On Sept. 15, the arbitration hearing on former Portland police officer Ronald Frashour began. The hearing will determine if the police union, The Portland Police Association, is correct in requesting the reinstatement of Frashour’s job. Frashour was fired by the city primarily for the fatal shooting of Aaron Campbell, a mentally ill, suicidal black man, on Jan. 29, 2010.
On Sept. 15, the arbitration hearing on former Portland police officer Ronald Frashour began. The hearing will determine if the police union, The Portland Police Association, is correct in requesting the reinstatement of Frashour’s job. Frashour was fired by the city primarily for the fatal shooting of Aaron Campbell, a mentally ill, suicidal black man, on Jan. 29, 2010.
Frashour was also responsible of other abuses of power, including a 2008 case where Frashour rammed into an innocent person’s silver Honda during a car pursuit, despite the fact that the police description to Frashour was a red Honda. A third incident included firing a taser at a man for videotaping the police pursuing a jaywalker.
If anyone deserves to be fired, most would agree from these facts that it is Frashour. Despite the police department’s attempt to fire Frashour, arbitration processes with the police union in the past have had the tendency to side in the favor of the officer. Though the arbitration process could take months to come to a conclusion, many organizations and people invested in police accountability are already predicting that Frashour will get his job back.
Steve Sherlag, a criminal defense and civil rights attorney in Portland, said that he would be shocked if they didn’t reinstate Frashour. “It has become, as a practical matter, impossible to hold the police accountable for their actions. City Hall has a contract with the union that makes them powerless. No one has enough backbone in City Hall to say no to the police union,” Sherlag said.
However, Mary-Beth Baptista, director of the Portland City Auditor’s Independent Police Review Division, is not so pessimistic. “We have made significant changes in our process that will result in more thorough and complete investigations,” Baptista said. She outlined the process that is intended to discipline wrongful officers: it begins with the city auditors and ends with the arbitration process with the union. Baptista is confident that the changes the division has implemented will make decisions stick from the beginning by conducting better investigations, interviewing all the witnesses and having a balanced board.
Fortunately for Frashour, at least, these changes came after his case. Concerned citizens have to ask themselves, “Why haven’t these procedures been stronger from the get-go?” The entire process depersonalizes what the officer was really responsible for: causing pain and death, engaging in misconduct and endangering the public. Instead it is more like a game of the union finding the gaps in the extremely convoluted and bureaucratic six-part process of disciplining an officer.
“The process is way too chopped up,” said Dan Handlema Portland Copwatch, a group that promotes police accountability. “Many people who are angry and marched in the streets for Aaron’s death wanted to know what was happening and wanted transparency. In late August we contacted the city and asked if the investigation was going to be public, and no one responded.” The arbitration hearings are not open to public.
Kristian Williams, author of the book Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America, says that if Frashour gets his job back, it means that “there is no meaningful way to hold the police accountable. Aaron Campbell was unarmed and was doing his best to surrender to the police.” He points out that Campbell was not a criminal suspect — police were asked to come out of concern from his family he might be suicidal.
Frashour faced no charges for shooting him. “If he’s reinstated it will communicate clearly to the police and the public that the cops face no consequences for wantonly killing people—or at least, wantonly killing black people,” Williams said.
Members of the PSU group Students for Unity added that police unions have long seperated the police from institutions that could regulate it. “In the case of Ronald Frashour, a former officer fired for his role in the shooting of Aaron Campbell and who also faces inquiries about his aggressive conduct, the police union is primarily concerned with setting a precedent,” the group said “so the local government will be unlikely to intervene in police matters in the future. This strengthens the protective wall around the institution of law enforcement which prevents democracy and accountability.” the group said.
Many strategies could change this unjust system. Steve Sherlag cites ideas such as a district attorney filing charges against an officer or getting people in City Hall to stand up to the union at bargain agreement time. Likely, though, “it will have to be citizens who get completely fed up and rally,” Sherlag said.
As the Frashour arbitration unfolds, will justice be served? Or do the laws only apply to the rest of us? Cops like Frashour keep our city unsafe and create distrust in local communities. As tensions mount it will be the pressure from the people of Portland that will ultimately change the way discipline is dealt out. And such a change is clearly needed—soon.
