French-Kissed By a Rattlesnake

It’s not like Jo Ann Hardesty didn’t warn us.

Portland, Ore. used to be one of the safest large cities in America. It's also one of the whitest -- not that the two could possibly be related. Because now Portland -- still one of the whitest cities in America -- has a rising rate of violent crime.

What has changed?

Three years ago Jo Ann Hardesty became the third black person to be elected to the Portland City Council. Hailed by Willamette Week as the angry black woman Portland needed, Hardesty -- a Baltimore native -- brought a touch of the ghetto to the Rose City. She hasn't shot anyone, but she has made it easier for those who do settle differences with a gun.

How so? By turning police into the enemy.

Hardesty's handiwork was on display Nov. 9 at the federal courthouse. City officials, community activists and attorneys from the U.S. Department of Justice appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon to review Portland's efforts to meet a 2014 settlement agreement requiring police to improve its treatment of the mentally ill.

The case arose after the death of James Chasse, a white man diagnosed with  schizophrenia, who was beaten by police. Chasse, 42, was not homeless. He had a rented room on Northwest Broadway Avenue. But he was off his medication and behaving erratically on the streets, where he attracted public attention and the police.

A subsequent federal investigation found Portland officers had a pattern of using excessive force on the mentally ill.

Hardesty and other black activists, particularly Albina Ministerial Alliance for Justice and Police Reform, coat-tailed on that agreement. They wanted the same considerations for criminal offenders who are black.

What Hardesty and her fellow activists really wanted was a weakened police department. They have succeeded.

Look at the federal courthouse itself. Gone are the massive amounts of hateful graffiti vilifying cops that scarred the building from one end to the other last year. But a temporary fence still surrounds the building. Plywood still covers the ground floor windows. Visitors to the courthouse wend their into a darkened lobby.

A bailiff told me nothing will probably change until a permanent fence can be installed.

“The last time the fence came down, within two hours they started breaking windows,” he said.

No need to ask who "they" are. Portland is strangely proud of its history of anarchy. Antifa has found a permanent home here.

Inside the courthouse, encouraging words from various quotations are featured tastefully throughout the building. In the lobby the words greeting visitors are: “The first duty of society is justice.”

What's a little vandalism? It couldn't possibly lead to anything more serious.

In Judge Simon's courtroom, Hardesty, sleek in a grey sheath dress and cream-colored jacket, stood before the microphone and smiled.

“It's always a pleasure to be in front of you Judge Simon ...," she began. "I couldn’t wait to be here today."

Simon replied, “We’ll do it again if you like,” to light laughter in the courtroom.

Policing in Portland has become a tangled mess. Everybody wants to have a piece of the action. For the past seven years, there have been repeated status hearings before Simon to monitor the police bureau's progress.

Although the city and the Department of Justice had arrived at a tentative agreement for the Nov. 9 hearing, the judge did not sign off on it. He asked them to try again, to ease potential differences. The agreement covered issues such as a new Community Police Oversight Board, investigation of use of force in the 2020 riots and policies for body-worn cameras. Simon had concerns, particularly regarding the details of how body-worn cameras will be implemented.

As Hardesty told him earlier, “You and I have had intensive conversations over body cameras. … I never believed there could be an accountability system I could get behind."

She acknowledged, though, that with changes in technology and the use of third-party vendors, "You were right, and I was wrong. ... We are committed to having the best police force in the country."

Judge Simon told Hardesty he had always respected her opinion. After looking at  research, he believes technology could solve some significant problems with body-worn cameras.

Nationally, body-worn cameras have been shown to improve behavior of both police officers and the people they encounter.

Hardesty and community activists are concerned about who will get to look at the footage and when.

They obviously don't have a problem publicly releasing videos of police behaving badly, but what about citizens behaving badly? They also don't want officers looking at camera footage before giving a statement to investigators when an encounter turns violent. Why not? Violent encounters can be sudden, and the officer has no time to take notes. Why can't he look at the footage -- unless this is a setup to catch a cop being wrong?

As a result, Portland is the only major American city whose police department does not have body-worn cameras. Nothing is resolved quickly in Portland.

Judge Simon didn't give the parties a deadline to reach a better agreement. He recessed "until the next hearing" and wished them all luck.

Only a block away from the federal courthouse is the Portland Police Bureau, housed in the Justice Center, which also bears scars from the 2020 riots. The Starbucks across from the Police Bureau is open, but most of its windows are boarded up. What does it say to the rest of Portland that even a business across from the Police Bureau isn't safe?

Perhaps Hardesty thinks it's sweet justice. For three decades she demanded police reform. She was like a rattlesnake, lying in wait for whenever police used deadly force -- which inevitably happens in a metropolitan area given the nature of police work.

Then Hardesty would strike. She would grab a bullhorn and take to the streets. Her insistence on defending men like Keaton Otis, who was killed by police after he shot and wounded an officer, revealed that she didn’t believe police ever had a right to use force.

When she was elected to the City Council, Portland’s white progressives cheered. Finally, a black woman on the council (the previous two black commissioners were men). And her Baltimore background automatically bestowed street cred. Maybe some of it would rub off on the pale people in their safe, white neighborhoods.

Hardesty scored some immediate victories -- eliminating the Gun Violence Reduction Team (formerly the Gang Enforcement Team) because she thought it targeted blacks. She pushed for cuts in the police budget and reducing the number of sworn officers.

Even with record shootings, Hardesty has confidently dug in.

"Police cannot prevent crime," she insists.

Hardesty doesn't realize it, but she can prevent crime. More than anyone else on the Portland City Council, she could have made a profound difference.

When she took office in January 2019, Mayor Ted Wheeler had allowed city council meetings to be commandeered every week by hecklers and protesters. In her third week, Hardesty had had enough.

Using the moral authority of her skin color and decades of sanctioned street protests, she issued a statement blaming “white male privilege” for empowering the men who were regularly disrupting City Council meetings.

She called the men disrespectful and self-centered.

"Nearly every council meeting is halted by a handful of men who call themselves 'cop watchers' or citizen journalists. They shout about the police department or actions they say are corrupt. They also videotape themselves and the commissioners and refuse to leave when asked. They later post their camera footage to social media websites."

She urged them to stop. She asked other white people at council meetings to intervene.

Hardesty's words had an effect. Council meetings did calm down.

Almost a year and a half later, the first serious riot related to George Floyd's death erupted in downtown Portland. Since the mayor was out of town, as acting council president Hardesty called for an 8 p.m. curfew for the weekend. After viewing video of looting, Hardesty noted that many of the looters were white. She urged that they be prosecuted.

Her commitment to law and order didn't last long. She immediately saw a different opportunity. She used the 100-plus nights of riots to pound on Portland police and turn the quest for justice into the pursuit for resources (also known as reparations).

Hardesty was in a singular position to make a profound difference. The current state of downtown Portland -- especially the area home to our courts and Justice Center -- is a testament to what she has accomplished.

Should the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict end in acquittal, and should protesters head to the streets for some early Christmas shopping, let's see how Hardesty shows her love for the whitest city in America.