Speaking in Codes
What is the audit of Portland Fire & Rescue all about?
It’s been a year since someone tossed fireworks into a dumpster at Heidi Manor Apartments in Northeast Portland, causing a blaze that killed three people and destroyed the 16-unit structure.
No arrests have been made.
In late December, Portland Police Detective Meredith Hopper, told me she thought there would be an arrest this year.
“I hope so. … I’m actively looking at the first of the year,” she said.
When I called her for an update on this 4th of July, she was dismissive.
“You have nothing to do with this case,” Hopper snapped.
Before I could ask her what had happened – did the District Attorney’s Office decline to bring the case forward? – she ended the call.
Hopper might be surprised how many people have something to do with this case. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of us. We all contributed to various GoFundMe sites to help the victims. Some of us still remember the peculiar comment that Fire Chief Sara Boone gave at a news conference about the fire.
Standing behind Boone, the city’s first black female fire chief, was Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, the city’s first black female commissioner who appointed Boone to her position.
Said Boone: “This was a fire that had rapid fire spread through multiple units, people jumping out the window, people walking through (fire), people that had coded.”
People that had coded?
Humanity is such a sticky business. Let technology do the talking.
The three who coded were at a wonderful stage in life, when the world looks wide open and full of promise.
Robert William Gremillion and Seth Robert Thompson, both 31, were longtime friends who moved from Baton Rouge, Louisiana to Portland to develop computer games.
Thompson’s girlfriend, Kelsi Edmonds, 25, had studied environmental studies at Evergreen College and found work she liked at Columbia Laboratories.
The 3:30 a.m. fire moved so quickly it left them little time to escape. Gremillion collapsed on an upper skywalk. Thompson jumped and died after arriving at the hospital.
Edmonds jumped and suffered severe burns over 65 percent of her body. She died three months later after numerous surgeries.
Portland had banned fireworks last year (as it did this year). Nevertheless, somebody still tossed fireworks into a dumpster.
“It was preventable,” Boone said at the press conference the afternoon of the fire.
Kelsi’s mother, Sondra Edmonds, told The Oregonian, “Whoever did it, I’d like him to think before you do something stupid.”
Kelsi’s father, Brian Edmonds, faulted the owner (Cosmo Investments LLC) and management (David Nase Property Mgmt.) of Heidi Manor Apartments for placing the dumpster in the carport under the units. Had it been placed away from the wood-framed buildings, the fire wouldn’t have ignited the apartments.
The families of the victims have filed a lawsuit against the owner and property manager for creating an unreasonable risk of harm.
According to city fire code, trash bins aren’t supposed to be placed within five feet of combustible walls or roof eaves. The Portland Fire & Rescue Bureau is supposed to conduct apartment building inspections every two years. The inspection history of Heidi Manor wasn’t readily available last year, and apparently it still isn’t. (The coronavirus is still being cited for reduced hours in the Fire Marshal’s office.)
About a week ago, the City of Portland released a 27-page audit into the Portland Fire & Rescue Bureau. But this audit didn’t concern itself with things like fire prevention or safety.
This audit was about subjects near and dear to Portland’s progressive values: diversity, inclusiveness, accountability.
In the intro, Auditor Mary Hull Caballero states: “City residents depend on Portland Fire & Rescue when they face unimaginable emergencies. The Bureau has prioritized this essential role by preparing firefighters to deal with various crises and ensuring that stations are always available to respond.”
Then this ominous foreshadowing of what is to come: “It has not showed the same commitment to creating and sustaining an accountable, professional workplace.”
In other words, it’s still too white and too male.
Of more than 700 employees, the Fire Bureau as of 2021 was 89 percent male and 79 percent white. A 2018 workplace study by Portland State University found that “some women and people of color in the Bureau feel alienated in the white-male dominant environment, and the family-like culture allows some employees to behave unprofessionally in the workplace.”
The Bureau has failed to invest “the time, attention, and resources needed to improve its culture and achieve its goal to diversify.”
The audit goes on like that speaking in generalities and bureaucratese such as, “Human Resources Administrative Rule 2.02 applies to all City employees and offers several options for filing harassment, discrimination, racism, and retaliation complaints, including avenues outside the supervisory hierarchy.”
It isn’t enough that the City of Portland has a demoralized Police Bureau, portrayed in the media as a hotbed of white supremacy – thanks largely to City Commissioner Hardesty and her supporters. Now here’s City Auditor Caballero taking down the Fire Bureau, which is led by Hardesty.
Caballero appears to be hoisting Hardesty on the same racist petard the commissioner has wielded as an anti-police activist for three decades.
Hardesty has been put on the defensive and cast as failing to pursue diversity, inclusiveness and accountability in her role as Commissioner in charge of the Fire Bureau.
But how important is this audit to what Portland residents want from a Fire and Rescue Bureau? Which is more important – the fact that in any workplace some employees won’t get along, or the ability to do the job competently?
If you’re the family of one of the three persons killed last year in the Heidi Manor fire, or one of the thousands of apartment dwellers in Portland living in a wood-frame apartment house, what would concern you more: that some Fire Bureau employees think their complaints of unfairness took too long to be completed? Or that safety inspections may not be done in a timely manner?
Four months before the fatal fire at Heidi Manor, in the early morning hours on Saturday March 6, three Portland Public School vehicles parked at the administration building were set on fire. Vandals smashed office windows and sprayed graffiti.
Within two days, Multnomah County District Attorney Schmidt announced he was assigning a senior deputy DA to work the case.
“These were violent acts that put property and life in danger,” Schmidt said. “The risk to the firefighters and police officers who responded cannot be understated… . My office is committed to working with law enforcement to identify anyone with ties to these crimes and to then prosecute.”
He asked that property owners in the vicinity of the Portland Public Schools’ administration building check their security devices for any suspicious activity.
If Schmidt issued similar statements about the Heidi Manor fire that killed three people, I haven’t seen them.
A memorial service is planned this Saturday at 2226 NE Weidler St. where Robert William Gremillion, Seth Robert Thompson and Kelsi Edmonds once lived.
You presented the facts and let them speak for themselves and damning they are. You asked fair questions and those questions answered themselves.
Exclamation points weren’t needed. Thanks to your writing the evil apparent here shouted itself off of the page and into the reader’s consciousness, at least of those readers burdened with a conscience.
In passing: I had to visit Andy Ngo online to get an accurate idea of the anti-American rampage on the 4th
It would seem DEI is to be the death of us regardless of race, creed, or religion.
This comment concerns the nexus between the god that rules City Hall today (let's call Them DEI) and the City Auditor's office. For the lucky few who don't yet know, "DEI" stands for diversity, equity and inclusion, the goal and purpose of woke organizations in America of the 2020s.
The secular religion (McWhorter, 2021) of diversity, equity and inclusion is like a virus (Lindsay). Once the virus enters a susceptible institution such as a city government, it turns the organization into a virus factory. Critics of DEI would say that the entity's original mission then becomes secondary to the primary goal of spreading the DEI virus far and wide.
I submit that the Portland City Auditor's office displays all the classic symptoms of DEI infection. This is bad news for the body politic, because the audit calendar is to the DEI virus what sneezing is to COVID. The preventive measures that government prescribes for others to fend off viral infections aren't available to the Portland Fire & Rescue Bureau. Under the protocol that surrounds audits, sooner or later the fire chief will have to send a groveling letter to the city auditor that thanks her for her team's professionalism and outlines the steps he will take to ensure all fire stations are fully infected with DEI by the specified date.
However, whether as a result of random mutation or intelligent design, DEI doesn't just compel its auditor host to infect others. In a miracle of energy efficiency, the auditor's office does not have to part with any of its viral load to spread DEI to new employees. That’s because Audit only accepts new hires who are already infected with DEI.
Take the auditor's current opening for a general counsel. https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/portlandor/jobs/3585735/auditor-general-counsel?keywords=general%20counsel&pagetype=jobOpportunitiesJobs
It's a gig many lawyers would kill for. Sure, the successful candidate won't be pulling down high six digits or more like Big Law superstars, but on the other hand they won't be slaves to billable-hours requirements or time sheets. Best of all, they won't have to play golf or attend meetings of the City Club in a perpetual quest for new business. It's no job for a baby lawyer, though. The lawyer who lands this job will have a real tiger by the tail:
"The General Counsel’s client confronts a variety of legal questions that arise from the work of an accountability office that conducts performance audits of City programs and operations, investigates community member complaints and fraud hotline tips, and enforces lobbying and campaign finance regulations."
"The General Counsel also advises on legal risks, public records requests, and employment and procurement matters; interprets Charter and City Code, engages in substantive and tactical discussions with the City Attorney’s Office and outside counsel, and drafts and updates administrative rules related to the Auditor’s Charter and Code authority."
"The General Counsel conducts legal and policy research, prepares written opinions and other documents, consults on litigation, tracks legislation, and serves as the Auditor’s legal representative in meetings with City officials and outside parties."
Yikes!
How does a mere mortal get such a coveted job? As is the case with any law job worth having, rank is everything. The better the ranking of the law school and the higher the applicant's rank in their class, the more marketable they are. By the time a lawyer is developed enough in their career to have a shot at being hired as general counsel for a city auditor, other qualifications come to the fore. Perhaps the candidate secured a plum federal appellate judicial clerkship, the equivalent of a medical residency, only in a field that bestows postgraduate training only on a select few. It could be they concentrated on corporate governance or municipal law. Being a CPA and having accounting experience couldn't hurt.
But let's look at what the job description says:
"I. Minimum qualifications:
Knowledge of federal, state, and municipal statutes, regulations, and ordinances, and the ability to analyze, interpret, explain, and apply them;
Ability to research complex legal questions using digital tools, libraries, professional resources, Oregon Revised Statutes, City Code and Charter, historical City Attorney opinions, and other legal publications;
Ability to draft City Code, administrative regulations, contracts, and other legal documents;
Ability to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing, and present information, proposals, and recommendations clearly and persuasively in public settings.
Ability to work with a multicultural workforce, promote an equitable workplace environment, and apply equitable program practices to diverse and complex government services."
The sound you just heard was the bottom dropping out of the stomachs of hundreds of would-be applicants from the white upper middle class (which is to say most lawyers) when they got to the last item.
The DEI virus has seen to it that hot-shot applicants won't be able to B.S. their way through that part in the interview. You see, an application won't be considered complete until the applicant has submitted a writing sample. Now, most lawyers with six or more years of experience will have volumes of materials they could provide: law review articles, articles in professional magazines, briefs, opinions, memos and other similar documents. Alas, none of them will suffice:
"II. Writing exercise:
In addition to the cover letter and resume, please submit an essay describing 1) your experiences or participation with any of the following, and 2) what you learned from them:
exposure to racial inequities and actions you took to help resolve them;
steps taken to make workplaces and/or public spaces inclusive;
experiences as a member of a historically underrepresented group in government decision-making;
experiences living, working with, and/or interacting with individuals from diverse backgrounds and identities;
experiences ensuring equitable and inclusive workplace operations and/or program outcomes.
If your experiences are different from those listed and you have a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, please explain how you will manifest that commitment in this position."
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The DEI virus works in mysterious ways!
In closing, it's worth pointing out that the deadline for applications has been extended to July 15, 2022. The only question is whether there has been a dearth of applications (some highly qualified lawyers might be put off at having to prove their fealty to the religion of DEI in order to be able to practice their profession) or whether prescreeners haven't yet spotted a candidate whose writing sample has yielded as sufficiently high DEI virus count.