Reinstating Ron Frashour

I thought I was going to take a break from politics for a while, but apparently I was wrong. However, this is local, and not largely theoretical, so it is a little different. It’s also a touchy issue, so if you are going to read, please read the whole thing, and give me a chance.

There was an article in the Saturday Oregonian about an arbitrator ruling that Ron Frashour should be rehired and granted back pay. I had not agreed with his firing, so I was glad that he won his case, but at the same time there was the mayor, Sam Adams, vowing to appeal.

I actually wrote a letter to the editor with my views, but it did not get published (no big deal—they get a lot of submissions), but then the Oregonian editorial was so off-base that I had to express something, and since the letter did not work I am using the blog.

Back to my confirmation bias issue, I think sometimes people can’t see a side because of the emotional impact. What happened was so wrong, it leaves no room for them to think of anything else, like whether the person being punished for the horrible crime is really the one who did it. So let me be clear that Aaron Campbell should not be dead, and it is awful that he is dead, and this should not have happened.

But it has also always been clear from reading about the investigation that what happened was not the fault of a single person. I don’t even mean the fault of a despondent person deciding that the best way to end the pain was to get the police involved. The issue is that there was a scene of confusion with no clear communication between the various officers and too much noise to facilitate understanding of the scene.

What was also clear in the reading is that this was not a coincidence. Other people involved in police training for dealing with the mentally ill and suicidal have said that they take experienced officers and run them through specialized training where they become part of a special response team, and those responders are the ones sent to the scene when this kind of situation comes up.

Here (at least at the time), this training occurred for every new officer as part of the general training. Everyone gets the training, but they get it at a time when all of the information is new, and no one specializes. The local response to that was that the officers followed their training, with no defense of the training methods.

It was a scene of confusion. A negotiator was texting with Campbell and got him to agree to come out. Apparently he exited with his hands on his head. Another officer wanted the hands over the head, so shot him with beanbag rounds. Campbell reached for his back, probably just as a reflex to being hit, and Frashour interpreted that as going for a gun and shot fatally.

If there had been good communication between the various groups, and everyone knew what was going on, then maybe things would have not transpired that way. As it was, the beanbag round seems to be the real issue. Yes, on its own it is nonlethal, but it set off a reaction that led to another reaction, and it seems unnecessary. Is it really so awful for the hands to be on the head instead of over the head? Maybe you want to make an adjustment, but is that the way?

Maybe, just as there was too much going on that night for anyone to hear clearly, we have that issue with the aftermath. A lot of the concerns are racial, because too many people of color have been shot by the police. That is a concern, and there probably is racism in the bureau among individual members, even if not in any kind of systemic way. That is bad, and difficult to address.

However, there is a much easier to identify issue with mental illness. Aaron Campbell and Keaton Otis were both black, but they were also, respectively, suicidal and mentally ill. Jose Mejia Poot was mentally ill. James Chasse was mentally ill. Jack Dale Collins was mentally ill. Actually, Mental Health Portland has a whole list. In some of those cases the death seems unavoidable, but in many cases a specialized response team of seasoned officers can make a world of difference.

The original article said the bureau has made some changes since the initial incident, though it did not specify what they were. It seems clear to me, though, that the issue is not the fault of any individual officer, but rather a collective failure. That can be not just a teachable moment, but a transformative moment, where we decide we are going to do this better. We are going to update our training, improve our response, and strengthen our safety net for the mentally ill. Nope, we’re going to fire the one guy.

This is the part in the editorial that appalled me: First of all, in the middle, it says this: “What the jury found was an appalling lack of communication among officers on the scene and that Frashour, by all accounts a decent and hardworking cop, was operating in an information void.” Everything is leading towards a systemic failure, not an individual failure, unless maybe you are saying that Frashour has sole or at least greater responsibility for the information void. Then it concludes this way, “That's why, unfortunate as it was, an otherwise good cop had to be fired, and that's why Reese and Portland Mayor Sam Adams must counter every challenge that would undo the firing. The credibility of the police force, and the city, depends on it.”

How does that follow? How do you put someone in a terrible situation where things are likely to go wrong, and then decide reason it went wrong is his fault? Yes, his step was the final step in the chain of confusion, but it was not the only step.
I feel like Frashour is being used as a sacrificial lamb the make people feel better, and Adams does not have enough of a track record of integrity or non-political decisions to have any credibility on that front. The credibility of the police force and the city is not at stake based on whether Frashour has a job or not. Their credibility comes from whether you can believe the things they say, and why they say them, and believing that they are committed to a well-run city that works well for its citizens over maintaining a positive image.

Unions can hurt their cause at times, like when they try and defend the jobs of the bus driver who seems to have at least one complaint for every week she works, or the cop who is having sex on the job, but this time they are exactly right. This is a time to defend.

I absolutely agree with the protesters that there are problems and they need to be addressed, but a false sense of security is in no one’s best interest, and that is all that can be accomplished by firing someone who even his detractors call a good cop.