Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013, January 21, 2000, Page 11, Image 11

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    January 21.2000 * | w t mmt. 11
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PHOTO BY INGA
O fficial W elcome
The Rose G ty's top cop meets and greets
the Sexual Minorities Roundtable by Inga So ren sen
Portland Police Chief
Mark Kroeker (left)
met with Sexual Minorities
Roundtable members,
including co-chair
Lori Buckwalter (right)
or the most part, Portland’s new police
chief, Mark Kroeker, sits quietly soak­
ing in the scene, only once or twice
dispensing questions of his own.
It is Kroeker’s first visit with the
Sexual Minorities Roundtable, a gathering of
queers and cops who congregate monthly high
above the city in a 15th-floor Justice Center
conference room.
On this day, gray skies threaten snow. There
are little more than a half-dozen law enforce­
ment personnel on hand, and about the same
amount of community folks representing groups
like Pride Northwest, which orchestrates Port­
land’s pride parade, and Outside In, a social ser­
vice agency that offers assistance to homeless
youths. Individuals from the leather and sex-
worker communities are on hand, as is Lori
Buckwalter, a trans activist and roundtable co­
chair poised at the head of the long, oval table
with Kroeker to her right.
“I admit I’ve never seen anything quite like
[the roundtable],” notes Kroeker, who spent
more than 30 years with the Los Angeles Police
Department before retiring in 1997 after rising
to the rank of deputy chief.
The 55-year-old born-again Christian was
tapped by Portland Mayor Vera Katz in Decem­
ber to fill the post left vacant by former Chief
Charles Moose, who resigned last July.
W hen Just Out first reported on Kroeker in
the Dec. 17 issue, Mitch Grobeson, a gay fonner
Los Angeles police sergeant who worked with
the man, said: “It’s definitely critical that the gay
and lesbian community of Portland establish a
foothold early on in terms of their relationship
D on ’ t F orget S ven
I
t’s been nearly a year since Sven Gomez, 42, was found dead
in his Northwest Portland apartment.
Gomez, an amiable and outgoing gay man, was discovered
March 25, 1999, dead of asphyxia.
All along, Portland police detectives have said Gomez’s
death was “being investigated as though it were a homicide,” but
it still has not been officially classified as such.
Nonetheless, detectives say the death is “highly suspicious,”
and investigators believe Gomez may have been with another
person at the time of his death.
Gomez was a native o f Colombia who came to the United
States in 1990. In Portland he supported himself through vari­
ous means, from interpreting to housecleaning to bussing tables.
He most recently worked at II Fornaio, a trendy Italian bistro a
few blocks from his apartment.
V "
y » «
. '
-
with Kroeker. He needs to hear that the gay and
lesbian community has a strong voice in Port­
land.”
Grobeson urged gay men and lesbians to be
attuned to any upsurge in vice operations,
harassment around gay establishments and
“entrapment” of cruisers.
A gay City of Angels esquire chimed:
“Watch what [Kroeker] does, not what he says.”
On this day, Kroeker doesn’t speak much.
Instead, he listens as roundtable attendees share
the latest updates on bias crimes, a fledgling
queer citizens foot patrol aimed at Old Town
and Southwest Stark Street, and the Sexual
Minorities Crisis Response Team.
He asks whether the Crisis Response Team is
gay-specific and is informed there are a number
of teams assisting a variety of populations.
During the gathering, a young woman
involved in the sex industry speaks of the
harassment she and others in the trade
encounter from police, and she wants to
know what will be done about it.
A man who works with street youths
notes that young people often feel they
are “viewed as the harassers and in fact
feel they’re the ones being harassed.”
There is talk of a safety survey that
generated little community response,
and discussion about attracting more
diversity to the roundtable.
In introducing himself, Kroeker
Gomez also enjoyed assisting those living with HIV/AIDS
and had volunteered for various causes.
Detective Jon Rhodes tells Just Out the case remains open.
He notes that sometimes a useful tip may come in “the next a
day, or five years, 10 years or never.”
Just last month— more than 10 years after his disappear­
ance— police recovered the remains of Todd Alexander Asay,
a k a Lindsey Alexander, a female impersonator who worked at
the popular Old Town cabaret club Darcelle XV.
Asay was last seen alive May 26, 1989, in front o f Silverado,
a gay bar on Southwest Stark Street in Portland.
Portland police believe Brian David Hill, 36, shot and killed
Asay in 1989 and buried the 25-year-old in the back yard of the
Southeast Portland home where Hill used to live.
Hill was recently charged with shooting to death his ex-wife.
He was arrested Dec. 19 and charged with murdering A nna Lee
Hill.
According to police, someone came forward following Hill’s
Sp en t ¿v lifiettnw ¿¿>e>Pin/y
*
shares an insight gleaned from his time in vio­
lence-ravaged Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he
served as deputy commissioner of the Interna­
tional Police Task Force under the United
Nations mission there a few years ago.
Kroeker recounts the ethnic hatred he wit­
nessed while there— Croats, Muslims and Serbs
who had once coexisted as neighbors and friends
but became bitter enemies.
At the time, he pondered whether such
potent divisiveness could shred his own country.
“And then 1 get back and hear of an incident
of a certain African American man [James Byrd]
being dragged to his death from behind a pickup
truck...and of the brutal murder of a gay person
[Matthew Shepard],” Kroeker recalls.
Bosnia, he says, hammered home the notion
that animosity can lead to unbridled brutality
“unless we take steps to come together and pre­
vent it.”
He adds: “I just wanted to share my heart a
little bit with you.”
■ The S exual M inorities R oundtable meets
from noon to 1:30 p.m on the second Tuesday
o f each month. For more information about the
gathering, call (503) 823-0000.
arrest and provided specific
information about where Asay’s body was buried.
Speaking of the Gomez case, Rhodes says: “Someone may
come forward with information. W ho knows what may trigger
it."
■ Anyone with information about the G om ez case is asked to contact
the Portland Police Bureau at (5 0 3 ) 823-0479.
Reported by I nga SORENSEN
w nicthin/f
& ¿oet te>
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