Uniform Accountability (Street Roots, USA)
Joanne ZuhlJune 25, 2008
In the era of public-private partnerships, some are more private than public. Which isn’t so much of a concern unless the situation involves 30 private security officers, most of them armed, who are funded by the city, enforcing public policy, but contracted with the private business association.
It’s Portland Patrol Inc., which contracts with the Portland Business Alliance as the “safe” part of its Clean and Safe program. They are the security officers in yellow and black jackets, patrolling the downtown area, conducting “order maintenance,” and offering their services to deal with, among other issues, the homeless and panhandlers.
Yet as a private company, none of Portland Patrol’s records are public, including its contract with the PBA.
“As a matter of policy, we don’t discuss contracts with private businesses,” says John Hren, a former Portland police officer and now the chief executive officer of PPI.
The Portland Police have a public review structure for complaints — the Independent Police Review and Citizens Review Commission — but it only has jurisdiction over Portland police officers. No such public forum exists for private security firms such as PPI. That lack of transparency in their work has social justice advocates concerned about due process, along with City Commissioner Erik Sten, who wants to see a public oversight process to not only redress problems when they arise, but improve service whenever possible.
“They’re out on the streets essentially enforcing polices and laws,” Sten says. “With any group that has essentially police authorities, there needs to be checks and balances and oversight.”
Sten says he wasn’t aware of any rash of complaints against PPI, but he said there should be a system in place should something come up, “to give people a chance to air their concerns.”
In the fall of 2006, the city signed a $620,000 contract with the PBA to provide security and maintenance in the city’s downtown parks, choosing the business groups proposal over a $537,000 bid from Wackenhut Security (which contracts with Tri-Met). The bulk of the contract is for security services, with additional funds for custodial services on the park facilities including bathrooms.
PPI has 17 armed and 13 unarmed security personnel patrolling downtown Portland. They provide a roving presence, reporting unlawful activities, safety hazards and maintenance problems, securing crime or accident scenes, and providing information to the public. Hren says these security officers have no more rights than any other citizen. They cannot detain or arrest people, and if they carry guns, it is because the contract they have requires them to be armed. If an employee fires his weapon, it is investigated by police like any other shooting. But none of his guards has fired a gun in the course of carrying out a contract, Hren says.
One major difference is that unlike other private security working downtown, the Portland Patrol can write park warnings and exclusions, ranging from 30 to 180 days that are valid in the court system. For more serious incidents or for making arrests, PPI officers can call on four Portland Police officers dedicated to the Clean and Safe Program, three of whom are paid for by the Portland Business Alliance.
The PBA has contracted with the city to provide security in downtown parks for almost two decades, but the latest contract now includes Waterfront Park and the Esplanade on the east side of the Willamette River — an expansion of nearly 30 acres and some of the most popular and accessible real estate for residents experiencing homelessness.
In monthly reports filed by the PBA to the city, security officers issued 274 park exclusions in Waterfront Park and the East Bank Esplanade between November and January – the most any other park received was 26 in Ira Keller Fountain Park. Among other activities, the reports document “problem solving incidents regarding drug activity, public drinking, skateboarders graffiti, panhandling and “unwanted persons.” There are no cases of panhandling cited in the reports, but there were 35 incidents of “unwanted persons,” nearly all of them in Waterfront Park.
Oregon Law Center attorney Ed Johnson said 274 figure sounded a little high for the winter months, but that the rate of exclusions historically peak in May and June leading up to the Rose Festival. Johnson and other attorneys at the center have worked on cases involving people excluded from parks, including a case of “jaywalking” across Front Avenue while it was closed to traffic during the Rose Festival. In 2004, after the center won a case involving two women petitioning for signatures in Pioneer Courthouse Square, the number dropped from around 2,500 to about 1,500 a year, Johnson said. The center has another exclusion case pending.
“Our concern with PPI has always been what kind of training their officers get,” Johnson says. “The (parks exclusion) ordinance gives very broad discretion to excluders, so if they aren't trained carefully, they can do what ever they want. Most police have some understanding of probable cause, it's not clear that PPI guides have similar training.”
Johnson has argued that the park exclusion ordinance is wide open to interpretation, and is often used to simply move homeless people out of the parks.
“Over the years, we have had complaints from homeless clients about PPI officers treating them rudely or worse but, on the whole, I'm not sure that their reputation is any worse than the PPB,” Johnson said. “As with the police, I think most officers are courteous, but the problem with an ordinance as broad as this one is that it allows the other officers to exclude people from parks for illegitimate reasons.”
Calls to Bill Sinnott, who runs the Clean and Safe Program, were returned by Mike Kuykendall, vice president of PBA’s Downtown Services. Kuykendall referred questions to PPI.
From the PPI and the police perspective, contracting with a private security force allows them to patrol for lower priority matters and lets the police focus on higher priority calls.
“It does impact the perception of safety downtown and I think they do a marvelous job of making a safe environment in downtown Portland and they do act as eyes and ears calling in criminal activity to the police bureau,” says Commander Mike Reese with the Downtown Precinct.
City Attorney Harry Auerbach says that to his knowledge, it is common for cities to contract with private security providers for enhanced security in public places. If people have complaints, they can contact the security manager at Portland Parks and Recreation, who can determine if there has been a violation of the contract, Auerbach says.
They can also contact the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, which implements minimum standards for recruitment and training of city, county and state police, corrections officers, parole and probation officers, fire service personnel, emergency telecommunicators and private security providers. Complaints against companies are kept on file there, but the department focuses on compliance with training standards (12 hours with refresher courses every two years), the criminal background check and “moral fitness,” all with regard to licensing, not for redressing a civil rights or policy complaints.
“That would be an issue for the company to deal with internally, or if, in fact, there was some crime committed, than law enforcement would be involved,” says Karen Evans, with the DPSST. The department does not have a Portland office or a toll-free number. Complaints are most commonly filed online, which limits accessibility for people on the streets.
“Of course, individuals should be encouraged to consult their own private lawyers about their individual rights and remedies,” Auerbach says.
For $5, people can get a basic report on a security company through the DPSST. Additional charges apply to more extensive requests, Evans says.
Alejandro Queral with the The Northwest Constitutional Rights Center is calling on the city to institute a public oversight process for the PPI and has requested the records on the company from the DPSST.
Capt. John Tellis with the Internal Affairs Division of the PPB, an element of the police oversight process, says there is a push-pull between accountability by the government, compared to accountability for the private sector, which is generally defined through the bottom line which determines how business is conducted, he says.
“I think it’s something that we’ll see more of in the future as money becomes tighter and tighter, communities hiring private security,” says Tellis. “That’s not that uncommon.”
Bruce Schneier, a security technologist who writes about security policy in newspapers and periodicals, finds the practice menacing. Privatizing law enforcement puts everyone at risks, he says, because private forces are focused on the concerns of their employer, not civil rights and due process.
“I think it’s very dangerous,” said Schneier, who lives in Mountain View, Calif. “And it’s a very bad idea. There’s a reason we have a public police force. Private security agencies are not accountable to the public. It’s a very bad trend. The same trend that’s happening in Iraq. The public should have the same worries for the exact same reasons.”
Schneier is referring to the private military forces hired by business and the government to help secure Iraq. Congress is currently conducting hearings into the lack of oversight of those companies.
On average, the Independent Police Review receives around 750 complaints a year regarding the conduct of Portland police officers. Laurie Stewart, intake specialist with the IPR, says they refer calls about the Portland Patrol, which she notes are few, to either the security company itself or the Portland Business Alliance. However, in response to questions from the Portland Mercury about accountability, the IPR is proposing making it a formal procedure to record calls about the Portland Patrol on e-mail. The content of the communications would still be private, Stewart says, but it would be the start of the city recording the number of complaints on a private security company.
By Joanne Zuhl
Reprinted from Street Roots
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