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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 5, 2015)
News Enough Artist Gathers Community Input to violence. “There hasn’t been enough outreach. There hasn’t been enough love. There haven’t been enough voices from our community to tell you that we absolutely need you,” Alex- ander said. Many speakers talked about disconnected young men who found surrogate families through gang affiliations. C.J. Robbins, who represented the Black Male Achievement ini- tiative, spoke of keeping youth connected while stemming the violence. Former gang member Arthur Davis addressed the audi- ence, sharing his life story and giving insights about leaving gangs behind. Soft-spoken and nervous, he told the crowd his father was killed by gang violence when he was only two years old. As he was growing up, he wanted nothing but revenge for ‘There haven’t been enough voices from our community to tell you that we absolutely need you’ himself and his siblings. It was only after being incarcerated and becoming a father of three that he decided to turn his life around, even if that meant cutting ties with most of his friends. When asked what he needed from the community, he said, “Just tell me how proud you are.” Speakers at Enough is Enough both defined the problems facing young Black men and proposed solutions for this cri- sis. Organizers hosted a series of speakers that highlighted grassroots work being done. Roy Jay of Project Clean Slate and Project Second Chance spoke about the Black economy and how helping one per- son in the community raises the health of the entire commu- nity. He told the crowd one dollar in the Jewish community will stay in that community for 20 days. Jay hoped for that kind of recirculation of wealth in the Black community, but said the people in the community are often depressed by incarceration fees that ruin creditwor- thiness. He announced a new legislative effort to wipe clean these fees.Keith Edward, a retired electrician and executive board PHOTO COURTESY OF BLESSING HANCOCK continued from page 1 Local residents may see their ideas for images and words cut into metal and projected in colored shadows on the wall of the Shute Park Library in Hillsboro. Next year, the city’s newest public artwork will create a dramatic gateway to downtown, showcased in front of the wall of the library on SE Tenth Avenue (TV Highway). Artist Blessing Hancock of Tucson, Ariz., was selected from 170 nationwide applicants to create a sculpture for the city. She will be a special guest at two events to show her design in progress and gather images and text from the public to be included in the final artwork. Hancock will be featured at the Arts Village on the Courthouse lawn at Celebrate Hillsboro, Saturday, August 8 from 9 am – 4 pm. She will also be in Shute Park near the library on Sunday, August 9, from 1 – 3 pm. Both events are free, open to all ages and will include family entertainment. member of the Oregon AFL-CIO, told the crowd about the Constructing Hope pre-apprenticeship program. He said as an electrician, he’d earned a family wage and had health care and a pension, and had been able to retire with dignity. Constructing Hope, a nine-week trade appren- ticeship, would enable young people access to similar secu- rity, he said. Though efforts like Black Male Achievement have made headway with youth, Enough is Enough issued a call out the community to give back their time and effort. Jerome Brooks, the Operations and Policy Director of Or- egon Youth Authority, said giving back to the community could mean something as simple as visiting young men who have been incarcerated in the OYA. He said these 12-to-24-year-old young men can go years without visits. He said people consider them throwaway children, and asked the gathering, “Who’s going to fight for those chil- dren?” When they get out, he said, they need to be enrolled in either work or school within 30 days or they will be likely to start the cycle of violence once again. Brooks said this outreach can’t be done from afar, or through policy or policing. Instead, it has to be done by the community, for the community. When longtime gang outreach worker Robert Richardson spoke, he reaffirmed this sense of connection. “Violence is just like rain. When it falls, it affects us all,” he said. Voting continued from page 1 previous scanners came across a question- able ballot, it would stop working. “The ballot had to be pretty perfect. If somebody had spilled coffee on it, or dripped ketchup on it or something like that, chances are that ballot would not have gone through our old scanners,” Scott said. “The scanners would stop and we would have to take the ballot out and send it somewhere else to be duplicated and to run clean ballot.” The ClearVote system will make a note about questionable ballots and send them to be reviewed, while continuing to scan other ballots. Scott said the new system is much more tolerant of imperfections. The new technology can also flag situa- bipartisan team of election workers would look at the vote and determine the intent of the voter. Scott said the new system is much more tolerant of imperfections tions where it looks like a voter might have changed his or her mind by crossing out one oval and filling in another. In that case, a Voters may see a change in the layout of ballots. The new system allows for more flexibility in the design of ballots and allows some time later, told dispatchers that the son was choking Brown. When officers arrived at Brown’s house, back or he would get tased, and Brown wrapped her hands around her son and asked the officer not to tase him, according officials to use smaller papers for elections with very few measures. The new voting system uses the same security protocols as before. Scott said the vote data is stored in a closed network in one room with no outside access. Very few people can gain entry to the tally room and each tabulation work station is encrypted and tracks who was overseeing which bal- lots. Scott said the county plans to use the new system during the November election later this year. Police continued from page 1 of being tased. “I asked everyone to calm down, and I don’t believe my efforts were respected,” he said. Richardson said he has spoken with Po- lice Chief Pete Kerns about the incident, and those talks have gone well. Richardson said his goals are to improve police training and transparency, while boosting resources for mental health. “I want to be as positive as possible, while at the same time showing that I felt the whole situation that happened to my sister was unjust,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday. According to a recording of a 911 call re- leased by Eugene police, the son was yell- ing and swearing at Brown, did not recog- nize her as his mother and believed he was trapped inside the house. A second caller, who talked with Brown ‘I want to be as positive as possible, while at the same time showing that I felt the whole situation that happened to my sister was unjust’ according to the police report, the son ap- peared agitated and stared at one of the offi- cers with an angry expression. He swore at the officer and repeatedly mumbled to him that he was not a real of- ficer, according to the video released by the police. The report also says the son was crowd- ing the officer and had nudged his shoulder twice with his hand. Another officer then told the son to step to the report. The officer asked her to step back, but she did not comply. When the son started “moving aggres- sively” toward the officer, he eventually de- ployed the stun gun and handcuffed the son, according to the report. Police and jail records obtained by The (Eugene) Register-Guard newspaper show Brown was booked into jail on a misde- meanor charge of interfering with police. She was released the same day, and prose- cutors declined to file formal charges. Kerns told KLCC radio in an interview that the police officers “went there with the best of intentions, to help the mom and the 19-year-old son who were in need of emer- gency services.” “Responding to an incident, with a full- grown, strong, athletic man who is in a mental health break, and whose behavior is unpredictable, is a very, very difficult thing to do,” he said. Kerns also said he could understand why the mother did not want to let go of her son. Although Kerns defended the police offi- cers as doing the best they could to control things, he said it would be inappropriate to say whether they followed policy until an investigation is concluded. Kerns also said he doesn’t believe race was a factor. August 5, 2015 The Portland and Seattle Skanner Page 3
