'Chaos Within, Chaos Without'

Police oversight in Portland ignores crime, obsesses about race

Ten years after Rodney King’s famous beating by Los Angeles police, he sat in a movie theater watching Woody Harrelson play a corrupt cop in “Rampart.”

In one scene, Harrelson’s patrol car is T-boned by a driver, and he gets out to confront him. But the driver throws open his car door, slams it into Harrelson, then takes off running. Harrelson catches him and, in an uncontrolled rage, brutally beats him.

“Now, this was a very interesting scene for me to watch, because of my reaction,” King wrote in his memoir “The Riot Within: My Journey From Rebellion to Redemption.”

King recalled: “I was rooting for Woody to pound the hell out of the asshole who was driving so recklessly. Then I kind of caught myself when I figured out that was me! I was the one guy in America who might feel differently about what he was seeing, and who he was rooting for, on the screen. But I didn’t — the guy was a jerk and deserved a good beating. For the first time in my life, I might have caught an inkling of how Powell, Briseno, Wind and Koon felt that night. Damn.”

But that was Rodney King and last century.

The five Memphis cops who beat Tyre Nichols to death had no justification. Why did they gang up on this lone, slender man in such a frenzy?

Lawrence Powell, Theodore Briseno, Timothy Wind and Stacey Koon were in the heat of a pursuit chasing King who was going 60 mph on surface streets and 100 mph on the freeway. Years later, King would admit his behavior was dangerous. He could have killed someone.

Nichols and King were both black, but the similarities end there. The LAPD officers were white. All five Memphis cops were black. This bad policing isn’t about race. It’s about crime and our failure to deal with  criminals.

The cops who beat Nichols to death have been charged with second-degree murder. Academia, the media and civil rights organizations have made their own contributions to violence by blaming crime on racism. They have popularized sayings like “the school-to-prison pipeline” as if it were truth. They urge compassion and “services” for violent offenders — not jail or prison. Even the mere use of the word “thugs” is considered racist.

Crime is real. The Memphis officers belonged to a special unit called SCORPION, which stood for Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods. It was created in response to public concern about violence and crime.

On Saturday, Nichols’ family and activists demanded it be disbanded. Police Chief Cerelyn Davis immediately acquiesced.

According to The New York Times, the decision to dismantle the unit was announced as protesters marched through the city.

“You know what that means?” one of the protesters asked the crowd. “This worked.”

Worked for whom? Criminals who will have even fewer cops to worry about?

Like many large cities across the country, Memphis has been trying unsuccessfully to hire more police officers. The city is currently offering a $15,000 sign-on bonus and $10,000 in relocation assistance. It may even waive pre-employment requirements for a person who has been convicted of certain felony charges that were classified as a misdemeanor.

In Portland, the city struggles to hire new recruits and retain experienced officers as the city experiences record homicides.

Meanwhile, the city’s various police oversight groups thrive. They include the Citizen Review Committee, the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing, the Police Accountability Commission. Still to come — a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, patterned after a court-like body established in South Africa when apartheid ended.

So far this month there have been at least a dozen police oversight meetings in Portland with two more scheduled for Jan. 30 and 31. These groups, composed of citizen volunteers, are soundly progressive and obsessed with race. The best description of these groups was offered to me by a reader who said they were like putting Right-to-Lifers in charge of Planned Parenthood.

The groups cast police as a problem to be dealt with. Criminals? They barely exist in this world.

The most prominent group right now is the 20-member Police Accountability Commission (currently with two vacancies), which is designing a board of paid cop watchers. The board will have a director, investigators and other staff plus a budget equal to 5 percent of the police bureau. This is the result of the Real Police Accountability ballot measure proposed by former City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty and approved by voters after the George Floyd riots.

The meetings via Zoom are poorly attended by the public. Discussion among commissioners is tightly controlled by a facilitator, who lets viewers know how many are “in the audience.” Often it’s about eight, but their names are not revealed.

The “chat function” is disabled so members of the audience cannot communicate with each other. Public comment is towards the end of the agenda and is often limited to no more than two minutes.

Earlier this month, the Police Accountability Commission held an in-person gathering at the Center for Equity and Inclusion on Northeast Alberta Street and 18th Avenue.

About 35 people attended and sat in a large circle. Several members of the Police Accountability Commission were present.

A perky city employee named Austin (she/her pronouns) ran the show along with facilitator Victoria Lara. Austin reminded us more than once that she is a public servant and would be happy to meet any of us for coffee.

As usual the meeting began with one of the commissioners offering the obligatory “land acknowledgement,” explaining that we are on land that once belonged to someone else. (According to this version of history, the 200,000-300,000 years of human life were going along fine until the white man arrived and seized everything.)

Next item on the agenda was the reading of community agreements. Among them: Always confront oppression; listen without agenda and refrain from interruption; everyone has their own truth; assume good intentions; say something positive about previous speaker and, of course, “allow yourself to be facilitated.”

Commissioner Connie Wohn read a statement about being against over-policing and police violence.

“We are your neighbors … and former protesters,” she told the audience.

Eventually, members of the community spoke.

“How many Portland police officers have murdered people in the last 20 years?” a gray-haired man asked. “You should know that data at least in the last 10 years. How many whites vs. BIPOC vs. anybody else? This is a progressive city with one of the most progressive police departments. I’m curious, do you have that data?”

Commissioner Sophia Glenn replied, “The commission does not have that data. The data we have is what the police give us.”

The man persisted: “You can look it up. It’s really easy.”

A young man asked what the Police Accountability Commission was holding accountable.

“There are more criminals out there than cops shooting innocent people,” he said.

This was more “truth speaking” than the Police Accountability Commission is used to. Facilitator Victoria Lara pointed out that she was among the “people of color” in the room.

“My son … has a target on his back,” she said. “We have to be respectful … let commissioners talk.”

Commissioner Faythe Aiken, sitting on what appeared to be a motorized scooter (she represents the disabled), sounded defensive: “We are not out just to punish cops.”

Her day job is working as an analyst at Prosper Portland, and she expects her boss to hold her accountable. Given the percentage of voters who approved the police accountability measure, in her mind it’s clear that this is a big problem.

“When there is an officer-involved shooting, it is publicized,” a woman named Meg told her.

Someone asked about the political views of the commissioners, and Aiken seemed to take offense: “What are our political views? … The goal is to hold police accountable.”

Other questions from the audience: Have you thought about shadowing a 9-1-1 dispatcher or police officer about what is going on?

Commissioner Glenn appeared confused by the question.

“What would you like for us to get from that?” she asked.

It seemed like a fairly innocuous get-together. But a couple of weeks later, at the usual Police Accountability Commission meeting with its controlled Zoom format, Commissioner Aiken complained about the in-person Q-and-A. She found it “really rough.”

Commissioner Katherine McDowell was bothered that some audience members did not allow themselves to be facilitated.

“It wasn’t a space for trauma-informed listening,” she said.

Commissioner Wohn added, “It wasn’t necessarily safe, and it didn’t feel trauma-informed.”

These are the people designing Portland’s new version of police accountability. They want to be backseat drivers to patrol officers — from the safety of a Zoom meeting.

Unpredictable questions make them nervous. Can you imagine them trying to fight crime and criminals?

It’s safer to go after police.

Rodney King might have laughed at these citizen cop-watchers whimpering about their trauma.

In his memoir, there’s a chapter called “Chaos Within, Chaos Without” where he describes the cops treating him like “some damn human piñata” (a simile the Nichols’ family attorney Antonio Romanucci used.)

At one point, “all my reasoning collapsed in on me, and I realized I was going to die,” King wrote. “I started to think about all the bad things I had done in my life, and that at least the Lord might see this beating as some kind of penance for the sins I committed.”

But he didn’t die then. And when the jury verdict on the cops who beat him came back not guilty, King admitted enjoying the first few hours of the rioting.

A couple of trucks pulled up outside his house. Friends brought him a haul of loot.

“Payback, Homes. Payback. You deserve this shit. It’s the least you should be getting.”

King looked and saw a case of booze.

“I could see a few of the bottleneck labels of Jack Daniels were charred from a fire, but the liquor was in fine shape, and I was really tempted. Man, was I tempted.”

He put on a Bob Marley wig and drove down to where the action was.

“Within a couple of blocks of Normandie, I had to stop. I sensed that terrible presence of hatred. … I mean there were sounds like I had never heard before, like evil erupting. … I wanted to look right into the face of it all, but then I heard gunshots going off. … I turned around and headed the fuck out of there.”

Then he heard about the beatings of white truck driver Reginald Denny and Fidel Lopez — a construction worker and Guatemalan immigrant.

Rioters shouted “white motherfucker” when they pulled Lopez from his truck, torched it, robbed him and pulled his pants down and spray-painted his genitals black.

It reminded King of something he once saw on National Geographic about evolution. He realized what all the violence he had seen meant. People were devolving. The primitive beast was back.

The Police Accountability Commission wouldn’t know what to make of Rodney King’s insight.