February 24, 2021
The
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INSIDE L O C A L N E W S
Week in Review
M ETRO
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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
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Arts &
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ENTERTAINMENT
C LASSIFIED /B IDS
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USPS 959 680
4747 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.,
Portland, OR 97211
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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
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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
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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.