Portland Cops and their broken ideas on harassing people with traffic stops

News data on traffic stops shows how reforms on gang enforcement has changed but is still flawed and broken.

For my entire life there’s been just a couple consistent controversies around the police in Portland.

In this article I’ll be looking at the city’s historic program to deal with gangs and mash that against the results of our new program.

Spoilers: I’m not a fan, it doesn’t seem to have any measurable effect on crime.

This program has had many many different names, in it’s most recent incarnation it’s labeled “Focused Invention Team”, and prior to that it was called the “Gun Violence Reduction Team”, and earlier “Gang Enforcement Team”. I believe this program has been killed, recreated, and renamed, at least 5 separate times since the 1990’s.

This program boils down to pulling over drivers for dubious legal reasons, harassing them, trying to search their vehicle, and potentially arrest them. Except, most vehicles aren’t search and most people aren’t arrested, so it’s just harassment. All of this is done crassly unconstitutionally. It’s completely and utterly illegal, just a huge goddamn sham, and if this was happening to you and your community you’d be fairly outraged about this, and you’d be morally justified to revolt against this injustice.

It’s essentially Portland’s version of Stop & Frisk.

The last time the City earnestly looked at it was in 2018 in a set of dual reports, one is especially relevant today:

“Gang Enforcement Patrol: The Police Bureau must show that traffic stops are effective”

The [Gang Enforcement Team] had 28 sworn members as of December 2016 and it costs about $6 million to $7 million per year to fund the team. In 2016, the Gang Enforcement Team recorded almost 1,300 [traffic] encounters, an average of about six encounters a shift. The team uses traffic violations as a pretext to create opportunities to search for illegal guns or to arrest people for other crimes. Pretext reasons include minor violations, such as changing lanes without a signal or infringing on a crosswalk.

Sounds like maybe this could work, right? Like maybe if we harass random drivers who are clearly gang members we could just fish for crimes and get them off the streets?

Turns out we only arrested about an average of 100 people a year through this program, confiscating guns a mere 2% of the 1,300 times we stopped people. Back of the napkin math says this was just 26 firearms seized, and at $6m/yr this means we spent $230,000 per gun seized through this program. 28 full time cops to seize just 26 firearms & arrest 100 people. Did those arrests at least result in lengthy prison? Nope: much worse, the Auditors provided only a single case study that included prosecution, and in it the DA didn’t press charges.

100 arrested people really means fuck all.

At the time the hapless politicians were declaring “this program is intended to get illegal guns off the street.” Who the fuck is dumb enough to think this is a good use of funds? At 6 million per year I think we’d all expect hundreds of guns off the streets, at minimum. We could just pay one of these fucking criminals $100k per year not to do crime, or we could pay out $100k to snitch on the shooter. It’s fucking outrageous especially when you consider the guns have a street value of $200-$250 each. This doesn’t scale in the slightest.

Oh, and 59% of the people they were harassing were black, in a town about 7% of the population were black.

So yeah, it was also extremely racist.

I could imagine a logical argument that if this whole tactic greatly reduced crime and got many guns off the streets and put terrible offenders in jail…so we need to just look past the racial disparity…. but there’s not even success in this program: it’s just racism for no purpose.

This is why the program is killed over and over again. When you look into it the program is stupid as fuck.

Importantly this audit ALSO showed that there was no purpose to do any of this - the cops weren’t even trying to keep track of metrics to benchmark their own performance. The cops themselves know this is stupid as fuck and totally indefensible program. If this was ostensibly about gang members and harassing them, then obviously management would demand patrol officers track how many stops are related to gangs but they weren’t tracking that, nor tracking anything at all. Like you can’t say “Our job is to go after gangs” and then you don’t track how often you go after gangs, that’s more than shitty management, it’s purposefully concealing what you do with your time:

One way for the Police Bureau to address the question of whether Gang Enforcement stops are focused on gang suspects is to quantify and explain the reasons for stops. The team’s officers, however, rarely documented the investigative reasons for traffic stops because the Bureau has not required any of its officers to do so.

Without this information, police managers had no way of knowing for which investigative reasons stops were made and if these met expectations. The missing data also stood in the way of the Bureau explaining the team’s activities to the community.

Was there anything positive that could reasonably justify this expenditure? Yeah, sometimes we arrested people - but mostly we just wasted everyone’s time.

In 1,300 encounters in 2016, the team made about 100 arrests. The team rarely issued citations – only about 15 times according to its stops data. The vast majority of encounters, nine out of 10, resulted in no enforcement action – arrest, citation, or seizure – by police.

.…

…we also observed several stops by Gang Enforcement officers that turned out to have no apparent connection to gangs. In one example, officers stopped a car which they suspected carried several specific gang members. During the stop, they learned the occupants were tourists, not those gang members they sought.

Historically speaking, one of the major occupations of police is keeping Lists. Lists of bad guys. Lists of subversives. Lists of known criminal syndicates. Or, what GET did was build a list of 1,000 Portland residents who were associated with gang incidents. Law Enforcement lists and other Shit Lists are a real problem for society because they’re rarely accurate, someone gets put on a list and they never really get taken off. Historically a list was kept incase you need to do a crackdown, and that’s the real purpose of the GVRT/GET: a “Suppression Operation.” Basically a round-up.

What are suppression operations?

For these operations, the team created lists of people they wanted to arrest for any legal reason. Police managers said these suppression operations narrowly targeted specific individuals and were not broad sweeps.

The team arrested about one third of the initial target list. In addition to those arrests, the team also arrested some 30 to 40 people who were not targeted.

This is an age-old tactic, it’s linage can be traced right through Portland’s history with the Red Squad, and it’s precisely identical to how we’d crack down on Wobblies and Communists 100 years ago: rough’em up, round’em up, the accused, the associates, and anyone around them. Insanely unconstitutional, immoral, unethical, inspiring contempt for law and order. It’s no surprise to me that this concept of “Gang Enforcement” started in the 1990’s, just a few years PPB Investigator Winfield Falk began doing a clandestine off-the-books Red Squad out of his home garage. Doing a “Crack Down” is an integral part of suppressing organized crime and political dissidents, so of course that’s the real job.

Portland's Red History: The Red Squad, Bloody Shirt, Longshoremen. Early Portland to the 1930's.

Portland's Red History: WW2, the Counter Intelligence Program known as COINTELPRO, and Portland's Red Squad 2.0.

Portland Police isn’t alone in creating a dubious or false pretext to harass and search random people - it’s common among many corrupt municipal governments.

Remember a couple years back when the Portland considered purchasing the horseshit “Shot Spotter” technology? That technology would have resulted in a mere continuation of this same tactic - that’s all that Shot Spotter is for (it’s why PPB wanted it) - it provides a flimsy excuse to harass someone the cops don’t like. Let’s look at Chicago’s use of Shot Spotter: most of the “alerts” were not followed up on because 85.6% of them were a wild goose chase (no evidence at all that a shooting even happened), but because these “alerts” were going off all the time the cops could use it as a justification to stop anyone, and only about 2% of all alerts resulted in a stop and investigation (1,056 stops of out 50,176 alerts). This was used for a pretext for a pat-down search 825 times, and only 244 times was there an arrest, and only only 152 times a gun was recovered. If the Chicago police are granted the authority to randomly stop and harass people 1,000 times, they’ll get a gun about 15% of the time, and arrest someone about 25% of the time, and the great majority of the time it’s just a reminder to a young minority why they should hate this government and police with good cause.

With Chicago’s data we have a good benchmark for carte blanche unjust racist policing. So if you were to really be a believer in the authoritarian utility of explicit racial discrimination, Portland cops are incompetent and underperforming here, too. We gave these fucks free reign to be racist authoritarian pieces of shit without any accountability, and they couldn’t move the needle on gun violence or gang issues even with multiple decades. These morons couldn’t figure out how to get criminal charges to stick on life long gang members with all of these unjust tools of harassment and surveillance at their disposal.

But it’s OK, Portland has put aside our deeply racist ways!

There’s new data published last week on traffic stops in 2023. And yeah, some stuff has really changed.

I’m not here to unpack all of this report, as there’s actually a ton of interesting tidbits in here about what’s going on with cops. The 73-page report is not worth reading, maybe just skimming - because frankly there’s a long history of PPB manipulating statistics, so there’s a decent chance that the stats aren’t accurate. The big overall gist of this is that they’re maybe trying to do more traffic stops in East Portland, but we’ve basically given up on dealing with pedestrians downtown (i.e., the tweakers). yada yada yada

PPB have a new and better way to understand race issues and explain why black folks get disproportionately impacted by traffic stops: the Injury Collision Statistics. “The data is an unbiased benchmark because police are required to respond to injury collisions, making it independent of any discretionary behavior that could intentionally, or unintentionally, alter the subject demographics.” As one can imagine, black drivers tend to get injured a lot, and this couldn’t be because of policing bias (though, I’m sure Jonathan Maus would say the roads are racist or something). I personally think this is a pretty fair tool.

Dear PPB, replace who ever put the tables in this document with someone who understands readability and modern Excel analytics. The tables are too small and need to be on separate pages, the few graphics included look like shit.

Page 58 of this report, APPENDIX H: FOCUSED INTERVENTION TEAM is what inspired me to write this post.

In 2020 and 2021, the City of Portland experienced record levels of gun violence across the City. In response, Mayor Ted Wheeler directed the Portland Police Bureau to create a new team aimed at interdicting gun violence before it happens. On January 19, 2022, the Focused Intervention Team (FIT) officially began patrolling the streets of Portland with a dedicated team of 12 officers and two sergeants. Collectively, PPB personnel utilizing unit IDs associated with FIT worked 21,056.51 hours – including overtime – across 265 days in 2023.

One cautionary note: this report is about traffic stops, the history of GET/GVRT/FIT is a lot deeper than merely traffic stops. Ostensibly they investigate gangs, organized crime activities, and of course gang shootings - our data is just traffic stops.

The racist problem isn’t “fixed” per se, but it’s improved a whole lot:

If we fairly use Injury Collision Statistics for a benchmark on traffic citations and police interventions, we might use Shooting Injury Statistics to understand gun violence. If one were to investigate all shootings in Portland by shooter & victim and race, you would find (pg 16):

So if closer to 47.2% of victims and suspects are black, and 36.5% are Caucasian, then FIT are mostly hitting the appropriate demographics.

Though if we look at the Suspects only in homicides and non-fatal shootings, which is a more accurate representation of the Injury Collision Statistics, then 41.2% of the homicide suspects are black, and it jumps to 57.9% for nonfatal shootings. In this sense, FIT should have somewhere between 40%-60% of the people they talk to being black folks - currently it’s about 40%, at least when we analyze traffic stops exclusively.

Meanwhile, PPB opted to NOT select any benchmark for FIT: “The specialized mission of the Focused Intervention Team makes it challenging to select an appropriate benchmark.”

Ok, we’ve solved racism, how is the actual performance going?

Overall, personnel from the Focused Intervention Team performed 966 driver and 4 pedestrian stops in 2023. On average, the team initiated about 3.7 stops per day each day they were working.

3.7 stops per day with 14 staff members. How many staff do they need to conduct a stop? What is the duration of an average stop?

I get that FIT claim they have other things they do, allegedly they’re investigating shootings - ostensibly there’s a lot of forensic work to do around shootings (though last I looked there was a federal and regional workgroup doing this actual work). So why would they report on a X-number of stops per day? Like this doesn’t seem like a metric that is key to performance —— unless traffic stops continue to be an integral part of the strategy.

Let’s remember for a second that the Gang Enforcement Team was able to do “an average of about six encounters a shift.” This new FIT group is just way less efficient than GET, but GET did have a much larger team.

Meanwhile, over in Traffic Division, I guess they’re more “Wham, bam, here’s your ticket, ma’am” because the 15 officers in that division were able to conduct 10,684 stops. 10x the volume.

Personally I’m still feeling lost: are the traffic stops even essential? What do they do in terms of aiding investigations? Or is this still a fishing expedition to pull over a car based on a hunch and see if any have a warrant?

Why do these people get stopped? It’s mostly expired plates, turning violations, speeding, lane use violations, failure to obey a traffic control device. Very obviously the FIT are either making up excuses to stop people or tailing people until they find a flimsy reason to pull them someone over. The following excerpt heavily implies that police have already made a decision to pull over someone, and now they’re just looking for a legal reason to:

FIT personnel are significantly more likely to stop a subject based on the probable cause or reasonable suspicion of another crime – either in tandem with a traffic violation or in isolation. Conversely, they are also significantly less likely to stop a subject solely for a traffic violation.

In the prior year, 31 percent of stops were for crimes related to the core mission of FIT (assault, homicide, and weapons offenses). However, in 2023 these were given as stop reasons in only five percent of stops. These dramatic changes potentially show a change in the daily operational mission of FIT and the approach to the interdiction of gun violence.

Ok, so the strategy is still in flux, because what they did in the past is changing pretty substantially.

So are traffic stops only relevant to their job 5% of the time?!

Also, the quantity of searches conducted by FIT are way less than GVRT/GET, as they conducted just 19 searches out of 966 stops.

So let’s move on to the final aspect: what are the results?

What did 966 traffic stops with FIT yield us?

• 108 arrests

• 41 citations

• 7 instances where firearms were confiscated (the raw quantity of guns is unknown)

• 3 other weapons

• 1 piece of stolen property

• 5 incidents of drugs confiscated

Not finding this impressive or compelling.

And of the 108 arrested, were any prosecuted? No data in this report - but anyone without their head in their ass knows prosecution was doubtful in 2023, that’s for sure. If the Schmidt Show didn’t fuck up their case, or couldn’t find a defense attorney, and if by some miracle the case advanced to pleas or trial I’m going to bet that at least 75% got wrist slaps and sent to the MCJRP.

What’s the pipeline here between activity of FIT, the prosecution by the DA, and the number of shitbags actually taken off the streets? (Not just given “wrap around services” where they continue to do crimes.)

I’m going to bet $1 that the great majority of the people arrested had bench warrants for failing to appear for another criminal charge. They never should have been let out of jail in the first place, but we did bail reform and here we are.

It sure does seem like our police are still inventing reasons to pull people over and this results in a lot of harassment.

Again I’m not seeing any justification for why this procedure is essential in targeting repeat criminal offenders (i.e., the gangs). Especially when it results in hundreds of people being pulled over with flimsy legal justification (when both the cop and the driver know they pulled over for bullshit reasons). Out of the 966 traffic stops 752 got a “warning” which was definitely bullshit, and another 51 got nothing - which means 83% of these interactions just leads to increasing contempt directed at law enforcement. If your dad or brother or best friend is arrested on bullshit charges, you’ll remember that — it doesn’t matter if “nice” cops have an “outreach presence” at your high school football game.

Pulling over random people won’t result in a reduction in crime, especially when 80% of the times we pull people over don’t result in anything — but it will result in pissing people off. Pulling over random people hasn’t resulted in getting guns or drugs off the streets.

Isn’t there civilian oversight of this? Can that help us reach our goals?

In Portland there’s always a committee.

I don’t know how the politicos have convinced so many fucking idiots in this town that a committee of volunteers is a substitute for good governance or accountably - but like so many other failed committees, the FIT Civilian Oversight Group (“FITCOG”) is just a monumental waste of time. Stereotypical of most committees in Portland, they tend to get stacked with busy bodies, political sycophants, ivory tower academics, ineffective political activists, and run-of-the-mill idiots. It’s totally unreasonable to ask civilian volunteers to spearhead something like this, especially because if you went to an CRC meeting in 2016 there was probably fucking no one there and they were completely toothless.

With FITCOG I tried to review the notes, updates, and presentations from the meetings and half of their shit is broken, notes are incomplete and not professional. I’m guessing the huge gaps in notes is because either no meetings happened or no one bothered to take notes?

Of what I could review, there was just one note that seemed of interest, the June 6th 2024 meeting notes:

Lt. Hill reported:

• 8 stops—6 male, 2 female (1 Asian, 3 A/A, 1 Hispanic, 3 White)

• 0 searches

• 0 use-of-force

• 7 guns recovered.

4 missions:

Mission 1- Ofc. Amy Li worked on case for eighteen months.  Male subject taken into custody.  Subject was elusive because he was in and out of town after committing gun violence.  Two guns recovered. 

Mission 2 – Actively in search of male subject in relation to shooting near 138^th & Sandy Blvd.

Mission 3- Worked on a Gresham, OR, shooting.

Mission 4 – On June 5, responded to 911 call reporting shots fired through an apartment ceiling.  Subject taken into custody.  Five guns were recovered.

This is a snapshot of seemingly two weeks of activity. And it seems that the work is divided between Missions (aka, investigations) and traffic stops.

Certainly the work of Officer Amy Li is commendable. I googled Officer Li to see if there was anything notable about her, and it turns out she’s been with the PPB for about 5 years, and she took home $238,072.95 in pay in 2023. $114,075.07 in overtime pay alone…so I’m presuming she spent all 18 months working on this case? Well, if nothing else folks, Officer Amy Li can buy herself a boat thanks to this program.

It seems that traffic stops are completely separate from the investigation missions.

I’m feeling like at $200k/yr we could fly in the best fucking detectives from Tokyo and Berlin - not joking - we ought to be really cherry picking the best professional talent internationally to come in and unfuck our law enforcement strategies on organized crime, since we’ve been a broke record since the 1990’s.

Can civilian oversight even fix a totally broken justice system?

One member of the FITCOG lost her son to gang violence in 2013. Her son was a gang member.

The shooter was Demetruis Ray Brown - a known member of the Hoover gang. In May 2012, when he was 17 years old, Demetrius Brown went on a crime spree: he shot Damon McDonald, a member of the Rolling 60’s Crips - shooting him 5 times in a robbery.

Demetruis Ray Brown was linked to the June 2013 shooting and killing of 21-year-old Andreas Prince in Gresham. He was also the primary suspect involved in an August 2014 shooting that left a 21-year-old pregnant woman, Ervaeua Herring, dead.

So this man has shot at least 3 people, a fourth if you include the fetus.

This isn’t his only criminal record, in December 2013 he went and got caught stealing from Home Depot, a few months later he was caught driving on a suspended license. He failed to appear to the suspended license case, because of course he was a free man able to walk around.

Demetruis Brown is an unbelievably bad man, who was ABSOLUTELY on the radar of the Gang Enforcement Team - they knew he was a suspect in a robbery that resulted in a shooting, he got busted for other things (presuming the driving on a suspended license was the work of GET), yet they still couldn’t keep this asshole in jail.

And as of 2021 he was declared unfit to stand trial — dismissing all murder charges against him. Of course allegedly he’d be on the way to the Oregon State Hospital, but as we should know, because of over crowding most of these people are released after just 1 year in local jail. God only knows where Mr. Brown is at these days, I sincerely doubt that if he made it to the State Hospital he will be there for more than a few years.

Keep in mind that this man killed the son of a woman who is now on the FITCOG. The woman has put a decade of her life into seeking justice for her son. What is the actual purpose of any program like this if it’s just catch and release?

I mean sure, let’s pretend we’re going to arrest the bad people, but that’s just the first step in every other step of the justice system being utterly broken, even for the worst people in our society.

One time I watched a tweaker try to pump air into a flat tire of a car that was a burnt husk frame, it had no engine, and only the one tire. Maybe we should have paid this tweaker $200k/yr.