Portland State University should keep armed officers on campus, but those officers should receive more training and oversight, a Vermont-based consulting firm concluded in a report released Friday.

The 213-page report from Margolis Healy offered 115 suggestions to improve campus safety, from police training to campus lighting. The school review followed the June 29, 2018 fatal shooting of 45-year-old Jason Washington by Portland State Officers Shawn McKenzie and James Dewey. A Multnomah County grand jury declined to indict the officers on criminal charges in September.

Portland State also hired a California-based police oversight firm, OIR Group, to conduct an independent review of the shooting. Margolis Healy didn’t review the shooting as part of its report. The firm said it was asked to analyze the college’s campus safety.

Among the report recommendations is that the university hire more unarmed officers and rely more on them to respond to calls, the report said.

A public meeting is scheduled at the downtown Portland college on March 7 regarding Margolis Healy’s findings.

[Read the report]

It’s not clear when the independent review of the shooting will be finished, said Kenny Ma, a Portland State spokesman.

The death of Washington, a Navy veteran who worked for the U.S. Postal Service, marked the first fatal shooting by the university’s police force. Officers began carrying guns in 2015 after school officials approved an armed police force in late 2014 despite opposition from students.

Student groups have since renewed calls for Portland State to disarm its police force in the wake of Washington’s shooting. The Margolis Healy report said 52 percent of 4,145 Portland State students, facility and staff surveyed believe campus officers shouldn’t have guns, while 37 percent approved of the practice. The remaining 11 percent either didn’t respond or chose neither option.

The university now has about a dozen sworn police officers and a police chief who are all armed and about six public safety officers who are unarmed, according to the school.

McKenzie resigned from the Portland State police force in September 2018 and Dewey left the department in January, state records show. McKenzie had been with campus public safety since 2002 and Dewey since 2014. Both became armed sworn officers in 2016.

In its report, Margolis Healy said the university would be “an outlier amongst its peers” if its officers weren’t armed and it “would represent an abnormal step with respect to campus safety models in higher education.”

The group said it was clear the Portland State community felt betrayed when administrators moved forward with arming officers despite opposition. That mistrust of school officials has lingered, and university officials have failed to adequately address the rift, the report said.

“It was clear to our team that the university missed an opportunity to restore trust and reestablish the department’s legitimacy following the decision to transition to a sworn and armed police department,” the report said.

School leaders botched the transition to armed officers by not providing accountability and ensuring appropriate oversight, such as making sure officers received necessary training before and after officers were armed, the report said.

“From our objective opinion, it appears that once the board approved the transition, the university assumed an arms-length, almost laissez-faire, approach to managing the transition,” the report said.

A review of the department’s calls for service showed a greater need for officers whose main job is performing “community caretaking functions." The review concluded that the university should employ as many sworn officers as non-sworn officers and consider pairing officers with mental health professionals.

The group also recommended the department provide annual racial and biased-based police training and consider opportunities to train alongside other law enforcement departments.

The department should work with students and administrators to find more ways to engage with the campus and have some officers serve as liaisons to groups of traditionally underserved students.

The report also recommended developing officer policies such as a peer-to-peer support program and bolstering mental health services for public safety employees.

On the night of the 2018 fatal shooting, Washington had been out drinking with friends when one friend got into a fight with another group of men near the Cheerful Tortoise, a downtown Portland bar that borders the college campus.

Washington had confiscated that friend’s gun earlier in the night to keep him out of trouble. Washington was trying to break up the fight by the time Dewey and McKenzie arrived.

At some point, Washington fell. As he got up, he was holding the friend’s gun that had been holstered to his hip. Dewey and McKenzie yelled at him to drop the firearm and shot him as he appeared to be walking away, body camera footage shows.

Washington had a valid concealed handgun license. The officers fired 17 shots that hit him nine times.

An attorney representing Washington’s family said after the grand jury ruling that his relatives intended to pursue legal action.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com | 503-221-8343 |@EvertonBailey

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