Mental Health Association of Portland

By Brian Lindstrom, in the Portland Tribune, Feb. 21, 2013

Brian Lindstrom

As parents of a 7- and an 8-year-old, my wife Cheryl Strayed and I often discuss what we hope to impart to our children.

At the top of that list is resilience, which I define not only as the ability to persevere despite obstacles but also as the capacity to extend some key element of your essential being beyond the vicissitudes and surfaces of day-to-day life.

James Chasse was resilient, and the opportunity to share that and other of his defining characteristics with a large audience was one of the main reasons for making the documentary “Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse.”

Many of you know Chasse’s name through the headline “Man with schizophrenia dies in police custody.” Perhaps you followed the story through the grand jury and civil lawsuit phases, and perhaps you wondered how he received 26 fractures to 16 ribs.

The first task of the film was to delve into James’ life, adding necessary dimension, depth and nuance to a person that — through no fault of his own — was now being defined by how he died. In making “Alien Boy,” I wanted to define James by how he lived.

One of the brightest parts of James’ life was his participation in Portland’s early punk music scene. Embraced by fellow outsiders and artists, he flourished, publishing his fanzine The Oregon Organizm, writing and recording songs as lead singer of The Combos, and playing muse to Greg Sage of the Wipers and Kim Kincaid of the Neo Boys, inspiring the songs “Alien Boy” and “Nothing to Fear.”

How many of us can say one song was written about us? James had two.

A measured account

James Chasse

The onset of schizophrenia made it nearly impossible for James to maintain those relationships, though he valiantly tried, writing a heartbreakingly brave note to an old friend from his punk days, “I thought I’d try to explain who I am….”

As so often happens with people suffering from severe and persistent mental illness, his behavior put people off and his interactions became confined to family members, mental health professionals and the rare person willing to endure the discomfort of reaching across the chasm of schizophrenia. One such brave, kind soul was Russell Sacco, a retired physician who attended the same church as James.

“He’s just a person and I’m just a person, so I went up and talked to him,” Dr. Sacco explains.

After weeks of no response, one day James replied “hello” to Dr. Sacco and a dialogue began. If only the police officers had approached James in a similar spirit that fateful day — or, absent that, ignored him altogether and not have initiated a foot pursuit that the Portland Police Bureau’s Training Division would later rule should never have happened.

The other task of the film was to take a clear-eyed, calm, measured account of how and why James Chasse died. Using eyewitness accounts, audiotape of the police investigation, police evidence photos, official court documents, footage from jail surveillance cameras, interviews of Medical Examiner Dr. Karen Gunson, recent Portland Mayor Sam Adams, then-Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler, journalists Matt Davis and Anna Griffin, attorney Tom Steenson and James’ mother and father, and videotaped depositions from Officer Christopher Humphreys, Sgt. Kyle Nice and Deputy Bret Burton, the film presents a relentless, enraging cascade of actions, decisions, omissions and lies on the part of police that led to James Chasse’s death.

Then-Mayor Tom Potter and then-Police Chief Rosie Sizer attempted to divert attention from the actions of Humphreys, Nice and Burton by framing what happened to James Chasse as a failure of the mental health system.

Nothing could be further from the truth. James was a success story, living independently and managing things well. He went off his meds, which is part of the disease of mental illness, but his case manager was aware of this and asked Project Respond to do a welfare visit accompanied by a police officer.

The welfare visit revealed that James was in a bad way, and Project Respond’s Ela Howard asked Officer Worthington to file a report flagging James as mentally ill so that if the police ever encountered him again, they would know to call Project Respond rather than try to deal with James by themselves.

Officer Worthington didn’t file the report. This was on Sept. 15, 2006, two days before James died. The mental health system is not to blame for James’s tragic death.

Fueling change

Last Friday evening, at the Northwest Children’s Theater on Northwest 18th and Everett, a mere 100 feet from where Officer Humphreys first encountered James, we had a party after “Alien Boy” premiered at Cinema 21 as part of the Portland International Film Festival.

I had the privilege of introducing Mayor Charlie Hales to James Chasse Sr. What followed was an open conversation between a still grieving father and a new mayor about what steps the city can take to guard against this kind of tragedy happening again.

I’m in Missoula, Mont., where the film just played in the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The audience was enraged — may that rage fuel positive change.

But rage will only get us so far. Let Russell Sacco’s simple, wise words guide us: “He’s just a person, and I’m just a person….”

In that vein, we have to ask about the toll all this has taken on the officers involved. Have they received the necessary mental health help such a traumatic experience requires? How has this experience changed them? What have they learned? Are they still capable of doing their jobs? Do we, the public, still have confidence in them?

Portland resident Brian Lindstrom’s third feature-length documentary, “Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse,” will play Sunday through March 7 at Cinema 21 in Portland.

From the Oregonian, April 4, 2012

The warnings from law enforcement started early last year, said Dr. Karen Gunson, the state medical examiner: Police told her they were seeing a big increase in the amount of heroin entering the state.

As the year wore on, the bodies kept piling up. By the end of 2011, 143 people, mostly young men, had died of heroin overdoses in Oregon. That’s 53 more than died the year before, and the most since the 131 who died in 2000.

“The numbers are driven by the availability of heroin and how cheap it is,” Gunson said from her offices at the State Medical Examiner’s Office and the Oregon State Police forensic laboratory across the street from the Clackamas Costco. “More than ever it’s just a flood–especially of heroin. It’s like a tidal wave.”

Gunson said heroin deaths peaked in the state in 1990, with about 250 tied to the drug’s use. That number kept dropping until about 2005 when it gradually started going up again.

She said the other factor driving the increase other than its availability is the fact that most heroin in Oregon is black tar heroin, which is not easy to cut with fillers that might decrease its potency.

“When you use it, you have no idea what you’ve got,” Gunson said. “It could be 20 percent, or 60 percent pure.”

She said most of the overdose victims are men, and they have been getting younger and younger each year. Rather than middle age men, she said, the victims are in their early 20s and early 30s. Where and how they die is agonizingly familiar.

“You can die in your car, die in restrooms, die down at Waterfront Park, in restrooms at fast food places,” she said. “Some of them get out of jail or the penitentiary and die on their way home.”

Years ago, Gunson said, a man went into a locker room at an upscale athletic club in Portland, injected in the locker room and died.

“We’re not just talking about lower socioeconomic classes,” Gunson said. “It spans all of society from top to bottom.”

Heroin is a central nervous system depressant. An overdose can kill quickly but is usually a long, drawn out process. If someone is with the person that overdoses, the story is frequently the same, Gunson said: The person nods off, falls asleep and then begins snoring–often loudly.

“They will tell me, ‘They were snoring for a long time and then thank God, the snoring stopped.” Well, they stopped snoring because they died. When they are in snoring phase, they are really in a coma.”

A traffic stop in Southeast Portland in November resulted in the seizure of a kilogram of heroin valued at more than $100,000, police said.

Gunson said many times she can tell by a person’s body, or the circumstances of where the person died–surrounded by needles, or a tourniquet still around an arm–that the death was a heroin overdose. That and the meringue-like foam that comes out of the nose and mouth. Many times an autopsy is not required, she said, although drug toxicology tests are always done.

Overdoses from methamphetamine and cocaine–both central nervous system stimulants–have remained fairly steady, as have deaths from abused prescription drugs such as Oxycontin or methadone; last year, 130 people died from prescription drug overdoses.

Those who overdose on cocaine either die from a seizure or an irregular heartbeat. With meth, she said, they take too much and they do stupid things, such as jump off buildings or die in car wrecks.

“That’s not saying that meth isn’t everywhere or a big problem,” Gunson said. “But people just don’t die from it like they do from heroin.”

Lt. Derek Rodrigues with the Portland Police Bureau’s drugs and vice division said the uptick in heroin overdoses in Portland can also be linked to the steep price and scarcity of the prescription painkiller oxycodone.

“A hit of oxy is hard to get and can go for $30, $40 But a hit of heroin is only $10,” Rodrigues said. “Same high, cheaper price. And if it’s a bad batch…”

Not surprisingly, the Oregon State Police’s drug enforcement section recorded the most drug seizures in its history last year, with 296, a 30 percent increase from 2010 and a 150 percent jump from 2008. That included 24 pounds of heroin; 242 pounds of meth; and 164 pounds of cocaine. The seizures led to 382 arrests.

“Although these seizures have kept traffickers from delivering substantial quantities of dangerous illegal drugs to their destination, significant supplies remain available and have a real effect on our communities and individual users,” said Capt. Calvin Curths, director of OSP’s criminal investigation division.

Curths said this year is shaping up to be another big year for drug seizures by the department, and like last year, most of the seizures are occurring on Interstate 5.

That will probably mean another year when more than 100 people die from heroin overdoses. The ledger is already adding up, Gunson said.

“We’ve got eight bodies in the cooler and three of them are overdose deaths from this week,” she said.

From the McMinnville News Register, June 4 2011

Last year, a single prescription drug killed 101 people in Oregon.

Karen Gunson, MD

No, it wasn’t the narcotic opiate oxycodone, dispensed primarily under the brand name OxyContin, or its cousin hydrocodone, under the brand name Vicodin. It was methadone, distributed under an array of little-known brand names.

A pure synthetic, methadone is best known for its use in getting addicts off heroin. While equally addictive, it doesn’t provide the euphoric high, so helps facilitate a more manageable two-stage withdrawal.

However, methadone has come into painkilling vogue of late as a cheaper alternative to semi-synthetics like oxycodone and hydrocodone.

According to records kept by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the amount of methadone distributed in Oregon grew 23-fold between 1997 and 2006, the most recent year for which records were immediately available. It has, in fact. quietly become the most-prescribed narcotic opiate in some parts of the state.

As a result, according to State Medical Examiner Karen Gunson, a robust black market has developed.

Ironically, Gunson said addicts are prone to overdosing on methadone because of the very quality that makes it useful in the treatment of heroin addicts. Users looking for a high tend to load up until they get it, and with methadone, that can easily prove fatal.

She said it is often mixed with other drugs as well, as addicts tend to take virtually any pills they can get. And because it lacks a pronounced high, it’s harder for them to tell how much they have ingested.

Just three years ago, Oregon logged 131 deaths by methadone overdose, so the 101 recorded last year actually represents an improvement, she said.

However, the legally prescribed painkiller still caused more deaths last year than heroin (90) or cocaine (20), and almost as many as methamphetamine (106, up from 87), according to records compiled by the state Medical Examiner’s Office.

Like heroin, falsely billed originally as a less addictive alternative to morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone are all narcotic opiates.

While methamphetamine and cocaine are potent central nervous system stimulants, the opiates are powerful central nervous system depressants. That puts users at greater risk for a fatal overdose, particular when cutting and mixing in the street trade makes dosage determinations very difficult.

Methadone originally gained cachet for its use in helping heroin addicts kick the habit. The idea was for addicts to overcome the psychological craving first by switching to methadone, then begin to beat the physical craving gradually by tapering the dosage over time.

Some addicts succeed in achieving step one, but not step two. They continue taking methadone on a permanent basis, as a means of keeping off the more dangerous and expensive heroin and avoiding the criminal lifestyle typically accompanying it.

As a result, methadone clinics have sprung up in big cities across the country, including Portland. They dispense methadone as a pink liquid that must be drunk on the premises, in prescribed dosages and under direct supervision.

However, doctors around the state aren’t prescribing methadone in liquid form for people battling an addiction. They are prescribing it in pill form for people either suffering from chronic pain or successfully mimicking the symptoms.

Because it requires no natural ingredient, methadone is much cheaper than oxycodone. Gunson said that makes it popular with both patients and insurance companies, and thus with prescribing physicians.

According to DEA statistics, painkillers have become a popular prescription all-around. In 1997, Oregon’s pharmacies and hospitals received about 9,000 grams of methadone, 57,800 grams of oxycodone and 134,000 grams of hydrocodone.

Nine years later, in 2006, Oregon received about 218,000 grams of methadone, 616,000 grams of oxycodone and 387,000 grams of hydrocodone.

Although the state used less methadone than either oxycodone or hydrocodone, its distribution grew 23 times, compared to nine times and twice for the other two, respectively.

And in 2006, five years ago, methadone distribution had nearly caught up with hydrocodone. It could very well have passed hydrocodone in those five years, but the DEA doesn’t provide data that current.

Gunson said doctors often prescribe hundreds of methadone pills to a single patient on a single visit, expecting the supply to tide him over for months. But she said a goodly share of those pills get diverted into the street trade.

The trend toward higher rates of methadone overdose isn’t exclusive to Oregon. According to a 2006 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, methadone overdose have become a national problem.

The agency said the nation logged 3,849 methadone overdoses in 2004, representing a 390 percent increase in just five years.

In 1999, only 4 percent of poisoning deaths were attributed to methadone. By 2004, the figure had climbed to 13 percent.

Between 73 and 79 percent were determined to be accidental and 5 to 7 percent suicidal, the agency said. It said a determination could be made in most of the remaining cases, though a few were classified as homicidal.

According to the agency, Oregon experienced a 14-fold increase in methadone overdoses during the five-year study period. Only two state’s showed a higher rate – West Virginia and Kentucky.

Methadone’s two narcotic opiate cousins also exacted a significant toll last year in Oregon. Oxycodone was responsible for 59 deaths and hydrocodone for 30.

Together, oxycodone and hydrocodone killed almost as many people as heroin and far more than cocaine. Adding the methadone deaths gives the prescription opiates a combined death toll of 190. That almost matches the combined death toll of 200 for methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and other drugs not available by prescription.

The medical examiner’s office didn’t break the prescription drug deaths down by county, only the street drug deaths. Yamhill County logged five of those last year, losing one resident to heroin, one to cocaine and three to methamphetamine.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Chris Ray, who heads the Yamhill County Interagency Narcotics Team, said the county has a thriving black market for prescription narcotics. However, he said relatively high prices – OxyContin can command as much a $100 a pill on the street – is fueling growing use of heroin as a cheaper alternative.

Gunson said the same market force is leading addicts to methadone. She said it sells legally for less than a $1 a pill, enabling a street selling to add a major markup and still undercut the price of OxyContin.

A change in the OxyContin manufacturing process is also fueling the trend toward heroin and methadone.

Previously, the drug’s time-release control could be short-circuited by crushing the pills, giving the user the instant high he was seeking. But that’s no longer the case.

Gunson serves on the state Board of Medical Examiners, which has long urged doctors to dole narcotics out in smaller quantities, even though doing so forces the patient to make more trips to the pharmacy for re-fills.

But she said the board has seen little improvement, particularly in rural Oregon, where the problem is most prevalent.

From The Oregonian, May 12, 2011

Methamphetamine-related deaths in Oregon jumped 22 percent in 2010, claiming 106 lives — the most in a single year over the last decade, according to statistics compiled by the state medical examiner.

READ – The Numbers Have Dropped But Meth Still Takes Its Toll, OPB.org – April 27, 2011

Gresham police and Multnomah County Sheriffs officers in hazmat uniforms clean out a meth lab in 1999, a frequent sight during the years before the state required a prescription for cold medicines with pseudoephedrine , one of the main ingredients used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.

And since Mexico banned pseudoephedrine four years ago, Mexican drug trafficking organizations are now manufacturing the drug in California, Arizona, Nevada and Washington.

“They can’t make the good stuff in Mexico, so they’re making the good stuff back in America,” said Rob Bovett, Lincoln County district attorney, who serves as legal counsel to the Oregon Narcotics Enforcement Association and had chaired Oregon’s Meth Task Force.

Bovett said Mexican drug organizations are manufacturing large amounts of methamphetamine in California, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Seattle, paying people to purchase pseudoephedrine products for the production of the drug. The process has become known as smurfing, or supersmurfing, where traffickers pay dozens of people to buy pseudoephedrine in quantities at or below legal thresholds from multiple retail stores.

A Fresno County investigation, for example, found that a couple had been soliciting homeless individuals to travel from store to store to buy pseudoephedrine, paying each $30, according to a report from the National Drug Intelligence Center.

“They’re supersmurfing everywhere across the West Coast, except Oregon,” Bovett said.

That’s why Bovett testified before the California Legislature last month, urging the state’s lawmakers to follow Oregon’s lead and require prescriptions for pseudoephedrine and ephedrine. He called California’s Senate Bill 315, modeled after Oregon’s legislation, “the most important bill for Oregon’s drug-endangered children.”

Bovett said that methamphetamine use in Oregon is rebounding somewhat, but he cautioned against drawing conclusions from one year of fatality data. He said statewide drug arrests and hospital admission figures from meth use show the the numbers don’t nearly approach the peak Oregon experienced in 2006 and 2007.

“The numbers are still very small, when you look at the whole data set,” he said.

State Medical Examiner Dr. Karen Gunson said traumatic deaths, where there’s methamphetamine detected in the body, are included in the state’s methamphetamine-related fatalities.

“It’s difficult to really overdose on methamphetamine,” Gunson said. “But it’s not too hard to jump off buildings or drive crazy while you’re on meth.”

Overall, the state’s 200 drug-related deaths in 2010 were down 6 percent, from 213 in 2009. Heroin was the second leading cause of drug fatalities, with 90 deaths, a 29 percent drop from 2009. Cocaine-related deaths dropped to their lowest level since 2000, with 20 last year.

The statistics from the state medical examiner do not include prescription drug-related deaths. Gunson said those figures may be available next week.

In Multnomah County, drug-related deaths dropped from 94 in 2009 to 87 last year; nearly 60 percent of the county’s drug fatalities were from heroin, even though heroin deaths were down slightly.

“I’m somewhat surprised the heroin numbers aren’t larger,” said Mark McDonnell, a Multnomah County senior deputy district attorney who handles drug prosecutions.

Many of the heroin deaths in Multnomah County involved people in their early 20s who became addicted to pain medication and switched to heroin because it’s cheaper and easier to obtain, McDonnell said.

From KGW.com, June 8, 2010

Keaton Otis spent the last months of his life mostly alone in his bedroom suffering from delusion and depression, his mother told a Multnomah County grand jury.

Otis shot a police officer May 12 during a traffic stop near Lloyd Center and died in a hail of return gunfire.

In May, a Multnomah County grand jury decided there was no criminal liability on the part of the police. A 708-page transcript of the jury proceeding and audio of the 9-1-1 calls were released Monday.

The grand jury report verified that a bullet fired by Otis struck Officer Christopher Burley. And the Albina Ministerial Alliance renewed its call Tuesday for a review of Portland Police Bureau shootings, both by the city and the FBI.

Felesia Otis said her son started acting strangely in 2008, suggesting that people were underneath the house planting listening devices, she told grand jurors. He would point at neighbors on the sidewalk or lawns and question why they stood there.

She suggested to Keaton that they get medical help for him. “Keaton, we need to talk to somebody,” she told jurors. “You need some help.”

She said Keaton realized something was amiss, but he focused on his depression. She focused on the delusional behavior, which she feared was bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

After seeing a therapist, he started taking anti-psychotics and anti-depressants.

The therapist would change the amounts or types of drugs, she said. Always a creative person, her son felt that the drugs stifled his artistic abilities and he stopped taking the drugs.

Last November, Keaton retreated to his bedroom and largely stopped talking and eating, she said. The only meals he would eat were ones taken to his room, she said. He would have stilted conversations with her and his father. He stopped talking to cousins he used to have animated conversations with.

He dropped about 50 pounds off his 6 foot 4 frame, to 155 pounds that day he died.

In the autopsy, Oregon State Medical Examiner Dr. Karen Gunson told grand jurors she was startled by how thin Otis was, describing him as “extremely slim, very slender, with long thin fingers and toes.”

Felesia Otis said she and husband feared for Keaton’s life. They wanted to have him committed, but current medical practices and laws said that without an imminent threat to his life, that was not possible.

She told jurors a therapist told her “basically, you are just going to have to wait until a crisis comes up before you are going to be able to get him in.”

Keaton did manage some outings, she said. He would take her Toyota (the one he was driving during the shooting) and go to the store. She attended a seminar where the suggestion was made that such trips were mentally healthy, as the delusional person would see everyday, normal life.

He would regularly go to a convenience store, purchase a bag of Doritos and go to Pier Park in North Portland, sitting quietly by himself before returning in about an hour, she said.

Police did tell her of a confrontation Keaton had where he threatened another man with a baseball bat. Keaton denied it took place, she said, then walked into his bedroom. She did check her car after that to make sure he wasn’t carrying a bat.

She and her husband didn’t worry about the incident too much. A year earlier, Keaton had been ticketed for parking illegally and had no problems with the police officer who issued the citation.

But they realized Keaton was in need of serious mental help. On Monday, May 10th, an appointment was made for that Thursday with a nurse practitioner. Her son died Wednesday.

Felesia Otis wept as she explained to the grand jury the difficulty of having a relative who needs help, but families unable to intervene in a meaningful way.

“You are suffering,” she told jurors. “The body is there. But they are not. There is a part of them that’s gone a little bit every day.”

Earlier, she described Keaton’s upbringing.

As a baby, he skipped the babbling and started speaking clearly, with full words. He went to Sabin grade school, then Buckman Elementary, an arts magnet school. His circle of friends included students from Southeast Asia, Africa, Mexico and Russia. He took Japanese as an elective.

In middle school, he entered a program called the Prospective Gents Club, which grooms boys to become responsible adults.

She and her husband are devout Christians, she told jurors, and a signature day in Keaton’s life was a trip to Lincoln City at age 18 to be baptized in the Pacific Ocean. Into adulthood, her son was would always give thanks before a meal, even at the height of his depression. She said Keaton is in Heaven.

Jurors were clearly touched by her testimony.

“I want to applaud you and your husband for doing a wonderful job,” one juror told her.

“Don’t stop as a wife and mother . . . and most of all, as a woman,” another told her.

A third told her, “please, for us, stay strong.”

From the Salem Statesman Journal, April 17, 2010

Family of man who died after a Taser hit seeks redress in federal court

Gregory Rold

Gregory Angar Rold, 30 died May 23, 2009, after he was taken into custody by Salem police. The family’s lawsuit asks for about $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $4.5 million in punitive damages.

The lawsuit claims that Rold’s civil rights were violated, that police officers were negligent in causing Rold’s death and excessive force was used against Rold.

The lawsuit names the city of Salem and four police officers: Officer Jacob Pratt, Cpl. Daron Mumey, Officer Adam Waite and Cpl. Eric Brown, as well as 10 other city employees.

A Marion County grand jury found that the Salem police officers were justified in using physical force while attempting to arrest Rold.

The Oregon medical examiner found that Rold died of causes related to cardiac arrhythmia and that his death was accidental.

Salem Police Department declined to comment on the filing of the case, citing pending litigation, said spokesman Lt. Dave Okada.

The May incident stemmed from a trespassing complaint that Salem police received regarding Rold in the 1200 block of Royvonne Avenue SE in an apartment complex.

The Marion County District Attorney’s Office said police contacted Rold and told him he was under arrest. Rold refused to comply and struggled with police. Police used batons and Tasers in the struggle. Rold was taken into custody and shortly after, stopped breathing. Rold was taken by paramedics to Salem Hospital, where he died.

The Oregon State Police and Keizer Police Department investigated the case, under the protocols of Senate Bill 111.

On June 19, a Marion County grand jury found that the Salem police officers were justified in using physical force while attempting to arrest Rold.

The grand jury heard from 15 witnesses, including the four police officers, investigators, two civilian witnesses and Rold’s mother and brother Siplus Ruba.

Oregon State Medical Examiner Dr. Karen Gunson determined that Rold’s cause of death was sudden cardiac arrhythmia due to hypertensive atheroselerotic heart disease, exertion and positional asphyxiation, as well as the contributing factor of obesity. Gunson ruled that the manner of death was accidental.

Among the allegations, the complaint states that Rold’s civil rights were violated because of excessive force by police and that the officers were negligent in failing to recognize that Rold had stopped breathing. The lawsuit also alleges that Rold’s death could have been prevented if the city was not negligent in failing to inform the officers at the scene of Rold’s limited English skills and his mental illness.

Rold’s brother, Siplus Ruba, said the family is still grieving over the loss of his brother, whose nickname was “Monny,” a Chuukese childhood nickname for Gregory that stemmed from his affinity to play with campfire ashes and dirt. Rold had dual citizenship of the U.S. and Micronesia.

Ruba said his brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and on disability. The family said he was not trespassing at the apartment, which was his mother’s, and was not violent when police arrived.

“We’d much rather have Monny back and the whole thing dropped,” said Steve Vian, Rold’s brother-in-law.

Vian said the family decided to file the lawsuit as a way of honoring Rold’s memory. Gregory Rold was the youngest in a family of five brothers and three sisters.

At least 300 people came to his funeral service, from places as far away as Seattle, Hawaii and Micronesia.

“We get together all the time, for family barbecues,” Vian said. “Without him there, it seems like a huge thing is missing.”

The lawsuit is filed under the name of Rold’s mother, Felisa Rold. Felisa Rold, speaking through her son Ruba as a translator, said she felt “broken.”

Felisa Rold still felt the same feelings of grief now as she did on the day her youngest son died.

“Nothing will ever change,” she said.

Attorney Todd Peterson of Portland is representing the Rold family. The lawsuit was filed on March 31 in Eugene federal court.

READ – Gregory Rold Complaint (Rold v. City of Salem) (PDF 7.5 MB)

From The Oregonian, April 5, 2010

Heroin accounted for 127 overdoses in 2009, killing more Oregonians than methamphetamine and cocaine combined.

The number of heroin deaths in the state marked the most since 2000, when there were 131.

Meanwhile, deaths stemming from the use of cocaine, methamphetamine and the combination of the three drugs were down.

READ – the rest of Heroin kills more Oregonians in 2009 than cocaine and meth combined

READ – Prying heroin’s grip loose, editorial, The Oregonian, April 5, 2010

READ – Heroin deaths spike as medical examiner tallies Oregon drug deaths, KATU.com, April 5, 2010

READ – Reed College addresses heroin deaths, KGW.com, April 5, 2010

READ – Heroin says hello to a new generation, The Oregonian, June 22, 2008

READ – Oregon’s drug problem: Social programs, schools can help beat addiction, guest editorial by Dwight C. Holton, U.S. attorney for Oregon, March 13, 2010

READ – the state medical examiner’s report on illegal drug-related deaths (heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine) in 2009.

Do you want to stop using heroin, cocaine or methamphetamine? The first stop for many people is Hooper Detox. Give them a call today at 503-238-2067. Get started on your new life.

By Sarah Mirk of the Portland Mercury, April 1, 2010

What We Now Know About the Homeless Man Shot by Portland Police

On Monday March 22, at 3:30 pm, Jack Dale Collins lay on the ground at Hoyt Arboretum, bleeding to death. Officer Jason Walters had just fired four shots into Collins, hitting an artery in his hip. Within minutes the man who lived, drank, and slept on Portland’s streets for 20-plus years was dead.

It took 30 hours for the medical examiner and police to release the name of the man shot by Officer Walters. They had to fingerprint Collins’ corpse to figure out who he was. The mug shot attached to the eventual press release including Collins’ name is a grim portrait. His mouth is almost hidden beneath a bushy, wiry beard. Lines droop beneath his eyes, deep wrinkles are carved between his eyebrows. He is balding on the top of his head, with hair sprouting from his temples and around his ears like an impoverished monk. His gaze is intense.

Jack Dale Collins

I pulled Collins’ mug shot out of my bag and showed it to James “Jimbo” Nelson, who was standing with a crowd fixing his bike trailer outside St. Francis Church on SE 11th and Oak, two days after the shooting. Nelson immediately identified the face.

“Old Man Jackie Collins,” said Nelson. “I didn’t know it was him the police shot.”

Nelson does not look so different from Collins himself—bushy gray beard, deep wrinkles, rough skin. Both have lived on the street in Portland for two decades.

“He was like any other drinker down here, Old Man Jackie Collins,” said Nelson. He leaned on the bike trailer. It was one of the first sunny, warm days of spring, and Nelson wore a black Harley-Davidson tank top. Nelson and his girlfriend, who goes by the name Gypsy Spirit, caravan around town on two bikes, hauling their homes behind them, trailed by their dog. Collins moved around town in much the same way, they said, but alone.

Nelson took Collins’ mug shot and hurried off to another group of homeless people who hang outside St. Francis, shooting the shit and smoking cigarettes until the church’s dining hall opens up for its daily free meal.

A lean woman named Momma Stormy knew Collins, knew him for years and still didn’t know much about him. “He liked to go up to Washington Park a lot, just spend time up there. That’s where a lot of drunks hang out and he would go up there to drink,” said Stormy.

“He drank every day,” said Nelson. “He was a drunk, but he was a peaceful drunk.”

Collins first surfaces in police files in 1980. Thirty years of Collin’s life show up in police reports as 25 incidents, including eight public park exclusions and nine citations for drinking in public.

In a write-up from an officer on horse patrol in Waterfront Park in 2005, Collins appears resigned to his life.

“[Collins] had a Seattle Best coffee cup sitting next to him. I rode up to [Collins] and asked what he was drinking,” reads the report. “He said coffee. I asked him if I could check and he removed the lid from the coffee cup. I saw the contents and recognized it as beer. I asked him what type of beer it was and he said it was Milwaukee’s Best. I asked him to pour it out in the bushes.”

The horse patrol officer had to quantify Collins’ appearance for the paperwork. He circled the words “thin,” “dirty,” “low-pitched voice,” “medium complexion,” and “teeth unknown.”

Scars

At 3:05 pm on March 22, someone called the police to report a “drunk transient” harassing people at Hoyt Arboretum. The transient was yelling at people, but he did not seem physically violent, the caller said. The transient was Collins.

Officer Jason Walters self-dispatched, heading out on the call alone. A 13-year-veteran of the bureau, Walters had worked around Washington Park for five years. He is also, Portland Police Association President Scott Westerman pointed out to press, a vegan bike rider. “He’s very Portland,” says Westerman.

Officer Walters was not carrying a beanbag gun, the bulky but non-lethal gun that gained recent controversy when Officer Chris Humphreys used one to shoot a 12-year-old girl resisting arrest at a MAX station in November 2009. Strapped to Walters’ belt were a baton, pepper spray, a Taser, and a gun. As he left on the call, he phoned Hooper Detox for a van to come out to the arboretum and possibly pick up the drunken transient.

Hooper Detox is the city’s sobering station and the first place addicts can go to get clean. It has 70 beds but can only afford the staff to fill 54. They also staff a van called CHIERS, which circles the city 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The van picks up 2,800 intoxicated individuals a year. This is actually a decrease. In the mid-1990s, the van picked up 3,200 people annually.

The CHIERS van never reached the arboretum. Everything happened too fast.

Officer Walters arrived at the arboretum office at 3:24 pm. The office is near the top of the park, by the big chapel-like gazebo that Zoobombers refer to as “the Skanktuary.” Green potted plants surround the entrance and right outside the door are two single-room bathrooms.

The person who called 911 told Officer Walters that the drunken transient was in one of the bathrooms. Officer Walters, according to the official interview police investigators waited 48 hours to conduct, knocked on the door. Jackie Collins emerged. His face, neck, and hands were covered in blood. In one hand he held a knife with a six-inch handle and one-inch blade.

Medical Examiner Dr. Karen Gunson does not shy away from the grisly details. “He cut around his neck, deeper on the right side,” says Gunson, describing Collins’ body. “It’s not likely that wound would have killed him. Though if he had kept cutting, down to his jugular maybe, he could have died.”

Back at St. Francis, Nelson and Gypsy Spirit shake their heads when asked if they think Collins was trying to kill himself.

“I heard he was a cutter, that disease for cutting,” says Nelson.

“He was a slicer,” agrees Gypsy. “When he got into depression mode, when he was really drunk, he would go into a slashing mode where he’d cut himself. His arms. That’s why he always wore long sleeves.” She traced on her arms where she had seen his scars.

“Even in the summer, he wore long sleeves,” says Nelson.

“He didn’t want anyone to know about his life,” says Gypsy. “He was a private man, a personal man.”

“Cutting is an unusual symptom of mental illness,” says Jason Renaud of Mental Health Association of Portland. “It’s usually seen in young people, but can be seen in older people. It’s a response to feeling bad about yourself, bad about your environment. It’s hard to treat, people are usually pretty secretive about it. It’s a way of harming yourself without killing yourself.”

Last Days

When the city tried to track down every homeless person in Portland for its one-night count on January 28, 2009, it found 1,591 people sleeping outside and 820 people in shelters. Despite the city being four years into its “10-Year Plan to End Homelessness,” there were 13 percent more homeless people counted in Portland in 2009 than in 2007.

In a different in-depth count in 2008, 35 percent of homeless Portlanders reported or were observed to have a mental illness. Only 19 of the 646 interviewed in that count were over age 60.

Why are these people suffering from mental illness not living somewhere safe in treatment? Disability Rights Oregon Executive Director Bob Joondeph explains in five letters, “M-O-N-E-Y.”

“We have an under-funded and overburdened community mental health system,” says Joondeph. “We end up paying down the road in jails or emergency rooms, neither of which are designed to humanely deal with people with mental illness who are in crisis.”

In the medical examiner’s office, Dr. Gunson says she did not see any scars from cutting on Collins’ arms. But, she admits, she wasn’t looking for them. Though she believes Collins was trying to commit suicide in the arboretum bathroom, Dr. Gunson classified the death as homicide. “Homicide is just a technical term meaning killed by someone else,” explains Dr. Gunson. “It’s up to another person to decide whether that means murder or manslaughter.”

A grand jury is due to convene about the incident this Thursday, April 1. It will decide whether the officer should be criminally charged.

When he emerged from the bathroom covered in blood, Collins moved toward Officer Walters, according to the officer’s statement. Walters asked if Collins needed help. Collins did not respond. The officer backed up while telling Collins to drop the knife. Collins said he would not. According to his report, Officer Walters backed up against a “physical obstruction” and ordered Collins to drop the knife. Collins continued “advancing.”

Walters pulled his gun and fired two shots into Collins. Collins spun around slowly, the knife still in his hand. Walters shouted again to drop the knife and Collins slowly approached him. Walters fired two more shots. Collins dropped to the ground, and as he bled, Walters called for medical support. The medical staff declared Collins dead at the scene. He was 58.

Though Officer Walters did not know it at the time, a second 911 call had come in to police about Jackie Collins that day. A mother and son had told a park ranger that Collins had shouted at them and threatened to kill them.

Days later, several media outlets broke news of another alarming detail, contained in a police report the bureau had initially classified as confidential.

Eleven days before he was shot, says the report, Collins went to the police to confess a crime. He walked into Central Precinct and told Officer M. John Holbrook that he had molested a girl 42 years ago. He couldn’t remember her name. Or where she lived. He had not spoken to her since. But he wanted the police to know that he had “rubbed his penis on her vagina” one night in his parents’ house.

“Talking with Collins was difficult as he took quite a while to respond to questions and had to be reminded periodically of the question,” wrote Officer Holbrook. After the conversation, Holbrook directed Collins to get in touch with a mental health service.

One week after Collins was shot, there is no blood on the ground outside the arboretum office. The bathroom, though small and covered in ugly green tile, is clean.

Out Of The Way

Nelson and his friends say Collins never stayed in one place for very long. He preferred to keep out of the way, not talk to people. “He hit all the free places around town that he could. He never kept one squat for more than a few days,” says Nelson. Gypsy Spirit and Momma Stormy say he often slept under the St. Johns Bridge.

It’s easy to see why Collins would like the park under the St. Johns Bridge. On the afternoon of Monday, March 29, the park was completely empty of people. Though the thunder of cars shook overheard, the grass was green and crisp. Geese meandered by the water’s edge.

But underneath one wide pine tree near the edge of the park that day was another makeshift home. Someone else’s wet red blanket hugged two backpacks and a shopping basket. Their 40 of malt liquor nestled against a cooking pan and a bundle of knives on the hard, dry earth.