The Northwest Enterprise

THE VOLLMER POLICE REPORT TO MAYOR R. EARL RILEY

August Vollmer of Berkeley, California, expert in police organization, has rendered to Mayor R. Earl Riley a report which holds that the Portland police bureau for the last seven years has been defective in almost everything.

It is an analysis which has its cumulative effect censure of police administration in this city. It is censure of law enforcement, of organization, of supervision, of records, of training, of pensions and of pay (too low).

It is, in other words, confirmation by technical authority of complaints that have been made locally less formally but with equal seriousness.

Now, both in the interest of police to Portland's policemen and for the sake of clarifying public understanding, we would like to see an answer to the Vollmer report. An answer, that is, from the men charged with responsibility in law enforcement and police organization.

This answer, the mayor could invite. At the same time he might detail what he conceives to be the relationship of his own position as commissioner of public safety to police administration.

This question of mayor-police relationship long has been a twilight zone which light from the city's chief executive would be welcome.

Nor, is it possible to overlook the fact that the Vollmer report comes as a whole after the appointment of a new chief of police and the beginning of reorganization of the police bureau.

In addition to any defensive answer, therefore, some constructive statements will be due from Chief James Fleming as to steps he has taken, and is taking, to make sure of improvements that expert Vollmer says are due.

Very frankly, August Vollmer states that he did not make the Portland inquiry broad enough to include vice. But he does point statistically to increase in law violation. Make no mistake, the increase of law violation is an unmistakable symptom of insufficiently restrained vice.

The Vollmer report hasn't ended public concern in law enforcement and police administration. It has furnished material that should be useful in forming a more active and expressive public opinion.