The

has engaged in a pattern of excessive force that violates federal law and the U.S. Constitution involving people with mental illness, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas E. Perez released a highly

use of force after a more than 14-month-long

.

Perez stood with U.S. Attorney Amanda Marshall, Portland Mayor Sam Adams and Police Chief Mike Reese, notably in the Portland Police Bureau's 14th floor conference room at the downtown Justice Center.

"While we have indeed identified serious deficiencies, we have

to improve public safety and to ensure the Constitution is respected," Perez said.

The Justice Department found Portland police encounters with people suffering from mental illness too frequently result in a higher level of force than necessary; officers use Tasers when their use is unnecessary or use repeated Taser shocks against individuals that are unwarranted; and use a higher degree of force than justified for low-level offenses.

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In a 42-page letter to Mayor Sam Adams, the federal officials

: a December 2010 incident when multiple officers used repeated "closed-fist punches and repeated shocking" of a person who was to be placed on a mental health hold; an August 2010 incident when an officer repeatedly shocked with a Taser an unarmed, naked person who was undergoing a diabetic emergency; and a May 2011 incident in which an officer punched an unarmed person at least 7 times in the face when responding to a check on the man's well-being.

The review found that Portland police have used Tasers without warning, fired multiple cycles on a single person and failed to reevaluate the stun gun's use between cycles.

"These practices engender fear and distrust in the Portland community, which ultimately impacts PPB's ability to police effectively,'' the 42-page letter said.

The federal agency found that the excessive force used by officers results from bureau "deficiencies in policy, training and supervision" that have been in place for a long time. It noted that the City of Portland has paid out about $6 million in the last 20 years to settle lawsuits related to alleged police misconduct.

Portland police policies currently do not require officers to consider the effect a person's mental illness may have on their ability to understand police commands. Further, the policies should allow police discretion not to use handcuffs to secure a suicidal individual for transport to a hospital.

In a footnote, the Justice Department cited as callous the Portland police training division's use of former Officer Chris Humphreys' controversial use of a beanbag shotgun against an unarmed 12-year-old girl as an "exemplary'' model of how a less-lethal weapon is used. The federal justice officials informed bureau managers, and Reese then forbade the incident from being used in training.

Perez said of the current police administration, "While they have not created the problem, they own the problem."

He also laid blame at the considerable gaps in mental health care in the state and local community, and cited the considerable number of homeless people in Portland, which all force police to be the first-responders to people suffering mental health crises.

"As one high-level officer told us, over his career, encounters with people in crisis have gone from a couple of times a month to a couple of times a day,'' Perez reported in his letter to the mayor.

The bureau and the federal justice department have entered into a "preliminary agreement" to move ahead with certain reforms. Federal justice officials plan to meet with community members within the next week and seek their input, and then formalize a court-ordered agreement within a month, Perez and Marshall said.

"It's disappointing to learn the Department of Justice believes you haven't got it right," Reese said at Thursday's news conference.

The proposed settlement between the Portland police and federal justice department will ensure: the city revises its use of force policies so officers have "necessary guidance" when encountering someone with mental illness or someone perceived to have a mental illness; revamp its Taser policies to focus on de-escalating encounters arising from welfare checks or low-level offense; expands its single Mobile Crisis Unit team, which pairs an officer with a Project Respond mental health expert, to provide 24-hour, 7-day-a-week coverage; and set up a Mental Health Triage Desk at the dispatch center to ensure mental health-related calls are properly dispatched to the appropriate agency.

Under the agreement, the city will also work with community mental health providers to try to open a 24-hour secure drop-off, or walk-in center that will give officers more options when helping people with mental illness. The Police Bureau will actively use its Early Intervention System to track officers with many citizen complaints or use of force complaints to help curb problem behavior; and expedite internal affairs inquiries.

Further, the city agreed to create a community group to continually monitor the requested reforms.

"All citizens –especially our most vulnerable – must be able to trust the police," Perez said. "There needs to be a structured approach for active and meaningful community engagement."

Marshall called the justice agency's report "grave and serious findings." But she and Perez said they were confident Portland city and police managers would move ahead with the recommended changes.

with the designated reforms, as he defended his officers.

"We all agree this bureau and this community can improve the way we serve Portland's vulnerable population," Reese said.

He added, "What we're talking about today is about process and systems, not about police officers...They're not the ones to blame. I support them."

"Without defensiveness or fingerpointing, we all need to absorb the seriousness of this critique."

He estimated that additional resources to carry out the necessary police and community mental health reforms will require "millions of dollars," but he declined Thursday to specify where that money will come from. Marshall said federal justice grants may be available. The mayor also is working with community mental health providers to address some of the problems.

Justice department officials cited several examples in which officers escalated conflict, rushed in to an encounter when they had time to hold back or continued to use force once the need went away.

In July 2011, for example, police shot a man with a beanbag shotgun who was said to have assaulted his mother and reportedly had a sword and was hiding in a bathroom. The officers opened the bathroom door. The man stood up as ordered, but didn't place his hands above his head. An officer shot the man in the leg with a beanbag round, while another shot a Taser to the man's back.

"That occurred despite the fact that the subject's hands were visible, and the officers never observed a sword, or any other weapon in the subject's possession,'' the letter said.

Police could have kept the man confined to the room while waiting for a crisis intervention specialist to respond to help talk to him, federal officials said.

In another encounter in December 2010, a man with no weapons pulled away when police tried to take him into custody on a mental hold. Officers tried to take the man to the ground, but he rolled on his back. Police turned him onto his stomach, and the man trapped his arms beneath his body. One officers applied a Taser stun gun to the man's back while another hit the man up to six times with closed fist punches to the ribs. Another struck the man in the back of his neck/shoulder area with a closed fist. The officers still could not handcuff the man, and deployed another six Taser stun cycles at him.

"The intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment rights...is substantial,'' Perez's letter said.

Perez also spoke of the obvious "tensions that exist between the Portland Police Bureau and communities of color" that needs to be addressed. He said he expects the new community group to also work to address this problem, and also urged the bureau to conduct a bureau-wide "intensive cultural sensitivity and competency training'' with community members.

he disagreed with the federal agency's conclusions.

"As Chief Reese has said, the officers 'are not to blame.' Nevertheless, we all can take comfort in at least two things - the USDOJ did not find a pattern and practice of unreasonable force against any particular race, nor did the USDOJ find a pattern and practice of unreasonable deadly force,'' Turner said, in a statement.

To be able to dedicate officers to a specialized crisis intervention team, the bureau must hire additional officers, Turner argued.

Perez came to Portland in June 2011 to announce the federal inquiry. He said then that the review was prompted by a significant increase in police shootings during the prior 18 months, the majority involving people with mental illness.

The police investigation was to overlap with an ongoing federal investigation into Oregon's mental health care system, federal officials said.

Special litigation attorneys in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, along with the U.S. Attorney's Office, reviewed over 700 reports over an 18-month period, including use of force data collection reports, and supervisors' after-action reports. They evaluated bureau policies, procedures and practices, as well as specific officer-involved fatal shootings or deaths in custody.

In February, federal authorities held their first public forum in Portland's St. Johns neighborhood to hear citizens' accounts of their interactions with Portland police officers. And in August 2010, Justice Department officials held individual interviews with community groups.

Since the inquiry began, Chief Reese has made some changes in response to federal recommendations. He began to require sergeants immediately initiate investigations into officers' use of force and assigned a new inspector to analyze data on such incidents, a gap identified by the Justice Department during the course of the inquiry. Just last week, the Portland police released its own 4-page statistical report on police use of force, showing a 35 percent decline between 2008 and 2011.

Earlier this year, Reese defended his officers' use of force. He cited increasing calls involving suicidal people and decried the faltering safety net for those with mental illness.

Portland joined a growing number of police agencies, including Seattle, Newark, N.J. and New Orleans, that have been targeted for federal review in the last few years, under a 1994 law passed by Congress after the brutal beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers.

In Seattle, the federal agency announced this summer that a court-appointed monitor was to ensure that Seattle Police revise its use of force policies, and enhance its training, reporting, investigations and supervision of police use of force.

The Justice Department found that Seattle police engaged in a "pattern or practice of excessive force," but did not find a practice of discriminatory policing.

The federal inquiry in Portland – the first comprehensive federal investigation into the city's police bureau- followed a string of controversial Portland officer-involved fatal shootings or deaths in police custody of people suffering from mental illness.

In February 2010, city officials, including former police Commissioner Dan Saltzman and Mayor Sam Adams, had asked the U.S. Justice Department to conduct a full review of the Police Bureau after the Jan. 29, 2010 police fatal shooting of Aaron Campbell, an unarmed black man who was distraught following the death of his brother earlier that day.

Community leaders disturbed by the high-profile police shootings and deaths in custody also pressed for such an inquiry.

Among their concerns: the high profile September 2006 death in police custody of James P. Chasse Jr. , a 42-year-old man who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia; the fatal shooting of a 58-year-old homeless man Jack Dale Collins who emerged from a restroom at Hoyt Arboretum with an X-Acto knife; and the shooting of homeless veteran Thomas Higginbotham, who was shot 10 times after he emerged from a Southeast Portland car wash with a knife.

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