Mental Health Association of Portland

Opinion editorial from The Oregonian, August 2, 2010

On a heavenly summer evening last week, Portlanders sat in the City Council chambers, trying to reconcile two realities, one bright and one dark — a police horror story and a stellar tale of a police agency’s transformation.

Both are supported by facts. Yet both are also hard to believe. Four years ago, three officers in the Police Bureau’s transit division — two from Portland and one from Multnomah County — chased a 42-year-old man, after glimpsing him, maybe, urinating in public.

They knocked him down and fell on him, kicked him, stunned him with a Taser and hobbled him, then carried him around by his armpits and slung him into a patrol car, despite his injuries. Their brutal takedown of James P. Chasse Jr. or their brutal way of carrying him — and likely the latter, one medical examiner concluded — punctured his lung.

Only two hours after police first encountered the mentally ill musician, he died in police custody en route to a hospital.

Not much about what happened Sept. 17, 2006, squares with the Portland Police Bureau’s current vision of itself. The bureau can tick off a long list of changes it has made, post-Chasse, from altering foot pursuits and medical transport policies to requiring 40 hours of crisis intervention training for 540 officers in the operations branch.

All of this places Portland ahead of many of its peers. The bureau has even gotten ahead of many of the 27 changes a consultant recommended, discussed Wednesday (after the council signed a $1.6 million out-of-court settlement in a lawsuit brought by Chasse’s family).

The consultant’s report highlighted the difficulties of demanding public accountability when other agencies are involved. Shockingly, for instance, Multnomah County refused to permit its deputy to be interviewed in a timely way, helping to drag out the internal affairs investigation into Chasse’s death for months, even years.

And yet, as the report notes, the Police Bureau could have protested this delay. The bureau should have complained to the mayor, council and public. That the bureau didn’t suggests it had its own reasons for preferring delay.

On a positive note, Chasse’s death sparked a new conversation in Portland about mental illness. It was helpful, productive and also, in many ways, a gigantic distraction. As the Mental Health Association’s Jason Renaud noted Wednesday, Chasse didn’t die because he was mentally ill. He wasn’t homeless, suicidal or bereft of services.

No, he died of broad-based blunt-force trauma to the chest. Police pursued him for no real reason. The transit division, an amalgamation of 14 police agencies, was apparently known at the time for rogue behavior and, in particular, for knocking people down.

Certainly, Portland Police Chief Mike Reese said impressive things last week about the profound effect Chasse’s death has had on the bureau. But it will be up to Reese now to follow through. As for the community’s outrage, we hope it doesn’t disappear too quickly. It ought to smolder.

It ought to spark skepticism, scrutiny and a constant demand that the bureau be the stellar agency it insists, circa 2010, it truly is — and wants to be.

Opinion Editorial from the Mental Health Association of Portland, printed in Street Roots, October 2, 2009

On Sept. 17, the Mental Health Association of Portland delivered a letter to Mayor Sam Adams, Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman and Police Chief Rosie Sizer requesting the release of the internal investigation on the fate of James Chasse on Sept. 17, 2006.

This letter joined a petition signed by more than 300 citizens and a status report of the important events which occurred since James died.

Because the district attorney failed to file charges against the officers who brutally beat James and then stood by while he died, Rosie Sizer’s investigation into whether officers violated bureau rules would decide whether the officers kept their jobs.

We had waited for three years.

On Sept. 23, the Portland Police Bureau distributed a news release about the findings of the internal investigation, a timeline of important events since James died, a list of changes PPB has made made since he died, and PPB efforts intended to resolve apparent problems with their own policy and procedures.

But a news release is not the sum result of an internal investigation. A press release is not what we asked for. We asked for a thorough investigative report of James Chasse’s death in police custody. The bureau’s news release was designed to address the issue of why the internal investigation is three years overdue.

Perhaps it would satisfy an insurance agent or a court clerk, but it is entirely inconclusive to anyone concerned with essential questions about the case and falls pitifully short of substantial answers.

The substantial question is: Are people with mental illness safer now than before James Chasse died?

The answer is: We still don’t know and the police can’t (or won’t) tell us.

The findings recommend Sgt. Kyle Nice’s suspension for an unknown duration because he failed to transport James to a nearby hospital after being Tased.

The results of these specific findings: Whether Sgt. Nice will be suspended is unknown, the duration is unknown, whether he will be paid or not while suspended is unknown, whether his suspension limits his future service is unknown, and the official accountability applies only to the most specific of circumstances.

According to witnesses, Sgt. Nice kicked James in the head while his partner Christopher Humphreys’ knee drops to James’ back caused the fatal injury. Deputy Bret Burton unloaded his Taser into James.

Accountability for the tackling? None.

Accountability for the punches, the kicks, the Taser? None.

Accountability for not informing emergency medical technicians Chasse has been beaten? None.

Accountability for arresting James instead of taking him to the hospital? None.

Accountability for James’ death? None.

Nice may be suspended from service, with or without pay, for an unknown duration of time. But his suspension is a technicality, not a proactive response to what happened to James. The message from the Chief is clear — officers are free to respond with deadly force when someone struggles.

The Bureau and the Portland Police Association — the union for patrol officers — will call the suspension justice and accountability.

Ultimately, the suspension is immaterial to the larger question.

Does punishing Kyle Nice make people with mental illness safer? There is no evidence to show that it does. And we believe it does not.

Rosie, who guards the guards? You do. That’s your job. And you didn’t do it. Not acceptable.

And can we make one thing perfectly clear? Our advocacy is not about the character of police officers. We are not critical of police officers in general. Good police officers are important partners for any community concerned with safety, and we value them as such. We are singularly interested in Kyle Nice, Christopher Humphreys and Bret Burton — the officers who brutally beat James Chasse and did not get him medical attention before he died 100 minutes later.

The bureau’s response to our letter includes a list of policy and procedure changes made since James’ death. The most acclaimed is giving all officers Crisis Intervention Training (CIT). Our organization initially applauded the bureau’s decision to hire a civilian psychologist, provide training for all officers, and shake up a stodgy curriculum.

But since James’ death, the contents of the CIT program became a secret. The curriculum is no longer public record — it’s hidden within a complex civil lawsuit. Data about police encounters with people with mental illness is no longer made available. The CIT advisory committee no longer meets. The Chief’s Forum has been canceled.

Three years later, we don’t have data to show these changes have a positive effect. But imagine this: You’re in a jam. Suddenly your peaceful community is upset and shaken and you need help from someone who is trained and equipped and prepared and supported to take control of a difficult situation; your normally normal neighbor is acting strange; your brother-inlaw is acting crazy; your boyfriend is drunk and out of control.

The question is: Just how long will you pause before calling the police, knowing that Officers Kyle Nice, Christopher Humphrey or Bret Burton might show up and act according to policy?

Guest opinion from the Oregonian, October 23, 2009


Scott Westerman, president of the Portland Police Association, gets the case of James Chasse wrong from beginning to end in his recent commentary in The Oregonian (“Punishing the police won’t help us heal,” Oct. 13).


Just whom does he mean by “us”? The police officers he represents?

On Sept. 30, the Mental Health Association of Portland asked the City Council to remove from patrol duty the officers who chased down and brutally beat Chasse, leading to his death. Three officers. Not all officers. Just three. “Off patrol duty” is not punishment. Ten years in prison for manslaughter involving a mentally ill person is punishment. We asked for accountability.

After a week of silence from city commissioners, we called for the three officers to voluntarily resign. We don’t want them to be Portland police officers any longer, and resignations, we believe, offer a path toward redemption: a positive, healing first step in rebuilding trust and respect, one that only the officers could make, failing action from leadership. The three officers did not resign.

Reasonable, well-trained police officers are vital partners for those who care for the welfare of persons with mental illness. They hold an irreplaceable position in the continuum of our care. We’ve supported additional training for officers to understand mental illness and anticipate crises. We appreciate the many changes made at the state, county and city level to address this issue. But to confuse the trust and respect needed for effective policing with the brutal actions of Sept. 17, 2006, is irresponsible.

I knew James Chasse in high school, and my father also had schizophrenia. So I’ve paid close attention to the issue from the beginning. But the lengthy and inadequate response from the city of Portland transformed me from an interested observer to an active advocate.

Since Chasse’s death, I’ve wondered about officers’ opinions: Do they see the actions of their peers as excusable? As being within normal procedure? Do they think they would have done the same thing? Does police training skew one’s humanity?

Westerman asks Portlanders to equate the behavior of the three officers with the many hard-working men and women on the force who help us make better communities. He asks us to believe that all other Portland officers would cruelly beat a slight, frightened and nonthreatening man — and then fight to justify the beating as “within policy.” In doing so, Westerman degrades the entire Police Bureau.

Westerman’s role as a union spokesman puts him in the unenviable position of defending the indefensible. My mother was a shop steward. I know unions play an important role in providing a balance of power for individual employees. I feel genuine sympathy for officers whose union dues are spent defending the indefensible actions of three of their colleagues.

I’m no longer shocked by the absurdities of what Westerman had to say, but his words will not move our city forward. For our city’s sake, it’s critical that we hear from leadership unconstrained by union demands. We all need to hear now from Police Chief Rosie Sizer and Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees the bureau.

Last week the Mental Health Association of Portland got a call from the city asking for a private meeting with Saltzman and Sizer. We declined. Impunity is a subject best discussed in the bright light of public access. Instead, we offered to host a public meeting so both Saltzman and Sizer can be heard and understood directly. So far they haven’t responded.

Mary Wheeler is a board member of the Mental Health Association of Portland.

From the Oregonian, October 22, 2009

Portland Commissioner Randy Leonard said Thursday he can no longer hide his feelings about police handling of the James Chasse case just because the city is facing a federal lawsuit in the death.

“That has nothing to do with justice, worrying about legal positioning when a man like Mr. Chasse is dead,” Leonard said. “If the Police Bureau caused Mr. Chasse’s death and the county denied him medical care, we should pay his family and we shouldn’t have to have a judge tell us to do it.”

Chasse, 42, died of massive internal injuries in police custody after he was chased down for urinating in public. The death in 2006 triggered a cascade of public outrage and criticism of how police treated the mentally ill man.

During a City Council meeting Wednesday, Leonard called Chasse’s death inexcusable. He said the Police Bureau’s three-year internal investigation, which eventually cleared all but one officer, should have taken 90 days.

Then Thursday, Leonard said he should have stood up before now. “If I, as a city commissioner, view an injustice, I should speak out about the rightness and the wrongness of people under my control,” he said.

Leonard’s comments come after recent public disagreements with City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who oversees the Police Bureau. While the remarks expose a simmering rift between the two leaders, they also put the city and police in an uncomfortable position in the lawsuit filed by Chasse’s family.

Mayor Sam Adams declined to address Leonard’s statements. He said he supports an independent review of the case by City Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade, who plans to hire an outside expert to evaluate the quality of the police investigation.

“I am waiting for that before I draw my own conclusions,” Adams said.

Multnomah County settled its part of the lawsuit this past summer for $925,000, but the city’s part of the case is set for trial in March. The suit accuses officers of excessive force and the police and paramedics of failing to provide adequate medical attention.

Two Portland officers — Officer Christopher Humphreys and Sgt. Kyle Nice — and then-Multnomah County sheriff’s Deputy Bret Burton, who is now a Portland officer, arrested Chasse after he appeared to be urinating in the street. Chasse ran, the officers chased him, knocked him to the ground and struggled to handcuff him.

An autopsy showed Chasse suffered 26 breaks to 16 ribs, some of which punctured his left lung; 46 separate abrasions or contusions on his body, including six to the head; and 19 strikes to the torso.

Medics at the scene said his vital signs were normal and he was taken to jail. But jail staff members refused to book him because of his physical condition. He died while being taken to the hospital in a police car.

In the internal investigation, Police Chief Rosie Sizer found that Nice violated bureau policy when he failed to have Chasse taken to the hospital as required for certain people once they’ve been stunned by a Taser.

Leonard and the Police Bureau have long been at odds. Last year, he clashed with Sizer when she said she wouldn’t work for him if he got the job overseeing the bureau. Adams then had Saltzman become police commissioner.

Now, Leonard and Saltzman are squabbling. Saltzman won’t back Leonard’s desire to train Water Bureau security guards as police officers and give them guns and Saltzman voted last week against Leonard’s proposal to buy a new high-speed rescue boat for the Portland Fire Bureau.

Then Wednesday, the two again disagreed during a council debate over releasing the names of people arrested by the city’s special force of police officers who go after drug dealers and chronic drug users. Saltzman wanted to keep the list secret, but Leonard pushed for its release and the rest of the council backed him.

Saltzman has suggested alternatives to armed water guards: using existing police, contracting with another police agency such as the Sheriff’s Office or perhaps creating an interagency task force, much like the collaborative effort among metro area police to patrol MAX trains.

“We don’t need more guns in Portland parks,” Saltzman said. “We don’t need another Chasse case in the city parks.”

Overall, he said, he and Leonard agree more often than they disagree. He’s just doing the job he was elected to do, he said.

“Commissioners have the right to ask questions on any policy matters,” Saltzman said. “I’m sorry that certain people take offense at that.”

Leonard will delay a council discussion on the Water Bureau security guards for two weeks to look at alternatives.

Read and sign the James Chasse petition.

The James Chasse petition has been signed now by over 180 persons. The petition asks the City of Portland to release it’s investigation of what happened to James Chasse, which has been sitting on the desk of police chief Rosie Sizer for many months.

Please read – and if you agree that it is time to know the truth, please sign the petition.

This petition will be delivered to City Council – those directly supervising the police department – on September 17, the third anniversary of the death of James Chasse.

READ – all about what happened to James Chasse.

By Mike Reese, Guest opinion posted in the Oregonian, August 9 2009. Mike Reese is Central Precinct Commander with the Portland Police Bureau.

Enforcement tool addresses behavior of ‘road warriors’

As the Central Precinct commander for the Portland Police Bureau, I oversee the enforcement of the sidewalk obstruction ordinance and interact regularly with the homeless and their social service providers.

As a founding member of the Street Access for Everyone committee (SAFE), I have looked carefully at the issues of sidewalk obstruction and homelessness for the past three years. The SAFE committee was instrumental in securing enhanced services for the homeless and developing a sidewalk obstruction ordinance that balanced the needs of the homeless and the downtown community.

In June, a Multnomah County judge said the ordinance is pre-empted by the state’s disorderly conduct statute. In a previous ruling, however, a different Multnomah County judge upheld the ordinance and said the SAFE process was a hallmark of good public policy. The city attorney and Portland City Council are seeking clarification on these competing rulings before deciding what adjustments to the current ordinance are needed.

With the ruling in June, the only tool police now have to address sidewalk obstruction is the state disorderly conduct statute, a criminal offense, which raises the question: Should the police arrest someone engaged in sidewalk obstruction using a criminal statute? It seems a little like driving a thumbtack with a sledgehammer.

The ordinance, on the other hand, strikes a balance that allows police to keep the sidewalks free for pedestrian travel while recognizing the many exceptions that may legitimately apply (people waiting for goods or services such as TriMet riders, medical issues and protests). The police can only issue citations after warning a person that their behavior is a problem, and the charge is a violation that can result in community service or a fine.

Most important to note is that the majority of citations have been issued to “road warriors,” young adults between 18 and 30 years of age. They’re the ones engaged in aggressive panhandling and intimidating behavior in downtown. I’ve talked to nearly a hundred of these young adults over the past three years. Most are addicted to heroin or alcohol. They travel across the country and don’t have ties to our community.

They have made a lifestyle choice to live on the streets, and they consistently refuse housing, treatment or other services. Social service providers have told me that this group is very difficult to connect with and often preys on the traditional homeless population.

The sidewalk obstruction ordinance is one of the few tools the police have that allows us to engage the road warriors and local street youth in a fairly low-level enforcement manner. In fact, I’ve had several “sidewalk” conversations with the young woman whose case resulted in the recent court ruling. My hope is that this dialogue will help support and encourage her to become clean, sober and permanently housed.

The notion that being homeless means that you can engage in anti-social behavior is not reasonable. So is the idea that the city cannot reasonably regulate the sidewalks in downtown for the common good. Somehow all of us have to find a way to get along. We as a community have to decide what behavior is acceptable and what is not.

As part of the SAFE process, homeless providers and advocates, business leaders, downtown residents and police officers came to the same conclusion: Blocking sidewalks and intimidating other people is not acceptable. Through this ordinance, we had an effective way to address this behavior. The sidewalk obstruction ordinance made downtown a more welcoming and safe place for everyone.

OUR COMMENT – Mike Reese misunderstands his role as a police officer, and some basic issues around homelessness, and, perhaps in the case of these “road warriors,” addiction and mental illness. This misunderstanding, that police officers are responsible somehow for providing leverage to cause persons with addiction or mental illness to seek treatment, has two basic problems. One, his basic assumption is wrong – police officers are neither the leverage or the fulcrum toward addiction treatment. Two, Reese clearly hasn’t the education or orientation to what addiction or mental illness is; Reese writes, “They have made a lifestyle choice to live on the streets, and they consistently refuse housing, treatment or other services;” this is amazingly false, akin to writing that prostitutes like to have sex with twenty men a night.

This misunderstanding is perpetuated by bad management in our police department, management which allows individual officers to become entrepreneurs and social reformers.

EXTRA – Sit /Lie Dies – Portland Mercury, July 2 2009

From the Willamette Week, July 22 2009

Police Chief Rosie Sizer was quick to take credit when the city’s Independent Police Review Division reported last week that use of force against all citizens by Sizer’s officers had dropped from previous years.

“I think we started managing the issue better,” Sizer told The Oregonian.

But at the same time that City Auditor LaVonne Griffin-Valade is embarking on what she says will be a months-long audit of the Police Bureau’s use of Tasers (as first reported July 15), one statistic buried on page 22 of the IPR’s 33-page report has some observers calling for closer scrutiny of the bureau.

That statistic: Subjects with mental illness are now the most likely out of all groups to get Tasered by Portland cops—even more than people who are actually armed or who assault an officer.

The IPR report, based on data from November 2007 to November 2008, shows 52 percent of subjects with mental illness who had force used against them got Tasered. Armed subjects, meanwhile, were Tasered slightly less, at 51 percent of the time. And those who assaulted an officer were Tasered 31 percent of the time.

Use of force in general against people with mental illness dropped 26 percent since the last period IPR reported on, which was August 2004 to October 2006. But despite that overall drop in force, which includes other methods like control holds and blunt strikes, reports of Taser use against subjects with mental illness rose 26.4 percent since the last IPR report.

Mental health advocates say they’ve long been concerned about reports of police using inappropriate Taser strikes against people with mental illness—whether out of convenience or a fear by police of touching the sick. Now they want more detailed information to determine what’s behind the rise in numbers.

“I find it hard to believe on the surface that this increase was somehow justified,” says Chris Bouneff, head of the Oregon chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “To me it signals that law enforcement hasn’t yet figured out how to deal with someone with a mental illness.”

While Bouneff admits it’s not always possible to recognize that someone is having a mental-health crisis, he says with proper training police can tell the difference more often and react more appropriately.

More than 300 Americans have died since 2001 after being Tasered by cops, according to Amnesty International. Because many of those people also suffered from mental illness, the human rights nonprofit has called for an end to Tasering the mentally ill except in cases where there’s a threat of serious injury to an officer.

Portland police policy, however, allows officers to Taser anyone who physically resists or shows that they intend to do so, regardless of their mental state.

The issue of police dealings with mentally ill people takes on greater resonance here after James Chasse Jr. died of blunt-force trauma following a violent encounter with police in 2006. The 42-year-old schizophrenic man was Tasered several times during the struggle, and advocates who pushed for reforms after Chasse’s death reject the notion that Tasers offer a more humane way for police to assert control.

“These statistics show us that what happened to James Chasse could happen tomorrow to someone else,” says Jason Renaud, a friend of Chasse’s and head of the Mental Health Association of Portland. “This seems to be a continuing problem where [police] don’t have the skills or the resources to do their job.”

Chasse’s death led to a new requirement for all Portland officers to receive crisis-intervention training. That training does not include instructions on Taser use or other tactical training, says police spokeswoman Detective Mary Wheat.

Sizer did not reply to a request for a phone interview. But in an email to WW, she said the people with mental illness police encounter are “more likely to be armed or more combative than other people against whom we are using force.” She added that police are looking forward to the opening of a new sub-acute mental health facility, which Multnomah County officials say is slated for 2012 or possibly sooner.“

READ – Use of Force by the Portland Police Bureau Follow-up, (Use of) Force Task Force, July 2009
READ – New Use of Force Report Shows, But Does Not Explain, Disparities, Portland CopWatch, July 2009
READ – Use of force by Portland police drops in two divisions, Oregonian July 21 2009
READ – Cops Using Tasers More Against People Suffering With Mental Illness , Portland Mercury July 21 2009

The third anniversary of the death of James Chasse is September 17 2009. We’re starting to plan a commemoration – and want your help.

We’re mulling a few ideas – but for brainstorming, the more the merrier. Want to help? Send us an email at info@mentalhealthportland.org.

The Mental Health Association of Portland has applied fairly constant pressure for truth and transparency about what happened to James Chasse since his death on September 17 2006.

In September 2006 we applied direct pressure to the mayor’s office with personal visits and ongoing correspondence.

From October 2006 to today we’ve provided local and national journalists with background interviews, documents and explanations of Jim’s death, the what happened before and after, the cast of characters, and the various twists and turns of the story.

From October 2006 to today we’ve collected every public document about what happened to Jim and put it online, including the complete homicide investigation, policy document, and news account.

What Happened to James Chasse – October 2006 / September 2008
Mental Health Association of Portland – tag ‘James Chasse’ – since September 2008

In October 2006 with help from Portland CopWatch and the First Congregational church, we helped organize a memorial service for Jim’s family. Dozens of speakers included Jim’s family, local civil rights advocates, mental health advocates, friends, community leaders and spiritual leaders.

We helped form the short-lived but helpful Justice for James Chasse Committee.

We organized the first annual memorial for James, a peaceful protest at City Hall where we presented the mayor’s staff with a list of continuing questions from the community about what happened to James. The mayor did respond – but did not answer the questions.

We are producing ALIEN BOY, a feature length documentary film about what happened to James Chasse. The director is Brian Lindstrom, creator of Finding Normal; the director of photography is John Campbell, the composer is Charlie Campbell or Goldcard and Pond fame. We’re 80% finished, and have raised $150,000 in cash and in kind contributions.

Go team!

From KGW.com, July 16 2009

FOR REFERENCE – Oregon is ranked #1 in homelessness in the Housing and Urban Development’s Housing Resource Exchange’s Fourth Annual Homelessness Assessment. Over 20,000 Oregonians were homeless on a one-night count in January 2008, 0.54 of our population – one out of 200 people. Over the past 18 months social services have been eliminated and Oregon’s economy has turned downward – so there’s reason to suspect the number of homeless persons has increased.

Oregon ranks third in year-round beds provided per capita – 14,215.

If you’ve noticed more homeless on Portland’s sidewalks you’re not alone.

The federal government has just counted more homeless per capita in Oregon than anywhere in the nation.

Why are Portland city leaders frustrated? Portland is four years into it’s ten-year plan to end homelessness.

Despite finding housing for hundreds of chronically homeless, and despite reaching 60 percent of the plans goals, the demand for service is increasing because of the economy.

Also, in 2007, the Portland City Council gave police the authority to write non-criminal citations to anyone responsible for blocking city sidewalks.

A judge last month ruled the city ordinance unconstitutional because it’s pre-empted by state law so, effective immediately, Portland Police are no longer enforcing the sidewalk ordinance

This, at a time when homelessness is peaking in Portland and sleeping on sidewalks is becoming a more and more common sight.

“The whole principle was we want everyone to be able to use sidewalks,” said the city’s Housing Commissioner, Nick Fish. “The law was never intended to target any one particular group but with this ruling it means we have one fewer tool to use to keep the sidewalks unobstructed.”

Compounding the legal challenges, Oregon is now ranked first in homelessness, second in joblessness, and third in hunger nationally.

Social service providers like Transition Projects, Inc. are stretched thin.

“We’ve got about 400 people on the waiting list now,” said TCI’s Community Service Director, Fern Elledge.

Commissioner Fish is seeking solutions and looking for help from the public.

He and Commissioner Amanda Fritz will co-host town hall meetings this weekend and next Tuesday.

“Rather than engage in a divisive debate about our sidewalks let’s engage the whole community in a debate about how we solve the problem,” said Fish. “This cornerstone of solving the problem is this resource access center.”

The $47 million resource access center will break ground in October, offering shelter, counseling, showers and job resources to help stabilize the lives of those in need. The city is paying $27 million of the total cost.

“Throwing money at the problem really encourages more of that problem,” said John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute.

Charles says Portland is “rolling out the welcome mat” to the homeless by increasing funding services.

He also criticizes city policies that encourage urban density because those policies make housing less affordable.

Charles says Dignity Village, a self-governed homeless village sanctioned by the city on land near PDX Airport, is the perfect model of self-help among the homeless.

Homeless villager Gaye Reyes agrees.

“The government doesn’t help us here. We’re self-supporting, self-sustaining. We built these (temporary houses) ourselves. Nobody came in and did it for us, Reyes said.

Fish says Dignity Village is a successful experiment on a small scale, but it cannot serve the 1600 people sleeping on the streets of Portland.

Fish says the city should stick to its ten-year plan to end homelessness even in tough times.

EXTRA – The Housing and Urban Development’s Homeless Resource Exchange
READ – The HUD HRE Fourth Annual National Homelessness Assessment (PDF 5.6 MB)
EXTRA – the Housing Authority of Portland’s Resource Access Center planning page
READ / LISTEN – Report Says Oregon Leads Nation In New Homeless People, OPB.org
READ – Oregon leads nation in homeless count, Portland Tribune
READ – Portland grapples with homeless issue after ruling on sidewalk ordinance, Oregonian
READ / WATCH – Report: Ore. has highest per-capita homelessness in the nation, KDRV.com Medford
READ – Oregon homeless to get help from federal agency, Oregonian
READ – Home Again, A 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness – brochure (PDF .5 MB)
EXTRA – Portland Housing Bureau, Portland agency responsible for coordinating services for homeless persons

From the Oregonian, April 15 2009

Jeremy Karvonen’s slide into homelessness started two years ago when he lost his job as a welder. He used up his savings, then his girlfriend’s student loans. They lost their storage unit, then their apartment. For months, they slept on sidewalks, under bridges and beneath overpasses.

In February, Karvonen found a bed at Transition Projects, which runs several homeless shelters. He spends his days applying for jobs as a welder, a fast-food worker, a stock boy and a day laborer. Nothing’s worked.

“I don’t want to live like this, but there’s no one out there willing to help us,” he said. “I’ve got a nice resume and letter of recommendation. Most jobs don’t want to look at you if you’re homeless.”

Karvonen’s story echoes that of hundreds of homeless people counted in a January survey that found their overall numbers have jumped 13 percent since 2007 in Multnomah County.

According to the Jan. 28 street count, 2,438 people were homeless that night, including 1,591 who were sleeping outside — on the street, in an abandoned building or in a car.

The overall number is equivalent to the entire population of Estacada, or all of the students at Grant and Franklin high schools.

“That sort of increase is just terribly alarming to us,” said Tony Bernal, director of development for Transition Projects. “We’ve seen recessions come and go, but we haven’t seen anything along these lines before.”

The count is a snapshot that tallies people sleeping outside, in shelters or in hotels using federal Section 8 housing vouchers. Officials believe the actual number is much higher because it’s likely that not everyone sleeping outside was counted.

Portland Commissioner Nick Fish, who heads the city’s housing efforts, said much of the increase is due to the deepening recession that has boosted unemployment and bankruptcies. Twenty-one percent of the people contacted reported that they had been homeless less than six months. And the number of people who identified themselves as military veterans is up 75 percent.

“We think this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Fish said. “In our analysis, this is the result of the one-strike-and-you’re-out economy, and it’s going to get worse.”

Other cities, Fish said, have reported as much as a 30 percent jump. He credited the city’s aggressive 10-year plan to end homelessness with lessening the problem here. Portland and Multnomah County have found homes for about 6,000 people in the past four years under the initiative.

The city’s $33.75 million housing budget faces a $6.7 million hole — just under 20 percent — with the new fiscal year that begins July 1. Much of that is what’s called “one-time money,” paid from a current year general fund surplus that’s expected to disappear with lower tax revenues in the coming year.

During recent budget hearings, Fish asked the City Council to find the money for housing programs, and there is some support on the council for closing the gap. Without the money, Fish predicts the numbers of homeless people will increase.

Fish also is seeking about $28 million to build the Resource Access Center, a $50 million homeless shelter and service center planned for Old Town / Chinatown. The money was supposed to come from the River District Urban Renewal Area, but the city’s redrawing of the boundaries of that area is tied up in a lawsuit. City finance managers are looking for another source of money.

Meanwhile, the number of people on the waiting list for a bed at Transitions shelters has almost doubled in the past year, from 286 in October 2007 to 434 in October 2008.

Those numbers are likely to soar if the city can’t find money for programs such as rental assistance, Bernal said. And the recession also has affected shelter donations, which were down 30 percent from 2007 to 2008.

“What makes it worse is most of us doing this work are nonprofits,” he said. “And I don’t know anyone who didn’t take a hit.”

READ – Report: More homeless people on Portland’s streets, Portland Tribune, April 14 2009
READ – Portland’s 2009 One Night Homeless Street Count, Bureau of Housing and Community Development
READ – Shelters: who stays, who goes, Portland Tribune

From the Portland Tribune, December 18 2008

Report shows rise in homelessness – Successes shown by city’s ten-year plan appear to lose ground

For the past two years, city officials have announced with pride that their 10-year plan to end homelessness was working. An annual one-night count of the homeless showed there were fewer people sleeping on the streets in the downtown area, as well as throughout the city, each year.

Not anymore.

Local authorities think it’s probably due to the economic downturn, but whatever the reason, there are more homeless people in Portland, with the majority concentrated in the downtown area, than there have been in years.

According to the city auditor’s annual government performance report, released last week, homelessness in Portland is up 33 percent over four years ago, when the plan to end homelessness was initiated.

READ – City of Portland Service Efforts and Accomplishments: 2007-08 (PDF 1.1 MB)

Some officials and advocates for the homeless question the auditor’s numbers, which are based on one-night counts of people in Multnomah County shelters, rather than people actually sleeping on the street, but none deny that homelessness is on the rise.

It was just short of two years ago that then-city Commissioner Erik Sten announced after an annual one-night survey that homelessness had appeared to decline 39 percent.

Not everybody is sure it did.

“We’ve been saying for a few years that homelessness has been rising,” says Patrick Nolen, community organizer for Sisters of the Road Cafe, an Old Town nonprofit that serves meals to a predominantly homeless population.

Nolen says that five years ago, Sisters was serving about 250 meals a day, and now they are serving about 425 a day, almost all to homeless people.

Nolen says he has talked to a number of homeless people who told him they have never been counted in the city’s annual one-night survey.

Sally Erickson, homeless program coordinator for Portland’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development, agrees that homelessness is on the rise this year, but maintains the one-night counts are an accurate reflection of homelessness in Portland.

Erickson says that the one-night count showed that in 2005, 1,020 people were turned away from shelters – most in the downtown area. In 2006, 664 people were turned away from shelters in one January night. In 2007, 575 were turned away, indicating more progress. But in January 2008, 709 were turned away, showing the start of an increase.

Erickson says city and county efforts to put more homeless people into subsidized apartments and to build new shelters made a major dent in the homeless population. She places blame for the increase on the recession.

“If not for the ten-year plan, we would be in much worse trouble,” she says.

But the increase in numbers is not the only trend among homelessness in Portland, according to Erickson and others.

Israel Bayer, director of Street Roots, a nonprofit newspaper produced and sold by homeless people, says the paper, long based in Old Town at 211 N.W. Davis St., is planning to open a second office this summer. But it won’t be in the downtown area. Instead, Street Roots will open where more of the homeless appear to be moving, to outer Southeast and Northeast Portland.

The new Street Roots office will be at Northeast 81st Avenue and Northeast Halsey Street.

“We see poverty trends moving east,” Bayer says. “As more of Portland becomes gentrified, we’re seeing poverty at all levels moving out of the city.”

Bayer and others say many homeless who once slept on streets in the downtown area now camp in areas around I-205 and in the Gateway area of Northeast Portland.

Nolen, of Sisters of the Road, says that some of the movement of the homeless to Southeast and Northeast Portland is due to police enforcing the city’s controversial anti-camping ordinance in the downtown area. Portland police this spring conducted a sweep of a number of homeless camps beneath the city’s bridges, in some cases taking away possessions and handing out citations.

“The anti-camping law is enforced less the farther out you go,” Nolen says. “And the sit/lie ordinance (which prohibits daytime sidewalk obstruction) is only in the downtown core. The one effect it truly has had is, the more you push people along with it, eventually people move.”

But many advocates say social service providers, still predominantly downtown and in Old Town, have not yet caught up with the trend to the east, leaving many homeless there without services such as health care, food and shelter.

Last week the nonprofit Oregon Law Center filed a lawsuit on behalf of four homeless people, seeking to invalidate the city’s anti-camping ordinance.

The city’s annual one-night count of homeless people will take place January 28, and organizer Erickson says she could use help. Volunteers willing to spend a couple evening hours interviewing the homeless at either social service agencies or on the street are needed. To volunteer, go to www.handsonportland.org .

EXTRA – Home Again, A 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness PDF. A significantly flawed plan which fails to acknowledge the impact of untreated addiction and mental illness on homelessness.
EXTRA – BHCD’s web site for homeless services

From the Willamette Week, December 9 2008

The newly elected police union president, Sgt. Scott Westerman, tells WW that the Police Bureau’s Use of Force Review Board has ruled that the officers involved in the death of James Chasse Jr. did not violate Bureau policy.

The decision of the board, which comprises both cops and civilians, has not yet been made public even though the board reviewed the evidence in the case in early October. The board then handed its ruling to Police Chief Rosie Sizer.

But more than two years after Chasse died and weeks after the use-of-force board cleared the officers, Sizer still hasn’t made her own recommendation on whether to discipline the officers, despite pressure from the union to make her decision known, Westerman says.

Westerman says since he was elected in October he’s had “continuous” conversations with Sizer urging her to make her recommendation.

“All she’ll tell me is: ‘The timing is not right,’ ” Westerman says.

The next step is for Sizer to decide whether to discipline any of the officers, and if so, what that discipline should be. She hands her ruling to Mayor Tom Potter, who oversees the Police Bureau.

Potter, who would make the final decision, leaves office in January, and City Commissioner Dan Saltzman will then take over as police commissioner. It’s worth noting that Potter made the extremely rare move of overruling Sizer’s recommendation on discipline when he fired Lt. Jeff Kaer last year. Sizer had recommended a suspension instead, and Kaer later got his badge back in arbitration.

Also complicating matters is a video released by the Chasse family’s attorney that the attorney says reveals conflicting statements made by Officer Christopher Humphreys about how he took Chasse to the ground. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office has now re-opened its investigation into possible wrongdoing by the cops.

Sizer is on vacation and did not immediately respond to an email message seeking comment on Westerman’s statement.

FROM: MENTAL HEALTH ASSOCIATION OF PORTLAND
TO: ALL MEDIA
SUBJECT: SECOND ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF JAMES CHASSE
DATE: SEPTEMBER 8 2008

September 17 marks the second anniversary of the beating death of James Chasse.

On a late Sunday afternoon, September 17, 2006, James Chasse Jr., walking home from a Northwest church, was attacked by and died at the hands of three law officers in downtown Portland in front of a dozen witnesses.

The officers, Portland Police officer Christopher Humphreys, Portland Police Sergeant Kyle Nice and Multnomah County Sheriff deputy Bret Burton, did not know Chasse, he was not suspected of a crime, and he did not provoke them.

When asked why the officers beat Chasse to death, one officer claimed Chasse “acted strange.”

Chasse was tackled to the ground, punched, kicked, Tasered repeatedly and hogtied, resulting in 16 broken ribs, a number of abrasions, a broken shoulder, both lungs punctured.

Inexplicably, paramedics cleared Chasse to be taken to jail. Upon seeing his injuries, jail nurses refused to admit Chasse, telling Officers Nice and Humphreys to take Chasse to a hospital.

Instead of administering first aid, calling for an ambulance, or taking Chasse to the nearest trauma unit, the officers tried to take him to a psychiatric hospital eight miles away. He died enroute, less than an hour after the beating.

No grand jury in Portland’s history has indicted a police officer for using force. The grand jury did not indict the officers who beat Chasse. The City and County refused to discipline the officers.

Christopher Humphreys was named in a federal lawsuit alleging police brutality that the city settled for $90,000 earlier in 2006. And in instances of use of force, Humphreys in 2006 was tied for No. 2 since the bureau began collecting statistics in 2004.

In response to Chasse’s death, the outcry of the Portland community led to changes in city and county procedures and processes.

In November 2006, Mayor Potter, reacting to the outcry, appointed a Mental Health / Public Safety Task Force to study how the mentally ill are cared for in Portland and their interactions with the police.

Increased funding ($290,000) for Project Respond to hire more staff and create a dedicated unit to partner with law enforcement and respond directly to police referrals.

Increased funding ($500,000) to establish mandatory Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) for all Portland Police officers.

Police Bureau hired a mental health professional to coordinate the CIT program as well as to provide policy advice on how to work with persons with mental illness. This person has significantly improved both our process of training officers and the quality of training.

Portland police officers no longer transport persons they have injured to jail or hospital.

HB 2765 was spurred by James Chasse’s death. The law requires the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training to include at least 24 hours of training relating to mental illness utilizing a crisis intervention training model (CIT.)

SB 111 was directly influenced by James Chasse’s death. SB 111 requires every county to create a six member planning authority co-chaired by the District Attorney and Sheriff. The planning authority must create and implement a plan that specifies how city and county law enforcement will respond when a police officer “was a cause in fact of the death of a person.” SB 111 requires that the county planning authorities inform the Oregon Department of Justice about such incidents. SB 111 also ensures officers or deputies who cause the death of a person is treated fairly psychologically, professionally, financially and legally.

Portland Police Chief Sizer issued a new Use of Force policy.

Since Chasse’s death, with the changes noted above that followed, no similar incidents have occurred in Portland. This remains the enduring tribute to James.

Regardless of these long overdue advances, persons with mental illness, their friends and family members, and citizens of Portland will hold public servants accountable for their actions, and not forget or overlook their mistakes.

James Chasse had a family, a history and a future, friends, neighbors, dreams and hopes. He was an artist, a small shy gentle person, and a person with schizophrenia. His death was merciless, brutal and pointless.

To remember James, and others with mental illness and addiction who died in past years during police action, supporters of the Mental Health Association of Portland will join on September 16 for a political action at the Portland Police Bureau Central Precinct and the Multnomah County Jail.

The action will begin at Noon September 16 and end before dusk. The action will consist of supporters drawing chalk outlines of persons who died during police actions on the sidewalks circling the block. Names, dates of death and perhaps remembrances of those who died will be written on the sidewalks in chalk. As per agreement with the City, all chalk drawings will be removed by the end of the day.

You’re invited to participate with this political action. Come at anytime between 10 AM and 6 PM. Bring friends and help remember those who have died.

For more information about James Chasse, see jameschasse.blogspot.com

To learn about a documentary film being made in Portland about the life and death of James Chasse, see www.alienboy.org

For more information about the Mental Health Association of Portland, see our web site at www.mentalhealthportland.org

The Mental Health Association of Portland, pursuing it’s mission to help people with mental illness and addictions speak up and speak out, has created a web site for the Homeless Liberation Front.

The web site is at http://homelessliberation.wordpress.com

The Homeless Liberation Front is a political action by homeless individuals protesting the City of Portland’s Camping Ordinance and the Sit / Lie Law. The protest has been in operation on the East sidewalk of Portland’s City Hall for the month of May.

Members of the Homeless Liberation Front have full access to authorship of this site. The site is permanent, free and was created by volunteers.