We Need to Talk About Kevin

DA Mike Schmidt drops the bomb on Kevin Dahlgren, the city's greatest reporter on the "homeless crisis."

Well, did he do it?

…whereupon, in asking this question we encounter our first problem in understanding the drama of Kevin Dahlgren, YouTube and Instagram journalist vs. Mike Schmidt, district attorney of Multnomah county.

What, exactly, is the “it” behind the multi-count indictment for various felonies and misdemeanors that Schmidt lodged against Dahlgren—and which legacy journalists treated as such a Really Big Story?

If you parse the legal thicket of the indictment’s official verbiage, this is what you’ll find, to give just one example…

COUNT 1

THEFT IN THE FIRST DEGREE

The said Defendants), KEVIN VAUGHN DAHLGREN, on or between September 08, 2020 and February 18, 2021, in the County of Multnomah, State of Oregon, did unlawfully and knowingly commit theft of personal property, of the value of $1,000 or more, the property of CITY OF GRESHAM, contrary to the statutes in such cases made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the State of Oregon,

The state further alleges that the property stolen had a value of $1,000 or more.

This count is of the same and similar character as the conduct alleged in the other counts of this charging instrument.

This count constitutes part of a common scheme or plan based on two or more acts or transactions with the other counts of this charging instrument.

…which is standard district attorney boilerplate, with the curlicue of “against the peace and dignity of the State of Oregon.” As if the state has much of that left.

It leaves just one thing out:

What the hell did Kevin Dahlgren steal?

In all there were 19 counts, which included additional allegations (let’s remember this word as we read on) of Aggravated Identity Theft and, just to ice the cake, Official Misconduct in the First Degree. (One suspects that many more public servants than Mr. Dahlgren might be charged under the latter law, starting with US Senator Ron Wyden, who brokered that $500K “contribution” from the fraudsters at FTX—although Ron says he didn’t know anything about anything—piquant, since he’s the head of the Senate Finance Committee. We cross-posted an excellent Jeff Eager piece on that here.)

Anyone who has ever hung around the courts is familiar with an indictment document—just enough on paper to mess with the prospective jury pool, details obscured (leaving ample room to prosecutors to leak juicy details), although they’ll come out on discovery and trial. (If they don’t, the defendant walks, which keeps DAs halfway honest,.)

Also well-known to cognoscenti: the adage that “grand juries would indict a ham sandwich,” since they are totally under the control of the DA. And the wallpapering of Counts is a great way to make a thin case look rock-solid (see: Trump, Donald, 91 indictments of), and gives a prosecutor room to maneuver when it comes time to plead out.

As for aspects of the case worth pondering…

• At this point, one of the most interesting facts is how quickly Dahlgren was appointed an attorney. How come the courts haven’t moved that fast on more serious cases?

• It’s been refreshing to see the right finally get involved in the drugs/homelessness crisis after the left has been dominating the discussion for more than a decade. Look at the results. Dahlgren was one of the first to challenge the left’s inability to see that homelessness is a drug problem. 

• The lame excuse offered for why Dahlgren’s mugshot was immediately released (more on that below). Authorities said Dahlgren has victimized others and wanted people to know what he looks like even though Dahlgren has been prominently featured in the media and online for the past year. His picture has been all over the place.

Considering that most thefts over the magic $1K number go unprosecuted in this jurisdiction (assuming the defendants don’t simply blow off court dates or get infinite continuances), the legacy media’s headlines, and the story’s “play” might strike some as over-the-top.

It’s not.

That’s because Dahlgren is a charter member of the city’s “pirate media,” the non-credentialed citizen-journalists using the power of the Internet and their hyper-aggressive reporting on social media to make legacy journos look slow, dim-witted, and lazy.

Whatever the truth of the DAs case, it’s beyond argument that Dahlgren has done astonishing and personally risky reporting from the depths of the homeless demimonde. His pieces on Instagram and YouTube are beyond anything that runs in legacy media, where the reporters seem more comfortable in the company of pols handing out astonishing amounts to dodgy nonprofits than among the bedraggled, besotted people who are, coincidentally, our fellow citizens.

This one Dahlgren photo told the homeless story better than any other image that has been published on legacy media hereabouts…

…a picture as grim as a 1930’s depression photo from the federal government’s Farm Security Administration archives. And likely to live as long.

One of his first videos, after leaving Gresham (where he played a key role in cleaning up the notorious Springwater Corridor) featured a startling bit of honesty…

…and challenged the nonprofit/political portrayal of the homeless as innocent victims of, well…us. Which was amplified by this video…

…that in a weird way, revealed why the homeless evoke such visceral reactions, like smelling something ugly in the back of the fridge, for the squares who pay taxes to, in effect, subsidize the “freedom’s just a word for nothing left to lose” lifestyle.

Earlier, Dahlgren was one of the first to break the story about a serial killer stalking homeless women (at first denied by Portland cops)…

…as well as others preying on the homeless…

…and brought the term “the Homeless Industrial Complex” into the civic dialogue with an assist from the homeless themselves…

…which, it’s safe to assume, pissed a whole bunch of people off.

With all of this relentless reporting and apostasy from progressive catechism, it wasn’t surprising that the legacy folks jumped on the Dahlgren indictment—hard.

First prize for smarm goes to the Oregonian’s city hall hitman, Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, who took to X to drop the hammer…

…while Zane Sparling’s lengthy piece ran under the labored, faux-ironic headline…

Sparling’s backgrounder made copious use of unnamed—you’ve just gotta trust ‘em—”law enforcement” types who just happened to be the fellows who spent six months making the case. (Has anyone subpoenaed their time-sheets?)

Quoth Sparling…

…according to a law enforcement source, Dahlgren’s bosses at Gresham City Hall became concerned that he was buying groceries with his city procurement card — but keeping the purchases for himself.

…and lifted quotes from a confusing KATU interview with someone named…

Sandra Sanders, a named victim in the criminal indictment, told the news channel that investigators asked her whether Dahlgren had also given her supplies from World Market, a high-dollar chain that sells imported food and drinks.

“They were asking me about World Market, and had he ever brought me a whole bunch of weird stuff,” Sanders told KATU in a video report. “I said no. I got vegetables twice.”

Sparling even tracked Dahlgren to a post-Gresham job advising the Deschutes county sheriff…

…who hired him to write reports documenting several remote encampments in the Deschutes National Forest and other rural areas.

It would appear from Dahlgren’s recent video posts, which have a rural setting, that he found kids wandering around the encampment…

…which he captioned: “I found this cute kid while doing homeless outreach. His parents seem decent, but I can’t believe in the US this is still a reality. They have no electricity, plumbing, or running water.”

Mr. Sparling didn’t bother with this, but instead foregrounded various nonprofit folks in Bend whose oxes were gored by Dahlgren. The most serious charge was that Dahlgren’s numbers about the homeless didn’t agree with the federal “One Point in Time” measurement—which, as we have noted, is conducted by volunteers in mid-January, when homelessness is guaranteed to be low.

Meanwhile, the local Fox station, KTVU one-upped everyone by running Dahlgren’s mug shot…

…which another pirate media voice, PDX.Real, reminded viewers is now against the law in Oregon.

Over at WillyWeek, Sophie Peel (with the scalp of a secretary of state hanging from her belt) dropped this strange item on X…

Ms. Peel is referring to a story back in May ‘22 headlined…

An Embattled Seattle Trash Pickup Nonprofit Parachutes Into the Pearl District

…in which Peel, ever alert for scandal, wrote…

Its tactics are controversial. The group regularly conducts cleanups within 20 feet of tents—a proximity that Seattle officials warn could spark conflict with the people living in them. And the group’s volunteers encourage campers to get clean from drugs and find indoor shelter, with a persistence that some observers say borders on harassment.

…and alluded to the charity’s hassles with the Seattle City Council, which might be even more brain-dead when it comes to homelessness than our five commissioners.

Not to be left out, Oregon Public Broadcasting emoted…

“Sometimes his posts take a political bent, claiming that ‘social services have been completely monopolized by the left and then radicalized.’ His work has attracted the attention of national right-leaning outlets such as Fox News and the New York Post, which have written stories critical of Portland’s response to the homelessness crisis.”

It wasn’t always thus for Dahlgren. In December 2019, KOIN reprinted a story from the Gresham Outlook. Headline: Gresham’s Stance on Homelessness Paying Off. One quote:

The Homeless Outreach team, helmed by Sando¹ and his colleague Kevin Dahlgren, have been hard at work creating relationships with different groups across the community. Rather than simply being an enforcement arm of City Hall, punishing homeless individuals, the pair communicate and try to ease people into better situations.

Although Gresham is terra incognita to the Portland press, other stories noted that when Dahlgren left city employ, there were only ten homeless in the town. And the Springwater Corridor had been cleaned up—something Portland has never been able to accomplish.

KOIN gave Dahlgren 8.5-minutes of airtime to explain what he believed might be done to solve the homeless issue…

..after Dahlgren had become the go-to guy for journalists visiting the provinces, numbering from Fox news to the New York Times and New York Post.

We should also mention that one of the most-read stories on this ‘stack was written by Mr. Dahlgren. He ended on this note…

I think of what I do as a cause, not a job. I wake up every day with the belief I can make a difference and we can get one step closer to ending homelessness. I am still outnumbered by those employed by Homelessness Inc., but my sense is that the orthodoxy is slowly changing. Questioning the status quo is becoming accepted in my field and common sense is returning.

I am hopeful.

The media gloat fueled the usual social media paranoia, although as Satchel Paige observed, something actually might be gaining on you.

In the case of the DA who decided to indict a journalist, the prosecution will be automatically considered as a feature, not a bug, in Schmidt’s death-match with one of his own staff who wants to unseat him. So some of the speculation centered around whether or not Schmidt will be able to cudgel Dahlgren into pleading out, maybe offering some brief prison time to save face—or whether Dahlgren (who isn’t rich) will find a local lawyer who will be a cut above public defender. There are already fundraisers in the works, with some interesting names of lawyers mentioned. Even jury voir dire should be entertaining.

Other online speculation brought out the usual cyber-sleuths…

…which proves that an absence of fact won’t prevent the bottomless X-pit from being filled. Then again, citizen-sleuths sometimes get things right.

Meanwhile, Angela Todd, one of the PDX.Real duo, distinguished her pirate media channel with a mature, even-handed, and brutally honest analysis of the indictment. It’s worth three minutes of your time.

Her remarks collected 1,878 “likes” from viewers who punched the little heart-shaped thingy on the Instagram page, along with 216 comments ranging from “You’re getting close to QAnon status with your conspiracy posts as of late,” to, “I wasn’t able to figure out all of these charges from the news report. Identity theft? No explanation for most of all of these accusations.”

Which, last we looked, was the highest mission of a free press: opening the floor for expression, opinion, rants, outrageous thoughts, unpopular memes…you might call it diversity.

Guilty or not, Kevin Dahlgren will get a proper hearing in at least one sector of Portland’s media. And people will be listening.

And bear in mind: even those most deeply lost in the bubble of the legacy press are justifiably nervous about pirate media. PDX.Real just passed 85K followers on just one platform; the Oregonian’s claimed daily circulation is now 91,827 Wednesday-Friday.

1. Mr. Sando was a Gresham Homeless Services Specialist.