The House Committee on Judiciary held a hearing on Monday on bipartisan legislation to curb police profiling in Oregon. House Bill 2355 will require law enforcement departments to begin collecting and retaining standardized demographic data on all officer-initiated pedestrian and traffic stops.
In addition, the bill requires mandatory training in cultural competency and implicit bias for all state and local law enforcement officers in Oregon and establishes a statewide system to hold law enforcement departments accountable for profiling practices.
HB 2355 will also change state law to make small-scale possession of drugs a misdemeanor with access to treatment, instead of a felony, which carries steeper penalties that often result in the loss of housing, employment and social services, making it that much harder to beat addiction.