Former state Rep. Jo Ann Hardesty (formerly Bowman) is one of the people stomping around mad at the Portland police bureau for the insensitivity and outright brutality of many of its officers. She reports that she's written the City Council members protesting its scheduled renewal today of the city's contract with a psychologist who examines potential recruits to the force for fitness as a public safety officer. Hardesty writes:

You will be asked to support the status quo in re-contracting with Dr. David Corey as the psychologist who determines the fitness for duty of Portland Police officers. In light of the scathing Department of Justice report about the inner workings of Portland Police Bureau it seems the city council is poised to repeat past mistakes with the hope of different outcomes.

The AMA Coalition for Justice & Police reform had asked the Mayor and Chief Reese to conduct a broad-based search process to replace this psychologist. We wanted to ensure that the pool was broadened to increase the diversity of the talent pool available for a psychologist to serve the Portland community. We were willing to assist with this outreach effort, and asked the Mayor and Chief many times for updates on this process. We also identified several associations of people-of-color professionals who were willing to apply for this opportunity.

We were shined on for months that this would be an open and inclusive process for this new contract.. As the city was finishing up its internal process, one of our members was called to review the applications. There were two, and the city has now decided to renew their contract with Dr. Corey. As I understand it Dr. Corey has contracts with at least three local law enforcement agencies and has not done an effective job in Portland to weed out officer candidates who have a propensity for violence.

Yet due to the lazy nature of the outreach effort by the City of Portland and once again cutting out the community in assisting with providing a diverse pool of potential candidates, the city is poised to re-contract with Dr. Corey.

We are very disappointed especially since the city was unable to articulate an outreach strategy that would have widen the potential candidate pool.

This is yet again an example of our government telling us one thing and doing something that is the complete opposite in practice. We plan to speak at the city council [today] in opposition to this contract.

Sounds like a double-cross by the Sam Rands, doesn't it?