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July 21, 2021
KairosPDX Leaders Swap Roles
C ontinued froM P age 3
lor’s from Brandeis Universi-
ty, where she played collegiate
basketball, and subsequently
completed a Fellowship in Poli-
cy Research at Harvard Medical
School.
Gardner, a master educator
with over 27 years of experience,
has worked with primary age chil-
dren as well as adult learners as an
adjunct professor and professional
development expert. She has been
co-leading KairosPDX as the edu-
cation director since its inception
and will continue to oversee all
educational innovation as well as
ensure the organization’s culture
and mission work hand-in-hand,
officials said.
“Zalika and Marsha are ex-
ceptional leaders and will take
the school, and all that it does
for kids, families, and communi-
ty to the next level of success,”
said Joe McFerrin II, president
and chief executive office of the
Portland Opportunities Industri-
alization Center, another school
serving the Black community
and other students of color in
north Portland.
New Ally for Change in Police Culture
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of eliminating it.
“I am very proud that The League
of Women Voters of Portland has
produced a deeply researched and
timely position on police account-
ability. Addressing the issues facing
many U.S. cities, it provides strong
recommendations for how Portland
can achieve a safe, just and equita-
ble public safety system,” said Deb-
bie Kaye, president of the League.
The organization said it enlisted
an all-volunteer 22-member com-
mittee to study police oversight
and accountability shortly before
George Floyd was killed in Min-
neapolis last year. The committee
reported that it reviewed 55 source
documents and interviewed 22
key stakeholders, including police
leadership, city council members,
state legislators and community
advocates.
The resulting 64-page study re-
port explained Portland’s history
of policing, the current process of
overseeing its police force, instanc-
es of inappropriate use of force by
PPB officers over the past 20 years,
and progress made so far on im-
proving Portland’s police oversight
and accountability system.
The new League report calls for
a reduction in use of force through
de-escalation and for alternatives
to armed police, such as using
unarmed, appropriately trained
civilian employees to respond to
certain calls. There is also a call
for enhanced transparency in the
scope and timeliness of releas-
ing police records, as well as for
strengthening civilian oversight
and community involvement.
The League is also support-
ing giving authority to oversight
groups to conduct independent
investigations of police miscon-
duct and to recommend discipline.
For more details, visit the Portland
League of Women Voters website
at www.lwvpdx.org.
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“I love you more than anything,
baby girl,” a sister, Shauna Harris
wrote on Facebook.
A cousin, Kyla Duncan, start-
ed a GoFundMe page to help the
family with the expenses of funer-
al services and a memorial.
“Makayla had the most conta-
gious smile you’ve ever seen, she
always wanted to have fun and be
around her family and friends,”
Duncan wrote on the page, adding
that Harris “was the most genuine
and kind hearted person you could
meet. She had a good soul and
definitely didn’t deserve this.”
She was also remembered by
Philip Humphrey, a Grant High
coordinator for Self Enhancement,
Inc., who described her as a “per-
sonality in such a small package,”
posting a photo on Instagram
showing him beside Harris at her
graduation last month.
Mayor Ted Wheeler and Police
Chief Chuck Lovell gathered the
media Saturday to respond to Har-
ris’ death and the latest in a string
of shootings. Both said they would
push hard for more officers and
resources for the Portland Police
Bureau, which has lost 125 sworn
officers in the past year and faces
new rounds of retiring officers in
coming months.
Last year, in the wake of sus-
tained protests against police bru-
tality and racial injustice and calls
to defund the police in favor of
better mental health and other so-
cial services to prevent violence,
Portland’s City Commission cut
some funding and disbanded a gun
violence reduction unit that also
drew criticism for unfairly target-
ing Black men and other people of
color.
Since then, Chief Lovell has
assembled new teams aimed at
curbing gun violence and solving
a rash of shootings through both
investigation and proactive inter-
vention before shootings happen.
Some residents, however,
question if that’s enough as the
city marked its 50th and 51st
homicides Saturday. There have
been about 570 shooting inci-
dents in Portland so far this year
— more than twice the number
recorded in the same time pe-
riod last year. Police have said
that about half of those shootings
were gang-related.
“We’ve had many years of
growth as a city and a shrinking
police force (and) you can only
go so long in that trend before
you hit a tipping point,” Lovell
said.
“If you go back to yesterday,
we’ve had 11 shootings incidents
resulting in 13 people injured or
killed — and that’s in a span of
38 hours. Not only is this shock-
ing, all these calls really tax re-
sources.”
Lovell said it was too ear-
ly to call Harris’ shooting death
gang-related.
He called on anyone who wit-
nessed the incident or had cell
phone video or photos of the area
before, during and after the shoot-
ing to contact police. No arrests
have been made.
“We all want to know what
happened and who did this and
why, and I pledge that more infor-
mation will come out as soon as
possible. Investigators think there
might be more victims and wit-
nesses who left the scene, which
is understandable given how terri-
fying and hectic that scene was,”
he said.
--Associated Press contributed
to this story.