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‘City of Roses’
Volume XLV
Number 42
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • October 19, 2016
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
Police officers push activists out of Portland City Hall in a violent confrontation captured in a public Youtube video from Oregonlive.com. The protesters were upset about
a closed-door City Council session in which a new police union contract was ratified, a labor agreement that the racial justice activists say let police off the hook over
demands for more accountability.
Battle Lines Grow
C ervante P oPe
t he P ortland o bserver
Racial justice activists calling for more
police accountability and trust between
law enforcement and the community are
not letting up on a series of protests after
losing a battle with the Mayor and a vote
before the City Council on the passage of a
new police union labor contract.
When police were ordered to remove
protesters from City Hall last Wednesday,
a violent encounter ensued with officers
deploying pepper spray and pushing a
large group of activists out of the building.
Police blamed protesters for throwing pro-
jectiles at them and 10 arrests were made.
Over 70 activists then took their con-
cerns directly to Mayor Charlie Hales’
by
southeast Portland residence over the
weekend by pitching tents on the planting
strip in front of his Eastmoreland home and
pledging to stay on the property until he re-
signs.
“I have no interest in continuing to meet
with Charlie Hales,” says Don’t Shoot
PDX spokesman Greg McKelvey. “After
what I saw him do last week I have lost all
respect for his morals.”
In the clash at City Hall some of the pro-
testors, many of them women, can be seen
being thrust to the ground by officers, as
other activists try to assist them amid the
chaos.
The situation got much worse when of-
ficers started pepper spraying patrons but it
was the lack of ambulance assistance and
No let down in fight
for police reforms
interference from Hales that McKelvey
feels was the worst outcome of all.
“We looked up at City Hall and there
was Mayor Hales watching down with no
emotion on his face. Someone waved at
him and he waved back,” says McKelvey.
“We need politicians who will run outside
of City Hall and help the injured get to
safety, not ones who direct a militarized
police force to beat women and children.”
The activists do have allies inside city
government from City Auditor Mary Hull
Caballero and the director of Portland’s In-
dependent Police Review Board, Constan-
tin Severe, who say that ratifying the police
union contract was a lost opportunity to ad-
dress issues relating to police accountabil-
ity in Portland, independent police reviews
and drafting a body-worn camera policy.
Hales won the support of City Commis-
sioner Nick Fish and Amanda Fritz to pass
the police union contract, in part because
of his urgency to hire new police officers to
fill positions left vacant by retirements and
departures to higher paying jobs. The new
contract promises a nine percent pay raise
for current officers and higher starting rate
for new officers. It also gets rid of a contro-
versial 48-hour restriction on interviewing
officers in police use of force incidents and
other administrative investigations.
As McKelvey and others from the
Don’t Shoot PDX and local Black Lives
Matter movement see it, not only should
C ontinued on P age 4