ACLU: Skimpy Reports Mean City Should Suspend Its Work with the JTTF

Portland Mercury:

A pair of bare-bones reports on the city's collaboration with the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force are due before the Portland City Council on Wednesday afternoon—and the ACLU of Oregon, which initially blessed the city's reunion with the JTTF, has just issued a stinging takedown of both reports. Irked that the city seems to have blown off its demand for a robust set of reports, one of the conditions behind the ACLU's tepid JTTF approval, the group is calling for Portland officials to "suspend its engagement with the JTTF" and add "independent oversight" of the city's work with the FBI. The ACLU's 20-page analysis (PDF), prepared by Dave Fidanque and Andrea Meyer, accuses the city of ignoring "the most important safeguards" in a JTTF resolution passed by the council last April. Meyer and Fidanque say it's not clear that Chief Mike Reese has personally vetted every request for help from the FBI. They question why work with the JTTF started even though Reese and Mayor Sam Adams, the police commissioner have yet to receive the security clearances prescribed by the city's resolution, and whether the city attorney's office has a free enough hand to make sure our cops don't violate our state's stricter civil rights laws. Unfortunately, these first reports from the Chief of Police and the Mayor fall far short of providing any information other than vague reassurances to the public that the City is actually in compliance with the requirements of the Resolution, Oregon law and the Constitution, including protections for lawful political, religious and social activities. The analysis demands much of what the ACLU has already asked for: more details about the number of investigations Portland cops have been working on, for how long they worked on them, and at what stage of the investigation their work began. Reese explained in his report that he couldn't release even that modest level of information without jeopardizing ongoing cases. [ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

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