Consultants want Portland police to prohibit officers who use deadly force from viewing video evidence of a shooting scene before they're interviewed by internal affairs investigators.

The Police Bureau also needs to place a greater focus on whether an officer's tactics before a shooting followed bureau training and policy, California-based Office of Independent Review Group said in a new report released Thursday.

The recommendations are among 26 offered by the consultants after reviewing three Portland police shootings in 2014 and three in 2015. The report, the consultant's fifth review in the last eight years, will be presented Feb. 15 to the City Council.

Some problems the consultants identified echoed concerns that arose in past cases: sergeants who get involved in tactical action instead of retaining their supervisory roles, delays in providing emergency care to wounded suspects and lapses of days before officers undergo interviews.

Other concerns were new.

The consultants asked why the Police Review Board, which analyzes officer-involved shootings for policy violations, no longer considers critiques done by the police training division. The training analyses used to be shared with the board, but the bureau recently decided to have the training review done after the board makes it findings.

"We fail to understand the rationale for the decision,'' the consultants wrote. This would deprive the board of the training division's insights and expertise, their report said.

Chief Danielle Outlaw said she supports each of the recommendations and will work to have the bureau adopt them.

"Over the past several years, the Police Bureau has made significant changes to its directives, procedures and training,'' Outlaw wrote in a response to the consultant's report. "However, there is still room for enhancements.''

Yet while Outlaw said she agrees with prohibiting officers from viewing video before giving a statement to investigators, she noted that changing the practice may require collective bargaining with the police union, specifically if it involves footage from body-worn cameras.

Document: OIR Report with Police Bureau response

The bureau, however, hasn't equipped its patrol officers with body cameras, and there's no timeline to do so.

The report cited video evidence from nearby businesses that captured a shooting or police encounter. The bureau's current policy is to evaluate case-by-case whether officers get to see video ahead of an interview.

But the consultants criticized the policy and argued that it should never occur.

"It is critical that officers' recollection not be influenced, consciously or subconsciously, by a video or audio account of the incident,'' their report says.

The Police Bureau must develop clear policy that protects the integrity of investigations by "insulating officers from having their recall contaminated by video evidence prior to being interviewed,'' the consultants wrote.

Investigators need a "pure statement'' from an officer involved in a shooting. Afterward, investigators can play a video for officers to help them recall additional details or clarify their initial statements, the report recommended.

The consultants praised the city for eliminating the so-called "48-hour rule,'' which required officers who fired their guns to get at least a two-day notice before internal affairs investigators interview them.

The investigators should interview officers on the day of the shooting, the consultants wrote.

"We look forward to the time in which we review officer-involved shootings where this best investigative practice has been implemented,'' they wrote.

The consultants also criticized how Multnomah County prosecutors handled a grand jury review of an officer's shootout with a suspect in Southwest Portland in March 2014.

They found the prosecutor presented extremely "prejudicial'' information about the man who fired at Officer John Romero that was unnecessary and tainted the jury.

Romero, 36, was wounded in a shootout that day with fugitive Kelly Swoboda. Swoboda was wanted in connection with a late January 2014 kidnapping in Clackamas County and was confronted March 12 on Southwest Cheltenham after police responded to a report of a suspicious van near the Hillsdale library branch. There had been earlier reports of a suspicious van in the neighborhood approaching students walking to and from nearby schools.

Romero was shot once in the right hand and returned fire, killing Swoboda.

During the grand jury hearing, a prosecutor called as a witness a Clackamas County detective who was investigating Swoboda for the kidnapping of a woman. Prosecutors also asked leading questions, eliciting agreement from the Clackamas detective that Swoboda had transformed his van into a "moveable dungeon or torture chamber,'' which was "speculative and of the highest level of prejudice,'' the consultants said.

Prosecutors countered that they believed the information was relevant because it explained that Swoboda was likely fearful of detection by police when he encountered Romero because the van held evidence of the kidnapping allegation.

Consultants disagreed, citing their past experience as federal prosecutors and trial attorneys.

"The grand jury presentation should have focused on the overwhelming evidence that Officer Romero acted in self-defense when he used deadly force,'' the report said. "Unfortunately the grand jury proceeding was infected with evidence about Swoboda's history, character and presumed intent that was prejudicial, speculative, extraneous and of extremely slight probative value.''

Recently, lawyers for 17-year-old Quanice Hayes, who was shot and killed by police a year ago in Northeast Portland, complained that the grand jury hearing was "inherently one-sided'' with evidence designed to "vilify Quanice'' while painting the officer in a "highly positive light, making it seem as if the officer had no choice but to shoot Quanice.''

The consultants reviewed the police shootings of Swoboda in March 2014; Paul Ropp in April 2014; Denoris McClendon in September 2014; Ryan Sudlow in February 2015; Michael Harrison in May 2015; and Alan Bellew in June 2015.

In two of the six shootings, the person shot by police had a gun and fired at an officer. In another, the man shot had a metal BB gun and one had a starter pistol. One man shot had no gun and another was armed with a knife.

Some of the consultants' other findings and recommendations:

-- An officer's commander and the Police Review Board should make separate findings on whether an officer's tactics leading up to the use of force followed bureau training and policy.

-- Police should use ballistic shields to approach a wounded victim or suspect to get them medical care as soon as possible.

-- If an attorney accompanies an officer on a walk-through of a shooting scene, don't allow the attorney to point out evidence or speak for the officer about where the officer was standing at the time or the officer's line of fire. That could improperly color an investigator's evaluation of a scene.

-- In the review of the 2014 police wounding of a man who was pointing a gun on Interstate 84, the bureau never found out why the man, Denoris McClendon, was released from a 72-hour police hold at a hospital, where he had been brought the night before when it was deemed he was a danger to himself and others. That question should have been asked and answered.

-- An initial training review of the police attempt to "box in" a suspect at a busy gas station in Gresham in February 2015, which ended in a police shooting when the suspect rammed the police car behind him, found the maneuver and an officer's firing through a windshield inconsistent with training. But the training analysis was revised after one lieutenant retired. It changed dramatically, finding the tactics "generally acceptable.''

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian