On September 12, 2012 the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a complaint in the Federal District Court for Oregon asserting that the City of Portland has engaged in a pattern and practice of unnecessary or excessive force against persons experiencing a mental health crisis. This survey is the result of a settlement agreement between Portland’s City Council and the DOJ which specified the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) develop a means of assessing public perceptions.

The first report generated by the research team examined general attitudes of residents. This second report focuses on an area pertinent to the DOJ settlement – police contact experiences. The purpose of this second report is to: 1) examine whether persons who report voluntary (e.g. asking police for help) or involuntary (e.g. being stopped by the police) police contacts in the past year felt they were treated “fairly” or “unfairly”, and 2) examine whether perceptions of treatment relate to attitudes about the Bureau. Data for the report were obtained from a postal survey sent in July of 2013 to a random sample of Portland addresses, including an oversampling of Census tracks with higher percentages of African American, Hispanic/Latino, and younger residents.