City Council upholds removal of Weinstein from police review body
Councilors vote 7-5 after his refusal to sign blanket nondisclosure agreement
Portland City Council upheld the removal of Bob Weinstein as an alternate member of the Community Board for Police Accountability last Wednesday by a 7-5 vote.
Weinstein had been removed by city staff for refusing to sign a nondisclosure agreement covering training information, policy documents and other materials that are readily accessible under Oregon Public Records Law.
Weinstein said he was not opposed to pledging confidentiality on matters such as legal advice from city attorneys, active cases under review and personnel matters. But he noted that blanket nondisclosure he was required to sign “undermines the public’s ability to assess the independence and effectiveness of the board.”
District 4 councilors Olivia Clark and Eric Zimmerman supported Weinstein while Mitch Green did not. Others supporters included Loretta Smith, Sameer Kanal and Dan Ryan.
The other six no votes came from Jamie Dunphy, Angelita Morillo, Elana Pirtle-Guiney, Tiffany Koyama Lane, Steve Novick and Candace Avalos.
Weinstein, a Northwest District resident and former mayor of Ketchikan, Alaska, who writes occasional opinion pieces for the Northwest Examiner, reflected later that his removal represented “secrecy treated as a governing norm, transparency treated as a risk.”
It was a sad day on the Council. The DSA Councilors and others that joined them also decided to overturn a recommendation from City Attorney’s office and allowed a person determined to be “biased” against the police to serve on the new board. This may well endanger the new Police Accountability Board’s ability to make fair, unbiased decisions.
Since this review board finally began taking shape, I have been wondering why the police union has not taken formal action to curb a process that has been biased against law enforcement since its inception. The union's most recent response was tepid:
"Portland Police Association union president Sgt. Aaron Schmautz said he agrees that information about the board’s process should be transparent to ensure fair investigations, though he was not familiar with the details of the nondisclosure."
"He said city rules protect the confidentiality of the investigations. But he said if the nondisclosure goes beyond that, 'then I would be concerned, and my members would be concerned, and frankly the community should be concerned.' "
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2026/02/he-refused-to-sign-an-nda-portland-leaders-might-remove-him-from-a-police-oversight-board.html
"If"? There are no ifs about it. Sgt. Schmautz and the rank-and-file should be concerned and should be doing something about it.