Portland police were forced to halt training officers last year on how to use a knife as a deadly weapon when U.S. Justice Department officials and a city-hired overseer objected and pointed out that the bureau had no policy permitting that tactic.

The training was part of a hands-on control tactics class offered during the Police Bureau’s annual refresher training last fall.

“Portland Police Bureau introduced this training without having a corresponding policy to guide officers as to when knives would be an authorized force option,’’ wrote Dennis Rosenbaum, the city’s compliance officer tasked with monitoring federally mandated police reforms.

Five sessions of more than 20 planned training sessions had been conducted with the tactic when Justice Department representatives and Rosenbaum voiced concerns after observing the classes. Police immediately suspended the classes.

The five sessions included less than a fifth of the bureau’s approximately 900 sworn officers, according to Capt. Craig Dobson, who recently took over as head of the bureau’s Training Division.

The bureau clarified its policy, restricting knives for use as only last-ditch defensive tools in life-threatening situations. Under federal case law, officers fighting for their lives can use “a tool of opportunity’’ such as a rock, brick or even knife to defend themselves.

Otherwise, the main purpose of an officer’s knife is as a utility tool, for cutting a seat belt, for example.

Justice Department officials have reviewed bureau training since the city and the agency signed a settlement in 2012 after federal investigators found Portland officers too often used stun guns or excessive force with people suffering from mental illness.

Rosenbaum, Justice Department attorney Jonas Geissler and Charles Reynolds, a police practices expert for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, all sat in on the control tactics training last fall.

They immediately became concerned that trainers were presenting the knife as just another weapon of deadly force that could be used, and not as a last-ditch option in a life-or-death struggle.

“Our big thing is you should train to policy and the policy didn’t address using it as a weapon,’’ Rosenbaum said.

“They didn’t want us to think a knife was one of the tools in our tool box to use regularly,’’ but only to be used in defense to preserve a life, Dobson said.

Then-Chief Danielle Outlaw stopped the training and agreed that knives shouldn’t be part of an officer’s deadly force arsenal. The bureau then clarified its knives policy.

The halted training appeared to be prompted by last year’s fatal police shooting of a man who had grabbed an officer’s knife, Rosenbaum said.

On Jan. 6, 2019, Officer Consider Vosu shot and killed Andre Gladen, a 36-year-old legally blind man who suffered from schizophrenia. Gladen ran inside a stranger’s home and grabbed a dagger-type knife from the officer’s outer vest while the officer was wrestling with him. The officer ended up shooting Gladen when Gladen cornered the officer in a back bedroom, holding the officer’s knife, police said.

A Multnomah County grand jury found no criminal wrongdoing by Vosu.

After the shooting, police adopted a new policy, forbidding officers from carrying knives on their outer vests and allowing officers to carry only folding knives.

The bureau later this year is expected to issue folding knives to all officers to be used primarily as a utility tool. Officers will not be able to carry their own knives.

Going forward, an officer team that drafts and reviews police policies, as well as command staff, will review new training before it’s presented to officers.

“That will ensure we’re teaching according to policy and there’s no gaps between the two,’’ Dobson said.

Rosenbaum called such oversight “essential’’ in his last quarterly review report for 2019.

This year’s annual in-service training for Portland officers starts Monday and will include bureau limits on knife use.

“Officers will not be trained on how to use knives, but rather on the restrictions placed on carrying knives, how to disarm a suspect wielding a knife, and what objectively reasonable force may be used in these situations,” Rosenbaum said in his report. “Finally, PPB has taken additional steps to ensure that such errors do not occur in the future.’’

The training also will address public order and crowd control as the bureau prepares for what is expected to be a busy year of protests in the city during election year.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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