Mental Health Association of Portland

By Jenny Westberg, Portland Mental Health Examiner

Michael Justin Evans

Around 10:30 p.m. on August 14, Michael Justin Evans became the latest casualty in a years-long series of bloody encounters between Portland-area police and persons with mental illness or addiction.

Evans, 23, was killed by one of the two Gladstone police officers dispatched to the home he shared with his grandmother, Judie K. Reich, in the 300 block of West Fairfield Street, after reports that Evans was tearing the residence apart. Soon after their arrival, either Officer Steve Mixson or Officer Christopher Spore fired multiple rounds at Evans, who police say was armed with a knife. Witnesses said they heard four gunshots.

Evans’ father, who was nearby, heard the shots and hurried to the scene, where he saw Michael’s body on the front lawn.

He started screaming. “The cops shot my son! The cops shot my son!”

To Jason Renaud of the Mental Health Association of Portland, it was grimly predictable.

Renaud has been cataloguing deaths at the hands of Portland-area police (see elsewhere on this site for a list, plus background information).

Early on in the process, Renaud recognized a pattern: Since at least the early 1980s, in 170+ documented cases, virtually without exception, the people who are shot by police (fatally or nonfatally) are those with a mental illness, an addiction problem, or both.

The latest death is no exception.

Michael Evans struggled with mental illness and substance abuse. His short life included trouble with the law, suicide attempts and erratic behavior. There were also attempts to get help: he joined AA at age 14. Those who knew him say he could be scary. But overall, friends remember him as a nice kid.

One of Michael’s friends, Jim Reynolds, told The Oregonian the cops knew Evans’ history, and he wonders why they didn’t take it into account.

“I don’t know why they had to shoot him four times,” said Reynolds. “They knew he was a mentally ill kid.”

The overkill of shooting four times — or continuing to shoot a person who is already dead; or going straight to lethal force when the situation could be handled other ways; or shooting a person who is unarmed, or who is surrendering — has, unfortunately, become a familiar part of police response to people with mental illness and addictions.

Aaron Campbell was shot in the back, unarmed, as he tried to surrender. Keaton Otis was shot so many times that another officer arriving on the scene thought it sounded “like World War III.” Jack Collins was shot and killed as he shuffled forward in a daze, holding a knife he had been using to harm himself. Anthony McDowell was shot dead as he came out of his house in a “surrender” position, his rifle held over his head. Thomas Higginbotham was coming out the door, holding a knife, but with a blood alcohol content so high it’s difficult to imagine him wielding it — but police didn’t wait to find out. James Chasse was just standing on the street, not committing a crime or suspected of one; even so, police confronted him, chased him, knocked him down, and while he lay on the sidewalk, they kicked him, Tasered him, and beat him so badly he died soon after, in the back of a patrol car.

Those are a just a few.

Renaud points out that when officer-involved shootings involve exclusively persons with mental illnesses and/or addictions, these are people with disabilities — a federally protected class.

Indeed, the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this year launched an investigation into whether there is a pattern of conduct on the part of Portland police that violates the civil rights of persons with a mental illness.

For Michael Justin Evans, dead before he had much of a chance to live, it hardly matters. Or you could say it was the ultimate civil rights violation.

Officers Mixson and Spore are on administrative leave while the case is investigated.

And Dean Evans mourns his son.

From The Skanner, July 30, 2012

Felesia Otis says it’s hard to pinpoint the moment when her son Keaton became mentally ill. As a Benson High School student he had lots of friends and loved life.

Keaton was artistic, interested in photography, graphic design and poetry. After leaving school, he designed and produced tee-shirts and jackets. He also lived with cousins in Canada, for a couple of years.

Felesia Otis

Eventually, he planned to go college and get a degree. But gradually, in his early 20s he slipped into psychosis.

“He could do all the normal things – he could go to the store. By the time we realized he was starting to lose touch with reality, and he was going to need some help, he’d been struggling for some time.”

Keaton had always had a suspicious streak, Otis says. The family would even tease him about it. But from an endearing character trait, Keaton’s suspicion morphed into paranoia. He began to spend more and more time alone in his room, even avoiding friends and family.

He would worry if a strange car parked across the street, or if anyone came to the door.

“It was subtle little things. We’d dismiss it as just Keaton being a little paranoid,” Otis says.

Because Keaton was talking less and less, it took a long time before his family realized he believed people were tunneling under the family home and spying on them.

“The more unsafe he felt and the more anxious he was, the worse his delusions got,” Otis says. “As a family member, you’re just in shock because it’s not rational for your child to believe that.

“He wouldn’t see his aunts and uncles; he wouldn’t see anybody. He had really changed,” Otis says. “He stopped talking. He wouldn’t say much more than a sentence. It’s like you don’t recognize them when they get to that place. They’re so not what they used to be.”

Signs along the way had pointed to Keaton’s vulnerability to psychosis. He had attention deficit disorder, which increased his stress at school. At 14, he asked for help because he realized he was depressed. Depression, anxiety and mood instability increase the risk of psychosis. Unfortunately, the doctor he saw had the mistaken idea that adolescents don’t get depressed.

Keaton Otis

“Provider lack of knowledge is a whole other issue,” Otis says.

Keaton eventually did see a psychiatric nurse practitioner and agreed to try medications. But without health insurance, no other services were available. He had to apply for a “scholarship” to get medication and his choices were limited to samples. The ones he tried had unpleasant side effects and he felt that they interfered with his ability to be an artist.

“It turned him off to the medication,” Otis said.

Otis says she wishes she had been able to contact a program like EASA, which supports youth going through a first psychosis and also works with families.

“You have might have one opportunity to get it right so you want to make sure it’s the best opportunity at the best time. To me, I think EASA would have been the right thing for Keaton.”

Support outside the family is essential, Otis says, because a young adult won’t tell his parents everything. And it is easier for a professional to suggest treatment.

“They can take on that difficult role of helping that young person weigh out their choices,” she says. “And if they get too ill, then they can look at hospitalization. So that takes the family out of that struggle and allows them to be the loving support they want to be.”

The mental health system is so broken that families can’t get help, Otis says, even when their loved ones are as ill as Keaton was. When sufferers are so caught up in their delusions that they don’t realize they are ill, (a condition called anasognosia) they can refuse treatment unless they meet the criteria for involuntary commitment.

Legally in Oregon, that means they must be so ill they are dangerous to themselves or others, or at imminent risk of death because of their illness. In Multnomah County that law is defined very strictly.

So when Keaton stopped eating and dropped 50 lbs– at 6 foot 4 inches tall he was 145 lbs – the family was told he still did not meet commitment criteria.

Soon after, tragedy struck. On May 12, 2010, Keaton was stopped by police when driving. A gang enforcement officer decided he might be a gang member because he was a young Black male wearing a hoodie on a warm day.

Keaton’s father, Fred Bryant, questions the rest of the official story. What’s not under dispute is that police shot and killed Keaton in his car. In June 2011 The Department of Justice launched a civil rights investigation into Portland Police Department’s officer involved shootings of people with mental illness.

Keaton’s family was still trying to get help for him when he died.

Felesia Otis and her husband Joseph Otis are determined to push for change. They are creating a nonprofit, Friends of Keaton, which will offer support and education to family members of people with psychosis. The group also will advocate to make sure Oregon’s healthcare exchanges include prevention services like the EASA program, that provides support and wraparound services to help people recover.

The EASA program offers support to youth and families dealing with mental illness. Contrary to previous beliefs about psychosis, medication is not always necessary and two of every three people recover completely. Psychiatrist Neil Falk says psychosis is like “a heart attack of the brain” and requires similar time and support to achieve recovery

Psychiatrist Neil Falk, who works with EASA in Multnomah County, says three out of every hundred people will suffer from a psychosis, but two of those three will recover completely with support. Psychosis generally strikes young people between the ages of 15 and 25.

The one in a hundred people who develop a lifelong psychotic illness usually can learn to deal with the symptoms and build a normal life, Falk says.

As clinical director with Volunteers of America’s prison re-entry program, Otis understands the intersection between the mental health system and our jails.

Mentally ill people should not be ending up in jail, she says, because they are too sick to know they are breaking a law. But since they often do go to jail, treatment should be better coordinated.

“If you know someone is bipolar, and you send them out of jail with no services and no way to get meds, or just a week of meds, then you’re setting them up to fail,” she says.

The Otis family has heard from other families whose experiences mirror their own. One family spent $20,000 getting power of attorney, simply to get a loved one into hospital. But once released, he rejected them and disappeared.

“He doesn’t trust them now because he’s equating them with the hospital,” Otis says. “That is a position no family should be in, but it happens all the time.”

A lot of problems –and expensive long-term treatment – could be avoided through prevention and early intervention services such as the EASA program, Otis says.

“If we could rethink how we deal with psychosis and be proactive not reactive, we would not wait till people’s lives have totally fallen apart so we can help them piece it back together.”

Contact the Multnomah County EASA program at: 503-988-5870

Or through the 24/7 crisis mental health line: 503-988-4888

By Jake Thomas, Street Roots, March 15, 2012

View Full Size    (REUTERS / Steve Dipaola)

Riot Police monitor Occupy Wall Street protesters in Portland, Oregon on November 13, 2011. Occupy Portland protesters and police confronted one another in the streets, as authorities around the United States tried to close down encampments occupied by demonstrators for weeks.

A common pattern often emerges after a citizen dies at the hands of police. There is public rage. The city promises reform, and then the rage simmers off until the next incident. Less noticeable, however, is the constant work of people dedicated to bringing reform to the Portland Police Bureau, notably Jo Ann Hardesty (formerly Jo Ann Bowman).

Originally from Baltimore, Hardesty has been an Oregon state legislator, the head of the civil rights organization Oregon Action and one of Portland’s most vital and outspoken critics of the Portland police.

Two years ago, Hardesty was part of a coalition that helped pass a city ordinance aimed at strengthening oversight of the police by expanding the Independent Police Review (IPR) Division’s powers to investigate police and giving it more of a role in how officers are disciplined. The ordinance was passed in response to a string of incidents where Portlanders were killed in standoffs with the police. But despite the efforts of the city, the bureau now finds itself the subject of a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Justice Department.

Recently, Hardesty served as a member of the city’s charter commission, a group of citizens selected by City Council and charged with making changes to what is basically Portland’s constitution. Although City Council intended the commission to refer “house-keeping” amendments to voters for final approval, Hardesty used the occasion to propose two measures related to how police can control crowds.

That opportunity was dashed when the commission adjourned Feb. 27, amid controversy and acrimony, with no signficiant policy proposals recommended for a public vote. Still, Hardesty hopes that the proposals, which were inspired by people involved in the Occupy Portland movement, will spark a broader discussion on police accountability while voters are also getting ready to select their next mayor.

Jake Thomas: Regarding the charter commission, you proposed two amendments that would bar police from using animals or chemicals to control crowds. Why should this be in the charter?

View Full Size   Jo Ann Hardesty                         

 

Jo Ann Hardesty: It actually shouldn’t be in the charter. We should have a police chief that would just implement it, or we should have a police commissioner who would say make it so because it’s good public policy. But since we have neither of those, the charter is the only option to the public right now. It’s not the whole police accountability package, but it certainly starts us on the process, and what I love is the opportunity to talk about it during the election season. Really, what does police accountability look like? I’d say that there are certainly other things that should be included with police accountability, but these two things are the most visible today right now and mostly on peoples’ minds because of Occupy and because of some of the most recent encounters with police. If it’s on the ballot, people will be talking about it, and we can create real community dialogue about what real police accountability looks like, and it forces people on the ballot to have this conversation.

I think the charter commission was set up for failure, quite frankly, because the mayor and the City Council didn’t want us doing policy issues. They gave us inadequate staff they gave us inadequate resources. They really tried to tie our hands. They didn’t expect in the short period of time that I would be able to come up with a couple proposals that would make it to the ballot.

J.T.: Was this a lost opportunity for some real change?

J.H.: I certainly agree with the lost opportunity for the public. It is really frustrating to work as hard as we did without the support of the public body that put us together. It supports the need to remove this process from the political process.

One of the housekeeping measures if passed in May, will provide a structure and timeline for the next charter effort. It would appoint commissioners for a two-year period of time. I continue to believe what the mayor said to me in a private meeting: he didn’t care about these issues, and it is reflected in the lack of staff and resources dedicated to this effort.

J.T.: It’s been about two years since City Council passed an ordinance meant to bring greater oversight to the police bureau. Looking back, how well has this ordinance worked?

J.H.: Commissioner Randy Leonard put together a work group that came up with 54 recommendations for changes. The City Council implemented four of those changes, and I would say that it is not working yet. We don’t have true police reform in the oversight process yet.

J.T.: What needs to happen?

J.H.: Several things need to happen. The IPR director needs to have the ability to have her own attorney. The city attorney represents the police, the City Council, the IPR director and anyone else within the city government. Their advice is always about how to limit liability or limit the possibility of a lawsuit. But if the IPR director had an independent attorney that could advise her about the appropriateness of filing charges against police officers, holding them accountable for some egregious behavior, then she would have much more power to implement her own investigations, get her own legal advice and then be able to recommend what the punishment should be.

The problem with the current system is the independent review process really does no review. They review what the police and the internal investigation committee has already done, or they recommend that the Internal Affairs Division actually conduct the investigation. So in and of themselves, they have the ability to do their own investigations, but they don’t. The whole IPR system is flawed. So trying to fix a flawed system becomes very, very frustrating.

I would like to see that system go away because it was supposed to be temporary 10 years ago. It was created by then Mayor Vera Katz who said, let’s try this for a year and see what happens. It’s become institutionalized and the assumption is that it works, and it doesn’t. It doesn’t work for community members, it doesn’t work as far as giving the community certainty that police are being independently investigated and then held accountable for their behavior.

J.T.: So what specific things should have been in the police-reform ordinance?

J.H.: Before the ordinance was passed, a work group made 54 recommendations and laid out some good ideas, like making sure that the auditor has the ability to show up at crime scenes and actually conduct her own investigation. She has the power to do that, but it actually looks like the City Council lessened her ability to do that in a follow-up ordinance. I don’t think it’s police that should be investigating police. There should be an independent citizen committee investigating police. If those 54 recommendations had been adopted by the City Council, I think that this system would be better because at least it would have those independent pieces in place, and then we would have to wait and see if that worked.

J.T.: Are any other cities doing anything worth emulating?

J.H.: I think San Francisco has a true independent body that actually investigates police. We wouldn’t want to copy them exactly, but they had some good things like their total independence, and their budget is set by statute so it doesn’t get in a political fight if people don’t like the outcomes. They have community members that serve on the body. I think that’s just one of several models around the country that we should be looking at.

J.T.: In response to a string of incidents where mentally fragile individuals died at the hands of police, the bureau has taken steps to make officers better equipped for such encounters. Has the bureau made any progress in this area?

J.H.: Some days I think that they’re making progress. We read every once in a while how the police were able to come to a situation where someone is suffering mental illness and they’ve been able to de-escalate the situation. But we hear that rarely. Most of the time what we hear is that they had to kill them because they had a little knife or they were aggressive in some manner like the poor guy on the roof of a garage downtown.

We’re told that under former Mayor Tom Potter that every law enforcement officer had been trained in how to identify and de-escalate situations with people who are suffering from mental health issues and be able to call a special team if they need it. So sometimes they use that system, and sometimes they don’t, and when they don’t another community member dies unnecessarily. And what’s frustrating for me, and I think others, is there is training in how to address people with mental health issues. We have mental health workers all over this state where every single day they confront the kind of things Portland police confront, but they don’t kill people. They are able to immobilize people, to calm them down, to de-escalate the situation. So, if we’re training police in de-escalation why is it not working for them most of the time?

J.T.: You mentioned the Justice Department’s investigation of Portland police. What are some things you hope will come out of that?

J.H.: Well, I’m hoping that the Justice Department investigation will confirm that people of color and people with mental health issues are treated differently by Portland police, and I’m hoping the Justice Department will have very specific steps that Portland police will be required to take to remediate that activity.

What’s good about when the Justice Department comes in, is that they recommend very specific actions that they want to see the local police department take. I hope they come out with a laundry list of things for Portland police, so that the community can have a better level of comfort with interacting with the police.

J.T.: Has any progress been made on the issue of racial profiling? Former Police Chief Rosie Sizer did some work on the issue, but have we seen anything since then?

J.H.: No, actually once the racial profiling committee was disbanded by Mayor Tom Potter, the replacement was supposed to be the Human Right Commission’s sub-committee on Police and Community Relations. I used to go to those meetings. The predominance of that committee were cops. The community members that they selected for the committee had to apply, and the people they selected had the least knowledge of police activities. I would go to those meetings and sit through the whole two hours until the 10 minutes of public comment, and I would be a bit appalled because I would hear police lying to community members about tactics or about activities or about what they’d been involved in. The people on the committee, because they didn’t know police other than from that committee, believed them.

They were not getting to the problem because it was a police-led kind of effort, and the police got to frame the conversation. They didn’t want anyone to talk about anything that was going to make the police uncomfortable. Well, it’s uncomfortable when police shoot people in our community. That’s uncomfortable. When they racial profile people, that’s uncomfortable. So it didn’t matter to me that people who are paid with taxpayer dollars are going to be uncomfortable in a meeting. They need to get over that.

J.T.: Do you have any thoughts on how racial profiling has affected police work, specifically with gang violence?

J.H.: Keaton Otis is dead because we had ill-trained gang officers riding the streets of Northeast Portland. That young man is dead because someone looked at him and thought he was African American and is between 14 and 24, therefore he must be a gang member, right? That moment when that officer made that decision to pull that young man over, they just escalated everything up until the point where they shot and killed him.

I think the police have a huge challenge because the community distrusts them because of their experience being stopped and searched just for walking down the street in their neighborhood. The police don’t get a lot of African Americans saying, “I know so-and-so is a gang member, and so-and-so has a gun.” They are not getting the community cooperation from people because people have observed over and over again this behavior.

When my office was on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, I can’t tell you how many times I saw the police pull over young African-American men, search them, search their car, search their back packs and then let them go. Now the interesting thing about that is there is no record of those stops. Even though the Portland police keep records of traffic and pedestrian stops those aren’t captured because they don’t call that a traffic stop. They call that a “walk and talk.” They’re just trying to find out what they’re doing in the neighborhood, even though they’ve searched them, and they’ve stopped them and limited their ability to move freely, they don’t consider that a stop. So the data doesn’t tell us how bad the situation is. But if you observe it, you can see this happens over and over and over again in certain communities.

This police chief doesn’t even mention racial profiling or the plan to reduce racial profiling that former Chief Rosie Sizer actually produced a year late. It certainly doesn’t come up during budget times because there were some very specific recommendations that Chief Sizer developed that had financial implications. We’re in the budget season now; I’ve heard no one talk about how we are going to fund the plan to eliminate racial profiling.

J.T.: How do you rank current crop of mayoral candidates on issues of police accountability?

J.H.: I think they’re all bad, and they’re not bad because they’re bad people, they’re bad because they don’t know what they don’t know yet. So I don’t think that there is any one candidate that stands out that’s going to do a great job reforming the police bureau. But what I’m hoping is that during this campaign season the community will ask these candidates that want to be mayor, what is your vision of true community policing? What do you think the role of a police chief should be? Do you like the one we have? Then based on those answers, pick the best person that we think is going to move the police bureau forward. I guess the good news is that all three candidates, because they’re not insiders to City Hall and downtown, could make the changes, but the question is if they will have the political will to make those changes.

J.T.: What would prove to you that we have police accountability?

J.H.: This is the first time in over 20 years that a Portland police officer has been indicted for using deadly force on duty — the cop who shot the guy with a shotgun using real bullets and not bean-bag rounds.

Real police accountability would say it’s impossible to think that out of 5,000 employees that nobody ever does anything wrong. So I would suspect that there are officers that would be fired, there would be officers that would be demoted, officers that would have to go through some kind of supervised training. And right now, I don’t believe that any of this happens. For me, real police accountability would mean that periodically that a police officer would be fired, or demoted or sent back to retraining and that would be public knowledge.

J.T.: What is the police bureau doing right?

J.H.: (Pause) There are a lot of good men and women in the police bureau who go to work every day and do their job in a respectful, thoughtful manner, and I don’t think there’s a lot of police officers that misuse their power. But I think that police become more empowered to misuse their power when they’re not held accountable. They answer over 40,000 calls a year and they don’t kill 40,000 people a year, so that means most of the time they get it right. When they don’t get it right, the problem is they don’t say, “yeah, we messed up that one.” They say it’s the person that they killed who is at fault because they didn’t follow directions, which I’ve never heard of anyone in a mental health crisis following directions.

We certainly know that there are some police officers whose names show up in excessive force complaints. But we have no certainty, quite frankly. I don’t know who is a good police officer. I would hate to be in a position where I needed a police officer, and I was unsure if the one I got was the right one. That would petrify the daylights out of me. That’s why so many community members are petrified of calling the police.

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Brad Lee Morgan smiles at his son, Kannon.

By James Mazzocco, on BlueOregon.com

It was January 25, and Brad Morgan wanted to die.

Maybe it was earlier. He had problems. A day, a week, or a month before — nobody can know for sure. All the same, Brad Morgan knew it was time.

A tragic event has the power to cause us to inspect it minutely. We turn it over and over in our minds, searching for meaning: a lesson, a parable, or a moral mnemonic.

The result is almost always a banal lie we tell ourselves individually and collectively. It is cheap and convenient. Whether to salve pain, gain absolution, or conveniently sop tears of shame and frustration, that lie is above all human, but the price is that we are left casting about for a reason why.

The banal lie in Brad Morgan’s death is a socially acceptable euphemism for manslaughter commonly known as “suicide by cop.” It is the same lie police spokesmen have used to describe the deaths of Aaron Campbell, Keaton Otis, Jack Collins, Darryel Ferguson, Anthony McDowell, Jimmy Georgeson, Elias Angel Ruiz, Larry McKinney, and many others. In each of these cases, a suicidal man was killed by someone other than himself. When a life is cut short by another person, it is wrong to call it suicide — especially when the man behind the trigger is a police officer.

Just 21 years old and a new father, Brad Morgan climbed an elevator tower at a downtown parking garage and used his cell phone to tell the 9-1-1 operator that he planned to kill himself.

Long before that moment, it had gone too far. Brad Morgan’s fate was sealed when he did exactly what we are all taught to do from childhood.

Every social service agency, mental health provider, church therapist, doctor’s office, and hundreds of others who provide help in crises have similar after-hours greetings. We have all heard the familiar final words without paying too much attention: “If this is a life-threatening emergency, please hang up and dial 9-1-1.”

He may or may not have heard those words, but he did exactly as they instructed.

Brad Morgan now had two problems: Not only did he want to die, but police were on their way.

When 9-1-1 is the default overnight number for hundreds of agencies that promote their ability to help in a crisis, we have effectively criminalized mental illness. We force police, at best lightly trained in mental health issues, to be all-night, ad hoc therapists — a proven poor match.

When cops learn by trial and error, our friends die.

It is not a crime to be mentally ill. It is not a crime to be drunk or high. And it is not a crime to attempt or commit suicide.

It is, however, a crime to assist a suicide. To intentionally cause or aid another person to kill himself is second-degree manslaughter.

In a more just society, the officer who fired the fatal shot would be facing six years, three months in prison.

The 9-1-1 transcript reveals that Brad Morgan told the dispatcher, “I’d actually prefer for a police officer to shoot me at this point. I am not looking forward to this jump.”

To face criminal charges as a result of assisting a suicide is rare. A prudent person would never help. Imagine a distraught man in a hardware store, tears streaming down his face, clothing torn, in obvious anguish, demanding of the bewildered shopkeeper, “Show me how to tie a noose!”

Brad Morgan told a 9-1-1 operator that he wanted a cop to shoot him. That operator passed the call to the police, along with the details of Morgan’s desire to be shot by them. Informed by this banal lie we have all unthinkingly agreed to call “suicide by cop,” and expecting that they would be tasked with ending Morgan’s life, police hurried to arrive at the scene of a foregone conclusion. As always, they were ill-trained to handle a mental health situation.

How is it that our hypothetical shopkeeper is able to refuse to give instruction in tying a noose, but our police bureau is unable to field officers capable of refraining from shooting a man who is actively seeking to be shot? Why didn’t the Morgan grand jury bring a charge against the officers involved?

Astonishingly, they could not. The wrong training is provided to our police, and the wrong charge was put before the grand jury.

The proper training would have taught our police not to facilitate “suicide by cop,” and the proper charge would have been assisting a suicide.

Desiring, attempting, or completing suicide is a lonely, broken expression of intolerable pain. It is not a criminal enterprise, but a public health matter. To effectively make suicidal thoughts criminal, simply because we have no mental health safety net, is inexcusable.

We failed Brad Morgan, and in doing so, failed ourselves.

James Mazzocco is on the Advisory Council of the Mental Health Association of Portland.

By Maxine Bernstein, The Oregonian, Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Fred Bryant, a longtime Portland resident, is among about 60 people taking part in a Tuesday town hall at the St. Johns Community Center, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice. He calls for accountability in the fatal police shooting of his son, Keaton Otis, during a traffic stop in May 2010. (Photo by Randy L. Rasmussen / The Oregonian)

Federal authorities investigating the Portland Police Bureau’s use of force held their first public meeting Tuesday night in St. Johns to gather citizens’ accounts of their interactions with city officers.

More than 60 people attended. Their complaints varied, but all pleaded with the federal investigators to do what they said the city hasn’t done: Hold police accountable for their actions.

“There is a culture in this police department that shoots first and ask questions later,” said Joe Walsh. “We want the police department to do community service, period.”

Fred Bryant, a 52-year Portland resident and the father of Keaton Otis, who was fatally shot by police in May 2010, said he’s afraid for his grandchildren.

He said he’s disturbed that police first pulled over his son after suspecting he was a gang member. And he called the grand jury process that reviews such cases a “joke.”

“These people have not talked to me since my son was killed,” Bryant said. “My son should not be gone. How many more children have to go? We don’t trust the police.”

Clo Eve Allen questioned why officers who fatally shoot people in controversial cases often don’t face criminal charges.

Chris O’Connor, a criminal defense attorney and Board Member of the Mental Health Association of Portland, urged investigators to look at officers who routinely accuse people of resisting arrest, suggesting the charge masks inappropriate police conduct.

“There is a select group that initiates these contacts, escalates these contacts and gets away with it because there’s zero oversight,” O’Connor said.

The U.S. Department of Justice opened a civil rights investigation June 28 to determine whether the Police Bureau engages in a “pattern or practice” of excessive force, particularly against people with mental illness.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas E. Perez has said the review was prompted by a significant increase in police shootings in the previous 18 months, the majority involving people with mental illness.

Jonathan Smith, chief of the special litigation section’s civil rights division for the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., told the crowd: “What you have to say and what you have to tell us is a critically important part of our investigation.”

Smith said the federal team is in the middle of the police review, which is occurring as a federal investigation proceeds into Oregon’s mental health system.

“We’re looking at a broad scope. Is there a systematic or a structural failure?” Smith said. “We’ll be done when we finish looking.”

U.S. Attorney for Oregon Amanda Marshall, two of her assistant U.S. attorneys, four Justice Department attorneys and a retired Miami-Dade police expert sat at a front table, taking notes as people spoke in the St. Johns Community Center.

Several speakers said they consider most police heroes but can’t tolerate officers who abuse their power.

David Green, active with the Mental Health Association of Portland, recited the names of people killed over the years by police, including Jose Mejia Poot in April 2001 and James P. Chasse Jr. in September 2006.

“Their voices are crying out from the grave for justice,” Green said.

He said he was particularly troubled when the police union marched in support of Officer Christopher Humphreys, who was disciplined in the in-custody death of Chasse, 42, who suffered from schizophrenia.

“I’m afraid when I see a police officer,” Green said.

Jason Renaud, an advocate with the Mental Health Association of Portland, said he was dismayed the town hall was held in the middle of the inquiry rather than the start.

Last August, Justice Department officials held individual interviews with community groups, including the Urban League, Central City Concern and JOIN. Investigators are continuing to meet with police supervisors and officers.

Police Chief Mike Reese earlier this month defended his officers’ use of force. He cited increasing calls involving suicidal people and decried the faltering safety net for those with mental illness.

In response to federal recommendations, Reese has moved to change how sergeants investigate officers’ use of force and assigned a new inspector to analyze data on all such incidents, a gap identified by the Justice Department. The new policy on sergeants is on hold pending negotiations with the police union.

Several speakers said they’re relying on federal officials to make a positive change.

“Don’t give us fluff!” Bryant urged. “Do the right thing!”

With that, the crowd stood and applauded.

Portlanders pack meeting to sound off on police bureau

KATU.com, February 28, 2012

Dozens Turn Out For DOJ Hearing On Portland Police Department

From OPB.org, February 28, 2012

Dozens Turn Out For DOJ Hearing On Portland Police Department

Dozens of Portlanders turned out for a federal hearing on the Portland Police Bureau. The U.S. Department of Justice is conducting a civil rights investigation on the Bureau’s use of force.

Some who testified called police heroes. But others told stories about traffic stops and mental health emergencies turned violent. Most of those who spoke said the Justice Department needs to rein in the city’s police.

Others asked for more training for police, or a wider safety net for people with mental illness.

Dr. LeRoy Haynes of the Albina Ministerial Alliance said he’d like more opportunities for the investigators to hear from Portlanders on the margins.

Haynes said, “We’re still not touching everyone. Many people are intimidated about speaking out against the Portland Police Bureau in a public setting. We have to find another avenue for those voices to be heard.”

Those who made it to the St. Johns Community Center on the city’s far north end got to talk directly to Amanda Marshall, the U.S. Attorney for Oregon. A number of attendees criticized the venue as too distant and hard to find.

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The actual Press Release for this event we include in full below, but it oddly makes no mention of people with a mental illness. The investigation started with an announcement on June 8th, 2011, where Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said the investigation was prompted by the significant increase in police shooting over the previous 18 months, the majority of which involved people with mental illness.

James Chasse Jr.

Aaron Campbell

Keaton Otis

Jack Collins, by William Fiesterman

So if you want to remind yourself what this is really all about, feel free to review some of the following material:

Read: What Happened To James Chasse
Read: What Happened To Aaron Campbell
Read: What Happened To Jack Collins
Read: What Happened To Thomas Higginbotham
Read: What Happened To Keaton Otis

Read: Perez Notice Letter notifying Portland of DOJ investigation.

From: U.S. Attorney’s Office And Civil Rights Division Announce Town Hall Meeting Regarding Portland Police Bureau Investigation, February 10, 2012

FEBRUARY 10, 2012

U.S. ATTORNEY’S OFFICE AND CIVIL RIGHTS DIVISION ANNOUNCE TOWN
HALL MEETING REGARDING PORTLAND POLICE BUREAU INVESTIGATION

The United States Department of Justice seeks community input concerning the investigation of the Portland Police Bureau’s (PPB) use of force policies and practices. The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon, in conjunction with the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division, will conduct a town hall meeting with members of the public on Tuesday, February 28, 2012 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the St. John’s Community Center located at 8427 N. Central Street in Portland.

On June 8, 2011, the Justice Department opened a civil investigation pursuant to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 42 United States Code, Section 14141, in order to determine whether PPB has engaged in a pattern or practice of use of force which amounts to a violation of civil rights. During the first week of August 2011, the Justice Department conducted numerous individual interviews with members of the public in three locations throughout Portland. The Justice Department is returning to Portland as part of the investigation and invites any individual who has specific and recent information they would like to share about their personal interaction with PPB officers to participate in this town hall meeting.

Throughout the course of the investigation, the Justice Department will seek to determine whether there are systemic violations of the Constitution or federal law by officers of the PPB. The Justice Department will consider all relevant information, particularly the efforts that Portland has undertaken to ensure compliance with federal law. The Justice Department has taken similar steps involving a variety of state and local law enforcement agencies, both large and small, in jurisdictions such as New York, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, and California.

The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon are jointly investigating this matter. If you have any comments or concerns, but are unable to attend the town hall meeting, please feel free to contact us at community.portland@usdoj.gov or 1-877-218-5228. You may also feel free to contact the U.S. Attorney’s local Civil Rights Hotline at either 503-471-5577 or by email at usaor.civilrights@usdoj.gov.

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From the Portland Mercury, January 10, 2012

It’s tucked all the way at the end of the latest (and still unceremoniously quiet) release of Police Review Board reports: After a meeting last fall, the discipline panel — which reviews cases and advises Chief Mike Reese on punishment — overwhelmingly found every aspect of the May 2010 police shooting of Keaton Otis “within policy.”

READ – Police Review Board untitled set of documents, released January 12, 2012 & redacted

Otis’ death, you’ll remember, was steeped in controversy. Otis, a young African-American suffering from mental illness, was stopped by gang enforcement officers who thought he looked suspicious because he was slouching in his car. Otis was Tasered and shot dead, amid an eruption of gunfire that left an officer injured (with The Skanner wondering, at one point, whether that injury was from friendly fire). Then, in an awful turn, Otis’ body, lying on the road, was hit three times with a bean bag shotgun.

The shooting came the very first day Reese took over as chief, and it will be Reese who will ultimately decide if any discipline may yet be meted out, despite the review board’s nearly unanimous recommendation against it. Only one member raised any formal blemish, questioning whether shooting Otis’ body with a bean bag gun was excessive. General questions also were raised about documentation of witness interviews.

The board did, however, recommend that the bureau use the case as a training exercise.

Otis’ case wasn’t the only prominent one contained in the reports.

The latest packet, the second ever, also includes scathing review board filings recommending discipline for Sergeant Kyle Nice, sued over a 2010 pistol-waving road-rage incident; Officer Scott Westerman, the former union president fired last summer after he was accused of lying to investigators probing a pair of road-rage incidents involving the same woman; two off-duty officers who enjoyed free “private dances” at a strip club they usually patrol on-duty; officers involved in DUIIs; and officers who crashed their service cars.

READ – Police Review Board: No Discipline Recommended in Shooting of Jack Dale Collins, Mercury July 13, 2011

From In These Times, September 3, 2011

There’s no sufficient apologizing for the inanities of the essay below; we only include it as a portion of our comprehensive archive of the issues its author comments on.

On June 8, the Justice Department announced a civil rights investigation to see if police officers in Portland, Ore., were engaged in a “pattern or practice” of using excessive force against the mentally ill. The investigation comes after several incidents in which police shot people in psychological crisis.

The problems with the mental health system are real enough, but this focus may obscure other dynamics propelling police violence—specifically, those relating to race and class.

Two high-profile cases in Portland help illustrate the point.

James Chasse, beaten & dying

James Chasse was a well-known figure in downtown Portland, a writer and musician with a history of mental illness and occasional homelessness. In September 2006, the police spotted Chasse loitering in the recently redeveloped Pearl District. As one officer put it, he was “doing something suspicious or acting just, um, odd.”

Officer Chris Humphreys approached; Chasse ran. The police chased him, tackled him and beat him. Chasse suffered 26 broken bones (mostly ribs), 48 distinct bruises and abrasions, extensive trauma to the head and a punctured lung. He died later that day.

His family sued and received a $1.6 million settlement. Meanwhile, two cops were suspended for failing to ensure that the bloodied, unconscious man they were arresting received medical treatment. No one was disciplined for beating him.

There is no evidence that Chasse committed any crime. The worst he was accused of was urinating in public. The offense itself builds in an element of class-bias: It is the equivalent of trespassing under bridges or panhandling, activities that homeless people resort to in order to survive. In practice, enforcement of such laws comes very close to criminalizing poverty per se.

In this case, moreover, the accusation was merely an excuse for what then-Transit Police Commander Donna Henderson later termed a “pretext stop.” In other words, the police approached, and then chased, and then killed Chasse, not for anything specific that he did, but simply because, as they saw it, he was “suspicious”—or rather: “just, um, odd.”

Chasse died because the cops decided that he did not belong.

Keaton Otis with his parents

Nearly four years later, on May 12, 2010, Portland police pulled over a young African-American man named Keaton Otis, ostensibly for changing lanes without a signal. It’s not clear exactly what happened next, but within minutes Officer Christopher Burley had been shot and Otis was dead after being shot 23 times.

It was not long before the police were placing the blame on the mental health system. Burley told the press that he wished Otis had found treatment for his psychological troubles: “The community as a whole failed Mr. Otis,” he said. “He deserved resources.”

But the police did not stop Otis because of his mental distress any more than they stopped him because of his driving. The cops involved were part of the “Hot Spot Enforcement Action Team,” a gang squad concentrating on the area surrounding Lloyd Center mall. They stopped Otis because Officer Ryan Foote saw a black man wearing a hooded sweatshirt and concluded “this guy… kind of looks like he could be a gangster.”

It is against Portland police policy to single people out solely because of their race, but Foote’s assessment seems to pass official muster. After the shooting, the public information officer, Detective Mary Wheat, stated: “The officers would not have been doing their duty if they had not pulled him over.”

Police now admit that they had no evidence that Otis had any history of gang activity. Aside from a single traffic ticket, his record was clean. Again, we see police policies unfold in ways that are not only discriminatory, but deadly.

Policing ‘quality of life’

In Portland, the standards of public order that the police enforce are shaped and propelled in large part by the agenda of the local chamber of commerce, the Portland Business Alliance (PBA). In terms of both dollars spent and the number of visits to public officials, PBA is the most active lobbying group in the city.

PBA has been a vocal advocate of “quality of life” policing and was a major proponent of the “Sit-Lie” law, which prohibited resting or reclining on the sidewalk. Predictably, between August 2007 and June 2008, 72.3 percent of the 159 people receiving warnings or citations for violating the Sit-Lie law were homeless. In fact, Mike Kuykendall—then vice president of PBA and co-chair of the Mayor’s Street Access For Everyone (SAFE) committee, now director of services in the Police Bureau—admits the law was designed with the homeless in mind. In 2008, he told the Portland Mercury: “The behavior of many of the teenagers and young adults who spend their days on Portland streets was the impetus behind the SAFE ordinance, as many businesses were impacted by the negative impression they were giving downtown.”

Central Precinct Commander (and now Police Chief) Mike Reese agreed: “The folks we’re really having a problem with are these Road Warrior youth.” After twice being ruled unconstitutional—first in 2004 by Circuit Court Judge Marilyn Litzenberger, then in 2009 by Circuit Court Judge Stephen Bushong—the Sit-Lie law was replaced in 2010 with a new Sidewalk Management Plan. The new version does not ban sitting outright, but in selected commercial districts it requires at least six feet of clearance between the seated individual and any building, essentially forcing people to the curb.

PBA’s agenda is clearly outlined in the April/May 2010 issue of its downtown “Business Improvement District” newsletter, BID News, in which BID chair Michelle Martin explains the problem, as she sees it: “We have seen a group of individuals, who some refer to as ‘road warriors’ or ‘summer travelers,’ begin to return to downtown Portland. They are approximately 18-30 years old, can be very unkempt, … and regularly engage in illegal or aggressive behavior.”

(Both Reese and Martin have argued that these young people aren’t really homeless because they choose to live on the streets.) Martin then explains several steps PBA is taking as part of its “Clean and Safe” program, beginning with the sidewalk law: “First, we have been working with Mayor [Sam] Adams … on a new Sidewalk Use Ordinance, which was passed by the Portland City Council on May 6. … Second, Central Precinct Commander Dave Famous has instituted a ‘zero tolerance’ program to deal with individuals committing livability offenses downtown.”

Hired guns

PBA also takes a hand in enforcement. The Clean and Safe Program deploys “42 armed and unarmed security officers, many of them retired police officers.” In addition, PBA has contracted with the Portland Police Bureau to provide four bike cops and the Mounted Patrol Unit to police the downtown using the organization’s radio dispatch system.

PBA spends $1.15 million annually—the largest item in its budget—to contract with a private security firm, Portland Patrol, Inc., which in turn leases sworn officers from the Police Bureau. According to the company’s website, “PPI has the honor of being the only private security agency in the country to have four full-time police officers housed out of a private security office, working hand-in-hand with our staff to improve community and business livability along with chronic nuisance issues.”

Under the terms of PPI’s contract, its officers are required to “wake up all individuals who use [the] sidewalk, and business doorways, as sleeping locations,” and to “stop offensive conduct wherever possible.” Making its mission clear, PPI staff have distributed laminated cards to local businesses, urging them to call the private guards to handle “Homeless Persons,” “Panhandling” and the “Mentally Ill.”

Though dressed like cops and often carrying guns, PPI officers have no public oversight and cannot make arrests. But they are authorized to issue warnings and exclude people from city parks. Furthermore, according to the corporation’s website, their partners in the Police Bureau “frequently make arrests, write citations for criminal and ordinance violations, or take other actions based on direct referrals from PPI officers. … As a result, our PPB officers regularly average over 100 arrests per month!”

Exclusion—and ‘livability’

In addition to its war on the poor, the Business Alliance has also been supportive of Drug Free Zones, which allowed police to exclude suspected drug dealers from certain designated areas prior to trial. PBA spokesperson Megan Doern said the law helped create “an attractive, livable downtown.”

The zones were abandoned in 2007 when it was shown that more than half the people issued exclusions (59 percent) were black. (Blacks represent only 6 percent of the local population.) But earlier this year, Mayor Sam Adams revealed a plan to re-introduce Drug Free Zones with one important change: Judges, and not cops, would issue the exclusions. Around the same time, the city also created Gun Crime Exclusion Zones, including one downtown and one in the city’s largest black neighborhood.

While the zones were defunct, the police, aided with $50,000 in PBA funding, simply replaced them with the Neighborhood Livability Crime Enforcement Program. The program consisted of a secret list of persistent low-level offenders to be singled out for special attention—surveillance, enforcement and felony prosecution, plus, as a salve to Portland’s liberal conscience, special access to services like housing assistance and drug treatment. More than half of the 408 people on the list are African-American.

By the Bureau’s own reporting, in 2009, blacks represented 12 percent of all Portland Police traffic stops—twice the percentage of the population. That same year, taking into account all police stops—not just traffic stops—blacks represented 21 percent. Additionally, they comprise 23 percent of arrests and 29 percent of the incidents in which police report using force. Those rates have been more or less constant for the last five years, with black drivers stopped at 2.73 times the rate of whites.

The numbers reflect something more than the personal biases of individual police officers. They demonstrate an institutional orientation that treats blacks as suspects, as hazards and as targets for violence. The death of Keaton Otis is one result of this orientation. In September 2009, several months before he shot Otis, Officer Berne admitted in court that race is “a factor I’d consider” when making a stop.

Clearly, Berne is not alone. More than a year earlier, James Pitkin, a Willamette Week reporter, tagged along with the cops during “Operation Cool Down,” in which police increased their presence in gang-affected neighborhoods. Pitkin reported that the cops passed by groups of white people without notice, but stopped, searched and questioned black and Latino men when they saw them.

Gang enforcement officer Russ Corno explained: “Profiling—to me, I’m not scared of that word. … If you’re profiling people based just on their race, that is an issue. We’re profiling people based on crime.” And yet, Pitkin wrote: “Corno is frank about who they’re targeting: young black men.”

The police chief at the time, Rosie Sizer, seemed to endorse this approach. She told the newspaper that gang violence, “is predominantly African-American males being violent against other African-American males. So from the sense of criminal profiling as opposed to racial profiling, race is in the mix. … We do not want to target young African-American men who are uninvolved in gang activity. But it’s impossible to perfectly sort.”

Enforcing inequality

The deaths of Otis and Chasse are not generally discussed together, but they share several elements worth noting.

Neither of these men were, in any real sense of the word, “suspects.” They were stopped simply because they belonged to groups that the police considered suspicious in and of themselves. One was black, and the other was—or rather, the police labeled him—”transient.” Both incidents began with trivial pretexts and ended with deadly violence.

Moreover, both involve police control of public space. In particular, they show the cops acting to restrict disadvantaged groups from using the streets in commercial districts. In all these respects, the two cases resemble each other. These similarities show us something of the real nature of proactive and public-order policing. They show the race and class bias implicit in terms like “quality of life” and “livability”—at least as they are applied to law enforcement. And finally, they reveal the violence underlying our systems of race and class privilege.

Author Kristian Williams is also author of Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America and American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination. He volunteers with Rose City Copwatch.