The Portland police union’s push for better PR continues this month with a poll on public perception.
Sgt. Scott Westerman (see photo), head of the Portland Police Association, says the union paid for a poll of hundreds of Portland residents this month to learn their opinion on public safety.
“The PPA has hired a company to do polling of City of Portland residents to better communicate with our members the priorities the city of Portland has as it relates to police services,” Westerman says.
Westerman calls the poll part of a “long-term strategy” by the police union to better engage the public. The union hired Gallatin Public Affairs last fall to manage its PR campaign.
Details of the poll so far remain sketchy. Westerman declined to say how much the poll cost, calling it part of a package deal with Gallatin. And Gallatin partner Greg Peden said he could not provide details, including how many people were polled.
Peden said his firm hired New York-based Mercury Public Affairs to conduct the poll, and the results have not yet been released to the police union.
The poll and wider PR campaign come at a delicate time for the politically powerful union.
Cops say they’ve taken a battering in the media and from some activists over the 2006 in-custody death of James Chasse Jr as a civil trial between the city and Chasse’s family approaches. The trial was recently postponed from March to June.
The poll comes after the union won what some observers call a Pyrrhic victory in its recent stand-off with Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman and Chief Rosie Sizer.
By holding a massive rally and a no-confidence vote on Saltzman and Sizer — then agreeing to withhold the results — the union convinced Saltzman to back down from his decision to strip Officer Christopher Humphreys of his badge.
Humphreys, one of the officers involved in Chasse’s death, used a beanbag gun in November on a 12-year-old girl who was violently resisting arrest. The incident drew public criticism and may have increased rifts between citizens and the police union when its members rallied to Humphreys’ defense.
Tags: Christopher Humphreys, Gallatin Public Affairs, Greg Peden, James Chasse Jr., Portland Police Association, Scott Westerman
Dimes to doughnuts that this “independent poll” will only contact people within select zip codes.
NO…they only poll people from within the PPB.
Polling is in a bad spot now, so the PPU study should be taken with many grains of salt: http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=102003A79EC6 – landline v cell phone bias across age and income.
Is Gallatin’s “polling” of citizens, a measure of those who understand civil rights (curious if the lack of that glaring dishonored right due Mr. Chasse, was ever shared with the Grand Jury by the prosecutor’s office, before they returned their verdict?), and a true measure of those who have had an opportunity to digest “ALL THE FACTS” contained in the full investigative report, or is this rather, just a union gratuitous “polling” of citizens who are still in the dark about what happened to James Chasse? Since the full investigative report has yet to be released, any reasonable person has to wonder, what’s their point? Go ahead and waste your money…who really cares?
A more interesting “poll” would be to measure the public’s interest-level, after being fully apprised of all past local government union employee misconduct, in banning union activity within our local government offices, in it’s entirely, in the state of Oregon. Since union activity has hampered taxpayers from “knowing” and understanding the full extent of some government union represented employees misconduct, which would enable the public to identify and minimize EXPENSIVE RISKS associated with patterns of union employee misconduct.
Merry Christmas James Chasse.
Dimes to doughnuts these racist, gestapo pigs haven’t polled a single person of color.
“Cops say they’ve taken a battering in the media and from some activists”
That’s better than what the citizens get from the cops.
“Cops say they’ve taken a battering in the media and from some activists over the 2006 in-custody death of James Chasse Jr.” Interesting choice of words, considering Mr. Chasse’s fate.
While the headline and the article refer to polling, Gallatin Public Affairs does not seem to be an opinion research firm. It looks more like a spin control firm–here’s a quote from their website:
“Sometimes effective advocacy requires more than educating a decision maker; it requires shaping the political environment and motivating the public or a constituency to support or oppose an issue.”
It will help the Portland Police Association hold us all as hostages to their whims.
Either curtail PPA’s power or get rid of it. HOLD POLICE ACCOUNTABLE–and maybe the way to do that is to demand that our elected officials begin to do so.
Do they really need to do this poll to find out what citizens think about them? The fact that they don’t already know is a clear indication of the problem. They are judged by their actions not a PR campaign.
And Gallatin hired the “web chatters” from Nemo Design.
Looks like Uncle FESTERman has had more than his share of rare Who roast beast.
What do people think of cops? Umm, that they’re fascist pigs who’ll beat you up for having a ‘bad attitude’. Duh. There is something fundamentally wrong about police culture in this country, and no amount of PR will fix that problem. It’s not a problem inherent to police work itself, and it’s not necessary to protect the officers’ safety– it’s traitorous, unamerican bullshit, and everyone knows it. These officers have earned every bit of scorn the people throw at them.
Until police are committed to actually upholding the law and have zero tolerance for corruption and injustice, Portland will never trust its police.
Yes, condemn all police for a few bad apples. This is prejudicial smartness at its best.
They all stand-up publicly for a bad apple….wearing blue tee-shirts claiming to be that bad apple, tell us why we shouldn’t condemn them all as being bad apples? Reconcile that for us Jerry.