Lakayana Drury, co-chair of a community group charged with overseeing federal-mandated Portland police reforms, rejected a report by a city-hired academic who found Portland in “substantial compliance’’ with the entire U.S. Department of Justice settlement.

He called the findings “premature,’’ and said he believes the city “is still a ways off,’’ from meeting all the requirements of the agreement.

But Drury could not convince the 12-member citizen committee he leads to support a resolution that would have challenged the “substantial compliance’’ findings and required Portland’s police chief and mayor to come up with a more meaningful way to measure the impact of reforms.

The resolution failed Tuesday night, with five members voting against it, four in support and three abstaining. Fellow co-chair LaKeesha Dumas abstained, saying she didn’t feel she had enough information.

A judge approved the settlement in 2014, after a federal Justice investigation found police engaged in excessive force against people with mental illness and fired multiple cycles of Taser gun shocks unnecessarily. The settlement’s 190 paragraphs required changes to the Police Bureau’s use of force policy, training, response to people in mental health crisis and community oversight.

Drury questioned how city-hired overseer Dennis Rosenbaum came to his conclusions, when police are continuing to fatally shoot people with mental illness, a problem that prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Portland police in 2012.

“We have a duty to represent the community,’’ Drury said. While the bureau has changed its policies on use of force and adopted new training, “is it actually leading to officers using less force?’’

“I 100 % agree that PPB has made tremendous strides in the five years that you have worked with them, but there’s still a lot of progress to be made,’’ he said. “The settlement agreement was designed to reassure the public that changes made in Portland will be sustained. Changes have been made. I don’t know (that) much of the public feels reassured, at this point. So, I believe that…substantial compliance is still a ways off.’’

Other community members shared Drury’s concerns.

“It seems like a rush to the finish line, and that’s not fair to our citizens,’’ said Jan Friedman, an attorney with Disability Rights Oregon, who sits on the Police Bureau’s Behavioral Health Unit Advisory Council, a group working to improve and reduce police encounters with people in mental health crisis.

Rosenbaum said he liked the instinct of Drury and others to hold police accountable, but he urged the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing not to dismiss his findings.

“Pushing back on compliance when we’ve already done this five years of work is not really the best way to go,’’ he said.

Rosenbaum defended his team’s work.

“I’m not a box checker,'' he said. "We held this city’s feet to the fire.''

While Dennis Rosenbaum’s team found that the Unity Behavioral Health Center, a psychiatric ER that opened in January 2017, fulfilled the settlement requirement for a new drop-off center, the community committee disagreed. (Photo by Beth Nakamura / The Oregonian)

Rosenbaum argued that the bureau has adopted new de-escalation and procedural justice training and use of force policies. He called the bureau’s crisis intervention training and use of even more specialized enhanced crisis intervention officers a “model’’ for other cities. The bureau has demonstrated it’s a “learning organization,’’ with supervisors reviewing officers’ use of force, inspectors conducting audits of police force, police brass tracking complaints against officers and internal affairs conducting more timely investigations into alleged police misconduct, he said. He also called the community oversight group a “legitimate body’’ for community engagement.

Driven by the settlement, the bureau has created “a system for self-government and a system for self-improvement,’’ added Rosenbaum’s partner Tom Christoff.

Committee member Elliott Young, though, said the policy, training and auditing changes haven’t produced the desired outcomes: fewer police fatal shootings of people with mental illness or decreases in use of force against people of color or the homeless. Bureau statistics, he said, suggested the agreement isn’t working.

“The outcomes were not a main focus of the settlement agreement,’’ Rosenbaum responded, adding that the pact doesn’t even mention the homeless. “It’s almost too soon, I would argue, too soon to expect the outcomes.’’

If it’s too soon to expect improved outcomes, then it’s also too soon to say the city has substantially complied with the settlement, Young said.

Committee member Steven Trujillo voted against the resolution, finding that the city has adhered to the language of the settlement provisions. Committee member Sam Sachs also voted against it, convinced the bureau has complied with the agreement. Sachs later announced his resignation from the group, and urged committee members to engage with police and establish better relationships.

U.S. District Judge Michael H. Simon will evaluate the community engagement requirement of the settlement when all parties to the case return to his court Feb. 25. The court retains oversight until the Justice Department finds that the city has substantially complied with the agreement for one year.

"PPB is a better organization than it was five years ago but they can also fall back, so you have to keep an eye on them,'' Rosenbaum said. "At some point, we have to pass the baton to you guys and the community. It’s time for a community voice to take the lead and not outsiders.''

Though the resolution challenging Rosenbaum’s findings failed, the community group agreed that one significant part of the settlement has not been addressed: creation of one or more walk-in, or drop-off centers in Portland for people in crisis or suffering addictions.

While Rosenbaum’s team found that the Unity Behavioral Health Center, a psychiatric ER that opened in January 2017, fulfilled that requirement, the community committee disagreed. It urged Rosenbaum to re-evaluate his finding.

Meredith Mathis, who sits on the group’s subcommittee for people with mental illness, said the Unity Center is not a walk-in center, but a hospital-level psychiatric ER that’s been plagued with problems, including deaths of patients, arrests of patients and staff complaints.

Rosenbaum and City Attorney Tracy Reeve said the settlement required community care organizations to establish such mental health drop-off centers, and the Police Bureau has been doing what it could to establish partnerships with outside stakeholders.

“But nothing in the settlement agreement obligates the city to fund mental health’’ centers, Reeve said. That’s the responsibility of the county, state and community care organizations, she said.

Another resolution considered Tuesday night, which would have recommended the city pay 25 percent of the operating costs for a new county mental health resource walk-in center that’s being planned, also failed.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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