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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 6, 2010)
Street roots 13 Aug. 6, 2010 Report can’t erase three years of dehumanization, abstraction BY JENNY WESTBERG AND ROY SILBERSTEIN CONTRIBUTING COLUMNISTS A I Vie initial scope of the OIR Group I report, an indepedent review of the A circumstances surrounding the 2006 death of James Chasse, was to answer the question, “Why did then-Police Chief Rosie Sizer take three years to COMING UP finish an internal investigation about FOR AIR Chasse’s in-custody The, Mental Health death?” Association of Portland Outsourcing an investigation of an Jenny Westberg and Roy investigation was Silberstein are board hardly routine, but members of the Mental City Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade had Health Association of Portland, a nonprofit little choice. In the public mind, Sizer’s advisory organization that dancing in place had raised serious supports advocacy efforts on issues around mental questions. The vast ensuing silence imposed health. Information about by city and county attorneys made the their work is available at questions even more prominent and www. mentalhealthportland, org persistent. Was there a cover-up? Were Christopher Humphreys, Kyle Nice and Bret Burton rogue officers? With changes to training and supervision, would the tragic outcome have been different? Overall, the OIR report is a good and helpful effort It’s comprehensive; it gives excellent hindsight advice. It represents the diligence we expect after a critical incident, and by accepting many of its recommendations, the city and the police bureau have taken a true step forward. This is a welcome change from the long wait that has eroded trust and confidence in our police bureau and with city hall. The report, however, has sizable omissions. Sizer makes no appearance in the 80-page analysis. ttumphreysYNice^ and 'Burton, who beat Chasse and left.him to die in the back of a patrol car, are nameless throughout. There is barely a mention of Sizer’s abandoned investigation. There is no explanation for the graceless inattention of police commissioners Tom Potter and Dan Saltzman, who failed repeatedly to intervene Howard Zinn’s BY RUTH KOVACS CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST Atom Bomb Dropped on Hiroshima” was the headline, and Howard Zinn was happy. It foretold the end of World War II, and he wouldn’t be going to the Pacific. Maybe his combat duty as a bombardier would get a break and he could go home to his family. “I had no understanding at the moment o what the atomic bomb had done to the people of Hiroshima. The Bomb It was an abstraction, By Howard Zinn a headline, just Publication date: another bombing ... August 2010 To this day, the vicious reality of aerial Trade Paperback bombing is lost to $8.95 90 pages most people in the Publisher: Open United States, a Media Series: City military operation Lights Books devoid of human feeling, a news event, a statistic, a fact to be taken in quickly and forgotten,” were the thoughts of 23-year old Howard Zinn. Yet so profound was the effect on his comprehension of war, that just one month before his death, Jan. 27, he completed the introduction to his last book, The Bomb. Zinn, bom Aug. 24,1922, grewr up in Brooklyn slums, where he '"'»rked in the shipyards during his teens. He hadI served his combat duty in the Air Force in World War Has his patriotic duty. His last writing speaks of the appalling and demand accountability. In May, with a legal settlement approaching, Mayor Sam Adams pressured Sizer into a resignation and yanked the police bureau away from Saltzman. Potter is retired. Humphreys, Nice and Burton are back on duty. For all its merits, the OIR report extends the city’s response to the death of James Chasse. It has been a response largely cobbled from dehumanization and abstraction. The long silence erased transparency. The delay of justice allowed impunity to gain a foothold. The dehumanization occurred by the officers at the scene. They told witnesses Chasse was homeless. He was not They said he was a drug dealer. He was not They said he had urinated on a tree. He had not They said they knew him. They did not Why do this? To justify their brutal actions, both to aghast onlookers and to themselves. The abstractions began as city leaders shifted blame to problems with the mental health system. Indeed, repairs are needed; efforts to fix the system should be led by the state and county. However, discussion of the mental health system is an irrelevance and a distraction. Chasse’s diagnosis of schizophrenia was not the cause of his broken bones. His death was a result of kicking, punching, Tasering and tackling by three officers, an incident that took just over two hours from first contact to death. But the “broken mental health system” is an easy scapegoat. It’s like Chasse himself: difficult to manage, fix, or understand. It’s a convenient and absorbent construct, soaking up questions of accountability. What happened to James Chasse was not the result of poor judgment. It goes beyond poor judgment; it was viciousness and thuggery. If not held accountable and, at the least, removed from the force, those very officers, or similarly inclined brother officers, are apt to repeat. For the admirable remainder of the police force, en masse, this is a crisis. Identifying the admirable officers with the tiny minority of awful ones stains the force, the city politicians, and the city itself. After the district attorney’s decision in October 2006 not to indict the officers, reference to the people involved in Chasse’s death, and progress toward individual responsibility, ceased. Instead there were additional abstractions. We heard endless discussions of policy, improved police training, better police tools, police procedural reform, and additional sensitivity trainings for police interacting with mentally ill persons. In all this grand discourse, we heard nothing about the three police officers who caused the death. Tonight our city employs these men, trains and arms them, and provides them with a great power - the use of force. We expect near perfection from them. But there is no expectation of accountability. As recently as July 29, the Portland Police Association underscored this defect, offering Humphreys, Nice and Burton unqualified support and promises of vindication. Then they swiftly directed the blame for Chasse’s death elsewhere. Unsurprisingly, they blamed “the mental health system.” As long as Portland, like innumerable other American cities, refuses to hold individual officers accountable for unjustified use-of-force, it does not matter which reforms are claimed, nor does it matter whether they actually occur. The deaths continue unabated. What happened to James Chasse will happen again, at some point, to someone. It’s a predictable matter of time and opportunity. Those who care for the welfare of persons diagnosed with mental illness will gaflier'hext' fime. We’ll light candles, sing and cry. We’ll console the family by sharing the best memories, the happiness, the unique character of their lost loved one. And we’ll fight to make certain the truth gets known. last book delivers a final lesson on humanity .... in suite of Dowerful insights powerful book were a fact that today, in spite of powerful insights transforming Zinn to one of our greatest of our historians, journalists, veterans and anti-war historians, and his writing of h victims of bombings, we debate the People’s History of the United States. continued use of weapons that can Among other quotes and data in “The annihilate not just hundreds, but thousands Bomb,” Zinn tells us that sociologist, Kai of humans and their homes. Tragically, Erikson, reviewing the report of the victims often include mostly women, Japanese team of scientists, wrote: children and other civilians, and sometimes “The attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki military personnel of the Americans and were not “combat” in any of the ways that allies. Frequently, only a small percentage of word is normally used. Nor were they the so-called military targets are hit primarily attempts to destroy military Zinn wrote this book, hoping to educate targets, for the two cities had been chosen and enlighten us today about the reality of not despite but because they had a high mass human destruction. His voice as a density of civilian housing.” historian, journalist and World War II air As Zinn continues his discussion about pilot cannot be ignored. He’s been there. the bombings in Japan, he assures us that He’s seen it He knew. the surrender of Japan was known and John Hersey was on the scene after the inevitable before the day of the bombings. Hiroshima bombing, Aug. 6,1945. Zinn But the United States and their allies had a quotes a report of an interview Hersey need to show their power, and to test their recorded as follows. weapons without regard for human life. “Mr Tanimoto ... reached down and took We then move on to the bombing of a woman by the hands, but her skin slipped Royan, Germany, that had occurred in mid off in huge, glove-like pieces. He was so April of 1945, when incendiaries, napalm, shocked by this that he had to sit down for a and 2,000-pound demolition bombs were moment... He had to keep consciously dropped that “mopped up most of Royan ... repeating to himself, ‘These are human A town of 20,000,” according to the New beings Zinn goes on to say that “ 0 nly with those York Times. U.S., France and the other allies planned scenes in our minds can we judge the for the Royan bombings with motives distressingly cold arguments that go on now, beyond “winning a war.” Again, a show of 65 years later, about whether it was right to power, testing weapons and. training troops, send those planes out... That this is were more important reasons to the leaders arguable is a devastating commentary on than a regard for human life and civilian our moral culture.” property. The backstory of the making and use oi Admiral Hubert Meyer, French the bomb as revealed in this short and „JemUr ^October 1944, “Sina said in September and October 1944, “Since the Germans did not have aerial defenses for Royan, here were good targets for bomber-crew trainees in England. “As it turned out, not trainees, but experienced pilots did the bombing. By April 1945, there was little doubt that the war was near its end, yet on April 14, more than a thousand planes dropped bombs on a German force of 5,500 men, in a town containing less than a thousand people. The powerful destructiveness of napalm had been demonstrated and factors of military ambition, pride, glory and honor were, no doubt, greater motivators than “winning a war.” Royan was a blazing furnace and Meyer “was visibly satisfied having achieved this brilliant revenge ... Zinn concludes “The Bomb,” telling us, “Those of us who have a bit more than our bare hands, and at least a small interest in stopping the war machine, that we might play a peculiar role in breaking the social stalemate,” which continues to have no moral justification for weapons of massive destruction, especially destroying civilian lives and homes, “must take a stand ... It means acting on what we feel and think, here, now, for human flesh and sense, against the abstractions of duty and obedience.” This is a timely book. Explicit horror stories and photos provided to U.S; citizens for more than half a century should convince us: no more war. Hopefully, “The Bomb” will help us pursue that mission.
