January 14, 2015
M ARTIN L UTHER K ING J R .
Page 43
2015 special edition
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O PINION
Mayor and Council Step Back on Police Reform
City appeal should
be rescinded
D R .L E R OY H AYNES
While every major city
and various small cities
throughout the nation are
crying out for justice and
police reform, Portland
Mayor Charlie Hales and
the city commissioners
voted unanimously to
take a step backwards to
appeal a condition set by Federal Judge
Michael Simon to have annual periodic
hearings on the progress or non-progress
of the Portland Police Reform Settle-
ment Agreement.
Are we on the same Planet?
Civil disobedience is breaking out
throughout the nation, including Portland
saying “Enough is Enough,” calling for
an end to the use of excessive force by
police departments. Activists are saying
that “Black Lives Matter” as do the lives
of people with mental illness and the
lives of every citizen including those who
police our streets.
BY
Not since the civil rights and anti-war
movements of the 1960s have we seen
such a mass movement throughout
America.
Instead of the mayor and com-
missioners leading the way to cre-
ate a true community policing model
that will give the nation a solution on
how to reform a city police force
with all parties at the table, they
make a political decision out of self-
interest, rather than the public inter-
est, public health, and the moral
character of the city. They are
masking a legal argument over a re-
quirement to have hearings to report on
the progress of the reforms by asking for
“clarification” of the authority of a fed-
eral judge to review periodically the
implementation of the Settlement Agree-
ment.
In other words, they don’t want any
unbiased, independent authority like a
federal judge to review what they are
doing. They want to keep it under their
control in order to cover-up or not imple-
ment parts of the agreement.
What the mayor and city council just
don’t get is that the stakeholders and the
public do not trust them to put away
political self-interest over the public wel-
fare and moral character of the city.
Why? Because past city councils and
our present one have failed to do it.
The Police Reform Settlement Agree-
ment was initiated after a great outcry
from the citizens of Portland and led by
the Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition
for Justice and Police Reform and other
stakeholders. It followed a 10 year
struggle to reform the Portland Police
Bureau with such police shooting cases
as Kendra James, Jose Mejia Poot,
James Jahar Perez, James Chasse,
Aaron Campbell, Keaton Otis and many
others. Later a suit was filed by the U.S.
Department of Justice in response to the
voices for justice in the city.
The Justice Department determined
that Portland Police have engaged in
patterns and practices of using exces-
sive force against people with mental
illness or those perceived to have mental
illness.
The settlement was worked out by
involving parties from the Justice De-
partment, city of Portland, the Portland
Police Association, and the AMA coali-
tion. The agreement is not a panacea for
a final solution, but it offers a historical
opportunity to reform police training,
policies, practices, investigations, ac-
countability structures and other major
areas.
There was much public testimony on
the agreement before Judge Simon that
expressed feelings of mistrust and weak-
ness in the settlement, but the AMA
coalition believed that it still provided a
model toward true community policing
to create a “more perfect union” in our
city.
Now the Albina Ministerial Alliance
Coalition for Justice and Police Reform
along with other organizations have
launched a community grass-roots cam-
paign to have Mayor Hales and the City
Council rescind their appeal to the 9th
Circuit Court.
We should keep the periodical hear-
ings and push forward with all deliberate
speed in implementing the Settlement
Agreement that will create a model for
Portland and our nation.
Dr. LeRoy Haynes is chair of the
Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition
for Justice and Police Reform.
The Need for a Truth and Reconciliation Process
Healing from the
long history of
racial trauma
F ANIA D AVIS
The killings of
Michael Brown and
Eric Garner have
sparked a national out-
cry to end the epidemic
of police brutality against black men. I
believe our greatest hope lies in creating
a truth and reconciliation process—start-
ing in Ferguson, Missouri—that can get
to the roots of a long history of racial
trauma and open the way for healing.
I say this as someone with direct,
personal experience of the shock, pain,
and grief of racial violence.
I grew up on Birmingham, Alabama's,
"Dynamite Hill," so-called because of the
bombings of black families like ours who
moved into this previously all-white neigh-
borhood. The Ku Klux Klan killed two of
my close friends in the 1963 Sunday School
bombing at the16th Street Baptist Church.
In 1969, police broke into my home in
Del Mar, Calif.,, and shot and nearly killed
my husband—because of our involve-
ment with the Black Panthers. And in
1970, the government framed my sister,
BY
Angela Davis, on capital murder charges
in an effort to silence her calls for racial
and social justice.
I have also felt fury. I have been a
combatant in the civil rights, black power,
women’s, and most of the major social
movements of my time. I spent years
organizing an international movement to
save my sister from prison and possibly
execution. Later, as a civil rights trial
lawyer, I worked to protect people from
racial discrimination.
After more than three decades of fight-
ing, I felt burned out. I began studying with
African and other indigenous healers, and
this ultimately led me to the restorative
justice work I do today in Oakland, Calif.
Every day, I see teens of color coming
of age in a culture that criminalizes and
demonizes them. Black youth in the U.S.
are fatally shot by police at 21 times the
rate of white youth. Children of color are
pushed through pipelines to prison instead
of put on pathways to opportunity. Some
make it through this soul-crushing gaunt-
let. But many do not.
In Oakland we are seeing glimmers of
hope. A broad cross-section of the com-
munity, including police, is participating in
restorative justice trainings. Residents and
police are working together to keep chil-
dren out of prison. Racially inequitable
school suspension rates are decreasing.
Youth and police are sitting together in
healing circles, building new relationships
based on increased trust and recognition
of one another’s humanity.
A Ferguson Truth and Reconciliation
process could likewise bring our commu-
nities together to search for the truth about
the causes and consequences of police
violence, and for ways to put an end to the
killings. Youth, families, police, and com-
munities affected by the violence and allies
could partner with the federal government
to establish commissions in communities
throughout the country.
South Africa’s 1995 Truth and Recon-
ciliation Commission can be a guide. The
entire nation watched, riveted, as the trau-
mas of the previous decades were re-
counted, and apologies and calls for repa-
rations and institutional reform made.
Though far from perfect, South Africa’s
process is hailed for helping the country to
transition from apartheid to democracy
without bloodshed.
In communities across the United States,
a Truth and Reconciliation process could
create safe public spaces for survivors of
police violence to share their stories. Law
enforcement would have opportunities to
accept responsibility for their actions. Ev-
eryone involved could co-create plans to
“make things right,” including, for example,
official apologies, restitution, public me-
morials, police training and demilitariza-
tion, new police policies that prioritize hir-
ing community residents, new curricula,
etc. The stories told, truths learned, and
recommendations made would be shared
nationwide.
The commission's task would include
facing and beginning to heal the massive
historical traumas that damage us all but
take the lives of black and brown children.
The killings today are only the most recent
expressions of a long history of unhealed
racial traumas that reaches all the way
back to the birth of the nation. Changing
form but not essence over four centuries,
this history has morphed from slavery to
sharecropping and lynching, from Jim
Crow to convict leasing, to mass incar-
ceration and deadly police practices.
It’s time for us to take on this history, tell
the truth about how it continues to harm
our whole society, and respond with a
justice that heals. Taking a page from the
great Nelson Mandela’s book, a truth and
reconciliation process based on restor-
ative justice principles offers the greatest
promise. Let’s roll up our sleeves and start
the messy, challenging, but hopeful work
of creating a more just society.
Fania Davis is a civil rights attor-
ney and co-founder and executive
director of Restorative Justice for
Oakland Youth.