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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (July 20, 2018)
Street Roots • July 20-26, 2018 Opinion Homeless arrest investigation should focus on real solutions alling a city a cesspool certainly grabs uphold. attention. That’s how Portland Police Our questions must be not only about how Association President Daryl Turner homeless people are profiled - and that’s a started his public Facebook statement on July big one - but also, about how their existence 16, decrying the new Independent Police itself is criminalized. Review investigation into whether the Right now, the suffering of the poor is Portland Police Bureau profiles people who conflated with the unnerving term are homeless. He “livability,” a term both the mayor and the ■ ■ listed frustrations police union president use. Livability for around the work that whom? Exactly. the police do with Really, it’s a combative term: it’s against homeless Portlanders, deeply poor people forced to live their lives lobbing much of his ire By Kaia Sand in the public. What would it be like if we at Mayor Ted Wheeler’ recalibrated the idea of livability to how My fear is that such livable the city is for the poorest of our a moment becomes a neighbors, and always acted from there? The heated drama between idea of livability could be connected, then, to prominent people wrapped up in the support of mental health and addiction defensiveness and blame, when the people services, shelters, and deeply affordable who really matter are the people who are housing. homeless. Their voices are not at the center. What if we were a city who were brave Because here’s the real mess I’m enough to redefine ourselves according to concerned aboift: the unforgiving tangle of the success of our poorest criminal justice problems residents? What if we were a for deeply poor people. city in which, 10 years from While the number of now, people visited to learn arrests that targeted What if we were a city about the courage we had in unhoused Portlanders last who were brave enough centering our poorest year was startling - 52 to redefine ourselves citizens? percent according to the according to the Because right now, the Oregonian- it also confirms the stories of people who success of onr poorest mayor allows the system to be complaint-driven in ways struggle on the streets. residents? What If we Last week we ran a series were a city In which, 10 that harm poor people. The One P oint of C ontact system of accounts of struggles y e a rs f r o m n o w , p e o p le is a place where enraged with police by Street Roots visited to learn about people can report campsites, vendors, and we could the courage we had In leading to camp sweeps. easily run many more, centering onr poorest Instead of allowing the I would suspect that loudest people to drive the many readers would agree citizens? dialogue, the city could that it is absurd and cruel prioritize de-coupling that on top of everything garbage services from police else unhoused people have work, expanding the Clean to deal with, they face far more legal hurdles than the rest of us. Start garbage pick-up service run by Central Daryl Turner should not resist an City Concern as a regular, reliable program. investigation into whether the police are Garbage services must be de-coupled from profiling people based on homelessness, the traumatic work of camp sweeps. because such profiling is illegal by state law, We need to let the mayor know that if he and the numbers demand accountability. An really centers the poor, lots of people have investigation can lead to changes that help his back, because he would have to ignore the officers act legally and responsibly - many angry voices. That’s why I co-sponsored something a police union should be for. the Petition for City of Portland to Adopt a But if he bristles over the public discussion Compassionate Response to Homelessness,” around the high arrest rates casting too which in one week garnered 2,000 much blame on individual officers, well, I signatures, and growing. Please, make your agree. These are systemic problems, and half voice heard. solutions are not OK. We need less politicking and half-solutions. I think we need a much larger We need to be all-in - and all-in for the right investigation. reasons. This should not be about I urge Mayor Wheeler to launch an appearances, but truth. If homelessness is investigation not just into profiling, but into visible - well, that’s because there are a lot this whole epidemic of arrests that target of people struggling with homelessness. And homeless people. for every tent and every person we see on As I wrote last week, there are many areas the streets, there are a host of others on the to tackle - including how court fines and fees target the poor and trigger more arrests; how cusp due to fragile economic, housing and health conditions. addiction should be treated as a public health Let us take moral responsibility for poverty - and not criminal - issue; and how many in a land of plenty. activities that are legal inside houses are Let Portland be a national leader in really illegal when people are unhoused. We need confronting how homelessness is to take all of this on. We need to go big. Because we need to not criminalized, and addressing it. To do this, we need less blame, less defensiveness, and only find out whether police activity is illegal, but also, what is wrong with the law that they more courage. B DIRECTOR'S DESK Kaia Sand is the executive director o f Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots. org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand Page 3 Write in ; If you would like Whove sortaci Executive Editor Joanne Zuhl at' 503-228-5657, joanne@streetroot$.org. We a$k'& <a| submissions include the author’s name and contact information, j j l | j ifa v a w e . Street Roots 2UNWDawsSt ' Portland, OR 97209 ■ 503-228-5657 ' Fax:503-227-3117 . ww.streetroots.org 111 www.news.streetroots.org Hours: 7:30 p«m. Mon.-Fri., 7:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Sat and 7:30-1 p.m. Sun. Advertising interested in advertising in Street Hoots? Email Andrew Hogan at andrew@streetroots.org Staff Executive Director Kaia Sand kaia@streetroots.org Executive Editor Joanne Zuh! joanne^treetrootsjorg Vendor Program Director Cole Merkel cole@streetroots.org Development Director Andrew Hogan andrew@streetroots.org / . ,: Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green Operations Director Sarah Beecroft Program Assistant Caelin Miltko, Jesuit Volunteer Vendor Assistant Scott Jackson, Alex Gillow-Wiles Development Assistant Rosemary Wilson Editorial Producer Monica Kwasnik Reporters Sarah Hansell, Leonora Ko, Emilly Prado, Ellena Rosenthal, Amanda Waldroupe, Thacher Schmid, DeVon Pouncey, Helen Hill Photographers Diego Diaz, Arkady Brown, Celeste Noche Canvasser Desmond Hardison Board of Directors Chair Rachel Langford Vice-Chair Dan Jones Treasurer Heather Stadick Secretary Alison Hallett Directors Michael Anderson, Sandra Hahn, John Brown, Nels Johnson Volunteers John Barker, Stacey Heath, Anjali Rathore, Dennis Hogan, Lucas Hawthorne, Thomas Buell-Jr., Jason Cohen, Doug Spangle, Susannah Kamala, Jon Raymond, Diana Richardson, Paul and Madeline Gefroh, Mary Anne Joyce, Brooke Anderson, Gillian Floren, Mark Oldani, Bianca Butler, Camber Hansen- Karr, Miranda Woods, Henry Brannan, Helen Hill, Mary Emerson, Brooke Anderson, Kathleen McFall, Robb Hengerer, Maile Yeats-Rowe, Erin Parsons, Faye Powell, Jon Raymond, Danny Moran and Megan Pickerel-Wirier. 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