JUNE 22, 2018, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A3
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
A good start
Last week, a Keizertimes reporter
was invited to be part of the Keizer
Police Department’s Deadly Force
Review Board and then write
about the experience for newspa-
per readers. While the
invitation was accepted
quickly, it led to a lot of
soul-searching soon after.
Every time a police
offi cer uses deadly force
– even when there is no
fatality – a review board
is assembled to determine
whether the offi cers in-
volved acted within de-
partment policies. The incident un-
der review last week was the fi rst
time a Keizer offi cer’s actions re-
sulted in a death. It stemmed from
the armed robbery of a River Road
business in March that turned into
a vehicular chase that turned into
a standoff in a residential neighbor-
hood. The offi cer had already been
cleared of wrongdoing by a Marion
County grand jury. The Deadly
Force Review Board was assembled
to determine whether department
policy had been followed and if the
policies in place needed to be up-
dated as a result of the shooting.
After making the decision to
take part in the process, we consid-
ered questions such as: the ability
for the paper to continue report-
ing objectively on police activities;
the motivation of the Keizer Police
Department in extending the invi-
tation; and what to do if questions
we had during the review went un-
answered.
We understand that readers
might have different answers than
the ones we arrived at – and we
probably agree with many of them
– but we also felt the downsides
were outweighed by one aspect of
the discussion: this was the fi rst time
a civilian, much less a representative
of the media, had been given ac-
cess to the process the Keizer Po-
lice Department follows after using
deadly force. That is a good start.
The review board worked pri-
marily from a summary report,
but had access to notes from the
original investigation, crime scene
footage and photos, testimony from
multiple offi cers in front of a grand
jury and autopsy reports. Through-
out the process, the four members
of the Keizer Police Department
on the review board answered
questions or accessed relevant in-
formation from a voluminous stack
of paper and video record without
hesitation.
Given that police departments
are generally viewed as having a
“blue wall of silence” regarding ac-
tions members of the public could
fi nd questionable, the transparency
on display was commendable. It ap-
pears, in this instance, the offi cer
not only met but exceeded many
of the guidelines set forth in pol-
icy. However, the one unanswered
question is how much of the infor-
mation had been reviewed by other
offi cer-members of the board prior
to extending the invitation to the
newspaper. While the representa-
tives of the department,
aside from the board
chair who assembled the
summary document, ap-
peared to be reviewing
much of the information
for the fi rst time, we are
simply not certain.
Regardless, this is
a good start. Inviting
members of the public to
have a voice in reviewing instances
when deadly force is used is es-
sential to maintaining the trust of
the people whose faith in offi cers’
intentions is what gives the depart-
ment, as a whole, its power. While
this instance appeared to our re-
porter to be in accordance with de-
partment policy, there may come a
day when an offi cer’s actions are not
so clear-cut. Allowing civilians, not
necessarily media, to have a voice
in reviewing the facts of such a case
might have negative consequences
in the short-term, but it could also
help turn the tide of negativity that
often follows closed-door processes.
Law enforcement offi cials must also
be open to adjusting policy in the
aftermath of questionable fi ndings.
Moreover, members of the
Keizer Police Department should
be talking about the outcomes of
this process with their brethren and
sistren in blue. Police departments
around the country are feeling
extra pressure these days as a long
string of seeming abuses of power
fi ll local and national media streams.
We know this takes a toll on po-
lice offi cers equal to the frustration
felt by the public. It is quite likely
that Keizer Police Department ad-
ministrators are hoping that this
is one small step in reversing that
trend. It is. But Keizer Police Chief
John Teague is a highly-respected,
and involved, fi gure at the Depart-
ment of Public Safety Standards and
Training that every Oregon offi cer
and administrator turns to for estab-
lishing and learning best practices.
It is incumbent upon him and his
department’s employees to motivate
other police departments to follow
KPD’s lead.
No one begins life distrusting
law enforcement offi cers. It is an
attitude cultivated through experi-
ences lived, shared by others and in
the absence of information to the
contrary. Just as we shouldn’t judge
a book by its cover, the entirety
of the law enforcement cannot be
judged solely by bad actors within
the ranks. Opening up the deadly
force review process to civilians at
Keizer’s police department is one
way to counteract the swell of neg-
ativity, but it cannot be the end.
our
opwnwon
Inside immigrant detention
I met Helena once. We sat on op-
posite sides of a long table, a small
wooden partition separating us. I in-
troduced myself as from a nonprofi t
that organizes visits to people in im-
migration detention. And then, she
told me her story.
Her birthday was coming up. She is
from Cameroon; the Central African
country is on the brink of civil war.
She fl ed the country af-
ter being targeted for her
involvement in the in-
dependence movement.
She came to America to
seek asylum, to be safe.
And then we locked
her up.
I don’t know what
happened to Helena. I
wrote her after our visit, wishing her
a happy birthday. She wrote back, but
after that I didn’t hear from her again.
I hope we granted her asylum, let her
start her life again. I hope we did the
right thing. I hope.
Not enough is known about im-
migrant detention. People who come
to this country without proper docu-
mentation often fi nd themselves de-
tained, either because Immigration
and Customs Enforcement picked
them up after years of living in the
U.S. or because they surrendered
themselves to Border Patrol upon
reaching the border, hoping America
would be the home of the free, the
brave, and the merciful.
We disappoint them.
Immigrants spend months in de-
tention, waiting for hearings about
their asylum applications and their
deportation appeals. Detention is not
for criminals—any immigrant, docu-
mented or undocumented, will end
up in regular prison for
criminal offenses. Deten-
tion is for those waiting
to see if they can stay in
the country. But they’re
treated like criminals—
held in the same facili-
ties, dressed in the same
jumpsuits, fed the same
food. Except, because
they’re not citizens, they retain no
right to a lawyer. Detention is not
supposed to be punitive. But it is. You
can see it on the tired, pleading faces
of those who have to endure it.
In detention, we treat immigrants
like the world’s trash, unwelcome
both in their home countries and in
the U.S. We justify this treatment in
the rhetoric we use to talk about im-
migrants. Dehumanizing terms like
“illegal alien” allow us to distance
ourselves from the human lives at
stake. I mean, what is an illegal alien?
That term doesn’t conjure a picture
casey
chaffi n
Failures of leadership
Our presidents, one after another,
have demonstrated lack of suffi cient
ability to handle the awesome burden
to which they were elected. Mean-
while, this writer is not convinced
that it’s a woman as U.S.
president who’ll necessarily
save us. Perhaps the most
able computer in America
should be programmed to
build a robot that could
succeed where mere mortals
have failed.
The way we’re being led
now is simply not working.
As far as the current president is con-
cerned, the media should be advised
to give up the pretense of treating his
behavior as something to analyze on
anything resembling rational grounds.
Having watched and listened to Don-
ald Trump for the past 16 months has
led to the conclusion that his behavior
results from a serious personality dis-
order. Reporters should back off from
their amateur psychiatrics and avoid
any further nonsense.
There was much less of the phony
Freudian stuff during Obama’s two
terms as he patently revealed himself
as one who wanted to be loved too
much by all members of Congress
while the nation’s racists prospered
mostly undeterred. Obama could have
worked to slay the beast of intolerance
but chose to turn a blind eye to preju-
dice that most Americans would pre-
fer to see as gone as the KKK and the
oft-used Red Scare lies.
Previous
presi-
dents have also let us
down. George W. Bush
was ruled by a hawk
vice president and other
hawkish members of
his cabinet. Bill Clin-
ton found more time
to dally in extra-marital
affairs than pursue the nation’s fester-
ing issues. George H.W. Bush made
promises he couldn’t keep. Jimmy
Carter chose to work alone without
members of Congress and thereby was
ineffective. Ronald Reagan was more
interested in getting even with pro-
gressive-minded Americans he viewed
as his enemies so became an engine
that delivered America’s 19th centu-
ry-minded-ultra-conservatives into
power. Richard Nixon was power-
crazed and sought absolute control at
the price of seriously threatening the
U.S. democracy. And so on.
The current president has become
a textbook study in what looks an aw-
ful lot like mental illness. President
Trump’s facts-free, self-centered, self-
aggrandizing, dangerous and patho-
logical narcissism appear to be getting
progressively worse. His reality was re-
cently exposed in the Singapore sum-
mit meeting with North Korea’s Kim
Jong Un and found wanting in the
extreme. Hence, the nation is rapidly
escalating into a high-risk place as the
president’s grandiosity and paranoia
gather more and more steam to reach
what may be nonstop levels of rule
by authoritarian means. His repeated
praise of Kim Jon Un for total sub-
servience by his subjects and that he’s
a smart and great leader does nothing
but alarm.
We play in this country now with
an all-consuming confl agration that
could burn this country to charcoal on
barren ground. Why more among us
do not demand a person in the White
House who proceeds with thoughtful
and exhaustively prepared decisions
in concert with counsel from the best
minds among our 320 million citizens,
leaving the use of tweets to the silly
and mindless wit nothing better to do,
leaves this writer to conclude that it
matters not to many among us wheth-
er our ideal of liberty and justice for
all can survive here.
Bring back
cursive
that cursive be preserved
and taught. And with little
resistance from law mak-
ers, school districts saw
the elimination of cursive
from the curriculum as an
easy target. Lastly, we the
tax payers failed to pro-
vide suffi cient funding for
schools to keep teaching cursive.
Cursive reading and writing is good
for the young developing brain. In
learning cursive, a young person de-
velops a unique and formal style that
remains with them for all of their
life. There is a certain beauty to long-
hand.
Older people who were taught
cursive generally remember it as one
of the more enjoyable periods in the
school day. The lesson provided imme-
diate tangible results and reward. And
it was fun!
Education (school) should be about
preparation for the many aspects of life
and not just job and career skills. Let’s
ask our legislature to bring back cur-
sive. And if a dedicated and focused
tax is necessary to fund it, let’s all be
willing to pay for it.
Jim Parr
Keizer
gene
h.
mcwntyre
Keizertimes
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RECEPTION
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Random Pendragon
Casey Chaffi n
facebook.com/kewzertwmes
twwtter.com/kewzertwmes
of your next-door neighbor. We talk
about undocumented immigrants
like they’re little green men who
were too lazy to apply for a visa. But
that’s just not true. Undocumented
immigrants are human beings with
lives and families and stories we can’t
even imagine, and who just couldn’t
wait 20 years for their visa application
to be processed. When human lives
are in the balance, we need to think
past “legal” and “illegal.” We need to
think in terms of kindness and justice.
I’d like to believe the human spirit
bends toward empathy. I’d like to be-
lieve we can fi x this. I’d like to be-
lieve we can treat humans as humans
and burn the paperwork. But that’s
not the national trend as of now: A
system that already detains hundreds
of thousands of people every year,
according to the Detention Watch
Network, is expanding under the
Trump Administration. That’s why
you, registered voter, need to educate
yourself. Learn more about what im-
migration detention is, how much of
your tax money goes to fund it (hint:
a lot), and what alternatives to deten-
tion exist for those between legal sta-
tuses. FreedomForImmigrants.org is
a good start. Now please, go and be
kind.
(Casey Chaffi n is interning with the
Keizertimes this summer.)
letters
To the Editor:
A recent study found
that many young school
kids cannot read the Con-
stitution as it was writ-
ten. They also could not
read a letter sent to them that was
written in “longhand”. In other
words, a young person would not be
able to read a letter written to them by
their grandmother because they can’t
read or write cursive. They call it “that
strange writing.”
Ending the teaching of cursive was
an unfortunate decision and there is
plenty of blame to go around. The tech
industry told educators that young
people will not need cursive in the
future. After all, they will have their
devices. Our legislature failed to insist
(Gene H. McIntyre lwves wn Kewzer.)
Thanks to everyone
To the Editor:
Truth Tabernacle Church and
Truth Tabernacle Christian Academy
would like to express our gratitude to
the communities of Salem and Keizer
for their donations to our 19th annual
30 Kilometer Bike-A-Thon that was
held on May 12. It was a tremendous
success and we thank you for your
support.
Jessica Anderson, secretary
Truth Tabernacle