News In an interview with WW last month, Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman said he doesn't have any "specific plans" for how to reform the Portland Police Bureau or improve community trust in the cops. But one of his opponents in the May election sure does. City Council candidate Jesse Cornett today rolled out a six-point plan to reform the Police Bureau. Cornett's plan calls for changes in ...   More

News Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman tells WW he and Chief Rosie Sizer decided today to take Sgt. Kyle Nice off the street following a recent off-duty road-rage incident in Washington County. Nice — one of the cops involved in the 2006 death of James Chasse Jr. in police custody — is currently on paid leave pending an internal Portland police investigation of the road-rage incident. ...   More

News After Portland Police Sgt. Kyle Nice's reported road-rage incident last weekend, Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman may take Nice off the street. "I am considering it," Saltzman said this morning in a WW endorsement interview. Saltzman said he has spoken with Chief Rosie Sizer about the matter and is scheduled to do so again today. He says he will make a decision by Monday. Saltzman also ...   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 Mayor Sam Adams' decision to take $20 million from the Bureau of Environmental Services to support the Bicycle Plan for 2030 is a done deal; City Council voted 5-0 on March 17 to approve the idea. Now the question is where to spend the money. And if that seems like an easy set of decisions to make, well, that's not the case in Portland. Adams, committed to promoting "equity" in spending across ...   More

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 After a briefing from Portland Police earlier today, Mayor Sam Adams said this afternoon he has not reconsidered his decision to hand police management to Commissioner Dan Saltzman. But the mayor does say he will play a higher-profile role on police matters going forward. "I've decided to be more visible," he told WW, two days after the second fatal shooting of a man this year by a Portland ...   More

News Commissioners Amanda Fritz and Dan Saltzman will present a new report, possibly as soon as April 7, outlining proposed changes to Portland Police Bureau policy on responding to incidents with mentally ill Portlanders. The work of drafting the recommendations, which will include a pilot program for pairing cops with social workers on service calls that involve people in mental-health crisis, predates ...   More

News At today's City Club debate with city Commissioner Dan Saltzman and candidates Jesse Cornett and Mary Volm, the two challengers went after Saltzman for being the third (and therefore decisive) vote approving Merritt Paulson's proposal to bring Major League Soccer to Portland. The underlying theme of the campaign is that Saltzman, who is seeking his fourth term, has outlived his usefulness. The ...   More

News Ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber, running in the Democratic gubernatorial primary for his old job, isn't the only one getting political donations from Nike. The company also swooshed into Portland politics last week when it gave $2,000 apiece to two candidates who each have little-financed challengers in the May primary. The recipients of the Nike contributions are City Commissioner Nick Fish and Multnomah ...   More