When 'police accountability' comes with a gag order
Why secrecy undermines police oversight
“The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.”
Portland’s Community Board for Police Accountability (CBPA) was created to embody a straightforward civic promise: independent civilian oversight of policing, grounded in transparency and public trust. That trust depends not just on outcomes, but on whether the public can understand how the board itself is trained, organized, and governed.
The City Council now faces a fundamental question: Should I be removed as a CBPA alternate—not for misconduct or breach of confidentiality, but for insisting that confidentiality rules respect both legal boundaries and the public’s right to oversee their government?
What actually happened
City staff claim that I “refused to sign required paperwork.” That’s inaccurate. I have repeatedly stated that I am willing to sign an agreement protecting genuinely confidential information: personnel matters, investigative files and privileged legal advice. Those categories deserve protection, and I have never argued otherwise.
What I declined to sign was something very different: a blanket nondisclosure agreement that treats all CBPA information as secret—including training materials, orientation sessions, complaint process flowcharts and other general information that is neither confidential nor legally privileged.
This is not merely a policy disagreement; it is a rule-of-law issue. Under Oregon’s Public Records Law, records relating to the conduct of public business are presumptively public unless a specific statutory exemption applies. An NDA that proposes to prohibit disclosure of nonexempt public records conflicts directly with Oregon law.
The overreach problem
City staff explicitly acknowledged their agreement “covers the full span of work” of the CBPA, including training. That admission goes to the heart of the problem. When officials admit their rules exceed legal requirements, the public should take notice.
Consider one example: CBPA training included presentations of CBPA charter language, labor agreements and state statutes—standard civics materials that governments routinely publish online. These are not confidential legal consultations requiring protection. They are educational materials explaining how government works—precisely the type of information Oregon’s Public Records Law presumes should be accessible.
Attorney-client privilege serves a narrow and important purpose: protecting confidential communications made for the purpose of seeking legal advice. It does not transform every statement made by a city attorney, or every training slide, into a secret. Yet the NDA would treat even basic training materials as confidential, contradicting both the letter and the spirit of public records law—and the mission of a police accountability board.
Why this matters
This issue should concern every Portlander. If a police accountability board cannot openly explain how it is trained and how it operates, how can the public meaningfully evaluate its independence or effectiveness?
Accountability cannot thrive in darkness. Transparency is not a nuisance to be managed; it is the foundation of public trust. A system that enforces silence where the law requires openness risks recreating the very culture of opacity that police oversight was designed to reform.
The CBPA exists to serve the entire community. Police officers and residents alike deserve a board that operates with integrity, respects legal limits and functions in the open. That is what genuine accountability looks like.
The choice before the council
The City Council now faces a clear choice: Will oversight boards operate as transparent public trusts or as extensions of the bureaucracy they are meant to oversee?
For a board charged with accountability, the answer should be obvious.
The council should insist on a confidentiality framework that protects what truly must be protected—while honoring the public’s right to understand how police accountability in Portland actually works.
What can be done?
Contact your city councilors and remind them of a basic principle: transparency is not a privilege government grants. It is a right the people already possess. And tell them you think the CBPA should model that principle, not evade it, by operating as openly and accountably as the law allows.
Bob Weinstein is a former mayor of Ketchikan, Alaska, and a retired teacher. He also ran for Portland City Council, District 4 in 2024.
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This episode reflects a trait among some progressives: an impulse to substitute secrecy and exclusion for legitimacy. The effort to shroud the CBPA in blanket confidentiality is of a piece with the insistence that no current or former law-enforcement officers may sit on the board—both reflect a distrust of openness rather than a commitment to accountability. I say this as a Harris-voting centrist Democrat.
Portlanders, especially those whose careers may be affected by the actions of the CBPA, are entitled to know the who, what, when, why, and how of the rulemaking that produced this overreach—and by what legal authority such an NDA was enacted. Was it pursuant to a city ordinance? Who actually runs the CBPA? An agreement that silences board members about non-confidential training and operational material is not merely excessive; it raises serious rule-of-law and due-process concerns. Rules that exceed statutory confidentiality protections require a clear legal basis and a publicly articulated rationale. Neither is evident here.
Oversight bodies cannot claim legitimacy while operating behind a veil of secrecy that exceeds the law. When transparency is treated as a threat rather than a safeguard, accountability becomes performative. That is not reform; it is a regression—and it should alarm anyone who cares about due process, public trust, or the rule of law.
Thank you for going public with this.
Good for you Bob...
As the 300 pages of City Council emails published in the WW show ... more than Police oversight , we may need City Councilor oversight.
Beware the "do as I say not as I do " hypocrites