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.