Election season is already under way for the new city council (the news Friday was that former City Commissioner Steve Novick is running for District 3).
What Portland needs more than anything is a better informed electorate — people who will take the time to study issues like you have done.
Portland City Council also needs to rethink the many community advisory groups it has. Does the city need that many? I once heard former City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty explain how all the advisory groups are NOT created equal. Unfortunately, some people apply for membership thinking they will have major input. They are disappointed when they don’t.
I just noticed this posting for an advisory group that probably many Portlanders have not heard of.
Recently, Women's Declaration International tried to have a speaking event in Portland, at the Hollywood library. The small group of women was beset by a crowd of trAntifa and brutalized. 4 went to the hospital with injuries. Eyeglasses smashed, tires slashed, cameras and phones stolen, pies in faces, and a random woman had been spray-painted on the back of her coat with the Anarchy symbol.
Follow Lierre Keith and Kara Dansky for more information.
Nov 27, 2023·edited Nov 27, 2023Liked by Pamela Fitzsimmons
The Oregonian's coverage of this story was maddeningly opaque and slanted. The comparison that came to mind was Soviet Russia and its state media's knack for presenting dissidents in the worst possible light - criminal if not downright insane. You see, local media are so captured by gender identity ideology that gender critical ideas and stories are almost never reported.
If this had happened to a BIPOC group, it would have been headline news for days.
Nov 24, 2023Liked by Richard Cheverton, Pamela Fitzsimmons
I took my kids shopping this week at Cascade Station and we all witnessed a shoplifting incident at one store (plus all the armed security guards). I was sadly not surprised in the least. My kids were creeped out, as they should be. There are real consequences for these ridiculous decisions.
Nov 24, 2023·edited Nov 24, 2023Liked by Richard Cheverton, Pamela Fitzsimmons
Ibram X. Kendi let the cat out of the bag when he revealed what could easily be the unofficial slogan of woke black activists and their progressive allies: "The only remedy to [sic] past discrimination is present discrimination." [1]
What's galling about Kendi's pronouncement is the author's utter disregard for the system of laws that is meant to ensure that Americans are treated equally regardless of characteristics such as race, color, ethnicity or national origin. It is understandable only in the zero-sum calculus of equity politics, where one group's advancement comes at the expense of others.
That principle must have been guiding the Police Accountability Commission when they directed that "individuals with lived experience of police discrimination" be given priority when assembling the panel that will sit in judgment of police officers who have been accused of misconduct. In a court of law, which must abide by the U.S. Constitution, that method of selecting jurors in a criminal trial would unlawful because it would violate the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a fair and unbiased jury. Fortunately, someone in City Hall caught this effort to bypass the Constitution. That's why City Council has axed that provision in favor of a rule that excludes anyone with a bias for or against law enforcement from the disciplinary panel.
The intellectual architect of this assault on the rule of law, Jo Ann Hardesty, is having none of it. As far as Hardesty is concerned, equity triumphed over equality when Portland's uninformed and terminally compassionate voters overwhelmingly approved Ballot Measure 26-217 three years ago.
She's not entirely off base. After all, capitalist psychonauts persuaded Oregonians to approve psilocybin as a treatment for various mental health conditions despite the fact that the FDA, the only body authorized to approve the therapeutic use psychoactive substances, had not determined that shrooms were a safe and effective treatment for any malady. It still hasn't.
If Oregon's merry pranksters can get away with flouting the law, maybe Hardesty and company can too. Let's hope that if the Community Board for Police Accountability gets tied up in litigation over City Council's efforts to make it less unfair to cops, the lawyers representing the City have more gumption than whoever was supposed to protect Oregonians from plant-based quackery.
[1] Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. One World. 2019.
Nov 24, 2023·edited Nov 24, 2023Liked by Richard Cheverton
I so wish more Portlanders knew about this Police Accountability Commission. Most had no idea what they were voting for and would not vote for it today if they knew the details. Thanks Pamela, I hope your article goes viral. Anyone have ideas on how to make this happen?
A civilized society thrives and prospers when everyone agrees to follow the rules that keep in check the human tendency to revert towards uncivilized thinking and behaviors. A big part of that is helping each other, being honest with each other and being able to provide protection for each other. When you have dysfunctional behavior from the top down where the well-being of society is ignored, you have chaos and a breakdown of law and order. Sort of where things stand right now in downtown Portland. It’s going to be a long time before it gets any better.
Nov 24, 2023Liked by Pamela Fitzsimmons, Richard Cheverton
Attorney Kristin Olson says “Portland is different than it was in 2020.” That’s true, but in fact Portland is different than it has ever been. Absent a community resolve by the voters to combat crime in the traditional way of enforcing the law and punishing the guilty, Portland will be stuck in 2020 forever. Average voters’ minds have to change, starting with a new DA, but it must go far beyond that. Portland’s illness is the people’s fault after years of progressive rot and political incest which they approved. Many more conservative voters have left out of frustration, and it’s doubtful any incoming replacements are going to be change artists. Those recent converts to fighting crime who now populate NextDoor are one thing, but it will take a lot more than a few vocal critics.
Excellent article. This should be required reading for all Portlanders. Have you considered sharing this, and the others on this topic, with Heather Mac Donald? She's currently following quite closely the effects on cities and police in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots. This Community Board of Police Accountability is something I'm sure she'd find quite interesting.
I would love it if Heather Mac Donald got interested in Portland. In her book, “The War on Cops” published in 2016, she writes: “The greatest beneficiary of the campaign against police departments will be the police monitoring business.”
I don't know her, but Joshua Marquis (who contributes to Portland Dissent) does. I sent him an email and suggested he reach out to her.
In addition to “When Race Trumps Merit” mentioned by Stephen Peifer, Heather Mac Donald is also a contributing editor to City Journal and author of “The War on Cops.”
If you have been following the long-running saga of the U.S. Department of Justice investigation and oversight into Portland Police Bureau’s “pattern or practice” of using excessive force on the mentally ill, Mac Donald’s chapter “Targeting the Police” is worth a read. Here’s an excerpt from the first graph:
“A deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in 2000, slapped the Los Angeles Police Department with federal oversight based on the 1994 law designed to curb a ‘pattern or practice’ of constitutional violations. … (F)or the next 12 years, the LAPD would operate under an draconian federal consent governing nearly every aspect of its operations, at a cost of over $100 million in contracting fees and in manpower diverted to mindless paper-pushing.”
Turns out the deputy attorney general who got the ball rolling back in 2000 was Eric Holder, who would later — as Obama’s AG — make the LAPD consent decree a model for oversight of police departments.
As Mac Donald notes, “The LAPD consent decree was a power grab from day one. The first thing that DOJ demanded as part of its new authority over the LAPD was the collection of racial information on every stop that L.A. officers make — even though the corruption decree had nothing to do with race or alleged ‘racial profiling.’”
In Portland, when the DOJ found police had used excessive force on the mentally ill, civil rights activists and groups, such as the Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform (which Dan Handelman and Jo Ann Hardesty are affiliated with) quickly horned in. The AMA Coalition was granted “friend of the court” status to the DOJ’s lawsuit against the city.
During the next court hearing on Nov. 30, they will be sitting up front and, as usual, they are urging "the community" to show up and speak out.
Outstanding author and researcher on crime, race relations and other social issues. See 2023 book “When Race Trumps Merit” and numerous previous books. Regular contributor to Wall Street Journal.
Nov 24, 2023Liked by Pamela Fitzsimmons, Richard Cheverton
A fantastic distillation of the apocalyptic chaos Portland voters have called down on themselves and the majority of citizens who never voted for this insanity!
Fitzsimmons outlines (because it is almost never revealed by “Main Stream Media”) the particular unconstitutional insanity around the institutional city boards to purge and punish police officers. It will take a couple lawsuits, but banning not just former cops, but anyone in their household, while promoting the very people who cannot live peaceably among us (felons) but this scheme is clearly unconstitutional.
Even more chilling is putting the power of judges - the compelling of testimony or giving information - not to a judicial tribunal, but to a ragtag group of junkies, felons, and cop-haters!
Just look how well that is working for the Measure 110 Oversight Board?!!
Nov 24, 2023·edited Nov 24, 2023Liked by Richard Cheverton
I've written Wheeler and other city commissioners a couple of times to point out that the requirement to put people with "lived experience of police discrimination" (a definitional and factual minefield) on the disciplinary panel probably violates the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of an unbiased jury in criminal cases.
I am glad to see that City Council wants to strike that provision and replace it with one that excludes anyone with a bias for or against law enforcement.
However, unless I missed it or The Oregonian's reporter did, neither Wheeler nor anyone else on City Council has made it a point to say to the public that the provision isn't just a bad idea but unconstitutional as well. That omission is puzzling. Maybe I am naive in thinking that putting it that way would be more effective at countering Jo Ann Hardesty and others who are making the political argument that the Police Accountability Commission's work is inviolate because 80 percent of the voters approved the ballot measure.
There’s a lot about this commission Wheeler and Gonzalez do not support. I spoke at the meeting, virtually, and tried to share what a bad idea it was. I had to cut my statement short because there were so many people set to speak, along with the usual mental cases, and crazies. The advocates were all up in arms because it had been changed too much. It’s not the same measure and the advocates for it were all pissed off. Ha!
City Council's decision to try to eliminate some of the worst provisions of the Police Accountability Commission's proposal is a positive development. It stands in contrast to their cowardice when asked to remedy defects in the voter-approved revised city charter, including the lack of any veto power over the legislative acts of the city council.
This comment from SFHaine was inadvertently removed. I am reposting it here:
Wow! You were (are) making sense here ... but really?!? To recast’s George Floyd as “a Minneapolis fent user subdued by police after he tried to buy cigarettes w/ counterfeit money” ... we all SAW THE VIDEO. That’s not really accurate. I have educated myself on the stats that show us how cops in many cities disportionately beat/kill non-white men vs. white people ( some women, too) often in traffic stops or mental health calls where you can guess the race by the outcome. It’s complicated right? But at the same time I Do support the police -- our PDX police -- big time. I’ve had some very positive experiences but I’m white & old at 67..... yes. A few are “ bastards” like a few out of any group. And I think we’ve militarized our cops a little too much. But these debates are so divisive. Why can’t I support police AND want reform? As a lifelong Democrat now I’m being told I am not doing it right for EITHER side!! by the way I see a comment about the M110 oversight board, a topic I’ve researched pretty extensively... well-meaning people but too many of the same perspective. That was an opportunity lost for sure. Signed : A Portland transplant 2018 / life pre-PDX in Middleton, Wisconsin.
Great article. My comments filed with the City: https://1drv.ms/w/s!AkgT96dlgfeBjLssZH9oab2Z7ZPW4w
Election season is already under way for the new city council (the news Friday was that former City Commissioner Steve Novick is running for District 3).
What Portland needs more than anything is a better informed electorate — people who will take the time to study issues like you have done.
Portland City Council also needs to rethink the many community advisory groups it has. Does the city need that many? I once heard former City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty explain how all the advisory groups are NOT created equal. Unfortunately, some people apply for membership thinking they will have major input. They are disappointed when they don’t.
I just noticed this posting for an advisory group that probably many Portlanders have not heard of.
https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/portlandor/jobs/4290613-0/extended-volunteer-non-paid-position-community-safety-strategic-plan-adviso
When I read how Portland is governed I know from where the phrase “Dumber Than Dirt” comes!
Recently, Women's Declaration International tried to have a speaking event in Portland, at the Hollywood library. The small group of women was beset by a crowd of trAntifa and brutalized. 4 went to the hospital with injuries. Eyeglasses smashed, tires slashed, cameras and phones stolen, pies in faces, and a random woman had been spray-painted on the back of her coat with the Anarchy symbol.
Follow Lierre Keith and Kara Dansky for more information.
The Oregonian's coverage of this story was maddeningly opaque and slanted. The comparison that came to mind was Soviet Russia and its state media's knack for presenting dissidents in the worst possible light - criminal if not downright insane. You see, local media are so captured by gender identity ideology that gender critical ideas and stories are almost never reported.
If this had happened to a BIPOC group, it would have been headline news for days.
Great piece, Pamela, thank you. I’ll be sharing your work here.
I took my kids shopping this week at Cascade Station and we all witnessed a shoplifting incident at one store (plus all the armed security guards). I was sadly not surprised in the least. My kids were creeped out, as they should be. There are real consequences for these ridiculous decisions.
In woke Portland, they don't lock up the criminals. They lock up the store shelves.
Ibram X. Kendi let the cat out of the bag when he revealed what could easily be the unofficial slogan of woke black activists and their progressive allies: "The only remedy to [sic] past discrimination is present discrimination." [1]
What's galling about Kendi's pronouncement is the author's utter disregard for the system of laws that is meant to ensure that Americans are treated equally regardless of characteristics such as race, color, ethnicity or national origin. It is understandable only in the zero-sum calculus of equity politics, where one group's advancement comes at the expense of others.
That principle must have been guiding the Police Accountability Commission when they directed that "individuals with lived experience of police discrimination" be given priority when assembling the panel that will sit in judgment of police officers who have been accused of misconduct. In a court of law, which must abide by the U.S. Constitution, that method of selecting jurors in a criminal trial would unlawful because it would violate the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a fair and unbiased jury. Fortunately, someone in City Hall caught this effort to bypass the Constitution. That's why City Council has axed that provision in favor of a rule that excludes anyone with a bias for or against law enforcement from the disciplinary panel.
The intellectual architect of this assault on the rule of law, Jo Ann Hardesty, is having none of it. As far as Hardesty is concerned, equity triumphed over equality when Portland's uninformed and terminally compassionate voters overwhelmingly approved Ballot Measure 26-217 three years ago.
She's not entirely off base. After all, capitalist psychonauts persuaded Oregonians to approve psilocybin as a treatment for various mental health conditions despite the fact that the FDA, the only body authorized to approve the therapeutic use psychoactive substances, had not determined that shrooms were a safe and effective treatment for any malady. It still hasn't.
If Oregon's merry pranksters can get away with flouting the law, maybe Hardesty and company can too. Let's hope that if the Community Board for Police Accountability gets tied up in litigation over City Council's efforts to make it less unfair to cops, the lawyers representing the City have more gumption than whoever was supposed to protect Oregonians from plant-based quackery.
[1] Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. One World. 2019.
I so wish more Portlanders knew about this Police Accountability Commission. Most had no idea what they were voting for and would not vote for it today if they knew the details. Thanks Pamela, I hope your article goes viral. Anyone have ideas on how to make this happen?
Pamela (once again) this is well written and a damning critique of Portland's hyperprogressives. Thank you for your work!
A civilized society thrives and prospers when everyone agrees to follow the rules that keep in check the human tendency to revert towards uncivilized thinking and behaviors. A big part of that is helping each other, being honest with each other and being able to provide protection for each other. When you have dysfunctional behavior from the top down where the well-being of society is ignored, you have chaos and a breakdown of law and order. Sort of where things stand right now in downtown Portland. It’s going to be a long time before it gets any better.
Well said. What you are describing is also called Pathological Altruism and it's destroying this country.
Attorney Kristin Olson says “Portland is different than it was in 2020.” That’s true, but in fact Portland is different than it has ever been. Absent a community resolve by the voters to combat crime in the traditional way of enforcing the law and punishing the guilty, Portland will be stuck in 2020 forever. Average voters’ minds have to change, starting with a new DA, but it must go far beyond that. Portland’s illness is the people’s fault after years of progressive rot and political incest which they approved. Many more conservative voters have left out of frustration, and it’s doubtful any incoming replacements are going to be change artists. Those recent converts to fighting crime who now populate NextDoor are one thing, but it will take a lot more than a few vocal critics.
And Floyd died from his drug and Chavin's appeal was denied! Injustus all around!
Excellent article. This should be required reading for all Portlanders. Have you considered sharing this, and the others on this topic, with Heather Mac Donald? She's currently following quite closely the effects on cities and police in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots. This Community Board of Police Accountability is something I'm sure she'd find quite interesting.
I would love it if Heather Mac Donald got interested in Portland. In her book, “The War on Cops” published in 2016, she writes: “The greatest beneficiary of the campaign against police departments will be the police monitoring business.”
I don't know her, but Joshua Marquis (who contributes to Portland Dissent) does. I sent him an email and suggested he reach out to her.
Who is Heather MacDonald?
In addition to “When Race Trumps Merit” mentioned by Stephen Peifer, Heather Mac Donald is also a contributing editor to City Journal and author of “The War on Cops.”
If you have been following the long-running saga of the U.S. Department of Justice investigation and oversight into Portland Police Bureau’s “pattern or practice” of using excessive force on the mentally ill, Mac Donald’s chapter “Targeting the Police” is worth a read. Here’s an excerpt from the first graph:
“A deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in 2000, slapped the Los Angeles Police Department with federal oversight based on the 1994 law designed to curb a ‘pattern or practice’ of constitutional violations. … (F)or the next 12 years, the LAPD would operate under an draconian federal consent governing nearly every aspect of its operations, at a cost of over $100 million in contracting fees and in manpower diverted to mindless paper-pushing.”
Turns out the deputy attorney general who got the ball rolling back in 2000 was Eric Holder, who would later — as Obama’s AG — make the LAPD consent decree a model for oversight of police departments.
As Mac Donald notes, “The LAPD consent decree was a power grab from day one. The first thing that DOJ demanded as part of its new authority over the LAPD was the collection of racial information on every stop that L.A. officers make — even though the corruption decree had nothing to do with race or alleged ‘racial profiling.’”
In Portland, when the DOJ found police had used excessive force on the mentally ill, civil rights activists and groups, such as the Albina Ministerial Alliance Coalition for Justice and Police Reform (which Dan Handelman and Jo Ann Hardesty are affiliated with) quickly horned in. The AMA Coalition was granted “friend of the court” status to the DOJ’s lawsuit against the city.
During the next court hearing on Nov. 30, they will be sitting up front and, as usual, they are urging "the community" to show up and speak out.
Outstanding author and researcher on crime, race relations and other social issues. See 2023 book “When Race Trumps Merit” and numerous previous books. Regular contributor to Wall Street Journal.
A fantastic distillation of the apocalyptic chaos Portland voters have called down on themselves and the majority of citizens who never voted for this insanity!
Fitzsimmons outlines (because it is almost never revealed by “Main Stream Media”) the particular unconstitutional insanity around the institutional city boards to purge and punish police officers. It will take a couple lawsuits, but banning not just former cops, but anyone in their household, while promoting the very people who cannot live peaceably among us (felons) but this scheme is clearly unconstitutional.
Even more chilling is putting the power of judges - the compelling of testimony or giving information - not to a judicial tribunal, but to a ragtag group of junkies, felons, and cop-haters!
Just look how well that is working for the Measure 110 Oversight Board?!!
I've written Wheeler and other city commissioners a couple of times to point out that the requirement to put people with "lived experience of police discrimination" (a definitional and factual minefield) on the disciplinary panel probably violates the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of an unbiased jury in criminal cases.
I am glad to see that City Council wants to strike that provision and replace it with one that excludes anyone with a bias for or against law enforcement.
However, unless I missed it or The Oregonian's reporter did, neither Wheeler nor anyone else on City Council has made it a point to say to the public that the provision isn't just a bad idea but unconstitutional as well. That omission is puzzling. Maybe I am naive in thinking that putting it that way would be more effective at countering Jo Ann Hardesty and others who are making the political argument that the Police Accountability Commission's work is inviolate because 80 percent of the voters approved the ballot measure.
There’s a lot about this commission Wheeler and Gonzalez do not support. I spoke at the meeting, virtually, and tried to share what a bad idea it was. I had to cut my statement short because there were so many people set to speak, along with the usual mental cases, and crazies. The advocates were all up in arms because it had been changed too much. It’s not the same measure and the advocates for it were all pissed off. Ha!
City Council's decision to try to eliminate some of the worst provisions of the Police Accountability Commission's proposal is a positive development. It stands in contrast to their cowardice when asked to remedy defects in the voter-approved revised city charter, including the lack of any veto power over the legislative acts of the city council.
This comment from SFHaine was inadvertently removed. I am reposting it here:
Wow! You were (are) making sense here ... but really?!? To recast’s George Floyd as “a Minneapolis fent user subdued by police after he tried to buy cigarettes w/ counterfeit money” ... we all SAW THE VIDEO. That’s not really accurate. I have educated myself on the stats that show us how cops in many cities disportionately beat/kill non-white men vs. white people ( some women, too) often in traffic stops or mental health calls where you can guess the race by the outcome. It’s complicated right? But at the same time I Do support the police -- our PDX police -- big time. I’ve had some very positive experiences but I’m white & old at 67..... yes. A few are “ bastards” like a few out of any group. And I think we’ve militarized our cops a little too much. But these debates are so divisive. Why can’t I support police AND want reform? As a lifelong Democrat now I’m being told I am not doing it right for EITHER side!! by the way I see a comment about the M110 oversight board, a topic I’ve researched pretty extensively... well-meaning people but too many of the same perspective. That was an opportunity lost for sure. Signed : A Portland transplant 2018 / life pre-PDX in Middleton, Wisconsin.
Hate to rain on your parade, but the wheels are coming off the Floyd death--poving that a well-edited video isn't the same as a well-conducted autopsy. Two news outlets have now broken ranks. (yes, Virginia, they're "right wing") that relate to the intense pressure on the doctor performing the autopsy to produce a finding that would allow Officer Chauvin to be prosecuted. Read 'em here: https://spectator.org/chauvin-did-not-murder-george-floyd/ and https://www.newsmax.com/michaeldorstewitz/blm-black-minneapolis/2023/11/20/id/1142959/ .
It was a farce from the get go.
The case was taken away from the actual Minneapolis prosecutor and farmed out to a group of connected trial lawyers.
I watched the trial.
At absolute worst this was what most states would call involuntary manslaughter.
This is what happens when political motivations dictate prosecutions.