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Asian Reporter Banquet
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“The City and BSK recently agreed to
mutually terminate a grant agreement to
fund three street level gang outreach work-
er positions,” says Antoinette Edwards,
director of the Portland’s Office of Youth
Violence Prevention.
“These very important three gang out-
reach workers have been placed within the
portfolio of Portland Opportunities Industri-
alization Center (POIC), another City
grantee that already oversees other gang
outreach workers. We’re very pleased that
Tonya Dickens said the
nonprofit would
continue its gang
outreach work, paid or
unpaid
POIC can provide a seamless transition for
these workers.”
Justice
improve outcomes. Sessions examined
crime data; school discipline; the overrepre-
sentation of poor children and children of
color; debates over sentencing policies; the
science of child development; child mental
health; and media coverage of youth crime.
Speakers included judges, attorneys, former
youth prisoners, a police chief and advo-
cates.
Carrion discussed the costs of incarcera-
tion and its consequences. Youth from the
inner city were sent to upstate prisons hun-
dreds of miles away from their families.
And Department of Justice investigations
into the state’s prisons found widespread
abuse of incarcerated youth.
“It now costs $260,000 a year to
keep a young person incarcerated in
the state of New York– with terrible
outcomes,” she said. “So we are
working closely with communities to
create programs that serve the needs
of young people.”
The Oregonian has just published
an exposé of years of sexual abuse of
inmates at Coffee Creek Correction-
al Facility. Coffee Creek is an adult
prison, but youth also were processed
through the prison. The Partnership for
Safety and Justice, a nonprofit advocacy
group has urged youth who went to Coffee
Creek to speak out about their experiences.
Carrion said her greatest challenge was
opposition from public service unions,
because the initiative cut 1000 jobs in the
communities where youth prisons were
sited. To overcome the objections of special
interest groups, the state found ways to con-
vert the former prisons to new uses. Experts
who spoke touched on several national
issues that The Skanner News has covered
locally, such as: community efforts to pre-
vent youth violence, the “schools to prison
pipeline,” and restorative justice initiatives.
This year, Oregon’s Commission on Pub-
PHOTO
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The Asian Reporter Foundation’s 14th Annual Scholarship and Awards
Banquet featured special recognition of the four “Most Honored Elders”
as well as community volunteer awards. Thirteen scholarships for $1,000
were given to local youth. Here, Most Honored Elders Dr. Angelito
Saqueton, Dr. Bolyvong Tanovan, Fred Wong and Wing Louie are
surrounded by participants in the festivities, held Friday night at Legin
Restaurant. The newspaper honored its publisher, Jaime Lim, for his years
of service to the community. Guests included The Skanner News Publisher
Bernie Foster, former Sen. Avel Gordly, human rights activist Kathleen
Sadat, and more.
the Partnership for Safety and Justice, say
now is a good time to examine youth
justice policy. Violent crime has
dropped, yet the last decade has seen
Oregon jails hold record numbers of
inmates. And while numbers of pris-
oners have doubled, costs have
tripled.
As readers of The Skanner News
will know, African American, Latino
and Native American youth are over-
represented at every stage of our
justice system. That’s true nationally and
it’s also true in Oregon.
Multnomah County is known nationally
as a place of progressive policies – for
example, keeping youth offenders in youth
facilities until they are 25 years old. How-
ever, 25 of Oregon’s 36 counties send youth
to adult jails along with those arrested after
age 18.
Oregon teens charged under Measure 11
must be tried and sentenced as adults if they
are 15 or older. Last year, for example, a
Hillsboro teen who committed a murder at
age 13, was sentenced as an adult to 30
years to life with no possibility of parole
before 30 years. Notably too, this summer
the United States Supreme Court will rule
on whether sentencing teens to life with no
possibility of parole constitutes cruel and
unusual punishment.
occupants of the vehicle, and thus without
sufficient suspicion on which to base the
stop,’’ the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit says the Border Patrol’s
behavior in Washington state is similar to
that of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s
Office in Arizona, which the Department of
Justice recently condemned.
One of the chief arguments in the lawsuit
is that similar behavior in the 1980s by
immigration and Border Patrol agents in the
Yakima Valley was deemed illegal by a fed-
eral court in eastern Washington, which
George W. Bush ordered U.S. Customs and
Border Protection, which oversees the Bor-
der Patrol, to beef up its presence on the
U.S.-Canada border, which is almost twice
as long as the U.S.-Mexico border.
In 2007, the northern border had nearly
1,100 agents. Now it has more than 2,200.
In the same period, the number of agents in
the Blaine sector, which covers the border
area west of the Cascades, went from 133 to
331.
Over the years, Border Patrol enforce-
ment practices common on the southern
border, such as highway checkpoints,
have been implemented along the
northern border, miffing residents on
the Olympic Peninsula, the area’s con-
gressman and an U.S. Senator and
local authorities. Agents cut back on
road and ferry checkpoints after objec-
tions mounted.
Tensions rose last year after a forest
worker drowned following a foot chase with
a Border Patrol agent. The Mexican nation-
al jumped into a frigid river to elude the
agent. His body was found entangled in
roots three weeks later.
The Olympic Peninsula is home to rural
towns around the edge of the 1,441-square-
mile Olympic National Park. Many
immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala
have moved there to work in the forests
picking salal, an ornamental leaf.
Oregon’s Commission on Public
Safety will be continuing to look
at how to reduce costs in the
state’s $1.4 billion corrections
budget
lic Safety will be continuing to look at how
to reduce costs in the state’s $1.4 billion
corrections budget. Reform groups, such as
ACLU
continued from page 1
Border Patrol spokesman Richard Sinks
said U.S. Customs and Border Protection
``strictly prohibits’’ profiling on the basis of
race or religion.
``In determining whether individuals are
admissible into the United States, CBP uti-
lizes specific facts and follows the
Department of Justice’s `Guidance Regard-
ing the Use of Race by Federal Law
Enforcement Agencies,’’’ Sinks said.
The agency has said it is following its
mandate to enforce the country’s immigra-
tion laws and protect the border and
shoreline from terrorists, drug smugglers
and other illegal activity.
But one of the plaintiffs says Border
Patrol agents stopped him numerous times,
even though he’s a U.S. citizen.
Jose Sanchez, a prison guard at Olympic
Corrections Center in Forks, Wash., said
agents have followed him home and ques-
tioned him when he’s with his family. In one
instance, they told Sanchez they were
pulling him over because his windows were
too dark, but they didn’t ask for his car
insurance or registration, the lawsuit says.
Another plaintiff is Ernest Grimes, a
prison guard at Clallam Bay Corrections
Center and a part-time police officer from
Neah Bay, Wash. Grimes said a Border
Patrol agent pulled him over last year.
According to the lawsuit, the agent
approached Grimes, who is black, with his
hand on his weapon while yelling at him to
roll down his window.
The agent provided no reason for the traf-
fic stop while he interrogated Grimes about
his immigration status, the lawsuit alleges.
Grimes was wearing his guard uniform at
the time.
The third plaintiff, 18-year-old Ismael
Ramos Contreras of Forks, was with a
group of friends when four agents pulled
them over. The lawsuit says one of the
agents tried to take the keys out of the igni-
tion and interrogated the teenagers but
never provided a reason for the stop. Ramos
also was asked for his immigration status
outside a courthouse in Forks.
``The Border Patrol’s actions
have created a climate of fear and
anxiety for many people living on
the Olympic Peninsula. The resi-
dents in this suit all are U.S.
citizens who worry that they could
be stopped and questioned without
reason any time they drive or are
passengers in cars,’’ said Sarah Dunne, the
ACLU’s legal director.
The lawsuit says traffic stops by Border
Patrol agents violate the Fourth Amendment
and exceed the agency’s legal powers. It
seeks to bar such stops until agents are
trained on what constitutes reasonable sus-
picion.
Border Patrol agents ``have implemented
a practice of stopping vehicles or participat-
ing in vehicle stops based on a hunch or
intuition, including stops based solely on
the ethnic and/or racial appearance of the
One of the plaintiffs says Border
Patrol agents stopped him
numerous times, even though
he’s a U.S. citizen
issued a statewide injunction.
The suit also asks the court to require that
agents file paperwork justifying each traffic
stop and make it readily available to a court-
appointed special master. The lawsuit is
seeking a class-action status.
ACLU of Washington spokesman Doug
Honig said the lawsuit is focused on Border
Patrol activities on the Olympic Peninsula,
but ``a favorable ruling presumably would
cause the Border Patrol to re-examine its
practices across the northern border.’’
After the Sept. 11 attacks, President
May 2, 2012 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 3