Item 6: Report to City Council from Police Auditor

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The Civilian Review Board membership has stabilized, and they provide a thoughtful, frank and representative mix of community members dedicated to improving policing in the community and gaining community trust. While only required to meet 4 times a year, 12 public meetings were held in 2012. Many involved case reviews of delicate matters with a significant width of issues; whether based on the conduct of individual officers or those that had significant policy implications. They are the community's voice on police accountability issues. Given the restrictions of the Oregon Public Records law, their case discussions and reviews are the community's window to concerns about police misconduct. We continue to strive to bring about a sense of understanding, consistency and normalcy to the process. We recognize that customer service and resolution of citizen complaints through thorough, fair and complete investigation and monitoring of allegations; and resolution of service and policy level complaints are the cornerstones of our existence. The customer service aspect of our responsibilities consumes a significant portion of our workload. We spend hours working with complainants to navigate and understand the complaint process; and assist them in understanding the roles of the courts, their attorneys and how their roles differ from the auditor's office. We serve as listeners for people with problems that have nothing to do with the police. At the same time, identifying and advocating for structural changes in EPD policies, supervision and police interactions has been a priority for us. This year our complaints dropped slightly. Our classifications of complaints as allegations dropped. However, our view is that the depth of investigations in the allegations expanded tremendously. Allegations are those cases which are investigated by the Internal Affairs Section of EPD and usually require far more comprehensive investigations and time. The balance of cases, called service complaints, policy complaints and inquiries, are handled through an alternate dispute resolution process (ADR); most often with supervisors discussing these issues with the complainants and officers. Intake Processes and Accomplishments: The Auditor's Office was constructed primarily as a citizen complaint -based model. While there is a brief portion of the legislation and protocols that gives the Auditor some latitude to initiate a complaint, the primary focus is on citizen complaints. A complaint process under this design has the potential to leave gaps without Eugene Police Department (EPD) internally generated cases or ones discovered by my office. I believe that the design gaps are closing as a result of improved supervisory efforts in EPD, technology upgrades to the data tracking system, and open and honest communication about individual behavior issues, systemic enhancements and policy weaknesses. Intake consumes a significant amount of staff time. We remain pressed in our activities as we manage nearly 400 complaints a year. (For comparison purposes, Boise, population 210,000 with 312 sworn officers, received 149 citizen complaints and 33 internally generated complaints.) I believe we spent considerably more time this year with individuals suffering temporary or permanent diminished mental capacity. We spend hours working with complainants to navigate and understand the complaint process; and assist them in understanding the roles of the courts, their attorneys and how their roles differ from the auditor's office. Returned survey data indicates a high satisfaction level with the intake and explanations received from the Auditor's office. We also see a steady increase in internally generated investigations and "complaints." I believe this is indicative of the oversight process, at least to some degree, bringing EPD supervisory expectations to a higher level. Also, I think more so than in the past, 2 1 Office of the Police Auditor 2012 Annual Report