News
Mudslide
Trader Joe’s Pulls Plug
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they don’t have anything they own, their
friends or relatives are dead,” she said. “I
think they need this.”
At the request of Washington Gov. Jay
Inslee, Obama earlier this month declared
shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas.
Three soldiers died and 16 others were
wounded in the rampage by another soldier,
who killed himself.
Obama also has mourned with the griev-
that a major disaster had occurred in the
state, making it and affected residents eligi-
ble for various forms of financial aid,
including help covering the costs of tempo-
rary housing, home repairs and the loss of
uninsured property. The Homeland Security
Department, the Federal Emergency Man-
agement Agency and the Army Corps of
Engineers also are helping.
The president repeatedly has stepped into
the role of national consoler in times of
mourning. Just two weeks ago, he met with
families and comrades of those killed in a
ing after carnage in Tucson, Ariz., Aurora,
Colo., Newtown, Conn., Boston, the Wash-
ington Navy Yard — and once before at
Fort Hood.
Tuesday’s stop in Washington came as
Obama headed for Tokyo, the first stop on a
four-country visit to the Asia-Pacific region.
The president is scheduled to spend the rest
of this week and part of next week confer-
ring with the leaders of Japan, South Korea,
Malaysia and the Philippines.
Associated Press writer Manuel Valdes
contributed to this report.
PHOTO BY LISA LOVING
‘They don’t now have houses any more, they
don’t have anything they own, their friends or
relatives are dead, I think they need this’
Officials from Trader Joe’s last week confirmed that they are walking
away from the proposed store at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr.
Boulevard and Alberta Street in Portland. The Portland African American
Leadership Forum spoke out against the city’s process for bringing the
store to the area earlier this year, prompting Trader Joe’s to cancel their
offer. Activists then mended fences with city officials on the issue,
including PAALF and the Portland NAACP, which held a press conference
in support of the project. But the grocery store chain refused to
reconsider.
Sheriffs
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anyone without a court order or warrant.
Other counties are expected to follow suit.
The ACLU has challenged the detentions
in federal courts around the country, and the
state of California and at least eight cities,
including New York and New Orleans, have
now stopped holding people for ICE.
Elsewhere, even people arrested for minor
misdemeanors can be held in jail for up to
two days, before ICE picks them up and
transports them to a detention center to
await a deportation hearing.
“Detainers raise serious constitutional
concerns by depriving individuals of free-
dom without due process of law and, in
most cases, without probable cause of any
criminal act,” the ACLU said in a press
release.
“Moreover, state and local corrections
officials frequently violate the 48-hour lim-
itation by continuing to hold individuals
zens, lawful permanent residents, and Lati-
nos in particular—without any charges
pending, sometimes for days or weeks after
they should have otherwise been released
from custody…
‘State and local corrections officials frequently
violate the 48-hour limitation by continuing to
hold individuals beyond the period requested’
beyond the period requested. Detainers
have resulted in the illegal imprisonment of
countless individuals—including U.S. citi-
“Multnomah County Sheriff Dan Staton
took a positive but small step forward when
he implemented a policy in 2013 to limit the
stricted reserve funds” used for such pur-
poses; his attorney charges that the fund
transfer Graham suggested was openly
debated as part of the city’s budget process
and ultimately taken off the table.
However Goward and Scott allege that
Graham “tried” to pursue the funds transfer,
which – also an important part of the law-
suit – is just like an even bigger transfer that
Scott did the year before, without censure or
public comment, thus creating the appear-
according to the first page of the report.
Graham’s tort claim argues the investiga-
tor was never asked to determine whether
the transfer proposal was itself legitimate,
but rather was directed to assume he was
guilty of wrongdoing; Graham says the
investigator herself did not understand the
terminology or processes she was examin-
ing.
A number of comments made by Scott
and Gower regarding what they say Graham
instances in which his office would honor
ICE detainers.
“The ACLU thanks Sheriff Staton, as well
as Sheriff Craig Roberts in Clackamas
County and Sheriff Pat Garrett in Washing-
ton County, for their decisions to now
suspend this harmful practice altogether
unless ICE provides probable cause for the
prolonged detention in the form of a judicial
warrant…”
The issue of how to police communities
when undocumented immigrants fear
deportation is on the national agenda.
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Graham
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“Mr. Graham also faced an effort, moti-
vated in part by his race, to remove the
City’s budget operations from his purview
and establish an independent Budget
Office,” the tort claim says. “Mr. Graham
complained that he was being subjected to
discrimination based upon his race, but the
City ignored his concerns.”
Graham last month was granted a name-
clearing hearing to allow him to give his
side on what really happened when he was
accused of fiscal mismanagement in 2012 –
but, his attorney says, city officials would
not allow any of his supporters to partici-
pate nor would they allow City Human
Resources Director Anna Kanwit to testify
on her own investigation into the case,
which contradicted an earlier report by the
City Attorney’s office.
Graham testified at the name-clearing that
he’d been tasked by former Mayor Sam
Adams to help find financial resources that
could be used to support Portland Public
Schools operations, which were in severe
deficit that year.
Graham says he asked his top manage-
ment staff – the Office of Management and
Finance’s Financial Planning Division
Manager Andrew Scott and Chief Financial
Officer Richard Goward – whether it could
be possible to redirect reserve funds from
the Water and Bureau of Environmental
Services budgets for that purpose.
Ultimately nothing happened with the
funds, which Graham argues were “unre-
‘Mr. Graham also faced an effort, motivated in
part by his race, to remove the City’s budget
operations from his purview and establish an
independent Budget Office’
ance of a double-standard in accountability,
according to Kanwit’s investigation.
A key part of Graham’s tort claim
involves a report on his activities commis-
sioned through the City Attorney’s office, a
copy of which has been obtained by The
Skanner News.
It was prepared in 2012 by Yael Livny, a
lawyer for Jackson Lewis law firm, who
was asked to investigate whether Graham
was warned about improprieties in the
schools fund money transfer and whether he
“engaged in potentially retaliatory conduct
against Mr. Scott and Mr. Gower for com-
plaining about his handling of the funds,”
said to them appear to be repeated in
Livny’s report without additional proof or
corroboration, followed by Livny’s determi-
nation that she believed the two but not
Graham.
Further, comments in Livny’s report
attributed to former City Attorney James
Van Dyke appear to suggest that officials
judged Graham’s honesty based on whether
he became “emotional” in discussing the
case with former City Attorney James Van
Dyke.
“This investigator found it significant that
Mr. Van Dyke reported that Mr. Scott and
Mr. Goward appeared very credible to him
when they first reported the conversations –
e.g. they were upset and very troubled when
they recalled the events,” the city’s investi-
gator writes. “Mr. Van Dyke recalled
thinking that if Mr. Graham truly thought
Mr. Scott and Mr. Goward were lying, a
more natural response would have been
anger, not commendation.
“We agree with Mr. Van Dyke’s assess-
ment,” Livny concluded.
Ultimately, Livny’s report discounts Gra-
ham’s stated concern that he was being
made a victim of racial harassment at the
hands of white administrators.
City of Portland’s Human Resources
Director Anna Kanwit did her own investi-
gation in late 2013, issuing a confidential
memo to current Mayor Charlie Hales find-
ing that Smith – with the certain knowledge
of Gower — did an even bigger funds trans-
fer in May of 2011, moving more than
$500,000 from the Facilities reserve fund
into the General Fund to pay part of the cost
of the Portland Police Bureau’s new training
facility at the Kelly Building.
It’s unclear whether Graham’s predeces-
sor, former Chief Administrative Officer
Ken Rust, spoke out against or knew about
that transfer at the time.
Kanwit’s memo, obtained by The Skanner
News, shows she is critical of Livny’s
efforts in the case.
Read the rest of this story online at
www.theskanner.com
April 23, 2014 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 3