Portland observer., July 04, 2018, Page Page 16, Image 16

Page 16
July 4, 2018
Deadly Force Review
C ontinueD from f ront
ground during a struggle. The
PSU officers could be seen trying
to stop them from fighting and
commanding others to step back.
Washington can be seen trying
to stop the fight. The images show
a gun holstered on his hip — for
which it was reported he had a
legal concealed carry permit. He
then fell, with the gun underneath
him, at which point the person
recording the video stepped back
and other people blocking the
camera’s view of what happened
next. But one of the officers can
be heard saying “drop the gun,”
and then seen pulling out his own
firearm and shooting.
Multiple witnesses say Wash-
ington’s gun fall out of his holster.
When he went to pick it up, he
was shot, they said.
The outpouring of grief was
immediately palpable downtown
and on the web.
“I love you Dad! You didn’t
deserve this,” one message, appar-
ently from Washington’s daughter,
was scrawled on a pillar near the
shooting scene on Monday where
many messages of remembrance
were written.
Social media was lit up with
Cellphone video shows Jason Washington (with arms extended) trying to break up a fight outside a
Portland sports bar Friday. He was carrying a permitted weapon which fell from his holster. When he
tried to pick it up, Portland State University Police officers shot and killed him.
mourning as well.
“I need to say that Jason Wash-
ington has been a next door neigh-
bor, a fellow dad and one hellava
fine family man. That beautiful
smile and welcoming persona. It’s
a tragic loss of a truly good man.
Stunning,” Dave Marlin wrote on
Twitter Saturday.
“Love you so much Uncle #Ja-
sonWashington. You didn’t de-
serve this. RIP,” Washington’s ap-
parent niece, Kyah Lee, tweeted.
Washington’s brother, Andre
Washington, voiced his “disgust”
and mourning at a protest rally on
Sunday in which nearly 100 PSU
students, friends, family, and ac-
tivists called for the disarmament
of PSU officers.
Opposition to the creation of an
armed police force at PSU to re-
place non-armed security officers
has been in the consciousness of
many college students, faculty,
and civil rights activists since it
was first proposed in 2014.
Tom Hastings, a conflict reso-
lution professor at PSU, was one
of the most vocal opponents of
having armed officers on campus.
Now, he’s starting a petition to get
the policy reversed. He’s also call-
ing for the PSU board members
who approved of the policy to step
down in light of the shooting trag-
edy.
Hastings said he sadly was
not surprised to learn about the
circumstances of the shooting
through the cell phone footage and
news stories that have come out.
“It was exactly what we predict-
ed would happen when we argued
to board of trustees, PSU board of
trustees, not to do this,” Hastings
told the Portland Observer.
Hastings previously testified to
the board three times in opposition
to arming police. He was joined
by student group representatives
from organizations like Students
United for Nonviolence, the PSU
Student Union and the PSU Black
Student Union. A chorus of oppo-
sition eventually included the ma-
jority of PSU faculty and students,
he said.
The debate at the time was
heightened by the civil protests
across the county about other offi-
cer-involved shootings, especially
in the wake of the 2014 shooting
of Michael Brown in Ferguson,
Mo., and other instances of police
killing unarmed black men.
Hastings said it was “disem-
powering” that the university
moved forward with the armed
police policy, despite PSU facul-
ty and students “overwhelmingly”
opposing it.
“For them to just ignore all of
this and just go ahead and do it
was very discouraging and now
we see, damn it, the exact, horri-
fying, fatal consequence that we
voiced our repeated, strident, con-
cerns about,” Hastings said.
A PSU spokesperson even
unwittingly, ominously fore-
shadowed Friday’s shooting in a
statement he gave to the Portland
Observer nearly four years ago.
At the time, Scott Gallagh-
er, director of communications
at PSU,” presented the fictional
scene of a potential fight outside
the Cheerful Tortoise as an ex-
ample of an incident that would
benefit from fully accredited cam-
pus police officers being able to
respond off campus, unlike PSU
security which would have to wait
for Portland Police before taking
action.
After PSU implemented an
armed police force in late 2016,
it hired three experienced officers
of color to help bridge students’
concerns that deputized officers
would engage in racial profiling.
Hastings, who has been work-
ing for PSU for nearly 18 years,
said in the past, unarmed campus
security successfully conclud-
ed conflicts without any injuries
for the entirety of the universi-
ty’s history, even if suspects had
weapons.
“I think this can be undone. I
think it can be reversed. But it’s
going to take a lot of political
will on campus, a lot more than it
would’ve taken to stop it before it
launched,” he said.
An internal assessment and
evaluation, as well as a review of
PSU’s policies and procedures is
currently underway, according to
a statement released by PSU Pres-
ident Rahmat Shoureshi issued
Friday afternoon.
In addition, Portland Police Bu-
reau is conducting its own inves-
tigation.
“There are a lot of questions
and concerns about the shooting
on campus—the first time there’s
been an officer-involved shooting
on this campus” PSU spokesman
Chris Broderick told the Portland
Observer.
Happy Birthday
Love your family
Jamar Tarver
and Hirani Baldwin