Page 6
February 10, 2021
Vaccine Signups Outrun Supply Officials Respond to
Spike in Shootings
C onTinued from P age 3
cine rollout — overwhelming the
hotline.
Health officials have encour-
aged Oregonians to text, call or
email 211 or 1-866-698-6155
for information about receiving
the vaccine. People can also text
ORCOVID to 898211 to receive
updates.
On Monday, the health au-
thority launched an online tool,
getvaccinated.oregon.gov, where
caregivers or family members
of Oregon seniors can go to help
their elderly family member sign
up for a vaccine.
Elderly people living in Clack-
amas, Columbia, Marion, Mult-
nomah or Washington counties
are urged to use the state’s vaccine
information chat bot tool, on the
oregon.gov website, to schedule
vaccine appointments.
Along with mass vaccination
sites, vaccines will also be ad-
ministered to local practices and
public health facilities, drive-th-
ru centers, mobile sites and 133
pharmacies across the state.
“In coming days, we know
there will be more demand for
vaccinations and for answers to
questions than we may be able to
provide,” Oregon Health Author-
ity Director Patrick Allen said
Monday. “My promise to older
Oregonians is this: if you want
a vaccination, you will get one.
But it may not be tomorrow, this
week or even two weeks from
now. But you will get one.”
C onTinued from P age 3
Council getting rid of the Gun
Violence Reduction Team axed
last year under criticism it target-
ed Black men. Lovell said he be-
lieves it helped prevent shootings.
Wheeler said he supports
creating the new 24-hour, sev-
en-day-a-week Portland police
team led by a sergeant with four
officers and two detectives to re-
spond to shootings. His remarks
came more than a month after
in
Elevating Justice Portland
C onTinued from f ronT
Advertise with diversity in
The Portland Observer
Call 503-288-0033
email ads@portlandobserver.com
Schmidt said there has been
progress in civil rights, but that
we still have a long way to go. He
pointed to work he had with lead-
ers like the late state Sen. Jackie
Winters, a Black representative
from Salem who built her roots in
business fin Portland, to look for
solutions to systemic racism.
“This summer drove home for
me the fierce urgency we all need
to feel around this work, but there
is more left to do,” he said.
Schmidt, who served as a depu-
ty district attorney in Multnomah
County for 12 years before tak-
ing on the top job and served as
executive director of the Oregon
Criminal Justice Commission,
said Conviction Integrity Units
are being used in 45 jurisdictions
across the country to improve ra-
cial justice outcomes.
According a draft proposal
for its creation here, “CIUs are
well-established vehicles for re-
viewing and, when necessary and
appropriate, seeking to overturn
convictions when there is evi-
dence of actual innocence, pros-
ecutor or law enforcement mis-
conduct, or other considerations
that undermine the integrity of
the conviction.”
The CIU as Schmidt proposes
will add a deputy DA to work on
questionable convictions, and a
second one to work on expung-
ing records of eligible people and
look at fine and fee forgiveness
where appropriate.
Schmidt said the unit will also
pursue legislative changes to al-
low petitions to bring people
back to court for re-sentencing,
allowing the accused to have
their sentences reviewed “when
they are no longer necessary for
public safety and are needlessly
long or punitive.”
The proposal also includes hir-
ing one paralegal and bringing
in law students to help with the
extra work, as the draft proposal
states, “to promote the concept
that the work of pursuing justice
for a prosecutor does not stop at
sentencing, but continues on in
the pursuit of maximizing legiti-
macy for public safety.”
Schmidt said he is also work-
ing with Portland Police Chief
Chuck Lovell to look at ways to
make the criminal justice system
more accountable.
“I want to build trust and ac-
countability in the system beyond
a conviction and a sentence,” he
said.
But that doesn’t mean Schmidt
is soft on crime.
“No amount of property dam-
age or violence is acceptable,” he
said.
Schmidt is also concerned with
excessive juvenile incarceration,
pointing to the negative impacts
of mandatory sentencing laws as
another impetus for the creation
of the Conviction Integrity Unit.
In his election acceptance
speech, he referred to a clemency
petition from a young man who
committed armed robbery as a
Lovell proposed such a team.
The city recorded 55 ho-
micides in 2020, the highest
number in 26 years. Forty-one
of those resulted from gun vio-
lence.
Police efforts to stem the vi-
olence have also been hampered
by the loss of 100 officers who
have left the Portland Police Bu-
reau over the past year. Most of
the officer retired and have not
been replaced. The department
has about 900 officers.
teenager, and who in the many
years since has completed every
rehabilitation program available
to him. It pointed to someone that
will have to spend the last months
of his incarceration in an adult
prison under current laws, which
Schmidt says is just wrong.
He went on to say “Multiple
studies have shown that a juve-
nile who enters the adult system
is immediately vulnerable to
violence and pro-criminal peer
pressure. For this young man,
the sentence not only fails to fit
the crime, it may make us all less
safe.”
Schmidt said that before go-
ing to law school, he taught high
school in New Orleans for two
years and observed the “school-
to-prison pipeline” first-hand,
which opened his eyes and ex-
panded his perspective on justice
issues.
According to the Annie E. Ca-
sey Foundation, there are 60,000
young people sent to jail by ju-
venile courts, with nearly half in
long-term correctional facilities.
“There’s compelling evidence
that locking up low-risk youth
offenders doesn’t reduce further
offences,” the foundation web-
site states. “It wastes taxpayer
dollars, and exposes young peo-
ple to high levels of violence and
abuse.”
Because studies show that
Black children and other chil-
dren of color are more likely to
be disciplined and expelled from
school, they become fodder for
the prison pipeline. According to
the Equal Justice Initiative, as of
2015, African American young
people comprised 44 percent
of juvenile prison populations,
while they are only 16 percent in
the general population.
“New Orleans it was very
eye-opening, to see that crimi-
nal justice system, and growing
up, what it meant for me — a
white kid in upstate New York —
not getting worked up about the
principal calling police on me,”
Schmidt said. “It was just deten-
tion.”