February 7, 2018 The Skanner Seattle Page 3
News
cont’d from pg 3
The Bureau of Land Man-
agement manages a com-
bined 385,000 square
miles (997,000 square ki-
lometers) in those states.
Colorado Republican
Rep. Scott Tipton intro-
duced a similar measure
in the House, and three
Democrats signed up
as co-sponsors: Reps.
Kyrsten Sinema of Ari-
Some Westerners have long
argued federal land manag-
ers should be closer to the
land they oversee
zona, Jared Polis of Colo-
rado and Ed Perlmutter
of Colorado.
Some Westerners have
long argued federal land
managers should be clos-
er to the land they over-
see, saying Washington
doesn’t understand the
region. Now they have a
powerful ally in Interior
Secretary Ryan Zinke, a
Montanan who is lead-
ing President Donald
Trump’s charge to roll
back environmental reg-
ulations and encourage
energy development on
public land.
Zinke said in Septem-
ber he wants to move
much of the Interior
Department’s
deci-
sion-making to the West,
including the Bureau
of Land Management,
which is part of the agen-
cy.
The Washington Post
reported last month
Zinke’s plan includes di-
viding his department’s
regions along river sys-
tems and other natural
features instead of state
borders, and using them
to restructure oversight.
A big part of the bu-
reau’s job is to lease drill-
ing, mining and grazing
rights on public land to
private companies and
individuals. That puts it
at the center of a heated
national debate over how
those lands should be
managed, and by whom.
Some recent disputes:
Lawsuit
nated in a 2014 armed
standoff in Nevada, be-
gan on bureau acreage.
• More than 50,000
square miles (123,000
square kilometers) of
Bureau of Land Man-
agement land in the
West is at the heart of a
debate among conser-
vationists,
ranchers
and energy companies
over how much protec-
tion to give the shrink-
ing population of the
greater sage grouse, a
ground-dwelling bird.
The bureau manages
more public land than
any other federal agen-
cy, ranging from about
1 square mile (3 square
kilometers) in Virginia
to nearly 113,000 square
miles (293,000 square ki-
lometers) in Alaska. That
doesn’t include national
parks or national for-
ests, which are managed
by other agencies.
It has about 9,000 em-
ployees, with fewer than
400 in Washington. The
rest are scattered among
140 state, district or field
offices.
“The larger issue is
that states and counties
that are predominated
by public lands are deep-
ly affected by decisions
made by BLM,” said Kath-
leen Sgamma, president
of the Western Ener-
gy Alliance in Denver.
Read the rest of this story at
TheSkanner.com
Church Seeks Children for Easter Choir
The historic Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church in North Portland is once again gathering children who love to sing, from the
ages of four years to 14 from the community for the Easter Celebration taking place April 1. Four scheduled choir rehearsals will take
place March 10, 17, 24 and 31 at 3 p.m. at the church location of 3138 North Vancouver Avenue. Following each rehearsal session, lunch
will be provided for the children prepared by a host of local adult chaperones. Free Transportation services are also available upon
request for each rehearsal. For more information and or to sign your child up, please contact Raymond Burell at (503) 593- 5285/or at
raymondburell@hotmail.com, or contact the church office directly at (503) 282-9496.
Measure
cont’d from pg 1
ing punished for crimes that are
products of circumstance,” said
White, who is African American.
Earlier this month, the Oregon
Council on Civil Rights published
a report in partnership with the
Oregon Justice Resource Center
— “Youth and Measure 11: Impacts
of Mandatory Minimums” – that
includes some damning statistics
on racial disparities in Oregon’s
juvenile justice system. It found:
• Black youth make up 15.5 per-
cent of Measure 11 indictments,
but only 1.8 percent of the gen-
eral population in Oregon;
• Black youth were nearly three
times as likely as White youth
to face a Measure 11 charge, and
nearly five times as likely to be
indicted;
• Black youth face conviction at
rates 12.5 times greater than
White youth for Measure 11
offenses, only slightly less than
their overall rate of referral;
• Latino and Native American
youth were also significantly
overrepresented relative to
White peers.
The report notes that while
Black youth indictments are more
likely, they are less likely to lead
to a Measure 11 conviction.
But an indictment can still re-
shape the course of a young life,
and the report connects the dots
between disproportionate rates
of incarceration and other prob-
“
I was very, very,
very illiterate
when it came to
law or my rights
lems hampering Oregon’s Black
communities, namely economic
mobility.
In Oregon, nearly 30 percent
of Black families live in poverty,
and the median income of a Black
family as of 2010 was $15,000 low-
er than White families.
“The economic disparity among
Oregonians of color is compound-
ed by the fact that the children in
these communities are all statisti-
cally more likely to have a parent
in prison,” the report said.
“For me I think the most sur-
prising thing is how much science
and research that has been done
over the past couple of decades
and how our criminal justice pol-
icies aren’t really connected to
that,” Bobbin Singh, the founding
executive director of the Oregon
Justice Resource Center, told The
Skanner.
Measure 11, he noted, was
passed in a political climate
where politicians in both par-
ties, both locally and nationally,
campaigned on “tough on crime”
platforms -- and youth who got
in trouble were described as “su-
per predators” who could not be
reformed. In the decades since,
scientific research has shown
that the brain continues to devel-
op through one’s 20s, suggesting
youth who receive adequate sup-
port have a good chance of turn-
ing their lives around.
“It was all politics of fear and an-
ger. There was nothing grounded
in any evidence,” Singh said.
Singh notes that for certain
crimes, district attorneys have
discretion in whether they can
refer a teenager to the adult court
system, and he hopes more DAs
use it to keep young people in
juvenile courts. He and Roberta
Phillip-Robbins, who chairs the
Oregon Council on Civil Rights,
would also like to see changes
that address root causes.
Read more at TheSkanner.com
cont’d from pg 1
Hayes, fatally shot Merle Mikal Hatch
in 2013. In March, a Multnomah Coun-
ty grand jury declined to indict Hearst
in connection with Hayes’ death.
The tort claim letter, attached to the
press release, also notes the Hayes fam-
ily has not been successful in their at-
tempts to get more information about
what happened the morning Hayes
died.
“Our knowledge of the circumstanc-
es of the incident is somewhat limited,
largely due to the fact that the only non-
law enforcement officer to witness the
shooting, Quanice, is dead,” the letter
reads. “While the Grand Jury proceed-
ings in this case were recorded and
made public, the process was inher-
ently one-sided: the District Attorney’s
office presented evidence to the grand
jurors that the shooting officer could
not possibly have known, and present-
ed evidence designed to vilify Quanice
while painting the shooting officer in a
highly positive light, making it seem as
“
The only non-law
enforcement offi-
cer to witness the
shooting, Quanice,
is dead
if the officer had no choice but to shoot
Quanice. We disagree. Moreover, the
city has refused to provide us records
in its possession, despite repeated re-
quests. Therefore, we again request
you provide us all documentation in
the city’s possession that
describes or documents
this incident in any way.
This request includes any
911 recordings, police re-
ports, scene photographs,
CAD recordings, MOAT
text messages, data from
employee phones, dispatch
recordings, notes, internal
affairs investigations or
other similar investigations
from within the city or out-
side agency, documents in
your possession produced
by others including but not
limited to autopsy photographs -- rele-
vant to the incident, communications
with insurance providers, and any oth-
er documentation of any description
FACEBOOK PHOTO
“
• Much of Bears Ears
National Monument in
Utah, created by Pres-
ident Barack Obama
and greatly reduced by
Trump, is on Bureau
of Land Management
land.
• Rancher Cliven Bun-
dy’s long battle against
federal control of pub-
lic land, which culmi-
PHOTO COURTESY OF VANCOUVER AVENUE BAPTIST CHURCH
Land
Quanice Hayes
related to this incident.”
A crowdfunding website to help with
the Hayes’ family’s legal fees, www.
crowdjustice.com/case/quanice, will go
live on Thursday at noon.