A Portland police officer who in 2015 forced to the ground and arrested a black man he mistook for a shooting suspect had not received racial bias training before the incident and omitted unflattering details about his conduct in his report of it, a confidential city memo shows.

The Portland City Council, apprised of the police department's failings in the incident, unanimously approved a $25,000 settlement Wednesday with the man who was arrested, Anthony Allen Jr.

Portland police officers have for decades stopped, searched, arrested, shot at and killed black men at disproportionate rates and continue to do so, according to data published by the Police Bureau, city auditor reports and accounts from criminal justice reformers. Police officials have generally maintained that while there is room for improvement, outright racial profiling is extremely uncommon.

The liability incurred by police officer Colby Marrs' arrest of Allen was outlined in the confidential memo, prepared by a city attorney for the mayor, commissioners, police chief and other select high-ranking officials. The document, provided to The Oregonian/OregonLive by an employee at City Hall, encouraged the City Council to pay to settle a lawsuit brought by Allen.

The night of the arrest, Marrs was posted in Allen's Northeast Portland neighborhood as part of a police perimeter after a shooting. Officers were told the suspects were three young black men wearing hoodies.

Allen, then 21, was riding his bike home from work when stopped by officers at the perimeter, who told him to go straight home. Marrs subsequently spotted Allen, who was not wearing a hoodie, just a few houses from his home and told him to "f***ing stop." When Allen kept going, Marrs used force to handcuff and arrest him. He was jailed for most of the night.

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Marrs never questioned Allen about the shooting, a decision that calls into question why Marrs insisted on stopping him to begin with, the memo states. Police officers are required to note in their reports if they use profanity on a suspect. But Marrs omitted that information in his write-up.

The city memo says Marrs said in a deposition that he had zero training on racial profiling by Portland police against black men. It said the city risked being found "negligent" at trial in failing to train officers to avoid racially-biased policing.

The Police Bureau has since 2009 had a strategy to stop racial profiling, pledging among other things to teach officers about race relations in policing. Dan Handelman of Portland Cop Watch, a police reform advocacy group, said high-rank officers have undergone anti-bias training but not all patrol officers have.

Police spokesman Sgt. Chris Burley said he could not explain on short notice why Marrs, who has worked for the department since 2012, had not been trained how not to profile people. Burley said the department has offered an equity class since 2016 and all officers attended a training this year that "discussed implicit bias." The department takes accusations of racial bias seriously, he said, and police rules direct officers not to discriminate.

The department will not say whether Marrs was disciplined, Burley said.

Daryl Turner, president of the city police union, said "lapses in training" have occurred depending on course availability and whether the curriculum "was agreeable" to each police chief. Larry O'Dea was chief at the time of Allen's arrest. Burley said the new chief, Danielle Outlaw, has been proactive in assuring police officers receive anti-bias training.

"There is no room for any kind of bias in the work that we do," Turner said.

Allen's attorney, Ashlee Albies, said his case is "a specific example, a zoom in on a data point" in a larger pattern of racial profiling of black men by Portland police officers.

"The data shows that there is this trend of stopping African American men in this city at a disproportionate rate to their white counterparts," Albies said.

The memo describes the city's take on how Portlanders perceive police in unusually frank language.

"This case presents a conflict between two contrasting points of view. The first is that young black men are the targets of racially biased policing, in danger of being hurt if not killed by excessive police force, and that police officers have an obligation to be polite at all times and respond to aggression and non-compliance with de-escalation techniques," the memo states.

It goes on: "The second point of view is that officers respond to suspects based on race-neutral factors related to crime, that profanity can be effective in gaining compliance when regular commands are not followed, that refusing to cooperate with law enforcement is suspicious, and that the inconvenience of being questioned regarding a crime that you were not involved with is reasonable, in light of the law enforcement mission of arresting dangerous criminals."

Mayor Ted Wheeler called the settlement appropriate in light of the facts. He noted that neither he nor Outlaw were in their current roles when the arrest occurred.

Only Commissioner Amanda Fritz addressed Allen's well-being. "I hope that we have learned from what happened in this incident. ... I hope Mr. Allen is doing fine," Fritz said.

Though Allen has agreed not to take the city to court over his claims of racial profiling, he has already prevailed once in court in a case related to his altercation with Marrs. After his arrest, prosecutors charged Allen with interfering with a police officer. A six-member jury acquitted him.

Brent Weisberg, a spokesman for Multnomah County District Attorney Rod Underhill, said the decision to charge Allen "was appropriate and in line with office policy." Weisberg said Underhill "respects the jury's decision" to acquit.

-- Gordon R. Friedman

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