B Y K E N N Y J A C O BY
44
ROD ADAMS IN
THE BOTTOM LEFT
HOLDS A SIGN TO
COMMEMORATE
THE DEATH OF
MICHAEL BRIGGS
PHOTO BY TODD COOPER
COUNTS OF HOMELESSNESS
Rod Adams will use the necessity defense
T
hree times last February, Eugene police officers
found Rod Adams, a 60-year-old homeless man,
lying in a sleeping bag downtown in the middle of
the night. They arrested, handcuffed and took him
to Lane County Jail each time, where he stayed for
three total days on trespassing charges.
Since Adams moved to Eugene nine years ago, police
have arrested him 40 times on 44 counts of being home-
less: trespassing, prohibited camping and violating park
rules lead the laundry list of minor crimes, plus warrant
arrests for missing scheduled court dates. Adams received
10 tickets last year, putting him in the top one percent of all
people cited last year.
Never has Adams been charged with a felony or violent
crime, but he’s been booked 15 times in Lane County Jail,
where he’s spent 32 nights, jail records show.
“And that’s only the ones they document,” Adams says.
“Every fucking day they’re in my face.”
Once a middle-class citizen, a disgruntled Adams
left his job in corporate America at a tech company and
stopped making payments on his home, which was repos-
sessed. He now spends his time documenting the “class
war” happening on the streets of Eugene. He’s become in-
famous for videotaping police interactions with homeless
people downtown.
Adams intervenes when he sees the unhoused being
harassed and often spews vitriol at officers. He’s posted
dozens of videos to his Facebook group, RE-volt, over the
past year, sometimes documenting officers ticketing sleep-
ing homeless people late at night and others times calling
the cops fascists.
Now, fed up with a justice system that penalizes be-
ing poor, Adams is taking his three recent criminal trespass
cases to jury trials, where he will invoke the “necessity de-
fense,” arguing he had no choice but to commit the crimes
because the city offered him no viable alternative.
It’s a rarely used — and rarely won — defense, and
Adams does not necessarily expect to win. But he says the
trials are “necessary work that has to be done” and only a
prelude to greater efforts to end criminalization of home-
8
May 25, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
lessness. He hopes it will encourage other homeless people
to do the same.
THE ‘SOFTKILL’
Adams is thin, about 5-foot-9 with blue eyes and an
untrimmed white ponytail and a beard. He wears a camo
hat and black combat boots and lives off his military pen-
sion — Eugene Weekly confirmed his veteran status —
but can no longer afford rent, healthcare and other basic
needs. Many of his possessions have been stolen, but he’s
managed to hang on to an Acer laptop and out-of-service
LG smartphone. Those, he says, will be stolen one day,
too.
Adams maintains a list of all the homeless people
who’ve died in Eugene and often invokes their names
when yelling at the cops. He counted 25 deaths in 2016
alone. Some he’s heard about from friends, others he’s seen
for himself — lifeless bodies under the bridges. One of
these days, he says, that’s going to be him.
“Many people are upset with me because I do yell at the
cops,” he says. “I say nasty, foul things to them. But they
take no responsibility for what they do to those people out
there, and those people wind up dead. So I absolutely will
never apologize for verbally abusing them.”
Adams plans to subpoena Eugene police chief Pete
Kerns in his upcoming trials to talk about compliance
training. He says police are trained to subject homeless
people — and all marginalized communities — to char-
acter assassination, dispossession and the psychological
inferiority. Adams calls it the “softkill.”
Ken Neubeck, a longtime local homeless advocate,
described Adams as “principled” and “fearless” — pas-
sionate about his beliefs, but frustrated at the slow rate
of change. Neubeck thinks a lot of Adams’ toughness and
prickliness toward the police is a product of his experience
on the streets.
“If you give him a chance, his whole voice changes,”
Neubeck says. “He’ll be sitting beside me in the car as a
passenger, and all the sudden he’s much more relaxed, and
he’s friendly. He’s talkative and respectful. I don’t think
there’s really a mean bone in his body, from what I’ve been
able to see.”
Wayne Martin, a retired pastor who housed Adams in
his basement for a week in 2013, says he has “great loyalty
to” Adams. He described him as a “poet,” giving eloquent
homilies about corporate demons and his belief in a sort
of agrarian democracy. He says he sees a fire light up in
Adams’ eyes when he “gets on a roll” while delivering a
speech.
“Rod has had to have strong legs to keep standing,”
Martin says. “He’s a whimsical guy and I think that helps.
I think he’s been really insulted a lot, both his intelligence
and his person. He’s in serious disregard about a system
that treated him badly.”
When police officers interact with Adams, he asks them
for their business cards. If they comply, he emails them
“The Package,” which consists of excerpts from three
philosophical texts that he says are the “minimum com-
prehensions necessary to address the failing state.” One
text asserts the main difference between the unhoused in
America and those in other countries is the public’s attitude
toward them.
Adams says no police officer has ever responded to Ad-
ams’ emails and lately they’ve stopped giving him their
cards.
Neubeck uses the term “structural classism” to describe
the systemic criminalization policies that Adams deems the
“softkill.”
In 2008, for example, the city established a downtown
public safety zone from which it could legally exclude peo-
ple convicted of certain crimes. But according to a 2010
police activity report, almost 60 percent of the people ex-
cluded were homeless. Neubeck says laws like Eugene’s
camping ban may not appear discriminatory — it prevents
everyone from camping in the parks, not just the homeless
— but that they “have a disproportionate negative impact
on people who don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“I think that’s what Rod is principally upset about,”
Neubeck says. “Not only does the city not offer enough
help to house people and provide them emergency shelter,