In a brief presentation to Portland City Council about people who commit retail theft, Portland police officers may have also violated state law.
Tuesday’s virtual work session featured updates from a number of Portland police teams, including a 10-minute overview of retail theft prevention in North Portland from a pair of officers. Commander Robert Simon and Sergeant Jorge Mendoza explained how they work with theft prevention staff at major retailers in the Jantzen Beach and Cascade Station shopping centres.
To illustrate their work, Mendoza used a slide show to walk the commissioners through some “case studies” of recent theft attempts at Dick’s Sporting Goods.
The first slide showed a mug shot of a black man in his late 30s, with his name and date of birth. Mendoza described how this man allegedly drove a stolen car to Dick’s and stole merchandise from the store before being stopped by Portland police. The next slide showed three more mug shots – two women and one man – who allegedly used a counterfeit check to pay for merchandise at Dick’s.
Like the previous slide, the suspects were all black. Their mug shots were accompanied by names and dates of birth. Mendoza noted that one of the identified women said she was a victim of sex trafficking.
Mendoza concluded the presentation with little fanfare.
“This is what we have for our slideshow,” he said.
The officers involved in putting together the slideshow are now under investigation by the police department’s internal affairs division for the slideshow, according to the department. It’s not clear whether Mendoza is under investigation.
That’s because of a state law that prohibits law enforcement agencies from releasing mug shots except under certain circumstances. The law, enacted in 2021, allows police to release mug shots only if it is critical to helping law enforcement apprehend a dangerous suspect or to encourage potential victims of a criminal suspect to come forward. Mugshots can also be released if the person has been convicted of the crime with which they were charged when the photograph was taken.
Three of the four people featured in Mendoza’s presentation were not convicted of the crimes described. At least one of the suspects had charges against him dropped, according to public records.
None of the five city commissioners present at the meeting questioned the use of the mug shots at the time. Mayor Ted Wheeler later shared a link to the recorded presentation on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, and praised the police department.
After the presentation, OPB asked the police department what exemptions allowed them to share mug shots publicly. By 2pm on Wednesday, the video of the public meeting had been removed from the city’s YouTube channel and Wheeler’s post on X had been deleted.
OPB received a response from PPB spokesman Mike Benner two hours later.
Benner explained that the retail theft slideshow was “for internal use only”.
“PPB regrets the unintentional error of not omitting the photos prior to presentation to City Council and ultimately the public,” he wrote. “This has been referred to Internal Affairs for review.”
The video of the public meeting, including the section on retail theft, has returned to the city’s YouTube page.
Attorneys familiar with state law say the presentation appears to have violated the law. Juan Chavez is a civil rights attorney with the Oregon Justice Resource Center, which helped draft the law.
“Putting their mug shots up in a public forum like that violated their rights under that statute,” Chavez said. “From the sounds of it, their faces were only shown to do what police departments have often used mug shots for in the past, which is to shame and intimidate community members and act as a mounted trophy for the police. The fact that they only showed pictures of black people further ties this act to a dangerous and sordid history of racism in this city and state.
However, the law doesn’t include an explicit penalty for officers who violate it. Chavez said the officers could be charged with “official misconduct,” a state misdemeanour against public officials who “knowingly fail to perform a duty imposed on the public official by law.”
Oregon State Representative Janelle Bynum sponsored the state’s mug shot law in 2021. At the time of its passage, she said the policy addressed a public safety concern.
“When law enforcement was releasing booking photos, people were being harmed as well,” Bynum said. “They were getting threats at work, they were being trapped in their homes because people were intimidating them.”
Bynum, who is running for Congress, declined to comment on the PPB’s mug shot presentation.
Law enforcement groups helped draft the legislation, which passed with bipartisan support.
Last month, the PPB released a public service announcement about the new law, explaining why the bureau had stopped sharing mugshots.
“This makes it illegal for us to release mug shots in most cases,” Lieutenant Nathan Sheppard said in the video. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go to jail.”