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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (July 10, 1980)
Blacks and the Police in Portland caught in a dark alley with a Ku Klux Klansman." Donald W arren. a Black patrolman in North Precinct, also remembers those times. He was stopped by a large group of officers once when he was on the way to visit a friend. Rev. Jackson remembers those times, and believes promises made to the blacks have not been kept. For one thing, certain officers who were supposed to be removed from the area are now back, says Jackson, and fo r another, a promised police officer in Albina never appeared. Leon Johnson, now w ith a ffir mative action fo r M ultnom ah County, was a police officer then at age 22. “ It was a very interesting time fo r me to be on the depar tment,” he recalls. Hv Joyce Holes (i dilor's Note: This is the second part in an investigation o f Blacks and the police in P ortland. Last *eek, the Observer looked at some history and at the Black United fro n t's hotline. In this article, we look hack at turbulent times in the 60s which helped shape attitudes today, both among cops and citizens.) It was those turbulent times more than a decade ago that stick in the minds o f many. Portland had civil disturbances in 1967, 1968, and 1969, along with most o f the rest of the cities in the country. Memories o f what happened then vary, but it is clear those memories shape much o f today’s thinking. Newspaper accounts at the time list fires, rock-throwing, groups of young persons refusing to disperse. Former Chief McNamera is repor ted to have met with Albina citizens in August, 1968, who protested discrim inatory attitudes o f police patrolling the area. A pastor said he thought police were harassing Blacks. The Black Panther Party in December, 1969 took steps to tile an initiative petition that would set up separate (but presumably equal) police departments in each neigh borhood. A few weeks later, officer Stan Harmon (himself later the vic tim o f a sniper’ s bullet that left him in a wheelchair) shot a young man during an arrest outside the Panther headquarters. The paper (back in those days a paper could do this) listed the young man’s arrest record, which was a long one. A fte r one disturbance, some citizens criticized police for making a show of force in the neighborhood. In June, 1969, the papers list three successive nights o f violence resulting in dozens o f arrests, fire bombing, looting, and a police field headquar ters at M cD o n a ld ’ s on U nion Avenue with 15 cars operating from there. One result of the trouble was the formation o f the Ad Hoc Commit tee on Police Community Relations, which continued to meet under the leadership of Rev. Harper Richard son in a local church for the next ten years, but which has since disband ed. Jim Loving remembers those times. Now coordinator o f the King Neighborhood Facility, Loving still tells with feeling his encounter with local police during the riot o f 1968, when he and a friend were stopped after returning from the Portland Meadows race track. “ Unbeknownst to us here in the core area a rio t was goin o n ,’ ’ recalls Loving. He and his friend were stopped by 10 or 12 officers brandishing multiple weapons and demands for identification, which Loving and his friend produced. “ At that point they proceeded to try and provoke us,” he says, by asking inappropriate questions, such as an explanation for why Loving was sit ting in the back seat, and other things. Loving says the o ffice rs called him and his friend "a bunch o f smart niggers,” and a few other things. But a s ta n d o ff ensued. “ They were so anxious to catch somebody doing something. I guess there was a lot o f action going on. Blacks throwing rocks or bombs or whatever, but they done got away. Here comes a couple o f innocent Blacks, and they say, ‘ We d id n ’ t R O B ER T P H IL L IP S JIM LOVING catch us those guys, we gonna get us one nigger tonight.’ And that’s their approach, and that’ s their tactics that they done. And I’ m sure it still goes on.” Loving adds that he has a son, age 24, who has never done anything wrong but who has been arrested twice. Once, Loving believes it was the presence o f a white girl in the car that led to a stop and the ensuing discovery that the young man had a fishing ticket outstanding, resulting in arrest and a trip dow ntow n. Another time, the youth happened to be a lone Black standing in a building downtown when the bank next door was held up by another Black. “ Some Black done robbed the bank. (The cops) saw him, they ran and grabbed him, and drug him o ff to ja il. Attempted bank rob bery.” Loving’ s son's only purpose in being there was to visit a doctor. These experiences lead Loving to this conclusion: “ There is definitely racism in the P ortland police department. I wouldn’ t be parked in a dark street with a policeman for anything in the world. I ’d rather be DO N ALD W ARREN $100 total move in to vets. low down FHA, FHA 245, and conventional terms also, model open Sat. Et Sun. noon to 5 p.m. 32nd Ave. at Burton Road. Vancouver, Washington. Call for a showing anytime. 1^1 This Model -- 4 bedrooms with family room, 2 baths, brick fireplace, w/carpets, double garage, appliances, 10X20 concrete patio. Energy ef ficient with 10 year Home Owner Warranty. Price only $58,800 Other Models priced from $48,500 HAZEL DELL BRANCH 716DN E.99th Street Vancouver, W A 98665 Phone 206-574-1522 Vancouver or 503 241 3723 Portland, OR MINNEHAHA BRANCH 47 St. Johns Road Vancouver, W A 90661 Phone 206 694 8577 Vancouver or 503 223 8229 Portland, OR it like a gentlemen), and $200,000, the main accomplishment o f the unit was listed as its own survival. Robert Phillips, a Black social w orker and p o litic a l activist, remembers one aspect o f the project, the Seven o f Diamonds Club, he says was doomed from the start because of its location on the toughest part o f Williams Avenue, so that teenagers had to find their way into it among all the most un savory types o f street characters. P hillips ascribes this to typical bureaucratic bungling. Del. Janisse, who was not here then, was heard that the purpose of the PCR unit was to “ gather in telligence in fo rm a tio n from the com m unity.” C ertainly, the unit lasted not much longer than the troubles, and was disbanded by 1973. LEON J O H N S O N “ 1968, Portland’ s version o f the riots, which was several kids throwing rocks. I was a motorcycle policeman which made you a mem ber ot the tactical operations platoon, which means supreme asskicker job...kids were raising hell in the parks and Portland State and kids in the com m unity were throwing rocks and saying 'whitey go home'...and as a membr o f the motorcycle unit we were at the fore, the wedge...(I was) in a situation where not many Blacks ever get ex posed. A confined situation with a whole bunch o f white officers who are responding to a com m unity that’ s out that definitely does not like the police, and I guess it's just a verbiage that comes out o f all that. You just get to the point where you've had enough o f that shit. The white officers’ verbiage. ‘ What we got to do is go through some o f these parks and bust some o f these nigger’ s heads and all that and let them know who we are.’ ” Johnson doesn’t know if such talk was a fac tor in his quilting the department but he did. O ffic e r D w ight Ford was also here then. Speaking wryly: " I have not been pro-police all my life .” Stan Peters remembers it d if ferently. “ I was on motorcycles in the Black area during the riots over there when all the furniture stores were being burned up. There was a two-day period (when at the request o f Black leaders police withdrew, followed by worse trouble) and two days later the place was ablaze, so they called us back in again. When the riots were happening we had un to ld numbers o f Black citizens saying, ‘Get them punks and make them stop their nonesense' just like the people in the white areas...” One response to the troubled time in 1968 was the fo rm a tio rt o f a police community relations project with offices in Albina. The unit was supposed to have young Blacks working in it who would attempt to be liaison with the community. The City Council at the time expressed doubt publicly that as many as 20 qualified young Blacks could be found. Sgt. John Roe, who com manded the unit, was quoted in the paper as saying he thought all police were racist, a rem ark which probably sealed his fate. By 1972, after three bom bings and trans ferring Roe out (he later quit the bureau altogether, and was variously accused o f having been a poor a d m in istra to r and an em barrassment, but defended as having trememdous rapport with the street, a man who was called “ nigger lover” frequently but took Rev. Jackson believes the area gets more police attention than do other areas, a belief shared by many. Says Stan Peters: " I n this city last year, 40 percent o f the m ajor crimes were com m itted by Blacks, the m ajority o f those crimes were com m itted against Blacks...there has to be more atten tion given to that area. We know the people that are com m itting these crimes..,” N ational statistics appear to support Peters. Ebony magazine (August, 1979) reports that more Blacks were killed by other Blacks in the streets in 1977 than were killed in the entire nine-year Vietnam war. FBI numbers cited in the same magazine show that o f the 1,639 murder victims in 1977 between the ages o f 15 and 19, 702 were Black. Ot the 1.8 million persons under 18 arrested in 1977, 24.6 million were Black, as were 59 percent in this age bracket arrested for rape and 64 percent o f those arrested for rob bery. Young Blacks accounted for 53 percent o f those arrested fo r violent crime and 29 percent o f those arrested for property crimes. Also in 1977, 1.8 m illion juvenile offenders were arrested in this coun try and 80 percent were Black. Worse, 1976 131 o f every 1,000 Black households were burglarized, compared with 84 or every 1,000 white households. Fourteen of every 1,000 Blacks were robbed, com pared to six o f every 1,000 whites. However, the P ortland Police Bureau’s own annual reports seem to call these national reports into question, fo r the call districts (districts o f the city in which officers are assigned; for example, districts 561, 562, 571, 572. 621, 622, 631, 541, and 542 arc heavily Black areas; on the police radio, an officer is called by the number o f the district to which he is assigned) in the Black area are not the highest in the city in any category o f Part I, Part II, or Part III crimes. Part 1, II, and i l l are uniform crime repor ting categories defined by the FBI and have no relations to local laws. The 1977 annual report seems to point at district 22 in St. Johns, and at districts 731, 732, and 742 in the far southwest as the roughest and toughest in this city. However, the 1978 report, which lists the characteristics o f arrestees by age, sex, and race, seems to in dicate a disproportionate number o f Blacks arrested compared to whites. O f persons under 18 arrested in 1978, 4,670 were white, and 1,264 were Black, and 105 were other races. This means that 21 percent ot the arrestees were black A similar 21 percent of the arrestees over 21 were Black. W ith the last complete census more than a decade ago, accurate and believable data about the per centage o f Blacks in the Oregon population are hard to find, but it is known that 20 percent o f all the children in the Portland school district are non-white. This tends to show, when compared with figures above, that disproportionately more Blacks are arrested than whites. Estimates o f the percentage of Blacks in Portland range from six percent to 20 percent. The 1980 cen sus should provide more in fo r mation on this matter. The bureau’ s own report also shows that assaults on officers arc more like ly to occur in Central Precinct, the downtown and West H ills area, rather than in North, where most o f the Blacks live, at least in the 1977 report. The 1978 report shows officer assaults pulling ahead in North, with 38 percent of the assults occuring there, while in 1977 only 31 percent occured there. Officer assault is frequently given as the reason for more intensive and defensive police work. Says Commissioner Jordan: “ Most o f the assault on officers comes from the Black community. Given that mindset you’re going to treat Blacks differently. It's human nature to do that. Stan (Peters) and I debate this.” To a man, however, police o f ficers agree that there is more "ac tion” downtown, in the Skid Road area, than there is in North Precin ct, thus refuting the frequently aired charge that those officers who are fond o f "taking care o f business” w ill request North Precinct as an assignment. Interested in cu rre n t books a bo ut A fric a n Liberation? Visit: J O H N REED BOO K STO RE In the Dekum Building 519 S.W. 3rd Avenue Sixth Floor Or call: 227 2902 TOP ROUND ..CUBE STEAKS C H IE F B AK ER Chief Baker recalls PCR to have been a police adm inistration fad that swept the co u n try in those times. Not only do they tend to separate themselves from the rest o f the department, but they tend to foster good com m unity feeling toward their own unit while com m unity feeling tow ard police in general remains unchanged. Other police officers tend to leave com munity relations up to the special u n it, rather than undertaking anything themselves. For these reasons, Baker has no intention o f forming another similar program in Portland. The area where the old Seven of Diamonds club was has changed radically since those days. “ The Avenue” is no longer there, all the buildings at the corner o f Williams and Russell having been leveled, vic tim s o f federal urban renewal policies o f the day. "The Avenue,” which Baker calls one aspect o f "police cultural m yth,” or a con cept raising out o f police work, has moved to U nion, where periodic police e ffo rts net hundreds o f prostitutes and their customers. U nion s till shows scars o f the rio ts. There are boarded-up buildings and burned-out buildings, and vacant lots. Overlooked in the usual discussions o f Union are the effects o f building the northbound interstate freeway to the west, leaving the commercial strip without as many customers. The C ity o f Portland is presently beautifying Union with trees, a median strip, and new design. ALL M EAT NO WASTE FABRIC SOFTENER % oi. Bottle 5339 < Canti off Labal nr? IE N O W S I 41 Lu. 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