Street roots
March 2, 2012
H A R D E S T Y fro m
page 4
community
profiling.
members
.
...
about tactics
J.T.: How do you rank current crop o f mayoral
or about activities or about what they’d been involved
candidates on issues o f police accountability?
in. The people on the committee, because they didn’t
know police other than from that committee, believed
J.H .: I think they’re all bad, and they’re not bad
them.
because they’re bad people, they’re bad because they
They were not getting to the problem because it was
don’t know what they don’t know yet. So I don’t think
a police-led kind of effort, and the police got to frame
that there is any one candidate that stands out that’s
the conversation. They didn’t want anyone to talk about
going to do a great job reforming the police bureau. But
anything that was going to make the police
what I’m hoping is that during this campaign season the
uncomfortable. Well, it’s
community will ask these
uncomfortable when police
candidates that want to be mayor,
shoot people in our community.
what is your vision of true
That’s uncomfortable. When
1 dea^t th in k that there Is
community policing? What do you
they racial profile people, that’s
think the role of a police chief
any one candidate that
uncomfortable. So it didn’t
should be? Do you like the one we
stands out that's going to
matter to me that people who
have? Then based on those
are paid with taxpayer dollars
do a great job reform ing
answers, pick the best person that
are going to be uncomfortable in the police bureau® But what
we think is going to move the
a meeting. They need to get over
police bureau forward. I guess the
T in hoping is that during
that.
good news is that all three
this cam paign season the
candidates, because they’re not
J.T.: Do you have any thoughts
com m unity w ill ash these
insiders to City Hall and downtown,
on how racial profiling has
could make the changes, but the
candidates that want to be
affected police work, specifically
question is if they will have the
mayors What Is yonr vision
with gang violence?
political will to make those changes.
J.H .: Keaton Otis is dead
of true com m unity
policing? What do yon
th in k the role of a police
chief should be?
because we had ill-trained gang
officers riding the streets of
Northeast Portland. That young
man is dead because someone
looked at him and thought he
was African American and is
between 14 and 24, therefore he must be a gang
member, right? That moment when that officer made
that decision to pull that young man over, they just
escalated everything up until the point where they shot
and killed him.
I think the police have a huge challenge because the
community distrusts them because of their experience
being stopped and searched just for walking down the
street in their neighborhood. The police don’t get a lot
of African Americans saying, "I know so-and-so is a gang
member, and so-and-so has a gun.” They are not getting
th e com m unity cooperation from people because people
have observed over and over again this behavior.
When my office was on Martin Luther King Jr.
Boulevard, I can’t tell you how many times I saw the
police pull over young African-American men, search
them, search their car, search their back packs and then
let them go. Now the interesting thing about that is
there is no record of those stops. Even though the
Portland police keep records of traffic and pedestrian
stops those aren’t captured because they don’t call that
a traffic stop. They call that a “walk and talk.” They’re
just trying to find out what they’re doing in the
neighborhood, even though they’ve searched them, and
they’ve stopped them and limited their ability to move
freely, they don’t consider that a stop. So the data
doesn’t tell us how bad the situation is. But if you
observe it, you can see this happens over and over and
over again in certain communities.
This police chief doesn’t even mention racial profiling
or the plan to reduce racial profiling that former Chief
Rosie Sizer actually produced a year late. It certainly
doesn’t come up during budget times because there
were some very specific recommendations that Chief
Sizer developed that had financial implications. We’re in
the budget season now; I’ve heard no one talk about
how we are going to fund the plan to eliminate racial
I Love, Therefore I Am
By Aaron Randazzo
Trees sway, graceful attention radiating with purpose
This acknowledgment spell blesses the air
Appreciation: washing our eyes, brightening the
surface
Willfully shatter these routines we declare
Divine connections unwind the chattering
Mind, a mystical moment murmuring merrily
Art; scribbles intertwine to reveal an eternal being
Consciousness, etched on star dust nightly
A howl of Mothers fills this eternal ocean
New life emerges, amply ready to add meaning
To a hungry dream; what an explosion
Variety fills the emptiness, gently glowing
Birds drift across a shimmering river
Serenely imprinted on the cosmic memory; listen,
Be potential’s choosing, a silent giver
At one with totality; the spirit shines within
Grazing elk, mystic waterfall, silent rock, teach us
Your oneness with the moment, your grace
We’ve forgotten ourselves in this dream of rust;
Society, a tradition ready to recycle and replace
A new beginning emerges soon?
J.T.: What would prove to you that
we have police accountability?
J.H .: This is the first time in
over 20 years that a Portland police
officer has been indicted for using
deadly force on duty - the cop who
shot the guy with a shotgun using real bullets and not
bean-bag rounds.
Real police accountability would say it’s impossible to
think that out of 5,000 employees that nobody ever
does anything wrong. So I would suspect that there are
officers that would be fired, there would be officers that
would be demoted, officers that would have to go
through some kind of supervised training. And right
now, I don’t believe that any of this happens. For me,
real police accountability would mean that periodically
that a police officer would be fired, or demoted or sent
back to retraining and that would be public knowledge.
We’ll remember humility, love, and compassion
Songbird, lead us in our dream, to utopia here
Erase this fantasy; material wealth and fashion
We open our hearts and relinquish the fear
To start a new collective dream
A dream of home.
J.T.: What is the police bureau doing right?
J.H .: (Pause) There are a lot of good men and women
in the police bureau who go to work every day and do
their job in a respectful, thoughtful manner, and I don’t
think there’s a lot of police officers that misuse their
power. But I think that police become more empowered
to misuse their power when they’re not held
accountable. They answer over 40,000 calls a year and
they don’t kill 40,000 people a year, so that means most
of the time they get it right. When they don’t get it
right, the problem is they don’t say, “yeah, we messed
up that one.” They say it’s the person that they killed
who is at fault because they didn’t follow directions,
which I ’ve never heard of anyone in a mental health
crisis following directions.
We certainly know that there are some police officers
whose names show up in excessive force complaints.
But we have no certainty, quite frankly. I don’t know
who is a good police officer. I would hate to be in a
position where I needed a police officer, and I was
unsure if the one I got was the right one. That would
petrify the daylights out of me. That’s why so many
community members are petrified of calling the police.
Toxic
By Jason W olf
The persistence of life is water down the drain
I only ask of you a moment while I recollect
Instead you choose to suck the essence out of my soul
You drain me within an inch of my being
Our relationship is explosively toxic
You poison me yet you keep me alive
To confront you is to confront a ghost
You are a whisper in the wind
Without you I am mere flesh
With you I am mere flesh
shosoxsa@gmail.com
Copyright Jason Bogdan aka Jason Wolf
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