News With a 5-0 vote, City Council tonight approved the new ordinance from Commissioner Randy Leonard and Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade on strengthening police oversight. That decision followed more than three hours of impassioned public testimony and came after Police Chief Rosie Sizer voiced some objections to details of the measure, including its call to make the city auditor (rather than ...   More

News City Hall is packed tonight as city commissioners and the mayor continue their discussion of the new ordinance to strengthen oversight of Portland Police. We'll have more from City Hall later. Meantime, we're hitting the rewind button and posting excerpts from a press release Mayor Sam Adams put out when he was still a commissioner. Issued in the fall of 2008, it explained why Adams wanted to ...   More

News There was much hoopla back in March when the City Council passed an ordinance to increase police oversight and boost the powers of the Independent Police Review Division. The ordinance was set to take effect on Monday, May 3. The police bureau referred our questions about the ordinance's status to IPR. So we checked in today with IPR Director Mary-Beth Baptista on the city's progress implementing ...   More

News City's Hall's Citizen Review Committee on police today released its final report (PDF) on alleged bias by Portland cops. There are some pointed words about police and police oversight. But the report, three-and-a-half years in the making, contains nothing groundbreaking. Overall, its recommendations fall along the lines of "let's communicate more and improve what we're already doing." The ...   More