Between 1984 and 1997, the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) was transformed from a "professional model" of policing, centrally concerned with accountability to the law and bureaucratic integrity, to one that today is recognized as a national leader in community policing.

Brief Stats: 529,121 residents1 Police department manpower: 7162 COPS grants: COPS Universal Hiring, COPS MORE, COPS Advancing Community Policing

Policing Focus

Bureauwide implementation. PPB's transition to community policing began with a strategic management plan to empower officers to work proactively with residents. A decision was made to implement the policy bureauwide rather than piecemeal through experimental special units. PPB restructured its operational and administrative systems to support front-line work. It decentralized certain investigations, restricted patrol areas, restructured its organizational chart, reformed internal affairs, and began basing certain promotions on commitment to community policing.

Community relations and training. PPB policy stressed partnership with the community, empowerment, problem solving, accountability, and service orientation and was accomplished through a program of public education and in-service training. A Neighborhood Liaison Officer program was established and assigns patrol officers to each of Portland's 95 recognized neighborhood associations to attend meetings and coordinate responses to local crime problems.

Help from COPS. With a community policing program already in place by 1994, PPB used COPS grants to support rather than initiate projects. In 1995, PPB received a $30,000 COPS MORE grant to purchase camera equipment for precinct officers. A second COPS MORE grant funded both a technology initiative to improve precinct computer systems and a civilianization grant to help pay for front-desk staff. During Oregon's municipal budget crisis of 1996, PPB received a grant from the COPS Universal Hiring program to pay for 60 officers. PPB also has applied for funding under COPS Advancing Community Policing to develop a "dial and deliver" system to enable the city to contact residents of particular areas that are prone to natural disasters.

For more information, click on the NATIONAL COPS EVALUATION-ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE CASE STUDY: Portland, Oregon, by David Thacher, which describes Portland's experience with community policing in three sections:

1. The PPB of the 1980s and early 1990s.
2. Policing reforms in the recent past and the role of leadership and the COPS grants had in effecting these reforms.
3. How the PPB operates today.

¹Source: Bureau of Census; Center for Population Research and Census, Portland State University; 2000 population from December 2000 estimate.
²Source: City of Portland Office of Finance and Administration; 1999 figure.