The second version of Portland’s beleaguered community panel formed to help oversee federally ordered police reforms is already off to a rocky start with allegations of a hostile work environment and the resignation of a contractor who was supposed to create "group cohesion."

Brandon Lee didn’t show up for the panel’s first meeting and has since cut ties with the city.

The city granted Lee and his wife, Hun Taing, who run Training 4 Transformation, a $100,000 one-year contract to help support Portland’s new Committee on Community-Engaged Policing.

The city has been without community oversight of police reforms for almost two years after the first committee dissolved in acrimony and an exodus of leaders and members. The committee is a key part of the settlement agreement between the city and U.S. Department of Justice that followed federal investigators’ finding that Portland officers too often used excessive force on people suffering from mental illness. It called for significant changes to police policies, training and oversight.

Training 4 Transformation was one of two firms hired by the city to work as facilitators for the new panel. Tiang and Lee say they turned to civil rights advocacy to build partnerships between communities and police after personally experiencing racial profiling. Lee was born and raised in Oakland, the former home of Portland's new Police Chief Danielle Outlaw.

But before the committee held its first meeting late last month, Lee complained that a committee member was racially hostile to him and urged the city to intervene and address his complaint.

Not satisfied by the city’s response, Lee and his wife severed ties with the committee.

On the night of the committee’s first public meeting, staff from the mayor’s office denied to The Oregonian/OregonLive that Lee’s absence was tied to a hostile workplace allegation or that any mediation was involved.

But emails obtained by the newsroom through a public records request show otherwise.

Taing wrote to the mayor’s staff on Oct. 23, concerned that Lee’s “experience of racism’’ with one of the committee members was “not called out.’’ Taing wrote that the city accepted the committee member’s concerns “as if Brandon’s racist experience did not matter.’’

Committee member Patrick Nolen, who formerly worked as a community organizer for Sisters of the Road, had questioned city staff when one day of a two-day private retreat for the new citizen group was cut short in mid-October. He asked why.

Brandon J. Lee, who co-founded Training 4 Transformation with his wife, will no longer serve the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing.

The reason he had heard was because it was sunny that day. Nolen wasn’t satisfied with that explanation and objected to the facilitators deciding the schedule for the committee’s retreat and training without input from its members.

Lee called Nolen the next day and the relationship soured even further.

"I felt kind of like he was bullying me and trying to get me to recant my concern about the postponement,'' Nolen wrote to the committee’s project manager. "He used terms like 'I have won cases against the police in Berkeley’ and ‘I have trained in this field, you wouldn’t understand what we are doing.’''

Nolen also said the committee members had prepared to discuss the committee’s governance that day “but the facilitators weren’t prepared” and that adding another day to training to cover the subject was “an undue burden.”

In turn, Taing complained that Nolen’s concerns created a “hostile work environment’’ for Lee.

“As the CEO of T4T, I cannot expect him to continue to play a role in (the committee) until this is confronted and resolved in person,’’ Taing wrote to city staff.

“Much like the settlement agreement, we responded empathetically with a mental health lens but were completely silenced on a racial lens,” Taing continued.

She also wrote that the committee “will lose credibility from the black community if Brandon is out of the picture!” and characterized Lee as “the glue and hope’’ for people of color in the community to support of the committee’s work.

Hun Taing, one of the co-founders of Training 4 Transformation, wrote this to the mayor's senior policy advisor on Oct. 23, after Taing's husband and company co-founder Brandon Lee complained of a hostile work environment in his facilitation work with the Committee on Community-Engaged Policing.

The mayor’s staff tried to bring in the city’s Bureau of Human Resources and coordinate a mediation between Nolen and Lee.

On Nov. 19, Nolen indicated to the city he was willing to be involved in a mediation with Lee. Three days later, Lee asked to bring his “peer support specialist’’ to any meeting with city staff and Nolen. He also wrote, “Mental Health for people of color seems to have taken a backseat while focusing on Patrick.’’

As the city was dealing with Lee and Taing’s complaint, Training 4 Transformation also sought more money. On Nov. 20, Nicole Grant, the mayor’s senior policy adviser, asked other staff if the city could adjust the total amount of the company’s contract, hoping to add another 25 percent.

That became moot.

In a Nov. 29 email, the morning after the committee’s first public meeting, Grant told committee members that Training 4 Transformation would no longer serve as a facilitator.

Grant wrote that she didn’t think it was right that Taing or Lee from Training 4 Transformation had shared some of their concerns with other committee members because “similar dynamics irreparably harmed” the original community panel. That panel disbanded in January 2017 amid internal conflict and frustration in part over lack of feedback from the prior mayor and previous police chiefs.

Grant said Taing acknowledged that Lee no longer was interested in mediation and their company wanted out of the contract.

“As of today, they are no longer facilitators for the PCCEP,’’ Grant wrote.

Taing, in a brief interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, said Monday that “we decided it was a good time to part ways.’’

The company spent most of the $100,000 in the first six months of the contract “because Brandon spent a lot of time recruiting the members,’’ Taing said.

Lee’s concerns about his work environment also were never resolved, she said. “I believe the city is supposed to work through all this from a racial equity lens,” she said.

“I think they could have been more involved in making that very explicit,’’ Taing added.

Grant wrote to committee members last month that she valued Lee’s and Taing’s work in helping to form the committee.

The Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing was scheduled to hold its second public meeting Monday night.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian