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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 8, 2014)
WWW . THESKANNER . COM J ANUARY 8, 2014 P ORTLAND , O REGON V OLUME XXXVI, N O . 14 25 CENTS For The Skanner news alerts Text "NEWS" to 503-715-0890 or scan this QR code C HALLENGING P EOPLE TO S HAPE A B ETTER F UTURE N OW Police Fairness Hearing SEAHAWKS City Council punts accountability issue to judge, Feb. 18 Helen Silvis Of The Skanner News J udge Michael Simon will listen to what public thinks about the Department of Justice settlement with the City of Port- land after the report that said Portland Police used excessive force and violate the rights of people with mental illness. Why it Matters: The DOJ and Port- land Police Bureau The DOJ opened a civil rights investiga- tion into Portland Police Bureau in 2011 after a string of fatalities, including the See DOJ on page 3 INDEX News ................2,3,5,6 Opinion .....................4 A & E .........................5 Bids/Classifieds ..........7 PHOTO BY MONICA FOSTER Fair? Adequate? Reasonable? Those are the values that U.S. District Judge Michael Simon will consider when he rules on the proposed settlement agreement between the City of Portland and the Department of Justice. The agreement came in response to a civil rights investigation showing Portland Police Bureau used excessive force against people with mental illness. But before Judge Simon decides on the proposed agreement, he wants to hear whether Portlanders think it is fair, adequate and reasonable. That’s why Simon has set a Fairness Hearing for Feb. 18, where the public is invited to speak out in court, or submit comments in writing or by video. “The police union is going to make sure their voice is heard. The Department of Jus- tice and the City of Portland are going to give their opinions. So it’s really important that the public has its voice heard,” says Jo Ann Hardesty, a former state legislator and longtime police accountability activist. Everyone who wants to make a statement is invited to testify at the hearing, set to start at 9 a.m. Tuesday, February 18, 2014 at the U.S. District Courthouse, Courtroom 13B 1000 SW 3rd Ave. If you care, be there, Hardesty says. The cheapest tickets on the resale market for this weekend’s playoff in Seattle are hovering around $200, considered the most expensive in the country, but the Better Business Bureau says no matter how much you are willing to spend, you need to watch out for fakes and rip-offs. Going to the Big Games? Watch Out! Seahawks’ high ticket prices mean fakes, scams and ripoffs Lisa Loving Of The Skanner News S eahawks fans heading to the Super- bowl game in New Jersey on Feb. 2 might need to put a second mort- gage on the house to afford prices already as high as $12,000 a seat. The cheapest tickets on the resale mar- ket for this weekend’s playoff in Seattle are hovering around $200, considered the most expensive in the country. But the Better Business Bureau says no matter how much you are willing to spend, you need to watch out for fakes and rip-offs. Be especially careful of online deals, BBB spokesman David Quinlan says, and make absolute sure you can see and touch the tickets before forking over thousands of dollars for them. He says that any deal that looks too good to be true probably is. “That’s why if you’re going to make a deal with someone, obviously meet them in public, look at the tickets, inspect them; know what a real ticket feels like – it’s kind of that hard cardboard,” Quinlan See TICKETS on page 3 Minimum Wage Rose 15 Cents But critics say the hike is far from enough to create living wage jobs By Helen Silvis Of The Skanner News W ashington now has the highest state mini- mum wage in the country, and Oregon the second- highest. Both are among 21 states, whose minimum wage is higher than the federal mini- mum of $7.25 an hour. Oregon’s minimum wage rose 15 cents to $9.10 an hour, Jan. 1. Washington’s minimum wage rose to $9.32 an hour in 2014. But experts say that even the highest minimum wages in the country are far from a living wage. “Nobody who works a full- time job should be living in poverty,” Labor Secretary Tom Perez told host Gwen Ifill on PBS Newshour Jan. 6. “And there are so many people who are. “And that is why the president and I and so many others on a bipartisan basis so strongly sup- port an increase in the minimum wage. But that’s not enough either. We do so much at the Department of Labor, for instance, to invest in skills, so that people have the tools neces- sary to compete for today and tomorrow’s jobs and have those ladders of opportunity to the middle class.” Fast-food workers across the country have been at the fore- front of a grassroots movement to demand substantial increases to the minimum wage. Staging one-day strikes in some of America’s largest cities, the workers asked for a wage floor of $15 an hour. Their slogan? “We can’t survive on $7.25.” Many economists agree. Last year, a study for the Washington DC-based think tank The Eco- nomic Policy Institute suggest- ed a single parent with two children would need to earn $24 an hour to live comfortably. Voters in SeaTac, Washington passed an initiative for a $15 an hour minimum, but opponents are challenging the new law. A judge ruled Dec. 27 that the law did not apply to workers at Seat- tle-Tacoma International air- See WAGE on page 3
