Portland police still keep an informal list of active gang members despite purging a more formal directory of "designated" gang members last fall under fire from community critics, a new city audit has found.

The bureau's Gang Enforcement Team also lacks records to explain why its officers pull over so many African American people during traffic stops or if their tactics work, auditors said.

The two main findings come at a critical time when community and police relations are strained amid a breakdown in public oversight of police reforms required by federal investigators.

Mayor Ted Wheeler, who serves as the city's police commissioner, said he was particularly troubled by the team's dearth of records on most of its encounters with the public.

"The audit correctly notes that it is difficult to demonstrate to the community that the (team) is not engaging in racial profiling if there is inadequate data collection and analysis of stops," Wheeler said in a response included with the audit.

Auditors set out to analyze the Gang Enforcement Team's investigations and patrol operations and discovered that the team has kept a list of "Active Portland Gang Members & Associates" since 2015 – but without accountability or transparency.

It's a monthly compilation of about 30 people that goes out on the bureau's intranet to other officers. It contains names, addresses, gang affiliations and whether the person is on probation or supervision.

No police supervisor oversees the list, auditors said. It has no written criteria and includes no public notice.

That's much different than the bureau's two-decade-old gang designation system discontinued last fall. Under that program, police had to document "clear and convincing evidence" that people met certain criteria, notify them and provide a chance for them to appeal the designation.

For the active list, for example, auditors asked for information on how officers came up with the names in 2016. But police had deleted the details despite bureau rules that say they must keep criminal intelligence records and bulletins for five years.

The bureau did have the information supporting the 2017 active list, saying it ranked people based on whether they were named as suspects in shootings or in recent police reports, the number of contacts they had with police, if police seized guns from them and if they were victims of gang-related shootings.

Documents:

--Gang Enforcement Investigations audit

--Gang Enforcement Patrol audit

City Auditor Mary Hull Caballero said the bureau must have tighter controls, especially given that a federal judge in 1994 prohibited Portland police from designating gang members without due process.

Hull Caballero, however, stopped short of asking police to do away with the list, calling it a bureau policy decision.

"The Police Bureau last year gave itself a big pat on the back when it discontinued its gang designations. So it's incredibly disappointing to hear all the while they're using this other list with absolutely no supervision,'' said Mat dos Santos, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon.

Police Chief Danielle Outlaw said police will draft written guidelines by July for the active gang member list, which the bureau has renamed the "Most At-Risk Persons'' report. The guidelines will set out how police identify people for the list and how it will be used and kept, with input from the city attorney's office.

"As a police agency, we remain committed to transparency and are willing to always pursue enhancements that benefit the bureau's efforts in ensuring public safety in our service of the Portland community,'' Outlaw wrote in her response to the audit.

When asked if the city attorney's office has evaluated the legality of the active gang member list, Andrea Barraclough, a deputy city attorney, said she couldn't comment about "legal work on behalf of my client.''

POLICE DEFEND LIST

Police said the list is no different from fliers that narcotics enforcement officers develop identifying suspects in drug trafficking cases. It's simply a synthesis of police reports and compiled for officer safety, they said.

They distinguish it from the long-standing past practice of designating gang members, which sometimes rested on a suspect's admission of ties to a particular gang, the presence of a gang tattoo or the flashing of a gang sign in a photo.

"The purpose is to identify people who have demonstrated that they are at risk for being involved in gang-related violence, based on recent involvement in such incidents,'' said Sgt. Pete Simpson, a bureau spokesman and former gang enforcement team investigator.

"It will provide investigators and officers information on potential leads in investigations and will allow for potential intervention and disruption to prevent potential victimization and/or violence,'' he said.

Auditors noted that the bureau loosely based its active gang member list on the Chicago Police Department's "strategic subjects list,'' but the Chicago list is governed by a written directive and evaluated and monitored with public awareness.

'MERE CONVERSATIONS' PROVE CONTROVERSIAL

Poor record-keeping and lax practices made it impossible to analyze or explain the overrepresentation of African Americans in gang enforcement team traffic stops, auditors said.

They also couldn't determine if the team's stops or patrols have been effective in identifying dangerous criminals or reducing gang violence.

The team now has 26 officers and a nearly $7 million annual budget. Six officers and one sergeant patrol in uniform in the afternoon and evening and concentrate on places where they expect gang violence, including certain neighborhoods, parks and bars. They pull over cars or people they recognize or make a stop if a driver acts suspiciously, according to the audit.

Of 1,300 encounters with people in 2016, the team's patrol officers made 800 traffic stops. The majority, or 59 percent, of the traffic stops involved African American drivers. They recovered guns in only 2 percent of those, the audit found.

The rest of the encounters were classified as "mere conversations,'' and the bureau had little to no information to share on them.

Police define "mere conversations'' as contacts with people who are free to leave at any time. They can turn into a "stop'' if police decide to detain someone, according to police and the audit.

With "mere conversations,'' officers aren't required to write a report, explain the reason for the encounters or record demographic information on the people they talked to.

The number of the gang enforcement team's "mere conversations'' has increased since 2013, and the team engages in "mere conversations'' at a much higher rate than general patrol officers assigned to precincts, the audit found. In 2016, ''mere conversations'' represented 12 percent of precinct patrol officers' interactions, compared to 41 percent of gang enforcement team interactions.

The Black Male Achievement initiative has long been concerned about the bureau's use of "mere conversations'' to avoid documenting encounters with the public, said C.J. Robbins, the group's program coordinator. The "mere conversations'' drive disproportionate stops of African Americans, he said, and the bureau needs to address the problem.

'LACK OF DATA ... SHOULD BE A CONCERN'

Auditors also identified inconsistencies between the team's records and dispatch records.

In more than 400 of the team's "mere conversations'' in 2016, officers told dispatchers that they issued warnings. But that would require them to identify a violation of law. Why wouldn't that then be recorded as a stop, asked senior management auditor Minh Dan Vuong.

''The lack of data for a large portion of the team's encounters with community members should be a concern to police managers who would get an incomplete picture if they analyzed the data or used it in public reporting," the audit said.

The racial disparity of the team's traffic stops doesn't surprise police because they said most gang-related shootings involve African Americans as shooters and victims.

But the racial disparities remain stark when auditors narrowed their analysis to specific neighborhoods on the city's east side where the team patrols, finding African Americans were stopped at rates more than two times higher than the African American populations in those areas.

Rarely did the team's officers cite an investigative reason for a stop, beyond noting a traffic violation, such as failure to signal a turn. And officers didn't record for the vast majority of stops whether they involved gang members or associates.

While the team officers may believe they're doing important work suppressing potential violence, it's not hard to see why African Americans might feel that they're facing police oppression, Hull Caballero said.

"We're not saying there's not a gang problem. We're not saying this unit should be disbanded,'' she said. "If these are the appropriate tactics, you need to show that they really are and are effective.''

While the Police Bureau has released three years of annual traffic stop data since 2013 to address potential racial profiling concerns, the reports haven't included stops by the gang enforcement team. The team's stops will be included in the next report, covering traffic stops from 2016, according to the bureau.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian