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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 5, 2015)
a ugust 5, 2015 P ortland and s eattle INSIDE: www . theskanner . com C hallenging P eoPle to S haPe a B etter F uture n ow ‘Enough is Enough’ Community Calls for Alternatives to Gang Violence By Arashi Young Of The Skanner News ore than 120 people packed Bethel A.M.E. Church last Thursday de- spite sweltering heat. Clothes were damp with sweat, people fanned themselves intensely with little relief and everyone sipped ice water to stay cool. It was the kind of day that would send many people home to hide from the heat — but to this community, it was a matter of life or death. On Thursday, organizers, family members and former gang members gathered to talk about how to combat youth violence and mourn the loss of young Black men. The new initiative, Enough is Enough, aims to reclaim peace in the community by giving young men hope, opportunity and support. Pastor Willie Hurst of New Zion Minis- tries opened the meeting with a prayer for the lives of young Black men. He asked for protection over them. He asked that there would be no more deaths during the summer break. Family members stood in support of their slain young men. Relatives represented for Andreas Jones Dixon, who was shot and killed June 9, 2013, outside the Rockwood Station Apartments in Gresham. Family members spoke for Quintrell Holiman, who died February 25, 2015 after he shot at a po- lice officer and then turned the gun on him- self. Parents, grandparents, and great-grand- parents also stood to represent Anthony Quincey Jackson, a 19-year old who had been killed outside the Shalamar Apartment complex in East Portland. His death oc- curred only two weeks before the meeting and the family could barely speak of him without choking on their tears. Former Urban League of Portland CEO Michael Alexander told the crowd that they needed to step up and encourage these wan- dering sons before more of them were lost V olume XXXVII, n o . 44 25 cents HEALTH WELLNESS & NUTRITION SECTION BACK TO SCHOOL HOT DAY M See ENOUGH on page 3 INDEX PHOTO BY SUSAN FRIED Children cool off in a water feature at Judkins Park in Seattle Aug. 1, on the 12th hotter-than-90-degree day of the summer. Seattle’s prior record for the number of days with temperatures high- er than 90 degrees was set in 1958. That record was broken July 30. County Buys New Vote Counters New machines should be speedier, more accurate and cheaper By Arashi Young Of The Skanner News ultnomah County elec- tion officials say their new vote tabulation system will increase the speed, accuracy and transparency of the vote counting process – and that overhauling the system was cheaper than an upgrade would have been. The county has replaced the former optical scanning system, which it had used for 15 years, with a new software-based vot- M ing system called ClearVote. The new digital system scans the paper ballots, creates a high-resolution image of the vote and produces election re- sults. Election official Tim Scott said the county vote tabulation machines were in need of an up- grade after years of use. “We had gone about 13 years without significant hardware or software upgrades,” said Tim Scott, Multnomah County’s di- rector of elections. “There were just a lot of hardware failures that we ran into. It never affected the outcome of the elections, but it just meant that we dealt with some significant down time.” Replacing the old hardware would have cost the county $500,000, paying $100,000 per scanner, Scott said. They were proprietary hardware running legacy software, he added, so if the county continued to use them they would get locked into paying to maintain an outdated system. “Under the new system, we get a much better system, with much better software and we are only paying about $25,000 apiece for the scanners,” he said. The new system pairs off- the-shelf Fujistu scanners with the ClearVote browser-based software. The new technology will be four times faster than the old system, scanning 4,000 ballots per hour instead of the previous rate of 1,000 per hour. Scott said this speed comes from the increased accuracy of the new system. If one of the See VOTING on page 3 Eugene Police Use of Force Questioned News .....................1,3,9 NAACP head says his sister had called for help for her son Opinion .......................2 Steven Dubois Associated Press Calendars ..............4,10 Back to School .........5-8 Bids/Classifieds ..........11 PORTLAND, Ore.— An NAACP chapter president says police in Eugene, Oregon, used excessive force on his sister after she tried to stop an officer from deploying a Tas- er stun gun on her 19-year-old son. Eugene-Springfield NAACP President Eric Richardson said Ayisha Brown called a mental health service early July 16 because her son was having a psychotic breakdown. The assistance team could not respond, and police officers arrived. Richardson, who said he witnessed the incident, said Brown hugged her agitated son to prevent an officer from using the stun gun. An officer, who was White, threw Brown to the ground, put a knee in her back and arrested her, Richardson said. His sister, he said, suffered a concussion and has back and knee problems. Richardson said he raised his hands and identified himself as the chapter president of the NAACP. He said the officers told him he was at risk See POLICE on page 3
