The controversial arrest and handcuffing of a 9-year-old girl in May 2013 has prompted Portland police to revise their juvenile custody policies.
The new directives went into effect this week and say police can't detain children under age 12 unless they present a "substantial threat to safety" and can't handcuff them "unless they present a heightened risk to safety, meaning they are combative or threatening."
"The case that raised this issue would not have met this threshold,'' said Mark McKechnie, executive director of the not-for-profit law firm Youth, Rights & Justice who pushed for the changes. "Short of having a bright line where we just say children under 12 can't be arrested, I think this is the next best thing.''
The new directives say: "The Portland Police Bureau recognizes the inherent dignity of every person, including the youth in our community, whose needs differ from those of adults. The Bureau also recognizes that temporary detention or custody may have lasting impact on the individuals involved and may impact the community at large.''
The 9-year-old's mother, Latoya Harris, had criticized police and appealed to a Portland citizen police oversight panel in May to press for changes in police policies.
Harris this spring told the panel she was disturbed the two officers weren't disciplined after handcuffing her daughter and taking her to headquarters to have her fingerprints and mugshot taken.
At that meeting, Capt. Dave Famous acknowledged there was a "gap in policy,'' and a work group was formed to come up with new directives.
"I think there's a consensus among the work group that this is a huge and positive step forward for the Portland Police Bureau to ensure these types of incidents don't occur again,'' Famous said Thursday.
Under the revised directives, officers who temporarily detain children under 12 must notify their on-duty supervisor and document why in their reports, describing the nature of the child's "aggression."
The officers can't take children under 12 to the Donald E. Long Juvenile Detention Hall "except for serious crimes," the directives say. If they intend to do so, officers and their supervisors must consult the on-duty supervisor at juvenile detention beforehand.
McKechnie said it's important that there be "significant conversations between the Police Bureau and Juvenile Department to make sure they're looking at these cases in the same way.''
"What is the point of traumatizing a young child, handcuffing, fingerprinting and photographing the child if you know that the case is not even going to be pursued by juvenile detention,'' McKechnie said.
Earlier this year, Harris recounted how her daughter was arrested in front of their home on May 2, 2013, for an alleged assault that had occurred six days earlier at the Boys & Girls Club in New Columbia. Staff suspended the girl from the club for a week, but said none of the girls involved had obvious injuries.
Two officers "aggressively questioned'' her daughter outside their home while the girl was in her bathing suit, Harris said. Police then cuffed the girl and led her away in a patrol car, refusing to allow Harris to accompany them, she said.
"I'll never get the image out of my mind,'' Harris said. "They should not be allowed to strip a child of their rights.''
The officers drove the girl to police headquarters in downtown Portland, where she had her fingerprints and mugshot taken. The district attorney's office never brought charges against the girl, and Harris filed a complaint.
The Independent Police Review Division, the intake center for complaints against police, found officers violated no Police Bureau policies and forwarded the complaint to the officers' supervisors at North Precinct for a "service improvement opportunity,'' essentially a debriefing.
At the time, police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said officers use handcuffs on juveniles as a safeguard and had acted according to bureau policy. He cited a policy then that said juveniles taken into custody for any felony or Class A misdemeanor "shall'' be fingerprinted, while juveniles facing Class B and C misdemeanors "may" be fingerprinted.
Under the new guidelines, children under 12 aren't to be handcuffed unless they're combative or threatening and youths 12 and older "may'' be handcuffed.
McKechnie said the "may be handcuffed'' distinction is also an improvement from the previous directive that said juveniles "shall'' be cuffed.
For children under 12 who are taken into temporary custody, their fingerprinting and photographing will be "coordinated'' with the juvenile detention hall, the new directives say.
Those 12 and older who are arrested on felony or Class A misdemeanors "shall be'' photographed and fingerprinted in the bureau's Forensic Services Division and those in that age range accused of less serious misdemeanors "may'' be fingerprinted and photographed at the forensic division, the new policy says.
In another handcuffing case, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month ruled that police can't handcuff students for refusing to respond to school officials. The court ruled decided in favor of an 11-year-old sixth-grader who was handcuffed by the police chief of Sonora, Calif., and another Sonora officer while "doing nothing more than sitting quietly and resolutely in the school playground," according to Judge Richard Paez, who wrote the majority opinion issued Oct. 15.
Among those on the Portland directives work group: Famous; McKechnie; Joseph Hagedorn, chief supervising attorney for the Metropolitan Public Defender's juvenile unit' Multnomah County prosecutor Lori Fellows, who oversees juvenile prosecutions; Christina McMahan of the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice; and Rachel Mortimor of the Independent Police Review Division.
--Maxine Bernstein