AARON WESSLING
BRIAN BROSE
THE BOSS: PPA president Daryl Turner, 61, will step down in November after 10 years atop the union.
Portland Police Chief Jami Resch, a white woman who started in the job just six months ago, stepped aside and ceded command to Lt. Chuck Lovell, a Black man. The changes are dramatic. And they might be just the beginning. The Oregon Legislature today begins a special session aimed at police reform. Within the month, Oregon lawmakers could revamp the arbitration system that has shielded officers from firings after incidents of deadly force. They also want to create a statewide database of disciplinary findings against police; make cops mandatory reporters—on each other; and move investigations of police-involved shootings from local jurisdictions to the Oregon Department of Justice. Portland has witnessed repeated controversial actions by police over the years, many of them against Black people. None of them catalyzed much real change. But George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis last month outraged the consciousness of millions of people for whom prior killings barely registered. “It’s not just Portland,” says state Sen. Lew Frederick (D-Portland), the co-sponsor of a raft of police reform bills. “It’s happening around the country and around the world.” Standing in their way: the 900 members of the Portland Police Association. “We’re not the evil empire, and I’m not the emperor of the evil empire,” says PPA president Daryl Turner. “There is the perception that the PPA and Daryl Turner have some kind of magic dust that we throw on people, and then all of the sudden they do what we want them to do. I don’t see it as the power we have retained. I see it as reasonability.” Reform advocates say the Portland Police Association has outmaneuvered City Hall at every turn: at the bargaining table, in the Legislature, and in court. Over and over again, the PPA has zealously protected the interests of its officer members. For middle-class residents of the whitest city in America, the fact that those interests sometimes trampled on the rights of people of color, the mentally ill and the homeless was mostly an afterthought. It’s worth noting that City Hall has been willing to dramatically revamp agencies with performance issues 12
Willamette Week JUNE 24, 2020 wweek.com
around race. An example: the Portland Development Commission, now called Prosper Portland. Years ago, the city recognized the role the PDC played in hollowing out Black neighborhoods, and City Hall gutted its budget and shifted its focus as a result. “The PDC did a bunch of really bad things, and so they went through a major overhaul that is still ongoing,” says Felisa Hagins, political director of Service Employees International Union Local 49. “The Portland Police Bureau has been shooting Black and mentally ill people for decades, and fuck-all has been done.” Why is that? We interviewed more than a dozen people about how the Portland Police Association has retained its power for so long in a city that doesn’t exactly love cops. Here’s what we learned.
The Portland police union frightens elected officials.
Soon after Mayor Bud Clark took office in January 1985, he invited Stan Peters, the longtime police union boss, to meet in his office at City Hall. Clark was a free-spirited tavern owner with no political experience who beat incumbent Mayor Frank Ivancie in a shocking upset in 1984. One of Ivancie’s last significant acts before leaving office was agreeing to a 10 percent pay hike for the police. Clark, now 88, remembers the meeting vividly. “The first thing Stan Peters did was reach around behind him, pull out his gun from underneath his shirt, and put it on the table between us,” Clark recalls. “It was him establishing, ‘Hey, I’m Stan Peters, you better pay attention to me.’ And I think he did it every time I ever met with him.” The PPA is the longest continuously operating police union in the country. Since its founding in 1942, it’s played hardball. Its current leader hasn’t held back from releasing fiery statements about the state of the city, and calling out elected officials by name. “In July 2018, I said our city was becoming a cesspool, and today I stand by that assessment; our once vibrant city is on the wrong track,” Turner wrote in January, ahead of his union’s impending contract negotiations with the city.
MAYOR PUBLICAN: Mayor Bud Clark saw high-profile police firings overturned by arbitrators.
THE BOSS: The late Stan Peters served as Portland Police Association president from 1974 to 1991.
