The Others

Sometimes a news item weighs on me, and then I feel like I have missed the opportunity by waiting. Funny how things repeat, and the opportunity just keeps coming back. So, before we need another incident to come up, let’s just talk about relationships between Portland Police and African Americans.

It’s so much easier if I just type cops and blacks, but I want to keep a level of respect—there’s not enough of that.

I originally wanted to write about the bean bag incident, so we can start there. First off, the use of the bean bag on the thirteen-year old girl seemed completely appropriate to me. She got a bruise on her thigh but did not require further medical treatment, so that part certainly sounds right. She had been banned from Tri-met but was not complying with that or with police orders, so some action is necessary, but what else would you do? Using a regular bullet would certainly be worse, and excessive for the situation, and would anyone feel happier if the adult male officer tried subduing the teenage girl with his body? The action was appropriate and justified. It probably wouldn’t have even been that big of a deal if anyone else had done it, but it was Chris Humphreys.

One appropriate use of force does not mean that every use of force is appropriate, and there certainly do seem to be grounds for concern in the James Chasse case—not even necessarily that excessive force was used, but was any force necessary and could medical attention have been provided more quickly? Because of the way that incident was handled, people have concerns about police behavior and accountability, and again, that can be reasonable.

So, then between City Hall and the Chief, Humphreys gets put on leave, and the force rallies behind him, because due process was ignored and the move was political. Well, yes, that move looked extremely political. Of course, people who get elected to their positions, or appointed by elected politicians, will sometimes need to think and act politically, but it wasn’t the right action for that incident. I believe it was an attempt to make up for mishandling the death of James Chasse.

At the same time, it’s hard to feel good about the rally, or the vote of no confidence. The history doesn’t help. The last time a vote of no confidence occurred was when two police officers were fired for leaving dead opossums at a black business. You know, even if we assume that any potential racial overtones are strictly coincidental, that sounds like harassment, and really inappropriate, and a good reason to be fired. Plus, my understanding was that Sizer had been doing a good job, and its important to have a good chief, with the confidence of the officers, so that’s a lot of harm being done, and probably without much help.

At the same time, it is really the wrong time to be crying racism, because if anyone punches a cop and comes away with no injuries but a bruised thigh, that is not persecution. Yes, thirteen sounds young, but physically she was large enough to do some damage, and she was way out of line.

I guess the point of the above is that I don’t agree with anyone, so ha! Except that it is not “Ha!” because I really hate situations like this, where everyone is in conflict and maybe no one is completely wrong but certainly no one is completely right. My stomach knots up and I hate it.

So now we have something worse than a bruised thigh. We have a dead man, and possibly inappropriate action, and probably a traumatized cop, certainly a bereft family, and Jesse Jackson to top it off, whom I wish I believed would be helpful, and a different kinds of rally.

On one side, we have the Portland Police Bureau. Many of them are good men, and it is their job to take risks to ensure the safety of the city. They volunteer for that. Sure, they get paid, but not really that much and with a lot of risk. Especially lately, when there have been so many shooters targeting police, it is an act of courage to keep going out there day after day. They need our support.

On the other side we have the African American community. They have good reason to be afraid of cops. There are disproportionate traffic stops and sentencing, and a long history of conflict, and it’s not hard to understand that when an unarmed woman gets shot, or a young girl walking in the middle of the street ends up with her head under an officer’s knee, or a professor gets arrested in his own house, all of that adds to a sense of fear and distrust. They shouldn’t have to feel that way. (And by the way, yes, he lost his temper, but why couldn’t the guy have just given his name and badge number? Could that have maybe defused it? He had been responding appropriately until then, so having his name attached to it should have been fine!)

A few years ago, I was almost asleep, and then suddenly I was wide awake as several shots were fired. I listened in the dark, trying to figure out what was going on, and just as I had almost decided it was nothing, voices started up, and police radio, and I was listening to a standoff about two blocks away. A man who had been drinking and was upset, not necessarily in that order, took two guns outside, fired them both, then took the guns back into the house, and went outside to wait for the police to show up and shoot him. He was asking for it, but he didn’t get it. He was arrested instead.

Talking about it to a neighbor, she became very agitated. She was a white woman, but she had a black son, and just having that happen so near to her house gave her visions of the police showing up and shooting her son. (Incidentally, the guy trying to get himself killed was white.) To help bring her nerves down a little, I told her it was probably lucky for this guy that he wasn’t in Portland. Somehow, I have always thought of them as a bit more trigger-happy. (Our responders are the Washington Country Sheriff’s Department.)

For me, sure, I am a white female in the suburbs, and I am not likely to ever be hassled, but I have to worry about appropriate responses too. I’m diabetic, and my blood sugar can suddenly drop, and such an incident led to one diabetic getting tased. (Why the people with her, when she told them her blood sugar was falling, called the cops instead of feeding her, I have no idea. If she asked for juice, I know she didn’t mean electricity.) That was also in Portland.

I don’t feel good about feeling that way. I know there are many Portland officers who try hard, and heroically, to protect and serve and keep everyone safe. Maybe it only seems like more happens because it is a bigger city, with more happening. But maybe there is something to that perception, and then it needs to be dealt with. If somehow in the attitudes or training or traditions, something makes the them more likely to fire, or in other ways act inappropriately, that needs to be investigated and dealt with. If the problem is just that there are a lot of good cops and some bullies, those bullies need to be brought out, and not protected.

On cop shows whenever the Internal Affairs team shows up it is bad news, and they are despised and traitors, but that kind of oversight is really important. Isn’t the real traitor the one who shames the job? There is work for the police to do, but it is not all up to them.
.
We owe them a better world and a better citizenry. Yes, a lot of the scuffles involve people of color, but they also frequently involve the mentally ill. With the way resources have been cut, the streets are full of them, and that’s something we haven’t had the will to solve.

The black community needs to be addressing the issues of youth in gangs, who shoot each other, and cops, and the issue of wild thirteen year old girls roaming around and getting into trouble on Tri-met. That’s not to pick on them. I realize that there is a long history of problems that have affected African Americas, starting with slavery, and then Jim Crow and segregated housing and welfare rules and many things leading to the social problems today, and that those problems are not uniquely black and pretty much spread out and touch all poverty. I know that and have compassion on it.

It’s just that all you can ever really be responsible for you. Jackson can chastise the cops, and the cops can point out all the reasons that every perp deserved and needed deadly force, but all it does is create bad feelings. If instead everyone worked to correct their part of the problem, then we could actually get somewhere.

A major disappointment for me was reading Fixing Broken Windows. It talked about community policing (Kroker was a fan), and I expected it to be all about making connections between police and government and citizens. Instead it was about order management. Yes, you fix broken windows and paint over graffiti, but also you don’t allow jaywalking or fare jumping and then because everyone realizes that the man is breathing down their neck they get into line (basically).

Maybe that would work, but what if maybe it was just showing that somebody cared? People keep things repaired because they care about the community, and that caring can spread to include caring about people. There was an emphasis on beat cops, and those can be great. What if there had been outreach to the point that Chris Humphreys knew James Chasse, and recognized him right away and could see, okay, he’s off his meds, better call his sister? This teenage boy is Walter, and he is a high-functioning autistic and if he does not respond right away, it is not insubordination. It’s a lot of work, but it’s not impossible.

Everything is different when we know each other. Most of the time, we don’t, and so when one of your own is attacked you circle the wagons and defend, and put on a “Don’t choke ‘em; smoke ‘em” t-shirt, because it is supposed to represent your tough choices, but what it really does is make a joke out of a loss of human life. Or you get all righteous about how violent the police are when someone who talks to others about suicide while holding a gun has put himself in a pretty bad situation. Everyone has a point, but they are still missing the one that matters.