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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 24, 2021)
February 24, 2021 The Page 3 INSIDE L O C A L N E W S Week in Review M ETRO page 4 page 8 The Portland Street Response team doing outreach in the Lents neighborhood of southeast Portland. Street Team Dispatched First calls taken for non-police crisis unit O PINION page 14 Arts & page 15 ENTERTAINMENT C LASSIFIED /B IDS pages 18 USPS 959 680 4747 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Portland, OR 97211 PO QR code P ublisher : e ditor : pilot location because it is not supported with as many existing resources and services. Addition- ally, the volume of mental and behavioral health calls in Lents is outpacing the growth of similar calls in other parts of the city. “We all agree we need new and better responses to people suf- fering mental health crises. Port- land Street Response embodies and implements that agreement,” said Mayor Ted Wheeler. “Peo- ple in crisis and people who call 911 will be better served by this new option. Every call the Street Response team answers allows Police to respond to other high priority calls. The launch of Port- land Street Response is a win for Portland,” he said. Commissioner Jo Ann Hard- esty, Portland’s fire commission- er and an early champion of the Portland Street Response concept, said “The community asked for a non-police response to calls that don’t require an armed police of- ficer on site and we’re delivering. I couldn’t be more excited to see this team in action and to learn from this pilot period about how to make this program the best it can be.” Hardesty added, “It’s rare in modern times for a new branch of a public safety system to be cre- ated from scratch. It’s rarer still for a city department to be built by the people who will be benefi- ciaries of the program. After many months of methodical outreach, C ontinued on P age 6 Taking Aim at Gun Law Loophole Charleston survivor testifies before Oregon panel Established 1970 The Portland Observer welcomes freelance submissions. Manuscripts and photographs should be clearly labeled and will be returned if accompanied by a self addressed envelope. All created design display ads become the sole property of the newspaper and cannot be used in other publications or per- sonal usage without the written consent of the general man- ager, unless the client has purchased the composition of such ad. © 2008 THE PORTLAND OBSERVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT PERMISSION IS PROHIBITED. The Portland Observer--Oregon’s Oldest Multicultural Publication--is a member of the National Newspaper Association--Founded in 1885, and The National Advertising Representative Amal- gamated Publishers, Inc, New York, NY, and The West Coast Black Publishers Association The pilot Portland Street Re- sponse team, an innovative non-police dispatch to assist peo- ple experiencing houselessness or a behavioral/mental health crisis, has hit the streets for the first time. It happened last week as soon as the team started taking calls dis- patched from 911. The team includes a program manager, a firefighter/paramedic, a mental health crisis clinician, and two community health work- ers. Each member trained for the past month to prepare for calls. The team has been walking the Lents neighborhood since the be- ginning of the year, the pilot lo- cation, to introduce themselves to business owners and community members. Lents was designated as the Mark Washington, Sr. Michael Leighton Office Mngr/Clasfds: Lucinda Baldwin Admin.Coord.: Quayuana Washington C reative d ireCtor : Paul Neufeldt o ffiCe a sst /s ales : Shawntell Washington CALL 503-288-0033 • FAX 503-288-0015• news@portlandobserver.com ads@portlandobserver.com• subscription@portlandobserver.com Postmaster: Send address changes to Portland Observer, PO Box 3137, Portland, OR 97208 So many people are buying guns in Oregon these days that the state police are often unable to complete background checks in time, allowing the sales to proceed if the deadline isn’t met. A handful of Democratic law- makers have now put forward a bill in the Oregon Legislature that would close this loophole. It’s of- ten called the Charleston loophole because Dylann Roof was able to buy a gun that way, and then murder nine Black people at the Emanuel African Methodist Epis- copal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. “You have the power to prevent a similar act of violence here in Oregon,” Sharon Risher, whose In Oregon, it’s up to the state police to do a background check. And they are warning that they are overwhelmed. In 2019, the Oregon State Po- lice completed 276,912 back- ground checks, said Maj. Tom Worthy of the state troopers. In 2020, that total rose by 51% to 418,061. “We saw exponential growth that we’ve never seen before,” Worthy told a committee of the Oregon Legislature on Thursday. “I can tell you that the unit is not Sharon Risher staffed for that volume, and it mother and two cousins were would be impossible for us to stay killed in the church, said in virtual current based on our current em- testimony Thursday before the Or- C ontinued on P age 7 egon House Judiciary Committee.