This is an overview of the history of the Portland Police Bureau.
19th century From 1851 to 1870, Portland was policed by a marshal, sometimes elected and sometimes appointed, who usually served a two-year term. After 1861, the marshal was empowered to hire deputies, but they did not have permanent jobs until late in the 1860s. Thomas O'Connor, a deputy, became the first Portland officer to die while on duty in a shooting on August 21, 1867. The bureau, originally named the Portland Metropolitan Police Force, was established in 1870 by the Portland City Council. The Council appointed James Lappeus as its first chief of police, in charge of a force with six patrolmen and one lieutenant, at a time when the population of Portland was less than 9,000. The first member of the Metropolitan Police Force to die in the line of duty was Officer Charles F. Schoppe, who was shot to death on June 13, 1874, while trying to disarm a drunken saloon patron.
20th century
On April 1, 1908, the bureau became the first in the U.S. to hire a female police officer, Lola Baldwin, who became the Superintendent of its newly established Women's Protective Division, especially noted for helping women during a time that PPB's officers focused on enforcement and patrol of people who could pay them under the table. Unattached women had arrived en masse for the 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition.
In 1915, the "Metropolitan Police Force" changed its name to the Bureau of Police. Four years later, the bureau became the first in the U.S. to use a police radio. Sybil Plumlee, also considered to be a pioneer in the field, served in the Women's Protective Division from 1947 to 1967.
PPB's "Red Squad" was formed in the 1910s to fight a rise of communism, the labor movement, and other left-wing efforts. Its membership was documented to overlap with Oregon's branch of Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and the pro-Nazi antisemitic Silver Shirts in the 1930s; Red Squad Captain Walter Odale was part of American Defenders, a spinoff of the Silver Shirts. In one of Red Squad's "Weekly Report of Communist Activities", Odale stated Portland was the third-largest center of Nazi activity in the country. The Squad interrogated a student leader at Lincoln High School, and within days of this becoming public in 1937, the Red Squad was disbanded. Still, by 1940, the Silver Shirts were confident that police would side with their organization "if any trouble starts in Portland". By 1923 it was estimated over half of the PPB were also members of the Klan.
In 1964, Black Albina resident Cleotis Rhodes was shot during a traffic stop, which led to his death. The use-of-force guidelines were amended by the new police chief to note firearms should only be used related to felonies.
In a 1968 City Club of Portland Report on Law Enforcement, PPB were described as having "the right to stop and frisk someone because his skin is black and he is in the black part of town." Albina, the majority-Black area of Portland, was deliberately neglected, as police and Mayor Terry Schrunk confirmed. This was intensified by the ghettoization (through redlining and other means), concentrating Portland's Black population in Albina. Portland police were disproportionately white (1% were Black) even compared to the low percentage of Blacks in Portland (7%). Attitudes were reflected in a 1966 survey, where 86% of officers thought the civil rights movement was happening "moving too fast".
Youth in the Albina neighborhood felt "watched all the time", calling the police "plantation overseers". These frustrations caused a peaceful rally to turn into an unprompted riot at Irving Park in 1967. After this, the Intelligence Unit collected information on any vocal activists and their friends, then harassed individuals "until they found a charge that would stick".
A 1969 class action lawsuit on behalf of 20,000 Black Portlanders led to the 1971 settlement called the Probasco Decree. It required the police to stop using "insulting, degrading or ethnically derogatory terms" towards citizens, banned the use of SAP gloves and leaded batons, and required a search warrant to enter a home. The Internal Affairs Division was created, though it was substantially ineffective, tossing out 90% of complaints in the first year, and nearly 93% of complaints in 1979. Police behavior did not change; in 1974, a resident wrote Mayor Neil Goldschmidt stating "It seems as if any time a police gets the urge to punch something, they snatch the first available black man they see, and use him to satisfy their savage egos." Four Black men were killed by the police in a six-month period of 1974–1975.
In March 1981, PPB officers (Craig Ward, Jim Galloway) dropped dead possums in front of Burger Barn, a Black soul food restaurant owned by George Powe on MLK. Witnesses said there were seven officers and four patrol cars involved. Ward and Galloway said they did it to relieve stress, not out of racial motivation. After pressure from the Black United Front and protests, Ward and Galloway were fired, though no other officers were punished. Stan Peters and the PPA protested the firings, organizing a "Cops Have Rights Too" rally, and demanding Charles Jordan, Portland's first Black city councilor and police commissioner. PPA hired Ward and Galloway to work for the union in the meantime; months later, the firing of the two was overturned in binding arbitration, which found Jordan failed to follow procedures. Marches and rallies were held, and Rev. C. T. Vivian came to the city to organize anti-Klan efforts, believing the possums represented a "Klan mentality" in the department and the ruling would lead to further attacks.
In 1985, Penny Harrington became Portland's first female chief of police, and the first to head a major U.S. police department. Also in 1985, PPB killed a Black veteran, Lloyd Stevenson, by placing him in a chokehold. Stevenson had served in Vietnam for the Marine Corps, and was buried with military honors at Willamette National Cemetery. After scrutiny over Officer Gary Barbour's chokehold, on the day of his funeral, officers sold "don't choke 'em, smoke 'em" t-shirts from a police precinct (Kelly Penumbra building, 47th and E Burnside) and the Portland Police Association's bar, the Portland Police Athletic Association. Two officers, Richard Montee and Paul Wickersham, were fired by Mayor Bud Clark, but later reinstated. A month after the killing, when a grand jury decided to not prosecute the officers, PPA president Stan Peters said people should not "dwell on the past", stating community relations would improve once those angry with the police moved on. He had previously called Black leaders "opportunists" and "vultures" over the Stevenson killing reaction.
The headquarters of the Portland Police Bureau was in the Portland Police Block until 1984. The 1912 building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Since 1992, there have been several cases of suspects having died while in custody at the Multnomah County Detention Center.Portland Police Shootings and Deaths in Custody: 1992-May, 2008 from portlandcopwatch.org
Prohibition Oregon passed Prohibition laws in 1915. These were enacted in 1916, well ahead of the 18th Amendment. Mayor H. Russell Albee, embroiled in several unrelated controversies, ordered chief John Clark to visibly enforce the prohibition laws. Clark created a "morals squad" in 1916 with Lt. Leo A. Harms as its leader. The raids and arrests focused on the consumers and low-level suppliers, making little impact. Even when an individual appeared in front of a jury trial, the jury would decline to find the person guilty. In at least two cases the jury drank the evidence (liquor) then acquitted the accused for lack of evidence.
Portland's liquor from Prohibition through the 1950s was supplied through a loose ring of Pullman porters. A 1917 raid on Portland's Golden West Hotel, the a hotspot for Portland's Black population and the porters, was a very public event even if no charges were successful.
George Luis Baker became mayor in June 1917; he and PPB chief Leon Jenkins took control of liquor distribution (through bootlegging) and kept speakeasies open. Confiscated liquor was stored in PPB's Central Precinct basement. Several officers on the morals and motorcycle squads were involved in the smuggling. The motorcycle squad operated under Captain Frank Ervin, handling chief Jenkins' "dirty work" such as anti-union work and alcohol distribution. Jim Purcell, later chief detective and police chief, was clearly linked with mobster Jim Elkins and described later as "He was very good at derailing investigations and covering up murders. Jim Elkins... paid Purcell well for his services." A wild Oregon Auto Dealers convention at the Multnomah Hotel led to a raid in 1918, yet no arrests for drinking were made.
Intelligence files In the 1950s through the 1980s, PPB's Intelligence Division, the effective successor to the Red Squad, kept files on hundreds of Portland organizations, ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Black United Front, Bicycle Repair Collective, and the People's Food Co-op. The Intelligence Division had approximately six officers who would gather intelligence and news clippings on organizations and individuals related to them. The paperwork was against city policy, and in 1981 it became against state law (181.575). Some reports were filed even after 1981. Most of the reports focused on left-leaning organizations. Winfield Falk took the records home sometime between 1981 and 1985, then moved them to a barn in eastern Washington. Falk died in 1987, and Portland Tribune's Phil Stanford chased leads until he found and acquired the files in 2002 or prior. Stanford "was devastated" because they were of no use to him, so he gave them to the Tribune.
Winfield Falk was a member of the right-wing John Birch Society, which had been involved with intelligence gathering in a similar unit of the Los Angeles Police Department in 1983. Individuals tracked in the files included Bev Stein, Ron Herndon, Neil Goldschmidt, Vera Katz, Harl H. Haas Jr., and Elizabeth Furse.
When Harrington became chief in 1985, Falk shared intelligence files on city commissioners Mike Lindberg and Margaret Strachan. She said "I just blew up at [Falk]" and broke up the intelligence and vice divisions. She resigned as chief in June 1986.
The files were analyzed by Portland Tribune in 2002 and given to the City of Portland Archives (PARC) in 2004. During an ethnographic study using document theory, researcher Kathy Carbone created an object biography on the files as a whole, noting the concept of "imagined-but-unavailable records" led many to experience strong emotions. Further, the files became recontextualized over time.
21st century
In 2000, a large protest occurred on May Day. Following that, police chief Mark Kroeker issued a policy to not use less-lethal force to disperse crowds. He also formed the Rapid Response Team designed for crowd control.
During protests against a Bush visit in August 2002, police escalated the force used to disperse protesters, indiscriminately using batons, rubber bullets, and pepper spray. Children (including a 10-month-old baby), independent police observers and a TV cameraperson (Beth English, KPTV) were deliberately sprayed from as little as one foot away from their face. This was counter to the RRT training and the Kroeker policy. The assistant chief, Greg Clark, put responsibility of the children being pepper sprayed on the parents; complaints were filed with the Bureau but they said no inappropriate behavior had occurred. Mayor Vera Katz, however, began to make changes on how crowd dispersal is handled.