Portland Oregon - Citizen Review Committee (CRC) (is a Portland police oversight volunteer committee) held a special CRC meeting on 4.26.16 to discuss their "media rules" in April 2016 regarding videographers and media folks who attend their public meetings. Flying Focus Video Collective (FFVC) represented their interest and concerns at this meeting. FFVC used a FOI to get public-emails by the CRC and police pertaining to the camera / placement issue and the right to film. {copy/pasted below} Though we were able to speculate that the Portland Police Association (PPA) had discussions with members of the Citizen Review Committee (CRC) asking us to move our camera from its usual location at CRC hearings, we received a final email from our public records request proving it so. Below is a letter to the editor we sent to the Portland Tribune, which covered the standoff among the PPB, the CRC, and members of the media/public last Thursday, but forgot to mention Flying Focus by name; the article is pasted in below the letter. You can see the specific email thread showing former CRC Chair Mae Wilson responding to the PPA President by referring to me and where my camera is here: http://www.flyingfocus.org/crc2016/DTurner_Wilson112315_120115.pdf Flying Focus Video Collective Letter To the Editor: Just a few points of clarification to the article "Police Bureau Standoff with Civilian Review Board is Over" (May 5).I videotape the meetings of the Citizen Review Committee (CRC) for the group Flying Focus Video Collective, while also attending the meetings as a member of Portland Copwatch. The issue of where people sit/stand to capture video of CRC meetings was of utmost concern to our group as a media organization. The fact that the volunteer CRC was having private conversations with the Portland Police Association (PPA) about where a person could be located, with the specific promise to move me to make the PPA more comfortable, should be of concern to every news organization in this city. The same day the article was published, we received one more email as part of our public records request which shows the former CRC Chair updating PPA President Daryl Turner on a "conversation [we] had a few weeks ago" in which the Chair notes that she "spoke with Mr. Handelman and is working on a compromise." Part of the reason the Police Bureau agreed to come back to CRC meetings is thanks to the effort of Flying Focus to force a public discussion about their security guidelines and ground rules that re-asserted the right to view all the participants in the meetings. As a video group that promotes social change, we're proud to have helped resolve the issue through face to face dialogue, rather than behind-the-scenes maneuvering. (Excerpts from the public records request can be seen at: http://www.flyingfocus.org/crc2016.html This video is also available to download or view here: https://archive.org/details/CRCMediaRulesDiscussion2016 This video was posted on Portland Indymedia here: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2016/05/432355.shtml

• published: 19 May 2016
• views: 59