Portland's longest-standing citizen police oversight board is the Citizen Review Committee (CRC), which is part of the Auditor's Office's Independent Police Review division (IPR). The CRC is an eleven-member, all-volunteer body that hears appeals of police misconduct cases. The CRC has a strict standard of review that requires its members to consider only the evidence that Internal police investigators had available to them -- the CRC cannot gather or consider new evidence.
Right now, the CRC is recruiting new applicants to fill five positions reaching the end of their terms this year. The CRC has seen both unprecedented success, and slightly more typical upheaval, over the past year, culminating in the resignation of several members including Committee Chair Kristin Malone. For more on the recruitment process and the current state of the CRC, KBOO reporter Sam Bouman spoke to Irene Konev, IPR's Senior Community Outreach Coordinator. A number of the CRC's cases, including many of those covered by KBOO in the past few years, have focused on police responses to protest events.
An important note: this interview was conducted in the days before the major demonstrations that commenced at the beginning of June, and does not address the numerous documented incidents of questionable police behavior during those events.
First aired 6/3/2020
- KBOO