Portland residents get a rare chance tonight to size up the four finalists competing to become the first director of the city's new police watchdog agency, with a public forum set for 6 p.m. at the Portland Building, Room 108, at 1120 SW 5th Avenue. The event, moved from its original Matt Dishman Community Center location, will let attendees ask questions and offer feedback directly to the candidates before city officials make their final call.
Four Finalists, One Pivotal Hire
The City of Portland announced the four finalists advancing in the search for the inaugural director of the Office of Community-based Police Accountability, or OCPA, on September 4, with the Community Board for Police Accountability scheduled to consider and confirm the final candidate on September 15, according to the City of Portland. Whoever gets the job will serve as executive leader responsible for building OCPA's staffing, investigative protocols, and daily operations from scratch, per the same city announcement. The four candidates bring distinct backgrounds spanning federal law enforcement, civilian oversight leadership, municipal management, and consent-decree implementation, the city notes.
Mac Muir led Oakland's Community Police Review Agency as executive director from 2023 to 2025 and spent seven years as a supervising investigator with New York City's Civilian Complaint Review Board before co-authoring the 2025 book “Cop Cop: Breaking the Fixed System of American Policing,” according to The Oaklandside. During his tenure, Muir personally conducted or supervised more than 500 misconduct investigations and interviewed over 1,000 NYPD officers and complainants, the city's announcement adds.
Careers Built on Oversight and Reform
George Perezvelez brings more than 28 years of civilian oversight experience, including serving as treasurer for the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement and co-authoring the 2020 ballot measure that created Berkeley's Office of Police Accountability, according to a bio distributed by NACOLE. Perezvelez served on Berkeley's Police Review Commission from 2006 to 2020 and currently sits on the BART Police Civilian Review Board, the bio states.
Bessie Marie Scott previously served as City Manager of Antioch, California, where she signed a 2025 settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to upgrade police accountability, and she served as interim executive director of Seattle's Community Police Commission in 2019, according to Police1. Scott managed municipal operations during major federal consent decree implementations in both cities, the outlet reports. Sean Eldridge, meanwhile, is a U.S. Air Force veteran with more than 20 years of public safety experience, having served as a federal Chief of Police with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and worked nationally on police reform with the Center for Policing Equity, per the city's announcement. Eldridge also founded ARISE Group Inc., focused on community public safety engagement through storytelling and facilitated dialogue.
A Charter Amendment, Six Years in the Making
The forum arrives six years after Portland voters approved Ballot Measure 26-217 in November 2020 with 82% support, creating the new oversight system through changes to the city charter, according to the City of Portland on Facebook. That system is built around a 21-member volunteer Community Board for Police Accountability with binding authority to independently investigate sworn police officers, decide misconduct findings, and impose disciplinary actions including termination, the city's OCPA page states. Board members undergo background checks and rigorous training before reviewing critical misconduct cases, the city notes.
Getting from ballot measure to functioning agency has not been smooth. Implementation was delayed for years by labor grievances and legal challenges from the Portland Police Association union, which argued the new disciplinary board structure violated collective bargaining rights, prompting a federal judge to push the operational deadline to 2025, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Ross Caldwell, who had led Portland's predecessor oversight agency, the Independent Police Review, since 2019, resigned in January as the office sat in bureaucratic limbo awaiting transition to the new OCPA system, the station reported. IPR staff had previously staged a strike in late 2025 over job guarantees during that transition, a dispute Hoodline detailed in its coverage of proposed AFSCME terms.
Budget Fights Complicate the Rollout
Even as the director search moves toward a decision, OCPA has been dragged into City Hall's budget politics. In July, the new oversight body became embroiled in a Portland City Council fight after councilors proposed reallocating underspent funds from OCPA's $16 million annual budget to undo citywide department layoffs, drawing formal objections from oversight board members, according to Willamette Week. Progressive councilors and board members argued that tapping the unused funds would hamstring an agency already delayed by years of political tinkering, per that report. It was not the first such attempt: Hoodline previously reported on a proposal from Council Vice President Olivia Clark to redirect $10M from oversight toward general fund gaps.
The stakes for getting OCPA up and running go beyond city politics. A July report by the independent monitor overseeing Portland's federal DOJ settlement found that police supervisors audited required body-camera footage in only 30% of audited cases, Hoodline reported, with federal attorneys cautioning that full police compliance under the consent decree could still be years away. Hiring a permanent director is widely seen as the pivotal step needed to move Portland's civilian oversight system from a charter amendment on paper into a functioning watchdog capable of handling misconduct investigations and helping meet those federal requirements.
Tonight's forum gives Portland residents the chance to hear directly from Muir, Perezvelez, Scott, and Eldridge before the Community Board for Police Accountability meets September 15 to consider and confirm its pick. Those who want more detail on the hiring process can find it at portland.gov/ocpadirectorhiring, according to the city's Facebook announcement.
