OPB Leaves Out the Best Part
It's what they don't tell you that counts
You may recall the story of Mohamed Osman Adan…
…who (we won’t bother using the journalist’s fudge-term, “allegedly”) butchered his ex-wife, Rachael Angel Abraham.
It was covered, gingerly, by the city’s media in late August. The Oregonian at first knocked it off as a typical felony flats murder, but then the O’s cop-shop reporter, Maxine Bernstein found a wrinkle…
Portland Freedom Fund bailed out man accused of violating domestic violence order. A week later, he was charged with murder
Helluva story…but because it was chockfull of delicate, by Portland standards, details…
Race—the killer is a Somali…
Religion…a Muslim, whose wife’s possible apostasy may have triggered the murder…
A powerful non-profit… AYCO (African Youth & Community Organization) whose “victim’s rights coordinator” wrote a letter of support—not for the victim of Adan’s relentless assaults but for Adan himself…
A compliant judge…who set a ridiculously low bail for Adan, who had, among other things, six prior arrests for domestic violence involving Abraham…
A spooky non-profit…the Portland Freedom Fund, which bailed Adan out…which was getting dough from yet another non-profit…and which (as KGW found) had bailed out a few other wild-cards…
A “social justice” DA… who suddenly changed his tune about doing away with bail (at least in hindsight)…
And that’s just for starters.
Unsurprisingly, local media buried the story. Two days and…poof! Down the memory hole.
Except for Oregon Public Broadcasting which ran not one, but two stories reassuring its listeners that Portland Freedom Fund was a really, really, really good thing. On Sept 7 they noted…
Portland Freedom Fund continues mission to help BIPOC defendants post bail
…and if that hadn’t sunk in, followed four days later with…
Portland Freedom Fund’s Terrence Hayes on deciding which defendants to help and learning from a terrible tragedy
Funny thing about Mr. Hayes.
Had they read Pam Fitzsimmons’ August 28 piece here in Portland Dissent, they might have shared this with their listeners…
Now that he has had his criminal record expunged, former Crips member Terrence Hayes, who once shot a man, has an important consideration to make: Should he exercise his legal right to own a firearm?
He’s thinking about it.
Hayes is the first person in Multnomah County to benefit from a new state law making it easier to have criminal convictions disappear – even if the offender, like Hayes, was guilty.
Under Senate Bill 819, District Attorney Mike Schmidt created a Justice Integrity Unit to review convictions and consider them for expungement, clemency or resentencing.
In Hayes’ case, his conviction was vacated. He had already served more than 12 years in prison and had been free since 2016. This wasn’t a situation of actual innocence. So why rewrite an honest criminal record?
…and…
At City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty’s suggestion, this month he was appointed to the city’s Focused Intervention Team Community Oversight Group.
None of which OPB bothered mentioning. Nor, for that matter, did Hayes.
For all you journalism wanna-be’s out here, OPB’s Dave Miller conducted a graduate lesson in puff-ball questions and got these responses…
On why the Portland Freedom Fund decided last month to help Mohamad Adan post bail, who then a week later, allegedly murdered Rachel Abraham, the mother of his children:
I think we’re okay with recognizing that in doing the work that we do every day that something horrific like this happened.
To be fair, when you’re doing a good thing, there’s always the risk of possibility that someone won’t do well by that good thing.
And Hayes added that the Fund won’t be bailing out domestic violence cases in the future.
Other felons? Get in line!
Although OPB (and other local media) might want to ask—where did the Portland Freedom Fund go? Give ‘em a search on Google and this pops up…
Maybe OPB could tell us…
The reporting on this story was even more opaque than usual. Although perceptive readers could deduce early on that the victim was the suspect's wife, it took an oddly long time for their relationship to be reported within the confines of a single news story.
The Oregonian has demonstrated that it's capable of doing extensive, in-depth reporting. Its coverage of the Red House debacle of a few years ago was superb. For once the reporters didn't pull punches when it came to exposing the anarchist criminals who besieged the neighborhood or the grifty nuttiness (or was it nutty griftiness?) of the BIPOC at the center of the chaos.
Imagine if the same level of persistence, thoroughness and transparency had been devoted to the telling of this story.
It has been reported that the alleged killer was working for one of the nonprofits that was distributing air conditioners thanks to a grant from the Portland Clean Energy Fund.
How did the nonprofit come to hire him given his record of domestic violence?
Wouldn't the terms of a PCEF grant require grantees to follow best business practices, including running criminal background checks on job applicants?