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Volume XXXX, Number 9
Wednesday • March 3, 2010
bserüer
Scammers go after troubled
mortgages making
matters worse
see story on page 4
Committed to Cultural Diversity
•/community service
Legacy
Unmatched
TV anchor, councilman and
police officer broke barriers
Dick Bogle, a trail-blazing Portland jo u r
nalist and city com m issioner, died last
week at the age of 79, leaving behind a
legacy for breaking color lines.
Dick Bogle serving as a Portland Police
Officer in the 1960s.
Bogle served as one of the c ity ’s few
black police officers in the 1950s and 60s;
he was the first black reporter and televi
sion anchor for K ATU news, and was only
the second African Am erican to be elected
to the Portland City Council.
Dick Bogle a former television news anchor, city councilman and police officer,
A fter attending Oregon State U niver died last week at the age o f 79.
sity and Portland State U niversity, Bogle
joined the police force as a patrolm an ing Charles Jordan, the first African Ameri
1992.
can
elected
to
City
Council.
working in the detectives and intelligence
With more time on his hands, he turned
divisions during the 1950s. In an interview
After running into some troubles after his attention to a long-standing interest:
with the Portland Observer last year, Bogle a form er aide filed a sexual harassm ent jazz music.
said his reason for joining the force was claim against him, and allegations he didn’t
Bogle frequently wrote about jazz mu-
sim ple: he w anted to help others.
account for all of his travel expenses
continued
on page 4
The spirit to serve the public rem ained em erged, he lost his bid for re-election in
with him throughout his prodigious career
that spanned several professions before
bringing him back to the Police Bureau
where he worked part-tim e during his re
tirem ent on cold cases.
“That spirit of w anting to help never
leaves you, no m atter how old you get,”
Bogle told the Portland O bserver at the
time.
B ogle’s fam ily roots in Oregon extend
back to the 1840s and 1850s, when his
fam ily first m igrated to the territory. He
grew up in southeast Portland.
W hile a police officer, he worked part-
tim e as a reporter and jazz critic for the
Portland C hallenger and Portland Re
porter, both which are now defunct.
He was befriended by Bruce Baer, a
highly respected Portland reporter, whom
Bogle would later describe as “color blind.”
Baer would later help Bogle become the
first black reporter at a television news
station.
“T h ey ’re not going to think about hir
ing m e,” Bogle told the Portland O bserver
last fall while recalling the rigorous hiring
process that ended with Bogle turning in
his badge to work at the station in 1968.
He later took a jo b as an aide to City
Com m issioner M ildred Schwab in 1982,
which he used to make his own bid for City In 1 9 85 , Dick Bogle takes the oath o f office as a m em ber o f the Portland City
Council two years later to replace the retir- Council.