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.

By Andrea Damewood, Willamette Week, Dec. 12, 2012

Officer Casey Hettman

It’s an otherwise slow Monday night, but Officer Casey Hettman is tense. He and two other Portland police officers move through a dingy hallway and flank the locked apartment door.

Behind the door is an agitated man who believes President Obama is ordering him to kill.

The cops have been summoned to the Helen M Swindells Apartments in Old Town by the man’s county social worker, who believes he’s become a risk to himself or others.

The social worker tells the cop the man inside suffers from mental illness. He wants cops to put the man on a mental-health hold and deliver him to a hospital for observation.

Oh, and one thing, the social worker says: He likes to fight cops.

The social worker knocks. The officers brace themselves. Nothing.

Hettman is thinking, What’s this guy doing? Maybe this guy is getting something to hurt us?

“It’s not until that door opens,” Hettman says later, “and you can see their hands, see their face.”

Hettman and the other officers are about to enter what are often the most critical moments between police and those in a mental-health crisis: the first 30 seconds of contact.

That’s when officers have to spot the warning signs of someone who may have lost touch with reality—the person’s motion, tone, level of aggression—and decide whether the threat to their own safety outweighs the needs of the person they’re supposed to be helping.

In the past, the choices a few Portland police officers have made in these pivotal few seconds prompted a U.S. Department of Justice investigation and a finding in September that cops have a “pattern and practice” of using excessive force against people with mental illness.

Portland quickly reached a settlement with the DOJ and scrambled to find $5.3 million to beef up social services, create a triage center, and expand units of officers trained to deal with the mentally ill.

Mayor-elect Charlie Hales and Police Chief Mike Reese (whom Hales plans to keep on the job) say they will also demand better investigation when cops do use their fists, baton, pepper spray, Taser or gun.

Beneath this tone of compliance runs an undercurrent of resistance and resentment. Reese, while talking about being a reformer, had earlier signaled he disagreed with the DOJ’s findings. And the Portland Police Association, the city’s police union, says the DOJ settlement threatens the safety of front-line officers.

And it’s simply hard to buck the decades-long attitude of police, says Mike Stafford, a former training coordinator at the state’s police academy. Stafford says police are trained to protect themselves first and face the consequences for their actions later.

“A common saying is, ‘It’s better to be judged by 12 than carried by six,’” he says.

Missing in this debate have been the voices of the officers themselves.

Over the past several weeks, WW has ridden with officers on patrol, watched how they deal with people with mental illness, and talked to them at length about what the proposed changes will mean.

Some say a fundamental cultural shift in the bureau’s attitudes about the use of force is inevitable. But many others echo the union’s view that the DOJ settlement means greater risk to officers.

“The DOJ appears to be willing to sacrifice police lives,” Officer Kevin Macho, who patrols the East Precinct, tells WW. “A Portland officer, I believe, is going to get killed because of hesitation.”

In fact, all the plans and money that will be spent may overshadow a central truth: Some officers are simply more adept and flexible than others in their approach to people with mental illness. They’re the ones less willing to default to using force. In other words, they get the problem.

The question facing the city is whether the new DOJ-imposed strategy will keep officers who don’t get it away from those with mental illness.

Officer Brad Yakots

The door of the apartment in the Swindells opens, and Hettman and his partner, Brad Yakots, see why it took so long for the man inside to respond: He’s using a walker.

The cops loosen their tight shoulders a little. They tell him they are taking him for a mental-health hold, and it requires putting him in handcuffs. “Can I have a cigarette first?” the man asks.

Yakots says sure. Hettman and the third officer, James Escobar, guide the cuffed man down the hall. It’s a slow shuffle, and the man’s pants slide down his hips. He complains, so Yakots—28, with a runner’s build and close-cropped red hair—hikes them back up for him. They put the man in a patrol car. He never gets his smoke.

Later that day, the officers say most incidents with people suffering from mental illness go without incident.

“This guy has a walker and is probably not much of a threat,” says Hettman, 31, who is tall and still lives up to his college nickname of “Skinny.”

“But what if he has a gun or a knife and wants to kill me? We’re constantly having to make split-second decisions.”

With Oregon’s broken mental-health system, Portland’s police are often de facto front-line social workers. Police estimate they come into contact with 1234s (their dispatch code for person in crisis) more than 34,000 times a year, although they lack a good way to track such calls.

The DOJ settlement calls for reinstituting a team of officers whose first duty is to deal with the mentally ill.

Portland gives all officers crisis intervention training, or CIT. But the voluntary CIT team is supposed to put the best-trained cops between the mentally ill and typical beat officers, and it may include Yakots and Hettman.

The two have been partners for 2½ years—a rarity, given that most patrol officers work alone. In that time, they’ve made 921 arrests and used force 12 times.

Their number of arrests is high by department standards. But their use of force is low—just over 1 percent. Overall, Portland officers used force in 3.86 percent of arrests in 2011.

“Your tongue is the biggest tool in dealing with people in crisis,” Yakots says as the car drives near Central Precinct. “Casey and I have different strengths, and we deal well with people who aren’t playing with a full deck that day.”

That’s part of the reason Yakots and Hettman signed up for the latest version of a crisis intervention team.

Details of how large the CIT squad will be, and how much more training its members will get are still being worked out, Reese says. But the team will surely get far more than the 40 hours of standard mental-health training every line officer gets each year.

The Police Bureau declined to give WW a list of officers who applied for the CIT squad, but it says 56 cops, or about 15 percent of the department’s 365 patrol officers, signed up.

Portland had the state’s first CIT program, from 1995 to 2006. A small band of officers who had volunteered handled as many crisis cases as possible. The unit had some success, but high-profile deaths still occurred when no officer from the CIT team was on the scene or available.

James Chasse

That includes Jose Mejia Poot, a day laborer who was on a mental-health hold when an officer gunned him down inside the BHC-Pacific Gateway Hospital in Sellwood in 2001. CIT officers had already calmed Poot earlier that day, but hospital staff called when Poot got out of a secured area. Poot, who could not speak English, tore off a strip of an aluminum door frame and threatened staff. CIT cops weren’t available a second time, and the two officers who showed up shot him dead.

CIT officers also weren’t on hand for the death of James Chasse in 2006. Chasse was a mentally ill man police chased and knocked down in the Pearl District, believing he had urinated in the street. An autopsy showed he had 26 broken bones, including 16 of his ribs, some of which punctured a lung. The city later paid Chasse’s family $1.6 million to settle a wrongful death case.

In response, then-Mayor Tom Potter required all officers to get 40 hours of annual crisis intervention training—but then did away with a dedicated CIT team.

Chris Bouneff, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Oregon, says the DOJ’s demand that Portland reinstate the CIT team is a positive sign.

Having officers with advanced mental-health training will help, he says, but it will require one important thing: that the CIT squad is big enough to respond whenever needed.

“There are officers who just don’t think it’s necessary,” Bouneff says. “You don’t want those officers dealing with people in a mental-health crisis.”

In the past, many officers didn’t see CIT as a way to get ahead in the bureau. Now, Yakots and Hettman say, they see it as an essential skill set for a cop.

“Attitudes will change,” Hettman says, “and the more senior people and the holdouts, they won’t have a choice but to change.”

Officer Herb Miller, 47, was a truck driver and National Guardsman before joining the Portland Police Bureau 15 years ago. He’s spent most of his time on the force dealing with the mentally ill, as one of the original members of the CIT unit and then spending a year on the bureau’s Mobile Crisis Unit. That assignment—limited to a year—ended in June.

Brad Yakots (L) and Casey Hettman (R) with unidentified person

The MCU is supposed to help people with mental illness who show up frequently on cops’ radar, before they have another confrontation with officers. The mobile unit consists of one sworn officer and a social worker with Project Respond, which is run by Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, a private mental-health agency.

The DOJ settlement calls for expanding the availability of the unit. It doesn’t involve any extra training, but the bureau says the close on-the-ground work provides a wealth of knowledge.

Miller found a special draw to both the crisis intervention team and the mobile unit: Both his nephew and niece committed suicide.

“Somehow, with my training and experience, if I can help prevent that tragedy for someone else’s family, that would be rewarding,” Miller says.

Yet his time on the MCU was often frustrating. He and his partner tracked one man with mental problems who they knew had a gun. But under the law, the MCU team can’t force anyone into treatment, and can’t arrest anyone until they become a danger to themselves or others.

Last October, the man locked himself in his apartment and was pointing his gun out the window at people in the street. The situation ended peacefully, but only after it turned into a lengthy negotiation and an evacuation of the building.

“We had done all of that work ahead of time,” Miller says. “We still weren’t able to intervene and prevent the incident from happening. I saw the whole trajectory of the way it went, and we couldn’t intervene until he crossed the line.

“I had no more control or power than a regular officer.”

Because of his experience, Miller says he signed up for the CIT this time around out of a sense of obligation.

But the price of keeping beat cops apart from the mentally ill may be the psychological toll it takes on the officers who specialize in crisis intervention.

Hettman, during his first week as an officer, watched a woman he was trying to help jump from the Fremont Bridge to the pavement below; he heard her hit the ground. “That was my rude awakening to the mental-health issue,” he says.

Miller couldn’t save a man who jumped from the Vista Bridge. “Things like that get to you,” he says. “You have to compartmentalize it and leave it at work.”

And for these front-line teams, the psychological toll can mount.

“Going in as a CIT officer, they’re going in with a sense of, ‘OK I’ve been trained to help these people,’” says John Nicoletti, whose Denver-based firm, Nicoletti-Flater Associates, specializes in police psychology.

“When that doesn’t work, especially when it’s a traumatic ending like a suicide, you get the combination of the trauma, and second-guessing of what you could have done differently.”

Officers say that since the DOJ started its investigation in June 2011, they’ve been increasingly reluctant to use force, even when they think they should. The bureau says it was shifting its culture before that: Statistics show use of force has declined 33 percent since 2008.

But some cops say the DOJ report has created a chilling—and dangerous— effect.

During one ride-along WW took with police, three officers responded to a domestic-violence call at an apartment near Southeast Glisan Street and 106th Avenue. A pregnant woman was hurt, but she insisted she had fallen and that her boyfriend—with face tattoos and a bad attitude—hadn’t pushed her.

The angry boyfriend was bigger than the officers. In the end, they didn’t need to make an arrest—despite their fears they might have to use force to do it.

“I thought for a minute we would have to go hands-on,” one officer, Michael Roberts, says.

“I was just thinking about the Taser,” says another, Josh Silverman.

“I’m too scared to Taser now,” Roberts answers. “You gotta go hands-on.”

Silverman, 28, has been a cop for three years (he is a former WW intern) and says his academy training put an enormous emphasis on officers protecting themselves—be it with less-than-lethal weapons, or by going “hands-on,” using holds and other physical tactics to gain control.

“When you get out of the academy,” he says, “you think there are ninjas waiting around every corner to attack you.”

If there is a chilling effect from the DOJ stalling the use of force, some critics say it’s good—if only because police training has instilled too much paranoia among officers.

“There are people who walk the streets all the time thinking someone is going to hurt them,” says Dan Handelman, director of Portland Copwatch. “And they’re the ones we call mentally ill.”

Eriks Gabliks, director of the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, says the police academy’s 16-week course has increased its role-playing scenarios on how to better communicate and diffuse situations. And as of Jan. 1, all cops-in-training will get 15 hours of mental and behavioral health training, up from 12.

The FBI, which tracks officer deaths nationwide, doesn’t keep statistics on at what point in an encounter an officer is killed. It also doesn’t track the mental health of those who kill cops intentionally.

The FBI does say that 72 American law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in 2011. Two were in Oregon, including one Eugene officer shot by a woman with severe mental illness.

Officer Macho, from the East Precinct, counters that he’s got a pinkie finger and a thumb that no longer fully function because he was afraid to use the appropriate level of force to end a volatile arrest. He tore the tendons of his pinkie chasing down and arresting a juvenile vandal; he tweaked the thumb when he says he was attempting to keep a man from punching him. In both cases, he says that four years ago, he would have used a Taser.

“With what’s come down from the Department of Justice, the public’s the real loser on this because there are many times when the officer feels like he’s got to choose between career survival and actually jumping in when he would have in the past.”

The DOJ report, Macho says, was a “hack job”—noting the report found fault with five cases out of thousands of arrests.

“What percentage of human beings get it as right as often as we do?” Macho asks.

Bouneff, of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, says the Clackamas and Marion county sheriff’s departments both have good reputations for the way they handle people in mental crises.

Both agencies started crisis intervention training in 2005, without an outside mandate, such as the one the DOJ has imposed on the Portland police.

Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts added crisis intervention training only one month after taking office. “[Roberts] had identified there was a need for better training related to mental-health issues for deputies,” says department spokesman Sgt. Adam Phillips.

Clackamas doesn’t have a CIT team—Phillips says the county is too spread out to reliably dispatch a team. In Marion County, all deputies have received crisis intervention training, and those who want it can get advanced training.

“Voluntary programs around the country are really the most successful,” says Deputy Kevin Rau, formerly the Marion County Sheriff’s Department’s training coordinator.

What will success look like in Portland? The DOJ settlement calls for a series of quantitative measurements to see if the Portland police are making improvements: for example, use of force against those with real or perceived mental illness; the number of officers who frequently use force; the rate of Taser use; and complaints against cops.

Hales says he’s also looking at a more subjective measure, what he calls a more “modern and humane” police force.

“Are people that you talk to about the Police Bureau ready to call when there’s a problem on their street?” Hales says. “Or are they wary about calling?”

Yakots and Hettman can’t help but notice the irony in one recent call.

They were the first on the scene Nov. 26 after neighbors called police to a downtown apartment complex, where an 81-year-old man was hallucinating that cops were being shot and killed in his hallway. He was swinging a hatchet and had already chopped through a fire door to reach the imaginary police officers who had been shot.

The cops drew their guns. “He’s trying to save police officers,” Yakots recalls, “and we might actually wind up having to hurt the guy.”

They didn’t. They gave him clear commands, and he let them cuff him for a mental-health hold. He’s since been committed and could be in a mental-health facility for as long as six months.

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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From the Portland Tribune, February 10, 2011

Five a.m. on Friday is prime time for the dealers on Crack Alley. Crack Alley, as it is not so affectionately known among Portland police, is a stretch of Northwest Flanders Street in Old Town. On this Friday morning, our pre-sunrise guided tour by officer Daryl Turner reveals that business is brisk.

The early hours around sunrise are when drug dealing and use reach their peak in the section of Old Town known as Crack Alley.

Drug dealing in Old Town is nothing new, Turner explains, as we cruise by a group of 10 to 15 dealers and users on Northwest Sixth Street. The neighborhood just across Burnside Street from downtown has been the center of the city’s coke and crack trade for years. But what is different, according to neighborhood residents and shop owners, is an aggressiveness among the dealers and addicts that has many of the residents and employees afraid to walk alone at night.

The dealers have become more brazen and confrontational, Old Town residents say. In response, the Old Town Chinatown Neighborhood Association – composed of residents and business owners – is drafting a letter that should arrive next week at the office of Mayor Sam Adams, asking Adams and the City Council to reinstate the controversial Drug and Prostitution Free Exclusion Zone for this section of the city.

In addition, the Pearl District Business Association will likely put together a letter supporting the Old Town request, and also asking that the Pearl District be included in the Drug Free Zone, says Adele Nofield, president of the association.

All of which is likely to revive a longstanding Portland controversy. On one side are Old Town residents and shop owners and many police officers, who believe that the Drug Free Zone designation was an important tool in helping them clean up Old Town, until the zone was allowed to expire three years ago. On the other side are those who prevailed three years ago by arguing that, because the majority of the people who ended up being excluded from Old Town for drugs or prostitution were black, the police were using the zone as a racial profiling tool.

Waiting for cover

Prime time on Crack Alley makes it easy to see how the dispute originated – virtually every dealer in sight is black. There are plenty of white and Latino drug dealers in Portland, police say, but they’re mostly dealing meth and heroin, and mostly on the east side of the city. In Portland, crack cocaine is predominantly the domain of black gangs, and the crack trade happens to be centered in Old Town.

Opponents of a Drug Free Zone cite a 2007 study, which showed the zone was being used to discriminate against blacks picked up on drug charges. The corner of Northwest Sixth Avenue and Flanders Street is considered the center of Crack Alley.

“This is Crack Alley, and that’s Randy Leonard’s crack house right there,” Turner says, pointing to the public restroom designed and championed by City Commissioner Leonard on Glisan Street near Sixth Avenue. Turner, who patrolled Old Town for four years until becoming president of the Portland Police Association labor union last summer, says that Leonard’s Portland Loo is a favorite nighttime destination for drug dealers and prostitutes, who conduct their business behind its closed door.

A few feet from the Loo, two men are firing up a crack pipe. Around the corner on Sixth Avenue, more negotiations for possible drug deals are under way. Turner says when TriMet’s new MAX line began operation in 2009, the drug trade became worse. The trains, he says, provide quick transportation in and out of the neighborhood and an inconspicuous place to make deals.

Turner says to make a dent in the drug trade in Old Town would require a police car with two officers dedicated to the area. But that level of enforcement hasn’t been available for years. Portland’s police force is down to 445 patrol officers, which means there’s a patrol car in this part of the city sometimes, and that car generally has only one officer.

Tonight, David Bryant is that officer, and he says being alone makes a difference when he’s in Crack Alley. Bryant says if there’s provocation – a fight for instance – he’s out of his car in a moment. But he thinks twice about approaching a large group of dealers without a partner.

“By myself, if something goes wrong, I’m waiting for cover,” he says.

Turner says a neighborhood resident walking on this stretch of Sixth Avenue sidewalk right now would certainly get mugged. These low-level dealers are desperate for cash, he says.

Looking at the lineup of dealers Turner says, “This pisses me off. I want to get out right now.” But he’s off duty and he knows that wouldn’t be a good idea.

“There’s at least one or two guns out there,” Turner says. “If there’s a fight, somebody’s going to get hurt.”

Turner insists this scene would look different if the Drug Free Zone laws were in effect.
Zone discrimination?

The zone, in use for 15 years, gave police the ability to issue a neighborhood exclusion notice to anyone arrested in Old Town for a drug offense or prostitution. If someone with an exclusion notice was found walking around Old Town he or she could be arrested on sight and taken to jail for a few hours – enough of an inconvenience for dealers to take their business elsewhere, Turner says.

“It worked great,” Turner says. “It gave us probable cause to get the frequent flyers and if you don’t have frequent flyers you don’t have issues we have now – the amount of crime and theft. They’d be in and out (of jail), but that’s two hours they can’t be out there.”

Turner, who is black, is aware of why the exclusion zone was allowed to expire back in 2007. But his focus is on the street.

“All the people that were hollering that it was racial, are they down here keeping the street corners clean?” he asks.

Carl Leonard Roberts stands guard in front of the Sally McCracken apartments each morning, hoping to at least keep the Crack Alley action a block away. The Sally McCracken is home to people in recovery.

Chani Geigle-Teller, community organizer for Sisters of the Road Café, says the scene on Sixth Street doesn’t justify reviving the Drug and Prostitution Free zones. Sisters serves the homeless community in Old Town, and Geigle-Teller has attended some of the many neighborhood meetings held in recent months about the issue. Bottom line, she says, is that when the zone was in place before, it was used to discriminate on the basis of race.

Mayor Tom Potter favored letting the zone ordinances expire after an independent analysis produced some eye-opening data. It wasn’t just that blacks were dominating the exclusion lists, Geigle-Teller says, but that blacks arrested in Old Town for drug offenses were put on exclusion lists at a much greater rate than whites.

Secondly, Geigle-Teller says, the exclusion lists were hard on people who needed to be in Old Town to see their parole officers or to access social services. Old Town is home to most of the social services supporting the homeless and addicts.

Geigle-Teller recognizes that the letter being drafted specifically seeks to make changes in the old exclusion zone law so that drug offenders who need to be in Old Town can still be there. But, she says, inevitably the racial biases of a few, and the confusion as to which drug offenders could still enter the exclusion zone, would lead to curtailing important civil rights.

“It’s another opportunity for cops to stop people (who are) experiencing homelessness and poverty,” Geigle-Teller says. “Folks experiencing homelessness already get stopped a lot. That’s harassment and targeting. We feel like there are other solutions to safety issues in our community.”

Geigle-Teller adds that she hasn’t noticed the stepped-up aggressiveness among the drug crowd being reported by others in the neighborhood.

‘Off my block’

Back in Crack Alley, the crack dealers are starting to disperse as the morning sun begins to hit the street. Carl Leonard Roberts says he’ll soon head off to breakfast. Roberts, a 56-year-old veteran, has been standing on the corner of Sixth and Everett, outside the Sally McCracken Building, where he lives. He stands here six days a week during the 5-to-6 a.m. prime time for drug dealing.

“I try to protect this block,” Roberts says, looking down Sixth toward the remaining crack dealers. “They don’t like to be watched.”

But neither do the dealers seem to pay Roberts any mind. They continue to conduct their business a block away from the Sally McCracken, a Central City Concern apartment building for people in recovery.

“Yes, but it ain’t here,” Roberts says. “They’re giving me respect by staying off my block.”

That speaks to a critical part of the mostly unspoken debate over the exclusion laws. Nobody thinks they eliminate drug dealing; they just push it into other neighborhoods.

For now, that would satisfy Jake Hammer, owner of Everett Street Autoworks in Old Town. Hammer says in recent months he’s seen drug users displaying a new aggressiveness with passersby. He’s says he’s had them walk into his shop screaming at customers, and lighting up to smoke crack when they know he’s watching.

Stephanie Doty, barista at nearby Pints coffee shop and bar on Northwest Fifth Avenue, says she looked out her front window recently and saw a woman on her hands and knees licking a sidewalk bench – scene of regular drug deals – in hopes of tasting some drug residue. One morning a man with his pants down around his ankles was standing up smoking crack right at the same spot – seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was visible to Doty and customers.

Back out again

Jamie Dunn, owner of the Gilt Club on Northwest Broadway, says he’s seeing a new brazenness among Old Town drug addicts in the past six months. They don’t seem to care if he watches them light up; they used to walk around the corner.

Dunn wonders if what has emboldened the drug users is a change in policy announced by the Multnomah County district attorney in late summer. Possession of less than a tenth of a gram of methamphetamine, heroin and cocaine are no longer prosecuted, but instead are being handled as violations, much like traffic tickets.

Whatever the reason, something has changed, Dunn says.

“We’re picking up the phone and calling (police) every day,” says Dunn, who has organized Old Town shop owners in support of the neighborhood association letter.

“When you talk to the cops they say, ‘Look, we arrest them, they’re back out again and we can’t make them go away,’ ” Dunn says. “If they say this is a tool that we need in order to make your neighborhood safer, that’s a tool I want to give them.”

Mayor Sam Adams shares Dunn’s concern about the relaxed prosecution of drug crimes. Adams told the Tribune Tuesday that he had not yet received the letter from the Old Town Chinatown Neighborhood Association but that he did not think reinstituting the Drug and Prostitution Free Zones was the best way to address the problem.

Adams said he was concerned about the drug problem in Old Town. But his attempt at a solution starts with finding funding so that the Multnomah County district attorney can prosecute even low-level drug-related crimes instead of treating them as violations.

“The district attorney needs resources to prosecute these crimes,” Adams said. “That is the root cause of the uptick in these kinds of crimes.”

Adams also said he would put a priority on finding funding for more addiction treatment as a means of combating the Old Town drug problem.

Editorial column by Steve Duin, The Oregonian, January 18, 2010

Forty months, or 1,220 days, have been insufficient to produce a single minute of discipline for Chris Humphreys and the other Portland police officers who were on hand when the 145-pound James Chasse was taken down in the Pearl and, somehow, died.

Yes, I know: Humphreys admitted tackling Chasse, breaking 16 of his ribs, and the poor guy died of blunt-force trauma while in police custody. But I’d hate to add to what deputy city attorney James Rice calls the “overwhelming, inflammatory, negative and pervasive” media coverage of the case.

That coverage has so tainted the jury pool, Rice insists, that his clients in the civil case can’t possibly geta fair trial in Oregon. Those clients include Humphreys and Officer Kyle Nice, police Chief Rosie Sizer, former Mayor Tom Potter and the city.

In his 16-page request for a change of venue, Rice condemns the “pervasive, prejudicial publicity that has saturated Portland for the last three years,” or as long as it took Sizer and the cops to complete their internal inquiry.

He cites the “attacks on the credibility” of police officers in random letters to the editor as undermining the ability of potential jurors “to consider them as honest, trustworthy witnesses at trial.”

He cites a documentary on Chasse’s death, “Alien Boy,” as possibly adding “another layer of sensationalism that would inhibit a fair trial.”

“How strange,” the film’s director, Brian Lindstrom observed last week in a guest column for The Stump, The Oregonian’s online opinion site, “that the city cited my film as one cause for potential jurors in a civil trial to be adversely prejudiced against the Portland police when the film has yet to be completed, yet alone screened.”

Click here to read the rest of this story

Form The Oregonian, January 12, 2010

James Chasse Jr. is pictured cuffed face down on the sidewalk. Chasse died later by broad-based, blunt force trauma to his chest, as ruled by the state medical examiner.

In a highly unusual move, the City of Portland has asked a federal judge to move the trial involving the death of James P. Chasse Jr. out of state, saying potential jurors in Portland and the Willamette Valley have been tainted by “inflammatory and pervasive media coverage.”

The defendants contend that Eugene would be the only alternative trial site in Oregon, because it’s the only other federal district court in Oregon, aside from Portland, that is technologically capable of allowing witnesses to testify remotely from Portland via video.

Yet deputy city attorney James Rice argues that Eugene would not be a neutral site considering what he described as the “statewide distribution of the Oregonian newspaper and Eugene’s geographical proximity to Portland.”

“This means that Eugene has been tainted by the same pervasive, prejudicial publicity that has saturated Portland for the last three years,” Rice wrote in a 16-page legal motion filed in U.S. District Court.

“Consequently, this case presents the unique situation where defendants’ right to a jury trial necessitates a change of venue outside of the state of Oregon.”

The city is seeking oral arguments before Judge Garr M. King on its change of venue request. Chasse’s attorney has time to file a response. A trial has been set for June 1.

Chasse, 42, who suffered from schizophrenia, died in police custody on Sept. 17, 2006. An autpsy by the state medical examiner showed he died of broad-based blunt force trauma to the chest. Police say they saw him acting oddly, and possibly urinating in the street in the Pearl District and when they approached, he ran. Police chased Chasse, knocked him to the ground and struggled to take him into custody.

Paramedics called to the scene said Chasse’s vital signs were normal, but jail medical staff refused to book him. Chasse died as he was being transported by patrol car to a hospital.

The federal lawsuit contends police used excessive force and police and paramedics failed to provide adequate or proper medical care to Chasse.

The motion for a change of venue include defendants Chief Rosie Sizer, former Mayor Tom Potter, Officer Christopher Humphreys and Sgt. Kyle Nice.

Rice writes that while a change of venue to Washington or Idaho likely would inconvenience the parties to the lawsuit and witnesses and expects the plaintiffs to complain, he urges the federal judge to put the “interest of justice” above those inconveniences.

“This unrelenting judgemental coverage of Chasse’s death in the media over the last 3 years has inflamed the community against the police and tainted the potential jury pool,” Rice wrote. “The city can’t get a fair and impartial jury anywhere in Oregon that has the capability to handle this trial.”

Further, Rice argues that Chasse’s family attorney, Tom Steenson, chose to play a high-profile role to elicit sympathy for his clients and blames him for creating a “media climate” that makes it impossible for the city to get a fair, impartial trial.

“To a large extent, plaintiff’s attorney has created this situation,” Rice wrote.

Rice submitted to the court excerpts of print stories, editorials and letters to the editor from The Mercury, Portland Tribune and the Oregonian, as well as online comments and TV coverage, and a DVD of a teaser to a movie being filmed about Chasse called “Alien Boy.”

He wrote that printed opinion pieces and letters referred to police as “goons” and “thugs,” commentators described police as “beating” Chasse to death and articles addressed Humphreys’ past use of force cases that wouldn’t be admissable in trial.

The city hired a local legal video specialist to compile the Internet media coverage of the Chasse case for the court’s review.

Usually, courts don’t decide on venue changes until after the voir dire examination of jurors. But Rice asks this court to “not rely heavily on precedent” but make a decision much earlier because of the complexity of the case.

A date for oral argument on the city’s change of venue request has not been set.

From OPB.org, September 17 2009

Portland’s Mayor and Police Chief received a petition from 250 people Thursday demanding the release of the city’s internal investigation into the death of James Chasse.

Chasse died three years ago — after being tackled by three officers. He suffered from schizophrenia but had not been involved in a crime.

Former mayor, Tom Potter, apologized afterwards and Chasse’s family has been awarded $900,000 by the county.

But Roy Silberstein, of the Mental Health Association of Portland, says the police Use of Force Committee found officers followed training and yet an innocent man is dead.

Roy Silberstein: “That’s the unfortunate conundrum that they’re currently having to represent as appropriate.”

A spokesman the Mayor’s office referred calls to Police Chief Rosie Sizer. She expects the investigation will be released before Chasse’s civil lawsuit against the city goes to trial in March.

KNOWN FACTS

On the evening of September 17, 2006 James Chasse was walking toward his home from Northwest Portland. Portland Police officer Christopher Humphreys and Multnomah County Sheriff’s deputy Bret Burton called out to him from their patrol car. Portland Police sergeant Kyle Nice arrived within seconds. According to witnesses, James turned away and began to run from the officers. Humphreys tackled James on the sidewalk, and both Humphreys and Nice fought with James on the sidewalk. According to witnesses, the struggle was brief, and one-sided.

According to the homicide investigation presented to the grand jury and two autopsies, James was tackled and beaten by fists and feet. He was Tasered multiple times. Officers caused 26 rib fractures, broke his shoulder, tore his spleen, smashed his face. His fatal wounds were from knee drops and kicks to the face. They hogtied him and threw him in the back of a patrol car.

Emergency medical technicians from American Medical Rescue examined James and indicated to officers he was not sufficiently injured to need medical care.

The officers who beat James transported him to jail, and then were directed by jail nurses to take him to a hospital. No jail nurses offered medical assistance.

As shown in a jail security video, officers hogtied and carried James, shrieking and writhing in pain past deputies and nursing staff, out of jail. The officers elected to take James to a hospital 8 miles away, instead of to any one of the four hospitals within two miles. He died en route to the hospital and little more than 100 minutes after the beating.

WHAT HAPPENED AFTER JAMES CHASSE DIED

Portland Police homicide detectives interviewed all three officers who beat James within a week after he died. All officers returned to duty and remain officers today.

On September 17, 2006, Medical Examiner Karen Gunson determined the cause of Jim’s death was blunt force trauma and that his death had been accidental. The fatal trauma was caused by knee drops to James’ back and kicks to his head, both unsuitable uses of force by police officers.

Assistant District Attorney Christine Mascal presented the investigation of the officers to a grand jury on October 3, 2006. On October 17, 2006, the grand jury return with no decision to prosecute. District Attorney Michael Schrunk failed to file charges against the officers.

In October 2006, Michael Schrunk released the entire homicide investigation to the Chasse family, who in turn released it to the media.

On October 17, 2006, the Mental Health Association of Portland, joined by Portland CopWatch and the Oregon Advocacy Center held a memorial for the Chasse family at the First Congregational Church downtown. Over 400 people attended.

On October 23, 2006, the Mental Health Association of Portland launched a comprehensive web site to contain all information pertaining to the what happened to James Chasse and to evoke community dialogue. The site is located at http://jameschasse.blogspot.com. On September 2, 2008, updates to this site were shifted the the new Mental Health Association of Portland web site at www.mentalhealthportland.org.

Mayor Tom Potter apologized to the Chasse family through the media on October 17, 2006.

On October 31, 2006, Potter convened the Public Safety and Mental Health Task Force, co-chaired by County Commissioner Ted Wheeler and then State Senator Avel Gordly. For the most part the Task Force focused on shortcomings of the mental health system instead of police procedure. However, they recommend changes in police hiring procedures, in police training, to build and fund a sub-acute psychiatric facility, and to fully fund Project Respond.

Mayor Potter allocated $500,000 in funding for Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training, and classes for all Portland police officers began on February 5, 2007. The training protocols, used in dozens of cities nationwide, are re-written by police training administrators leaving community members out of the process, a move which included canceling of the CIT oversight committee. According to police sources, all Portland Police Bureau officers received training by September 2008.

On February 8, 2007, the Chasse family filed a civil lawsuit against the City of Portland, Multnomah County, Tri-met and American Medical Rescue. Opening statements in Chasse v Humphreys are scheduled for March 2010. The family’s attorney stated from a second autopsy that James would have survived the beating if he had received medical attention.

The Oregon legislature passed Oregon House Bill 2765 on May 19, 2007, providing 24 hours of training for all Oregon certified officers on identifying persons with mental illness.

The Oregon legislature passed Oregon State Senate Bill 111 on June 28, 2007. The bill requires each county to create a process of investigation and review of use of deadly physical force by law enforcement officers.

On February 19, 2007, Multnomah County Commissioners changed jail policy to require injured and ill arrestees to be transported via ambulance to hospital and not by police car.

On January 30, 2007, the Portland Police Bureau policy changed to require ambulances to transport injured or ill arrestees to jail whenever possible.

On June 14 2007, Multnomah County Sheriff’s Deputy Bret Burton was hired as a Portland Police Officer.

On August 6, 2007, the Mental Health Association of Portland announced the beginning of production of ALIEN BOY, a feature length documentary about the life and death of James Chasse. As of September 2009, the film has been fully funded by contributions from over 200 community members. Director Brian Lindstrom has interviewed over 60 persons associated with James, and the film team has begun post-production. The film will be ready for festivals in the winter of 2009.

On September 17 2007, the Mental Health Association of Portland hosted a peaceful rally at City Hall and presented the Mayor’s staff with a list of unanswered questions about what happened to James Chasse. Mayor Potter responded with a considered letter but was unable to answer many basic the questions stakeholders posed about what happened to James and who was responsible.

On October 11 2007, Federal Judge Dennis Hubel ruled to allow a wide ranging protective order in Chasse v Humphreys, making secret thousands of policy and financial documents of the City and County. Lawyers for the City and Judge Hubel cited the documentary film ALIEN BOY as a threat to officer safety and as an example why the protective order was required.

In January of 2008, Chief Rosie Sizer ended the long-running Chief’s Forum, the only public opportunity to speak with police leadership.

In March and April 2008, fiscal mismanagement overtook Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, requiring a $2.5 million emergency loan from Multnomah County and the state. Profitable portions of the agency were handed over to local competitors. Lead staff members were fired or resigned, but eight out of ten board members remained. The agency still exists, but in a diminished form; its financial and clinical sustainability is questioned by many mental health practitioners and county administrators.

On September 17 2008, the Mental Health Association of Portland held a peaceful demonstration at the Portland Police Bureau headquarters, noting that two years had passed without resolution to the case.

On October 27 2008, attorneys for the Chasse family released a closed circuit video from the Multnomah County jail of James Chasse, still alive but hogtied and screaming in pain, being carried into a jail cell. Police officer Christopher Humphreys can be heard saying “we tackled” Chasse. In September 2006 Humphreys told homicide investigators he had “shoved” Chasse.

On December 9 2008, Rosie Sizer announced the production of police training videos to highlight the danger of foot pursuits and the bureau’s “knock-down technique.”

On May 5 2009, Michael Schrunk declined to prosecute Christopher Humphreys after reviewing the jail video and considering the variance in his comments and his testimony to investigators in September 2006. At the same time Rosie Sizer stated the case would be turned over to the police bureau’s Internal Affairs Division for review.

On July 1 2009, attorneys for the Chasse family released portions of transcripts from dozens of sources, including of witnesses, police officers, and American Medical Rescue staff, policy documents, photographs, expert testimony.

On July 2 2009, the Chasse family accepted a settlement from Multnomah County for $925,000 for their part in Jim’s death.

On July 2 2009, county chair Ted Wheeler and state mental health administrator Richard Harris announced they had found funding to build and operate a sub-acute psychiatric facility. Central City Concern (CCC) was designated as the vendor for this project without an competitive open-bidding process. CCC’s director Ed Blackburn stated on July 2, 2009 the facility would be open by the Spring of 2010.

CURRENT STATUS AS OF SEPTEMBER, 2009 – THREE YEARS AFTER JAMES’ DEATH

Since September 17th 2006 there have been over 300 news stories about what happened to James Chasse. Updates about what happened to James remain front page news.

To date, no data has been released to show the effectiveness of CIT training – or any other new training or hiring policy – on officer behavior or performance.

To date, $925,000 has been awarded to the Chasse family from one of four parties. Over $100,000 has been spent by the city defending the case, now at $3700 per month.

To date, no one has been held accountable for James’ killing.