy around homelessness.
I was a part of that, and, um, but that is not what PSR is.
PSR is part of the public safety, um, service sector and, and responds to anyone in crisis.
And as we were talking about with the call types, a lot of these are about diversion so that the police actually are able to take on the higher acuity calls.
So with the youth, when you talked about Dreaming, I do want to make sure to emphasize— I think I didn't make clear— that these are calls that police would otherwise respond to.
And the reason Dayton decided to focus all of its mediation on youth is that youth issues generally are There's generally someone else, there's generally an adult, and having mediation involved really helps the youth from entering into the carceral system.
So I want to make sure that I didn't muddy that as a kind of dream as much as looking at the holistic public safety system.
Um, the PSR is about to do an evaluation that you all funded thanks to the 2025-2027 And I'll turn that to Director Howard.
Stephanie Howard
Yeah, I'm happy.
We are in the RFP process right now.
The proposals for that evaluation are being evaluated as we speak.
To speak to some of the questions that you have, I can tell you from previous 2 evaluations that have been conducted by Portland State University evaluators, what we have seen in terms of return on services is that our call volume right now is about 14,000 calls a year that would otherwise have been going to the police queue.
And, you know, likely— and I see Chief Day is here, and I would invite him if he feels like joining into the conversation.
But I think the return on investment is not just impacts to the city, it's to the entire community, including the court system, the jail system, and trying to divert those calls out of that system.
That has been a huge payoff, and I'm happy to quantify that.
Loretta Smith
I don't have the Yeah, no, I understand, Stephanie.
Thank you so much for, um, explaining that.
And, um, I am trying to, uh, figure out from a 30,000-foot level of how to manage this $8.6 billion budget.
I know that's not you all's problem.
That's my job that I got elected for.
But I have to ask you these questions because I don't want to take on everybody else's job from the courts From this, from the Multnomah County and all these folks.
I want to do our book of business and I want to do our book of business well.
We are doing a lot of things at the City of Portland that is not a part of our book of business or in our charter.
So for me, when I see people, when I hear people say expansion, and they will say small numbers initially, and then that next year they'll come up with a whole bunch of stuff that we didn't realize that we had to have This.
So now we need these many dollars for this new bureau.
And I don't want to be caught off guard with us bringing new books of business into the city of Portland.
I want folks to be able to, um, get the services that you all are offering and have the appropriate people pay for those services.
And I think those services should be coming from Multnomah County.
Understood.
I think that's, that's where they should be coming from.
We have been a really good neighbor and doing additional shelter work, doing additional cleanup work as a result of our commitment to keeping the city clean and safe.
But at the end of the day, without our ARPA money— and that's how you all evolved— without our ARPA money, You wouldn't be here and we wouldn't have these services.
And it wouldn't— and I'm saying this because Multnomah County would have been forced to actually do this work because they have the money for it.
And we don't have that extra $300 million every year to do this.
And so when you talk about this, you're talking about homelessness.
This is what I hear.
Yes.
When you talk about PSR, you're talking about mental health needs.
Multnomah County is the public health authority.
And so my question to you is, have you tried to go to Multnomah County and say, we need to partner with this?
Because I don't think the city of Portland can do this alone.
I really don't think that we can or that we have the bandwidth to do this alone.
Thank you.
And I don't want to give people a false impression by having this report.
Just like the police, the Public Safety Service area, they came and brought us a report about what it would— what could we do if we had additional resources.
That's how they couched it.
If they had additional resources, where would they spend it?
And you saw the report that the police put out.
Yes.
You all are coming with a direct ask of an expansion, not if we had XYZ dollars, this is what we can do more.
It is like, this is what we want you to do.
This is the code we want you to change.
And what I'm saying, changing code is, is making our book of business different from what it was.
And so until we find a, a stream of funding, I don't know how we do this.
And I don't want to, I don't want to get people I don't want to give folks false hope because I can tell you, unless you tell me where you're going to get this money from or where we should take this money from, I'm not putting any more one-time-only monies in an expansion.
I'm not.
I'm not going to go for it.
Stephanie Howard
Your point is well taken, Councilor.
I appreciate it.
And I think just a couple of things to flag.
Number one, our budget was made ongoing last year regardless.
And so our— this budget is an ongoing budget.
Number 2, Portland Street Response's calls are all generated from 911.
They would go to police if not Portland Street Response.
And so that doesn't change—.
Loretta Smith
Well, the police would be expanded, not PSR, if it would go the normal way that it would generally go.
Stephanie Howard
I think you might— I would welcome a deeper conversation about this, but I also do want to talk to mention, like, this committee was formed to make this recommendation to council.
And so I don't want it to be lost that they're doing exactly what council asked them to do in bringing forward these recommendations, not sort of creating something from whole cloth to bring and ask.
They were asked with to do the work that they have are producing for you now.
And so I, I completely understand your points.
Loretta Smith
But I— when you bring me something that says you only need $135,000, I don't believe it, Stephanie.
Stephanie Howard
And I'm happy to have more conversations with you about that.
Loretta Smith
Thank you.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Wow.
Sameer Kanal
Uh, looking forward, I'm excited to get started on this work, uh, and I'm excited about the low-budget impact.
And when I ask a question and I get an answer, I actually am appreciative that there was an answer.
$144,000, Not million, thousand.
And that's a, that's a really helpful piece of information, uh, to have going forward.
Um, I want to appreciate that it is not— we did not ask anyone on this side of the dais to tell us what to cut to fund PSR.
That's not your job, and I don't want to ask you to do something that's not your job.
That's our job as city councilors, as legislators, as the budget authority to figure out what to cut.
I'm interested in doing that job because we do not have a $170 million deficit.
We have a much smaller deficit.
We have $100 million or so of ongoing programs which are designed to sunset each year, and the mayor asks to retain those programs and continue them.
That's not a deficit.
That's a request for expansion of a program designed to sunset at the end of one fiscal year into the next fiscal year.
And we can say no to that as an expansion the same way we can say no to continuing any program.
Obviously, if the mayor does choose to propose retaining those programs, he would propose what to cut in his proposed budget.
Now, of course, if there's the fair share tax passes or another revenue source is created, then that conversation is different.
But even otherwise, we do have have places to look for the real deficit, as well as to take a critical eye to whether or not to retain programs into a following year that were designed to be one-time, the bulk of which are important solutions, which is the thing that's breaking our budget right now.
So I think it's, uh, the question that was posed earlier of where to look for the money is— was answered in the question itself.
Um, writ large, I think it's fair to observe that there are attempts to diminish this program by forcing it to co-respond, by forcing it to be a part of homelessness services by making it have a phone number that is not 911, by making it a part of the county, by making it a nonprofit, or some new idea.
And it's important for us to name that these are cynical attempts to just zero out PSR, and we have to name it so that we can combat it.
Because even when naming it, we're noticing, and I'm observing as well, that the argument was made that the reason why we shouldn't do this is so we can expand a different bureau, as opposed to evaluating PSR for what it is.
But I don't think we need to relitigate that because we actually already passed this last year in June.
Um, the, the, the position of this council has been established, and it includes that PSR is not a healthcare program.
PSR is not a homelessness services program.
It is a public safety responder for people in behavioral health crisis, like the people who have lost their lives earlier this year and last year because they did not have the right responder going to those Now, there is an overlap between homelessness and behavioral health, but it is a Venn diagram, not a single circle.
And I also want to observe that there is a pattern of applying standards that are fair for everyone, but applying them only to things that are doing the helping and not the things that are doing the harming.
I would love to see the same standard of evaluation applied to Portland Solutions.
Is it accomplishing its stated goals that is being proposed here for PSR?
Because PSR is passing that test, and that's not coming from me, and that's not coming from anybody on that side of the table.
Today is it's coming from multiple external evaluations.
And again, Portland Solutions is the stream of funding that we are looking for.
We should be looking there because that is going to assist us in achieving the goals of this program.
Now, I, looking forward at this, I'm excited to first just, you know, accept the report today and appreciate the work that's gone into it, but to have the conversation and to be honest about the I think the fact that turning something into a bureau, implementing the recommendations, has a smaller price tag.
And then what that enables will— may possibly have other prices down the line.
Eventually, if PSR were to triple its staff, obviously that would cost more than $144,000.
If it goes up by double, it would increase also, just not by as much.
Those are conversations we have to have later and see where we want to go.
But the first step is ensuring that it is protected.
Thank you.
Because it has lived as an extended pilot for far too long, and we need to make it a permanent part of our public safety system.
And that's, I think, what your recommendations do a big part of achieving.
And I'm excited to accept those, build upon them, and, uh, and appreciate the work as we keep going.
Thank you.
Steve Novick
Councilor Morillo.
Angelita Morillo
Sorry, you caught me mid-nose blow.
Um, Um, yeah, I, I want to say thanks again to the folks who presented today because again, it was council that directed you to bring us recommendations.
So you have fulfilled your duties in bringing us those recommendations.
And I just want to remind folks that Portland Street Response was also sort of created during a time where police were responding to mental health crisis calls and they had killed so many people who experienced mental health crisis because they did not So sure, we could beef up the police bureau more, but that doesn't address the fact that these calls exist.
Someone has to respond to them.
The public wants somebody to respond to them, and there is a right person to do that work.
Um, so I, I don't want to glaze over that.
And the other thing that I will add is that this isn't just a homelessness crisis response.
There are people who are housed who also experience mental health crises.
Yeah.
And crises, so we need to be able to and some of them are lucky enough to have a supportive family that ends up bringing them home later.
But those mental health crises happen in public streets as well, and Portland Street Response would be responding to housed and unhoused people alike.
So this is a program that serves everybody in our society.
It's just that houseless people are more visible when it comes to a lot of the issues that they deal with because they don't have a private residence to deal with The other thing I'll say is I think there were some allusions to, like, new offices being created and that costing us a lot.
I will say it sounds like they gave us a number for how much it's estimated to cost.
And this is a bureau, which is a little bit bigger than an office, I would say.
But with the Data Privacy Office, there was no increase in cost.
I just verified with my financial analyst to make sure I wasn't hallucinating.
Thank you.
But we were really careful when we created that to ensure that it wouldn't create additional costs for the city because of the budget crunch that we're in.
So the cost of this is pretty nominal, around $144,000 is something that we can find in the city budget.
And I think that we have a responsibility to find it because we just need to send the right responder to the right call.
The other reason I think that this really does belong at the city and not at the county is because it needs to fall within our 911 system.
Portland Street Response does not just do, you know, random outreach to connect people to services.
It is specifically about, okay, someone is having a mental health crisis.
They are standing in the middle of the road blocking traffic for everybody, and they don't have the wherewithal to put— get themselves out of danger or stop blocking the road or whatever, right?
That is a 911 call, and that 911 call falls under the purview of the city.
So our role is to decide who gets that call, who answers, what training they have, do they show up with a gun, do they not show up with a gun.
All of that is part of an emergency response system, and that's a little bit different than just doing general day-to-day outreach when there isn't a 911 call level threat happening.
Thank you.
So that's sort of why I think it was created within 911.
That's why police couldn't respond to it.
And frankly, I don't think police should have to.
That's a lot of additional training.
That's a lot of additional, maybe even college education that someone should have to answer that type of call.
And they need to actually be freed up to address violent crime, We need more detectives.
I think as Councilor Novick and Councilor Kanal have pointed out, that type of work needs to happen, but they can't do that if they are responding to calls that they are not equipped to handle.
So again, thank you to the presenters for coming here for months-long work putting all of this together for us.
We're very lucky to have people take time out of their day to do that.
And I think we're very lucky to have a great Deputy City Attorney Nancy Thorington.
Thank you.
And I appreciate you crunching the numbers.
Stephanie, thank you as well for crunching all of that for us.
You know, if you have any further breakdowns you want us to look at, feel free to email it to our offices.
But I trust the numbers that you put forward.
So thank you.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Councilor.
I'm going to shut this down at 11 so we can take a break and then get to body-worn cameras.
But Councilor Smith, do you have a minute?
Loretta Smith
I have one quick question.
So I'd like you to do one thing for me.
Uh, Director Howard, I'd like you to tell me, because the recommendation is to have PSR go 24 hours, could you please put in your recommendation what it would cost to bring new people on and put that number with your $145,000 number so I can see the whole number with the, um, recommendation to go 24 hours?
That's what I mean.
I, I, I, I'm seeing something in my head, and I know good and well it's going to be more than one $145,000 because you're going to pay with benefits and for one person.
But if you could please, um, um, calculate what it would cost for personnel in addition to the monies that you've already identified, what it would cost, the whole number.
That's what I'm asking for.
Stephanie Howard
Yeah, happy to, Councilor.
And we, we have our expansion plan that we created earlier this year.
I can send that to you.
It has that information.
Loretta Smith
Okay, perfect.
Thank you.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Councilor.
Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks.
At the, at the risk of stealing your thunder with a pop culture reference, uh, Councilor Novick, uh, there's a— and at the risk of, of alienating Alanis Morissette— we have 10,000 knives when all we need is a spoon.
And when you are trying to eat soup, it doesn't matter how many knives you get, it doesn't matter how many forks you get, you just need one spoon.
And so trying to get the right responder for the types of calls that only you can do at PSR is the key piece that we're missing in terms of identifying what the problem we're trying to solve is.
So, um, I just wanted to, to put a finer point on that and, and kind of continue to commit to, to the diversity of options in silverware drawers as well as in the PSSA.
Thanks.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Councilor.
That reminds me, I've been meaning to ask the council president to have a work session discussing how much damage Alanis Morissette did to the English language with that song Isn't Thank you very much.
I really appreciate this, and I realize you've been sort of caught up into council discussions, which we need to resolve ourselves and can't ask you to resolve.
But one thing I want to say is I really appreciate the— what you've done looking at other cities, and I want to follow up with you, Kaya, and like talk about who do we talk to in Dayton, who do we talk to in Minneapolis, because I think that's something that we need to do more.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And, uh, now we're going to take a 15-minute recess and then talk about body-worn cameras.
So good people, be back at, um, 11:14.
I didn't see it.
Oh, all right, I've let things slip to 11:15 when they said 11:14.
Could the clerk please call the next item?
Keelan McClymont
Document number 2026-379, Procedures for the Release of Body-Worn Cameras footage discussion.
Steve Novick
Please proceed.
Bob Day
Good morning, Councilors.
Bob Day, Chief of Police.
Joining me is Mike Menner, our comms manager for the Police Bureau, and we are gonna walk through some— a little bit of history with the body-worn camera program and then speak directly to our Thank you, Councilor Herbold.
I'm going to talk about our SOP regarding the release of information during critical incidents, and then I know we're going to hear from PCIP, and we'll have some chance for some Q&A, I believe.
So go ahead, Bree, next slide, please.
So just a quick overview.
As you can see on the left-hand side of the screen, what the cameras are for, and the context on the side, on the right side there, kind of gives you an idea of the history of how we got Oh, I do want to highlight that this document that we're looking at, these 4 slides, there were a couple of minor changes made this morning just because we got some clarification on them from what was originally sent over.
Kaya Sand
They're working off of the newest one.
Bob Day
They're working on that?
Okay, so this is the original one.
Kaya Sand
No, this is the newest one.
Bob Day
This is the new one?
Okay, good.
Okay, great.
Thank you.
Sorry, I wanted to make sure.
So you can see on the, like I said, left side what they're used for.
The highlight that I would place at the bottom there is it's a piece of evidence from one vantage point.
Oftentimes we think we have a camera angle and So we just know everything that happened.
It's just a single piece of evidence from one vantage point.
On the right-hand side gives a little bit of the history.
We're gonna dive into that a little bit more.
But going back to the settlement agreement, the context of body-worn cameras within the settlement agreement is important as we talk about the policy and the application of it.
We began studying, well, go ahead in the next slide.
We actually began having some conversations about body-worn cameras As you can see down at the bottom, you know, well, 2014, 2015, that first bullet at the top, and then down below 2015, we hosted a number of community forums.
'21 Polling showed high percentage of Portlanders wanting us to have cameras, several petitions including from various civil rights groups.
It took a little bit of a while there, but you can see in April of '22, Judge Simon accepts an amendment to the ordinance.
Steve Novick
Thank you.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you.
Bob Day
To the settlement agreement, body-worn cameras became court required.
And if you move down to the end, in June, August of 2024, we began the— excuse me— the implementation of body-worn cameras.
So, you know, about 10 years more or less of the Police Bureau looking at this in different iterations to get it off the ground in full implementation in the summer Go ahead, next slide, please.
So the body-worn camera program, these are just some of the processes we use.
It automatically activates when you can see emergency lights are activated, a firearm is drawn, et cetera.
Those are immediate activations.
Middle category talks about when officers must activate if, in fact, some of those things don't automatically take place.
And then there are opportunities built in for, you know, whether we have the camera on or off during, you know, sensitive interviews, attorney-client conversations, some basic, you know, roll call training, etc.
The entire body-worn camera policy was part of negotiations with the PPA, so it's, it's, you know, part of the CBA as we look at it.
And so these were some of the steps that we Thank you.
Accountability is built in at the end there.
You can see where we announce that we are recording.
That's required in Oregon.
Record somebody, we need to let them know we're recording them.
And then we can, before stopping, state the reason.
So that's documented.
Community members' request alone does not end the recording, but obviously going back up to that The paragraph on the right, for some of these sensitive investigations, they may turn into that, and then we would end the recording, and we would state why we ended the recording.
Okay, next slide.
It's a little bit about how long the footage lives, how it's retained.
It's obviously recorded on the camera.
When the officers return to the precincts, they put it in what's called the dock.
It's uploaded.
And then it's archived.
They're required to go in and tag it and make sure that it lines up with the proper case number, and then it's stored.
It's protected.
It cannot be edited, deleted.
We can limit who can view certain footage.
And then you can see down at the bottom, we follow Oregon law and state statute around the retention of the material.
Thank you.
Routine footage, no case.
This might be, for example, I oftentimes wear a camera.
I may drive by a vehicle that's on a traffic stop and the overhead lights from that vehicle activates my camera.
I'm not stopping, I'm just driving by.
My camera comes on, it may record for 30 seconds or a minute.
I end that recording and then I have to go in and tag that as an accidental or unintentional activation, and that will be deleted.
So that's not a crime?
Within 180 days.
Evidence until the case reaches final disposition.
Internal investigations until closed or 180 days, whichever is longer.
And then on the right, you can see some of the purposes that it's for, where it's helped us.
And we're going to get into on the next future slide here around footage release within 14 days, critical incident releasing of information.
We did negotiate in this process all involved officers give a statement to Internal Affairs within 48 hours before viewing.
We use it for after-action process, including random reviews throughout the year to, to review officers' performance.
And then of course, it's never used in accordance with facial recognition or non-law enforcement use.
And once again, as I said earlier, it's one perspective.
There's a lot of things that impact the benefit or availability or information that's shared as it relates to, you know, the placement of the camera, field of view, light, audio, et cetera.
Okay, Bree, I think we have the SOP next.
Is that right?
So this is the SOP.
I just want to walk through, and I want to be clear about language for a minute.
Oftentimes we talk about policy, and what I just reviewed for you was really the directive, which is the policy that governs the behavior of the police officers.
And once again, that policy is put through many stages.
Community review as part of, uh, was negotiations with labor.
You know, there's a lot of steps for something to become policy.
And then, as with many bureaus, you have an SOP.
We refer to as a policy as well.
Um, we have more flexibility and more latitude within an SOP to create, you know, how we're going to operationalize, what's this going to look like.
So what you have before you is an SOP.
As I mentioned, the program for us became live in '24.
The disadvantage to that was we had many years where we were behind what other agencies were doing and progressing.
The positive is when we created the program, we had many agencies to pull resources and information from.
So This, you know, I'm not going to read word for word, but we use this SOP when we are talking about body-worn camera public release, and largely it's around critical incidents.
And so you can see, you know, point number 1, initial evaluation.
This references an officer-involved shooting.
It may not be an officer-involved shooting.
It could be really any critical incident, but this is specific.
We mentioned that.
Then there's the work that we do, the sharing of the video internally, the evidence, as the comms unit begins to prepare.
Um, the videographer then has to begin the process of downloading, redacting.
There's a lot of privacy issues that we have to work through when we— when we, uh, before we release video information.
Um, then point number 4, you can see the public information officer reviews it.
Um, a script is created, um, for the video.
Um, we attempt to have that be factual, neutral, Go ahead and go to the next page, please.
The script is approved obviously by the homicide sergeant, and also we work closely with the district attorneys who have ultimately authority over all death investigations.
There's more editing.
We add a disclaimer, and then the draft of what we intend to release is reviewed by A through G. There you can see the number of people that put eyes on Yes.
Just as recently as this past week before we did the release, city administrator gave some input.
We made some adjustments and changes before the last release.
And then you can see in terms of the release process, how it's released to YouTube.
It's released in 14 days following the incident.
The reason we do 14 days, we can do sooner.
We oftentimes need that entire amount of time to really protect the privacy of the information on there that we have to, the redaction, a lot of editing that can go into this.
Yes.
It may not just be one.
And the 14-day window is state law.
So if somebody requests the name of an officer, we have to provide that name within 14 days.
We know that on these incidents, everybody's going to want to know the name of the officer.
So we just tell media, 14 days, we're going to get all this out and everybody will have that information.
This SOP has been around for a little over a year.
We made some changes recently at the direction of the city administrator and some of the requests for council regarding The fact that we are now trying to make sure that it's no later than 6:00 PM on the 14th day, 'cause sometimes these events happen in the middle of the night or whatever.
We're trying to not be like 14-day to the minute, but we wanna make sure that it's typically released.
That's not always gonna be the case, but that's the goal.
We also wanna make sure that it gets to council within 8 hours of the scheduled release time.
So that's a change in the policy.
Thank you.
We really weren't being consistent about when council received this.
We have taken a variety of approaches.
I will say this is a work in progress.
So Councilor Novick, it's a timely conversation.
I think we've done 10 or 11 of these.
Is that correct, Mike?
Mike Benner
Yes.
Bob Day
We've done about 10 or 11 of these since we've had the program.
And once again, there's really kind of 3 primary ways we see this done around the country.
And I've spoken with a number of chiefs about this.
Mike has spoken with a number of comms One way is, and we've done all 3 of these, or at least 2 out of 3 that I'm sure.
I'm not sure about the 3rd one.
We do a critical incident briefing where we just get up in front of a microphone, walk everybody through it, do it very publicly.
That's one option.
Another option includes doing a shorter version that captures, you know, the main content of the event.
That is a narrated version.
And then a release of all the raw video.
Thank you.
That's primarily how we've done it, where we've had a narrated version to provide some context about what people are seeing.
And then the third version is to not have a narrated version, but just to have embedded words.
For example, that's how San Diego, I believe, does it, is they don't, excuse me, have anybody talking, but they do have a narration.
What would you call that, a caption?
Caption.
A caption in the video.
So those are kind of the 3 primary ways that we see it done around the country, and that's what we've adopted.
We recognize that anytime we are going to, you know, create context or do any editing, there's a risk of bias to that, that, you know, could be seen as us trying to portray a position or a belief.
We work strongly to avoid that, but we recognize that exists in all of us and everything that we do every day.
So that's why we release all the raw footage following Including the narrated portion so that Portlanders or others can go and see everything in context.
But we really believe it would be irresponsible to just put it out there without any context at all.
And this is consistent, like I said, with the best practices across the country.
So that's a quick down and dirty 10 or 15 minutes, but kind of gives us an overview.
But I know the primary purpose of getting together is to be able to have a conversation.
So threw a lot at you.
I'm happy to come back and review anything, Councilor Novick.
Steve Novick
Thank you, Chief.
And I, um, there's some confusion in my notes.
I thought we were going to hear a presentation from the Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing, but it's not in my script.
Do we have PCAP here today?
Um, yes.
Okay.
Bob Day
Yes, they're here.
Sameer Kanal
Presentation's fine.
Steve Novick
All right, thank you.
Yeah.
By the way, I should note that Chief Day has told me that he has a hard stop at 12:15, so just keep that in mind.
Keelan McClymont
All right, uh, good afternoon, councilors.
Thank you for inviting us to share a bit about PCAP's work on the issue of body-worn cameras and bringing a community perspective into the conversation.
Uh, my name is Dori Grabinski, and I'm the PCCEP program manager.
For anyone following along, PCCEP stands for the Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing, which is a community body that oversees the Portland Police Bureau and makes recommendations to the mayor and the chief of police.
So today we're going to provide a brief overview of PCCEP's historical work on body-worn camera policy, and we'll also touch on some emerging discussions.
And so you're aware, some of that historical work that we're going to talk about predates the service of current PCET members and staff.
However, everyone here today was a part of those more recent discussions about release and presentation of footage.
So we'll try to be pretty quick for you today.
I am joined by 2 PCET members who are going to help me present this overview, and I will invite Kip and Gabby to quickly introduce themselves at this time.
Kip Silverman
Yeah, hi, I'm Kip Silverman, he/him pronouns.
I am co-chair of I think Gabby is online.
Gabrielle Pochia
Yeah, I'm Gabrielle Pochia.
I'm the chair of the Policy and Reform Committee.
Keelan McClymont
Okay, and we can go to the next slide.
Okay, so I'll start us off here.
Chief Day touched on the timeline as well.
We're going to just talk about a PSAP-specific timeline.
So as you can see, body cameras have been a formal topic for the committee since 2017.
Thank you.
So the PSUP racial equity subcommittee held a series of meetings and listening sessions, and that culminated in a formal recommendation about body-worn camera policy to PPB Chief Resh in 2020.
And we'll talk about the details of that recommendation in the next slide.
However, those policy recommendations weren't considered at the time because the pilot program So then we get into the sort of settlement agreement remedy era.
The body camera for Portland discussion was revived in 2021 when DOJ signaled that they wanted to add them to the settlement agreement.
So over the next couple of years, PCAP conducted more large-scale engagement about what the community wanted and didn't want from a body camera program.
And that included a town hall and a survey that a couple thousand people responded to.
Thank you.
So COCL presented those engagement findings to the DOJ, the city, and the court in 2022.
And over the next couple of years, the city worked to implement the program, which went bureau-wide in 2024.
And then the final point we have here is once body camera footage started coming out, the committee discussed it again beginning in 2025.
And this time they were looking at details of how the footage is made available to the public.
Thank you.
And we will get into that at the end of our presentation.
And now I will pass it over to Kip.
Kip Silverman
Yeah, thank you.
So we're gonna get into what PCCEP's recommendation and the engagement work on body-worn camera policy actually said.
There's an overlap between the formal recommendation and subsequent engagement events and surveys.
So we've condensed the themes here.
We'll try to be quick.
What we think is important to know is that there has been a sustained effort to understand the community Thank you.
So, we have heard from the community's values on this topic, and we have a lot of documentation about what PCET has heard.
As you can see, we have some familiar themes here.
Transparency, ensuring that most types of encounters are recorded, that footage is subject to independent oversight, and that it's released in a timely and consistent way.
Secondly, accountability, officers completing reports before reviewing footage.
Thank you.
Second, access to footage, consequences for policy violations, and using footage for training and auditing.
Thirdly, privacy.
These findings were about protecting community members from unintended harms related to recording, storing, and releasing footage, and establishing clear rules about when cameras should be activated.
And finally, control and integrity of footage.
The idea that PPB shouldn't have exclusive control over footage, and that public trust depends on information being complete, reliable, and accurate.
Next slide, if you would.
In our formal recommendation, PCIP identified specific metrics of success for a body cam program.
They were a 50% reduction in use of deadly force, reduced stops of people of color, and widespread public approval of the program.
Thank you.
Keelan McClymont
Next slide.
Kip Silverman
And lastly, on the policy side of things, we did a high-level side-by-side comparing community priorities as identified by PCCEP and COCL with the implemented policy.
We don't have time to go through this piece by piece, but many aspects of the existing policy do generally align with PCCEP's work.
One notable exception Yes.
The exception is a topic of preview— pre-review.
PCEP stated that officers should not be permitted to view footage prior to writing reports in order to prevent officers from adjusting their account— excuse me— of events based on what the video shows.
Generally speaking, PPB officers may review the footage in advance.
I believe the major exception is in deadly force situations.
And I'll pass it to Gabby at this point.
Gabrielle Pochia
Thanks.
So now we'll speak to an emerging topic that first came up at PCCEP in 2025.
This has less to do with formal PPB policies around body cameras, and it's more about how body camera footage of critical incidents is presented to the public and what the standards are when it comes to packaging In 2025, Damon Lamar Johnson died after an encounter with PPB.
Damon Lamar Johnson appeared to be in an acute mental health crisis during that encounter, so many community members noted the painful echoes of the settlement agreement origins in this case.
When it came to releasing the footage, PPB took a few steps that people took note of.
First, they produced a summary video that included selected footage from the encounter.
Thank you.
The video also included narration and context, which some people felt was subjective and heavier-handed than prior videos.
PCIP understands that summary videos are a common practice, and we don't inherently have a problem with the concept.
The issues talked about had more to do with how subjectivity can be injected based on production choices, and we would like to see more The other thing PPB did not— I'm sorry, the other thing PPB did was hold advanced private screenings with community leaders before the public release of the footage.
For those screenings, community members were organized into separate sessions based on affinity.
For instance, Black community leaders and behavioral health leaders.
Thank you.
This also just generated some mixed reactions, and while this could be seen as an effort to prepare the community for the release of sensitive footage, some expressed concerns that this was an effort to manage public reactions and keep groups separate.
And it also called into question whether this process took place for the release of all sensitive footage, and if not, how the Bureau makes those calls.
So, Councilor Loretta Smith, So here we've laid out a list of considerations PCAP discussed when it comes to how footage is released and messaged out to the public.
Release timelines.
So how soon is the footage released?
Do timelines differ between incidents?
Video editing.
What governs decisions about how to edit summary video?
What footage is included or removed?
The narration.
When is narration verbal or written included?
Thank you.
What is PPB's approach to preventing potentially subjective analysis and narration?
The rollout and communication of video.
How are videos introduced to the public?
Are certain groups informed first?
Is all material released at once or in stages?
And the consistency.
Do the same procedures apply across all critical incidents?
And if not, what accounts for the differences?
And we hope this conversation We hope that context helps inform your discussions, and we're happy to answer any questions.
Steve Novick
Any questions?
Councilor Kanal.
Sameer Kanal
I feel like my— I don't have questions for PSAB about it.
I'm probably going to reference it in the conversation we have with PPB, but I, I appreciate it.
Steve Novick
So thanks.
Okay, thank you very much.
I'll call PPB back up, but please stay in the room because I'm sure we will ask you to comment later on.
Sameer Kanal
And thank you all for being here.
Unidentified speaker
Thank you.
Steve Novick
So I'm, um, I think I'll start just by asking, what are your responses to some of the questions we just heard raised?
Like, how are decisions made about how to edit the video, and about how do you make sure that the narration is, uh, you know, is, is not subjective.
Bob Day
Yeah, I'm going to turn that over to Mike here, um, about some of those decisions.
I want to acknowledge, particularly in the, uh, footage regarding Mr. Johnson, that the overtalk— there was some, there was some talk over Mr. Johnson's comments.
And so that's a situation that we rectified going forward, not narrating over when we hear voices on the camera, making sure that that's heard.
So as I said, this is a work in progress.
It's always going to be evolving.
And as I mentioned earlier, before Mike makes a determination or gives a little more detail about how the editing is decided, you know, I'm very comfortable in recognizing the bias that exists in all of us and certainly including in policing.
And so we do, as I said earlier, try to take steps by getting other eyes and ears on the product to make sure that we are presenting something to the best of our ability that is objective.
It will never be entirely objective because nothing we do can ever be entirely objective, but we are really striving for that.
And our intent in the release and the format that we do is just really believing the responsibility we have to provide some context both for Portlanders and for others.
So Mike, if you could speak to how decisions are made about what to edit.
Mike Benner
Yeah, appreciate that, Chief.
And before I get to your question, Councilor Novick, I just want to say that we do appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation.
Producing these videos is not something we take lightly.
Anytime we're engaged in this process, someone has lost their life.
Someone has suffered a life-changing injury.
There's a ripple effect through our community, especially the friends and family of the people involved, community in general, our officers.
Even trickles down to my team.
While what we experience in this process pales in comparison to people directly involved, it can take a toll on the folks on my team when they're putting these videos together in interest of, you know, full disclosure and transparency for the community.
So I just wanted to level set with that.
But to get to your original question, Councilor Novick, when we have an incident, So when we get an incident, either myself or a combination of myself and others on the team will head out to the critical incident, and that's where we get our first understanding of what's happened.
Pretty quickly, within an hour, 2 hours, we will be given access to the body-worn camera footage.
I think there's a belief in the community that anyone at any time can look at body-worn camera footage within the Bureau, but that's not the case.
Okay.
You know, an officer on the street won't have access to the video that, you know, was recorded during a critical incident.
The detectives in charge of the investigation have to give you permission.
So my team, of course, gets that permission, and we will look at the call notes, the times of the call, the— just the indications of what happened that day.
We'll work with homicide detectives as far as creating a timeline, and that is basically how we get, uh, to a script.
Um, you know, Chief referenced biases.
Um, we are human, uh, at the end of the day.
Uh, this is an evolving, um, process.
Um, we're open to feedback, but, um, I think at the end of the day, uh, what we put out there is, um, as close to, uh, factual, um, as, as it can be.
But again, it, it's a work in progress.
We're about 10 videos in.
Um, unfortunately working on our 11th right Thank you, Chair Novick.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks, Chief.
Thanks, Mike, for being here, and Bree as well.
Appreciate everybody from PSAP involved as well.
Um, thanks for the, the chance to talk about this because I think it's, it's come up.
I just want to give a little context.
After Damon Lamar Johnson was killed in June 2025, our office started asking about a BWC footage release policy.
It appears that there was no policy, either of the directive or SOP type, in existence at that time.
So just wanted to give that context.
I know that Portland is the last major city to have body-worn cameras.
I can't speak to what happened before 2020, but I started working at the city in 2021 and started to get information.
I know there's been a lot of simplistic narratives out there that the reason for that was, um, was police pushback.
That is not what I saw, uh, in 2021 and beyond.
Um, I can't again speak to earlier than that.
Um, I know that there were a lot of details to work out, and, um, I remember seeing several LOAs, uh, in the contract.
The final policy, I believe, was in an LOA with the letter of agreement with the PPD.
That sort of was the first 13, 14 points of policy on this.
And I noted that in that process, PCEP noted this too, that pre-review was an unsettled question entering that and exiting that, but a lot of the other things got an answer and that can be iterated on, improved upon.
That policy didn't include anything about releases by PPB.
That information I've been trying to get.
I think that's a good point.
I get, as I mentioned, since July.
Um, we had a meeting in the Rose Room with CA Jordan, Chief Day, Sergeant Allen was there as well, I think DC Akazi at the time, and asked about this policy because we were, we were given a pre-showing a few hours before the press conference.
And at the, um, at the, the pre-review, we saw the edited narrated version.
And then I went to the press conference because I wasn't sure what was going to be shown there.
And the, the exact same video was shown followed by the sequential Yes.
And then there was a sequential release at that point of the— I believe there were 3 officer body-worn camera footages.
It was about 20 minutes in length each, so about an hour of total footage after that.
They were presented sequentially, so you'd see a full-screen version of each officer's in turn, as opposed to, for those who've seen like a security camera footage, the sort of split screen, or if you're watching online, you might see the zoom like that as well.
Thank you.
As well.
Um, we followed up.
We didn't, uh, get any, um, information about a, uh, standardization of that.
Um, I followed up after the footage of Eric Scherer was released in March 2026, which had a different, um, a different process for that.
We sent an email on March 3rd.
We got a March 4th response saying the PPB was working on responses.
We followed up with sort of put a finer point on the questions on March 7th and didn't Thank you.
We hear information in response.
This is all 2026.
And so we followed up with Chief, uh, with CA Lee, sorry, on September 29th following the death but prior to the body-worn camera release of Eddie Campbell.
Um, and we got a response on October 5th, still prior to the release.
His response was really helpful, and I appreciate that it responded to things other than the request for a written policy.
Um, this, this item, this presentation item, today's agenda, was published on Friday, Thank you.
So I just wanted to note that and also note that on page 3 of it, it says that it was originally published on September 1st, 2025, about a month and a half after I asked the first question in the Rose Room and 13 and a half months prior to the public presentation being put out.
It also notes that the policy was revised on October 5th, 2026.
So to get that out there, and then to— in terms of content, um, we— what we've been asking for since July 2025 is in service of building community trust.
So the questions were about if there's a standard practice of council notification about the, the fact that a police shooting, uh, or in-custody death or other critical incident occurred.
That does not appear to be captured in this policy because it might be outside of the scope.
Is there a written policy Yeah, a couple things, Councilor.
Bob Day
First of all, um, the timeline you outlined is correct.
I apologize, we have had this since September 25th, and whether just oversight— was no withholding, it was just I thought it had gone across.
I knew you'd ask for it, so I apologize for that, um, because that's, you know, always something that we want to make sure that we're doing.
Yes.
That was a mistake on our part.
And you're correct that we didn't have a policy in place when, you know, when Mr. Johnson passed.
It was, you know, shortsightedness once again.
We had a robust policy, as I said, directed, but we didn't think about, you know, the release piece of it.
So certainly some of your initiative around that led to, obviously led to the creation of that policy.
You know, of this policy.
And the revision that was done just a couple weeks ago was at the behest of the city administrator, who asked that, you know, we put in the 8-hour prior notification and some other things.
So that's the, that's the revision part of it that we sent over.
So I'm committed to being more transparent in that going through—.
Going forward.
In terms of council notifications, in our directive regarding critical incidents, I'm required, or my designee is required to notify the city administrator and the mayor.
And whether explicitly or so, we've been— I know there's been a number of times where the city administrator has asked me to provide information that he can pass along to council.
So I'm trusting that's still the, the pathway, but we haven't written that down anywhere since the new council's come on board.
And you want to address that, sir?
Unidentified speaker
Yes, and that will always be my direction anytime there's an officer-involved shooting or incident that I know is going to pick up any media presence or anything like that, that we're making council aware of this.
I would hate for you to get a camera put in your face and you're not aware of what has taken place.
So that will always be my practice as city administrator when we have these type of incidents to try to get in front of council.
And I think this council has seen that in my communication to them, making sure that they are aware of these incidents as they, as they take place.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, I think that's accurate, and I appreciate the practice.
I'm also asking about the policy side because, you know, hopefully our systems are more resilient than any of the 3 of us still being here.
Bob Day
Do we want to add that into the SOP?
Are you suggesting that, or—.
Sameer Kanal
I'm not sure if this one's about release of footage, so it might be a better place somewhere else.
I was just curious if it existed in writing somewhere.
Bob Day
In the directive, I'm required to notify the mayor and the CA for these Category 1 force incidents.
So, but it's not written down anywhere specifically right now.
We can work on that.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks.
Um, so I, I think the other thing you referred to, Chief, is the, um, the standard practice of council review.
That's Part 9A.
Is that the part that got added on October 5th of this year?
Bob Day
Uh, I'd have to go back and look at that.
Mike Benner
It's the 8 hours.
Yes, trying to get you guys an adequate amount of time to see it and review it so you know what's coming, say, 8, 9, 10 hours later.
Steve Novick
Yes.
Sameer Kanal
I appreciate that.
And I know that that was practice for the Eddie Campbell release.
So I appreciate that being put down.
The other pieces, so, and I'm just gonna run through them because I think there are a lot here.
So there's, we asked for footage to be released unedited and without narration.
To have clarity on when footage begins.
So I'll notice when, when Damon Lamar Johnson footage was released, there is, uh, pre, uh, footage where the officers are on Lombard, I believe, uh, kind of— you, you can see through the, the windshield the Taco Bell sign there, um, and they're, uh, across the street from it, and, um, they're getting the call.
Um, so you, you have an understanding of what they thought they were entering, which I think is really helpful for the public, um, because in that particular case, the framing of that call— it's not 911 and it's not the police, it's, it's actually a security guard at the facility making a call and, you know, referring to, um, Damon Lamar Johnson, uh, as a gorilla and impersonating a gorilla in that call.
That is helpful context for the public to know what was given to officers, because that had nothing to do with Yes.
Any city employee at all.
Whereas some of the later footage releases start later.
They start with arrival on the scene.
Similarly, there's a question as to when does footage end.
So there is an intertitle, a screen overlay with text written on it in the release of Eddie Campbell footage that says, despite life-saving care, Mr. Campbell died at the scene.
The footage cuts off before that.
And so that part, which ostensibly is in the footage somewhere, is not a part of the release.
Whereas in some of the others, it has gone on maybe a little longer afterwards, maybe not all the way through that period.
And it's certainly different for each situation.
I want to acknowledge that, how long after.
But so that's another thing.
In the policy, and I will just kind of ask here, Part 6, Let me do that.
In the event of a large-scale incident involving numerous officers with the same angle, the decision will be made in coordination with the Chief's Office how many camera angles to include.
And I fully recognize the next line is important here too.
This will be done recognizing the length of the video as well as the workload that it would create for redaction.
So that implies that, you know, after the 14-day period when that release occurs, that if there were multiple officers at the incident, that not all the video from each— the officers whose videos are released, it will be released, but not all officers will have their video released.
Is that an accurate reading of that, and can you speak to that?
Bob Day
So just to put it into simple terms, if we have 5 officers And we make the decision in the narrated version to release 3.
Your question is, when the entire raw footage review is released, is it 3 or 5?
You want to know if it's everyone.
Yeah.
My understanding, it would be all 5, but I'm just—.
Mike Benner
Yeah, we will do our very best to include all of them.
For instance, the one, to give you a little bit of a peek behind the curtain, 'cause we're starting to work on one right now, there was one officer involved, as we've reported publicly, and then there was 2 other nearby.
So we'll be including that to try to give an extra perspective.
But then there's times where we'll find that the incident happens in one location and around the corner is another officer.
So at some point, you have to just acknowledge that that camera isn't useful, but also understand that all cameras and video is available to the public at any point once the investigation is closed.
So anyone could get more if they But that's why— where this is an evolving process where we believe in every, uh, one that we've had, which is 10 to this point and working on 11, that we're including all relevant cameras to the actual incident itself, if that makes sense.
Sameer Kanal
Okay, so I appreciate that.
I want to just follow up on, uh, 2 parts here.
So the first 2 sentences of this says the videographer will edit the narrated version following that be raw footage.
It's— so to Chief Day's point first, um, I'm not sure which one the allowance in the rest of that paragraph is for reducing the number, uh, for, for determining what's relevant or not subjectively.
So in other words, I'm not sure if, if all the rest of that text applies to the narrated version or to the full sequential release.
Mike Benner
We— if I may, the part, the video that comes in the unedited portion of of our presentation are the cameras that were used to put together the narrated piece so that community knows that while we might be in the narrated piece taking bits and pieces of it to put it together for an understanding, that ultimately from a 30,000-foot view, it has not been manipulated.
That what you see in the un— uh, narrated portion, uh, unedited And the reason we do that is research shows that somebody's attention span is 40 to 47 seconds.
And we owe it to our community to give them an understanding.
At least we believe it's our responsibility to give them an understanding of what happened.
Because in some of these— I don't know if it was Damon Lamar Johnson, but in a couple of these videos, the officer is not even in the video.
Loretta Smith
Yeah.
Kaya Sand
Yes.
Mike Benner
And I think it would be an incredibly, um, big ask of us to dump that on community without any understanding.
And something else, Councilor, that we're seeing, um, which is troubling to us, is third-party companies coming in.
We, we just saw it over the last week, wanting access to our raw so that they can, in other words, play with it and make their own account of what happened.
And we have a responsibility to level set.
And I think that's kind of where we get to this stage of we have a narrated piece and an unnarrated piece so that community has a choice on what part, you know, they want to watch.
Bob Day
But to your point, Councilor, are you recommending that if there's 5 videos, we'll use 3 for the narration, we at least have all 5 as the raw footage?
That's what I hear you saying.
Sameer Kanal
I think with relation to the clarity of this paragraph, that's Being clear about which that is is step 1.
Step 2 is what you just said, Chief.
I mean, as I've indicated outside of here, and I'll mention now, I actually don't believe that there should be a narrative version at all, right?
But certainly releasing all of it, because as you know, investigations can take a while.
I mean, we're not measuring in weeks at that point.
Bob Day
We'll make a note of that and then go back and, and have a conversation about, you know, what that looks like.
Um, and as Mike mentioned, I mean, ultimately through the public Public records are processed, anything ultimately can become available.
But in the purpose of, you know, wanting to be transparent with folks, I understand what you're saying.
Thank you for that.
Sameer Kanal
I appreciate that.
Um, when I imagine this is— this next one is based on how many angles, because it is different if it's 3, 5, or 20.
But the choice of whether or not to release it as sequential full screen versus a split screen I've seen, for example, in some of the— around the country, that there is— media has done it in some cases, but the city itself has released in other cases where it's time-aligned so that if you're not getting the right angle here, you can go back 10 seconds and watch this side, as opposed to hunting for the timestamp.
That doesn't appear to be directly addressed in here.
Is there a policy related to that?
How does that decision get made?
Mike Benner
We don't have a policy on that.
I think that's something we could look at.
Could discuss offline.
I think where— and maybe where you're coming at is the Damon Lamar Johnson one, I don't think had the multiple boxes.
Quite frankly, again, this is where it's difficult because what we're doing is trying to do our best.
When we look at those videos and we're putting this together, there was an obvious struggle.
For anyone in the room or anyone watching that is familiar with that video and that incident, there was a struggle in Mr. Johnson's apartment.
And when you put 4 cameras up at the same time, it was very confusing.
It was very jarring.
So the decision was made not to put those up at the same time.
But again, all 4 videos, if that is it— I don't have it in front of me how many officers were involved in that one.
I think 4 or 3.
The raw comes right after it.
But again, we had a simultaneous one where we had them side by side a couple weeks ago.
Thank you.
My intention is to do that again with this one.
It was just looking out for the people watching this and trying to think, will they even understand what's happening?
So again, we're— it's an evolving process, and we're doing our very best to give the community the best look and understanding of what happened prior to them looking at the unedited portion, if they, if they choose to.
Sameer Kanal
Okay, thanks.
And then the last kind of content question I have: in the slides and in the policy, it talks about the possibility of blurring Right.
You, you—.
And it talks about blurring faces, for example.
In the Eddie Campbell footage, um, there is a large rectangular black box placed over that covers most of, or all of at times, the silhouette of both Mr. Campbell and Kylo.
Um, and so I know that there's minimum standards for redaction in state law, but my curiosity is about the type and choice of redaction.
Which sometimes can make it obviously it's hard to watch in any of these cases, and I should take the time to acknowledge here that obviously everybody involved in this—it's not that there can be a lot of secondary trauma associated with watching and editing, and a lot of these folks are you know videographers, right?
These are professional staff as non-sworn as well who are affected by it.
So I did want to note that.
How does the choice get made of how to?
Mike Benner
Yeah, appreciate that.
Uh, the redaction starts in our records department— it's a division.
It's not even in the comms.
Um, so, uh, I think it's somewhere in the policy.
Um, if not, we can add it.
But one of the, one of the first, uh, uh, things we do out of the gate is when we get access to it, when my team gets access to the body-worn camera footage, we immediately go through it and we look for anything that we think is It also gets sent to the Records Division and they handle the redactions.
So that would be something we'd have to bring in someone from our Records Division to kind of get into the weeds on that.
I'd be misspeaking if I went any further, and I think Chief would be too.
Bob Day
Yeah, I'm happy to ask in that particular case.
You know, my assumption was just to, you know, out of respect for, like you said, the trauma of, you know, watching anyone die was my assumption when I watched the video.
But that's certainly a question we can dig down Yeah, I appreciate that.
Sameer Kanal
I mean, I, I guess really big picture to kind of begin to wrap up here, because I know I've gone on for a bit.
I, I'm, I'm trying to understand.
So the, the purpose of release is in part to inform, right?
But I also believe it's, it's partially to help build public trust in 2 different things.
Ideally, the institution of city as being transparent, our core value, inclusive of the police bureau but broadly the city.
And then depending on the nature of the content in the post-incident evaluation by police or whatever other entity is doing the review, you know, IPR, eventually CBPA, um, that there is sufficient information to do that and that it's being presented in a way that allows for, um, evaluation Potentially investigation, depending on the nature of it, right?
And so, and I'm seeing you nod, and I appreciate that.
I think we're all on the same page there.
I think, and I recognize that the people that are probably talking to each of us in this room are probably different about it.
What I hear about public trust is that it is diminished by the release of a narration, especially given, and I, you know, I'll note the unit is called Strategic Communications.
Yeah.
Communications unit, right, in, in the, in the document.
And so that, that begs the question— this is a, this is, you know, paraphrasing things that have come to me— of, you know, strategic for whom, right?
What does it mean to be communicated with strategically?
Um, and so that's one piece.
In, in part, uh, 4 of the policy, it talks about the script being factual, neutral, and unbiased.
But I'm not sure who outside of the police bureau is determining that.
And this is different from the disclaimer.
This is different.
There was a Google Earth zoom-in at the beginning.
Like, I don't think anybody's got an issue with that.
Like, that's contextualizing where the event occurred.
You know, I'm not— this isn't about everything that's being done in the editing process, just to be clear.
And I think, you know, the disclaimer that says, like, number 7, I haven't Thank you.
I haven't heard any complaints from anybody about that.
But in terms of the narration piece, which could be, I think, improved depending on how it's— you mentioned, Chief, the San Diego option of having it be a captioner, Chiron or something.
But I'm curious about that piece of it, as well as the sort of subjectivity that goes into determining if angles are different.
I watched an event on video that was stitched together by media.
It was not a police-related event.
It occurred in um, Seattle in 2020 where there was a, uh, shooting that was captured by several cameras, um, some of which were around the corner.
And the audio of that was actually in the video.
This is people's cell phone footage that was stitched together by, uh, a media, um, I can't remember which station, um, but they, they basically— that context was helpful for if you're trying to have an understanding of the situation, especially, especially if if the— there was probably a reason the officer was around the corner, right?
Something either was there or they were on their way to it.
So I'm just trying to understand that piece of it.
Like, where is the third— where is the people outside of the Bureau checking on what is the, the neutral, factual, objective, unbiased— I can't remember all 3 words.
Steve Novick
I'm going to cut in here, um, because I know the chief has a hard stop at 12:15.
I want to make sure that Councilor Smith has a chance to ask her question, and then, uh, could you go ahead and Answer, answer both councilors' questions.
Sameer Kanal
Thanks.
Angelita Morillo
Thank you.
Loretta Smith
Uh, question, do you release a video of some sort to the family before we actually see it?
Mike Benner
Yes, that's part of our policy, is to show the family of the individual involved, um, the video before it goes out so that they're prepared.
Bob Day
Okay, thank Councilor Knol, so I really appreciate your recognition of the fact that this is complex and the people you're talking to or I'm talking to or otherwise is going to be as varied as the city is itself.
Given the massive amount of data that comes in now because of these cameras, it is an ever-evolving process.
Thank you.
I know I've said that a couple times, but I want to highlight that the Police Bureau is a learning organization.
We've demonstrated that.
We will continue to demonstrate that.
In terms of the subjectivity, there will always be a level of subjectivity.
We try to, by using the city administrator, by using the mayor's office, by using the district attorney, we try to use other voices to be available to us to influence what is going out.
And as I said in this last Thank you.
I really appreciated CA Lee's comments where we made adjustments.
So people are leaning in.
And then after each one, we do have an evaluation.
We do seek feedback, and we do both internally and we hear from people externally.
So it's going to continue to be a work in progress.
The input that you've offered today, as well as others that I'm sure are watching and PCAPS feedback, et cetera, we're going to continue to evolve.
I just feel strongly in the importance of providing some level of context to this very critical, very essential event that Portlanders need to have, knowing the huge responsibility that comes with it.
Not just the actions, but the responsibility that comes with the messaging to it.
So, you know, we'll continue to take this into consideration and work on it that way.
Steve Novick
I'm going to ask the PSAP folks to come back Actually, have all of you— here's my question.
Has there been any discussion, or could there be any discussion about the Bureau sort of engaging with PCAP on looking over the narratives and, you know, giving suggestions as to how the narratives might, you know, if you see any suggestions you think might be made about how the narratives might be changed?
Um, just has there been some back and forth between PCAP and the Bureau about the narratives that you've seen so far?
Bob Day
Historically, no, that has not been part of the process, Councilor.
Kip Silverman
Yeah, I, I can, I can address that.
Kip Silverman again.
Um, we, uh, questions about body-worn camera in the town hall we had on Damon Lamar Johnson, a lot of these topics came up.
Yes.
Of how things were put out there, how the reaction from the community, whether it met the needs.
We engage with PPB frequently throughout our meetings.
We have liaisons that show up.
They are a party to, I think, nearly every meeting that I've been involved in.
We have not had a revisit Other than some conversations that we've had about details revolving different events.
But absolutely, I feel there's opportunity here, and Gabby can agree with me or not, that there's an opportunity here for future recommendation and conversation.
Steve Novick
Yeah, I mean, what I'm envisioning is that we would have a public comment period I mean, that there can be sort of an ongoing dialogue where you take a look at the video with the narration and you sort of share your feedback with the Bureau on here's recommendations we make to make the narration more informative, you know, more objective, et cetera.
Sameer Kanal
Yeah, I appreciate that question.
Thank you for the response.
I didn't get a chance to respond to that, Chief Day, to the previous question.
I, I, I will note, you know, PCEP is not necessarily the, the community entity that reviews the footage.
I mean, you've got CRC members, the PRB pool as well, that may also be worthwhile, um, in terms of the specific video-by-video kind of review that you're talking about.
But I do think PCEP brings a different thing that I wanted to highlight, which is the conversation about the, the broader, um, structure and, and, and sort of approach I think it's fair to ask, you know, what about this video, this particular script, things like that.
But I don't think PCIP has directly addressed the question yet of should there be a narrated version.
And I would— my request, and I'm not trying to supersede Councilor Novick's at all, but my request would be if PCIP could consider that.
And, you know, if there's not an interest in it, there's not an interest in it from the members.
That's how that goes.
Thank you.
Goes.
But, you know, because I— and/or if there's a way to do it where what is the sort of primary release is, I think, really important as well.
I think that's the place where the trust piece comes in, is the idea that the first thing I'm being told is edited versus the idea that the first thing I'm being told is it— I also have a follow-up for you, Mike, because I know you're You have worked on the other side of the releases, and so I'm curious how if you have if that's shaped how you approach this because I imagine that the that there is a risk associated with allowing a third-party entity that's in the in the media to sort of determine what the story is from a large body of video footage.
I appreciate the question.
Mike Benner
Just so everyone understands what you might be referring to is my former career.
I was a— my former life, if you will, was a reporter here at KGW for 15 years.
I never did put together body-worn camera stories because they came on board after I had been at PPB.
But I do know in my research of putting this all together, talking to other departments, one that we sat down virtually with a number Times was the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
And one of the things they said out of the gate, which is something I have seen, uh, since we instituted all of this, was the cadence and the media's understanding of, um, when they're going to get the video.
So now no one asks anymore because they know it is going to be released 14 days after the incident.
In fact, it would be a couple days out and someone will send an email saying, hey, you're still releasing this in 2 days?
I said, we are, it'll, it'll, it'll be there.
So they're So there's this understanding between media and PPB when they can expect the video.
I do know, again, kind of like dumping unedited raw footage on the community, it'd be incredibly difficult for media to sift through that amount of footage.
So I hope that answers that question.
And then if I may, because I don't think it's been asked directly yet, what we do at PPB or some variation Yes.
And I think that the context and the presentation of it, at the end of the day, is best practice when you look at all the agencies across the country.
In fact, in my research, talking to my counterpart at an agency on the East Coast, when I reached out and asked him about this, and I have a wealth of respect for this individual as he's been in the business decades longer than I did, he says, Mike, I do not know of an agency across the country that releases unedited footage without context.
Ultimately, it is my belief that that, um, it's dangerous and reckless, um, to do so, and that, uh, we'd be taking away, uh, the choice of, of community to see 2 versions, whether it's the narrated because they only have a couple minutes, or hour, hour and a half if they don't.
So while we're evolving, I, I, I, I think we— I truly believe what we're doing.
Um, these conversations are great.
Um, we can fine-tune the process.
And, and, and as we move forward with more of these, unfortunately.
But, uh, I do stand by— I think what we do is, I, I believe it is best practice across the country.
Steve Novick
Uh, we've got a hard stop at 12:15.
Councilor Kanal, do you have 30 seconds?
Yep.
Sameer Kanal
Um, I appreciate that.
I'll probably follow up with PSET more, but just because I know the chief has, uh, time, at the very beginning you, you noted the distinction between a directive and an SOP.
So I guess my question is, if you so chose Because this is an SOP, it would be relatively easy to change it.
Is that accurate?
Bob Day
Yes, I changed it 2 weeks ago.
Okay.
Yeah, that's it.
Sameer Kanal
Appreciate it.
Mike Benner
Thank you.
Steve Novick
Thank you very much.
Um, let's see, the next meeting of the committee isn't until November 17th.
I'm going to be in Nashville for the League of Cities meeting trying to convince other cities to agree that we should announce that we want to buy smart guns for our police forces.
So Councilor Murillo is going to be running that meeting and is thinking over what the content's going to be.
Thank you all very much.
And we— this meeting of the Committee and Public Safety Committee is adjourned.
Mike Benner
Council adjourned.