Dispatcher: “9-1-1. What is your emergency?”
David Kif Davis: “My Jewish ancestry has been insulted. I’ve got PTSD, and somebody called me a skinhead. I want an apology.”
Dispatcher: “9-1-1. What is your emergency?”
Charles Johnson: “I just threw a cup of water in somebody’s face at a public hearing. It’s how I express my First Amendment rights. And don’t call me a suspect or a subject. I’m a victim.”
Dispatcher: “9-1-1. What is your emergency?”
Bob West: “I’m bipolar, and I like to film the police. One of them put his hand out towards my camera. It was unprofessional. You would’ve thought I was a rapist or something. I want to file a complaint.”
Eavesdropping on the future of police reform in Portland, Ore. would be hilarious if it didn’t have the potential of becoming a reality. How is it that a handful of manipulative, aging adolescents – wielding cameras as if they were guns – think their constitutional rights should take priority?
Last year, Portland was hailed as a potential national model in how to pursue police reform. Instead, it is a national model on what happens when self-serving agitators, under the guise of “community involvement,” seize control of the agenda.
Davis, Johnson, West and their cohorts want to custom-design police reform to their own specifications. They shut down public meetings with no fear of repercussions – because they are “mentally ill.”
Portland’s police-reform bullies have done their best to try and destroy the Community Oversight Advisory Board (COAB). Board members, many of whom claim some form of mental illness or expertise with the mentally ill, were appointed by the City Council.
But there has been infighting on the board. Some board members side with the agitators.
Kathleen Saadat, 76, a long-time civil rights advocate in the black and gay communities in Portland, is resigning as chair of the board after several months of bruising public hearings. Even as her term winds down, the bullies cut her no slack at the latest meeting, striking with a well-planned attack.
Almost from the start of the meeting there was trouble. Laura Vanderlyn (whose signature shriek at many meetings has been “police murder babies!”) refused to abide by rules of the public hearing. When Saadat attempted to call Vanderlyn out of order, the hooting and hollering began as planned.
Joe Walsh, a retired union boss from Long Beach, Calif., who now rides herd at various public meetings in the Portland metro area, roared at Saadat from his front-row seat: “You’re out of order! That’s why you’re quitting, coward!”
Walsh sprawled in the middle of the floor in front of the dais playing a tape recording of his voice screaming over and over: “The COAB is for the community … the COAB is for the community … the COAB is for the community.”
Somebody in the audience shouted that Walsh “should have Kathleen Saadat’s job.” (In the photo of Walsh that ran with The Oregonian’s story, the big guy is West, a convicted rapist.)
When the meeting finally resumed, Davis took center stage. He has a shaved head and takes special glee in defying Sadaat.
In April, following an earlier episode when Davis disrupted a board meeting, board member Bud Feuless had had enough. He took to Facebook and addressed the effect that Davis’ ego trip was having:
“Do you know how many citizens have complained about his filming them without permission and following around all (and only) the Black people in the room. This is not the place for childish skinheads like him and their self-serving agendas and wasting our time.”
The Facebook post enraged Davis and his friends, and Feuless took it down. At the latest meeting, Feuless apologized to his fellow members for having created a distraction, but he would not accede to demands by Davis and his friends to apologize directly to Davis and resign.
From her seat in the audience, Vanderlyn crowed that they had kept a screenshot of Feuless’s Facebook post as if they had the goods on him.
When Saadat told Vanderlyn she was out of order and violating her agreement to behave, she was led out of the room by police.
“Good job, Bud! You got someone arrested because you can’t apologize!” yelled Davis.
“Fuck you, Kathleen Saadat!” shouted Katie Houle, an agitator who frequently brags that she works for a federal agency (Portland HUD) and thus has special knowledge about the inner workings of bureaucracy. (“I’m a victim of domestic violence, I’ve been raped by the cops … I have a mental illness.” )
Saadat followed those outbursts with a well-intentioned, but misguided gesture.
“Mr. Davis I’m going to give you (three) minutes in case it will calm you down.”
Of course, it didn’t. Once Davis gets wound up, he doesn’t unwind. Why should he?
Eventually cops led him from the room. There would be two more breaks in the meeting, which would limp to an early adjournment without delving deeply into the actual agenda.
Much of the board’s best work in the past has simply been thinking out loud about how police do their jobs, and how they could do them better. On issues such as use of Tasers and pepper spray, the disagreements underscore how grey these areas can be. One subject the board quickly reached unanimity on was recommending an end to the 48-hour rule, allowing a waiting period before Internal Affairs can interview officers after a shooting.
Board members’ frustration is showing. They don’t get paid, they sit through disrespectful and intimidating outbursts by the same people – and for what? Are the board’s recommendations even considered? When they asked for an immediate end to the 48-hour rule, they never heard back from the city.
Representatives from the mayor’s office and the city attorney’s office explained that the rule is part of the city’s contract with police. The contract runs for another year, and the City Council cannot unilaterally change it because of the board’s recommendation.
The board was starting to coalesce and work together when the malcontents took over. Why were they allowed to take over? It’s the Portland way – like apologizing even when you’re right.
Meanwhile, Walsh, Davis, Johnson and West have been emboldened by small victories.
West filed a complaint of unprofessional conduct against an officer he was filming. The Citizen Review Committee (another police watchdog group) agreed with West that the officer should not have reached towards his camera.
In March, Johnson threw a cup of water on a member of the Citizen Review Committee during a meeting. COAB member Dr. Rochelle Silver came to his defense calling the incident “an anomaly.”
Hales attempted to bar Walsh from City Council meetings for months at a time because of his disruptive behavior. U.S. District Court Judge Michael H. Simon ruled the restriction was unconstitutional, that the city could only remove Walsh from specific meetings when he acts out.
Consequently, the police-reform agitators frequently cite Simon’s ruling. Davis told the Citizen Review Committee on June 1 that he’s looking forward to his own court victory.
“I just filed a court claim against the city … I’ll be glad to take their money … We’re going to start suing you guys.”
Davis must have been pleased when at the same meeting of the Citizen Review Committee, COAB member Myralviani Rivier was present and offered a defense of him and the others.
Rivier urged committee members to adjust meeting rules to “take into consideration that having a conduct disorder or special defiance disorder or destructive disorder due to having a mental illness diagnosis (means) some people might run over a minute. That’s OK.”
The Community Oversight Advisory Board came into existence last year after the Portland Police Bureau was required under federal court order to change how it interacts with the mentally ill. In 2011, former Mayor Sam Adams welcomed the U.S. Dept. of Justice investigation into incidents of excessive force.
In similar court orders in other cities, compliance is usually overseen by a court-appointed monitor or by the Justice Department itself. Portland wanted to do something different. The city created the oversight board made up of 15 voting community members and five non-voting police members.
The city also hired a Chicago-based team of academics with expertise in police reform to serve as compliance officer/community liaison and to file quarterly reports based on the Community Oversight Advisory Board’s recommendations. Almost immediately, there was criticism by some Portland activists towards the Chicago group because they were outsiders.
However, the Community Oversight Advisory Board was hailed as an innovative concept. Board members were praised by attorney Jonas Geissler of the U.S. Department of Justice who said they were playing a role that could change policing nationally.
But the board quickly began losing members. It was initially chaired by former Oregon Chief Justice Paul J. DeMuniz. He resigned after the first meeting.
Unfortunately, COAB was built more on words than a strong foundation. Mayor Adams, who supported the federal investigation, did not run for re-election.
His successor, Mayor Charlie Hales was initially enthusiastic, announcing, “The empaneling of this board is a tremendous next step in our ongoing effort in police reform.”
Now Hales is on his way out, having declined to run for re-election. His police chief, Larry O’Dea, is on administrative leave for accidentally shooting a friend in a squirrel-hunting incident and then lying about it. Still another humiliation was U.S. Attorney Amanda Marshall, forced out after she had an affair with a subordinate and then lied about it.
Last year, Marshall encouraged people to apply for the community board, saying it would “bring community voices to the center of the discussion. … We will be monitoring the city at every step of the way.”
She isn’t monitoring anything now.
After shutting down the latest COAB meeting, the police-reform bullies seemed please with their work. Walsh, who calls himself “Lone Vet,” in honor of his veteran’s service, groused that he couldn’t get arrested by “the coppers.”
In planning for how they would disrupt COAB meetings, Walsh urged, “If COAB fails, we must have a program ready to offer in its place.”
If COAB is suspended, maybe it’s time Portland decided to follow instead of lead. It could use a court-appointed monitor or someone with the Justice Department, like other cities have done. The monitor can decide which recommendations from COAB to incorporate in its reforms.
Not everybody is going to be happy. No “community” agrees on everything.
Without COAB, where will the police-reform bullies gather to agitate?
Not U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon’s courtroom, that’s for sure.
No matter how “mentally ill” they may be, Simon is not going to let them violate the majesty of his courtroom.
— Pamela Fitzsimmons
Related:
Wow.
Quel Supris.
Or like that film “The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade”
about a play put on by the inmates of an insane asylum.
Except the big boots as USDOJ approve this nonsense….
The only thing scarier is the approving words by the truly out of touch U.S.D.O.J.
One of the guys protesting police is a convicted sex offender?? This is the kind of person Portland is listening to?? I keep hearing about how bad Portland cops are … how come I don’t know anybody at work or personally whose had problems with them.
I don’t even see many cops around Portland.
I got an idea. If Portland wants to let sex offenders run the police dept., hire at the prison. Salem’s not far away. set up a recruitment where inmates are released.
This city will do anything to stay weird.
Somebody beat you to it, G., at the April 14th meeting of the COAB.
At this meeting board members, audience members and invited guests broke into groups and sat at tables for a “community engagement outreach program.” We were asked to consider three big questions: What do we want the relationship between the police and the community to look like? What is the Police Bureau’s responsibility to achieve that vision? What is the community’s responsibility to achieve that vision?
One of the men at my table, who has attended several meetings, promptly tossed out a couple of ideas: Stop sending African-Americans to prison, and have convicts become cops. He was serious.
So much is wrong here. How many of these protesters know who Kathleen Saadat is? I know of her long history and met her once. She was on the frontlines of gay rights before it became popular. She knew how to make a point without degenerating into crude and disrespectful behavior.
She’s lived a long life and seen a lot. Did the anti-police group assume that because she was black she would be on their side? The man who looks like a skinhead gives no reason for disliking her other than that she wants to run an organized meeting.
What kind of HUD employee screams “Fuck you!” at a public hearing? Like the other commenter said, is this who Portland officials listen to.
As a teacher I’ve worked with students with behavioral problems. You don’t let them run the classroom. They can meet boundaries and expectations like other students. The board member who didn’t think the protesters should abide by the rules is being condescending and harmful.
I’m curious about how many people go to these meetings? If the general public stays away, the protesters take over. A friend of mine who served on a small school board told me the only people who attended meetings were ones who had complaints. It gives a distorted view of things.
At the least I’m sure this group was a learning experience. Time to close the book.
Regarding your question about attendance: The first couple of meetings of the Community Oversight Advisory Board attracted a standing-room only turnout and media attention. The media went away, and turnout dropped. But even when there was a good turnout, it was often people who had complaints about the police. Judging by what was said at these meetings, you would think no one in the city of Portland had ever had a positive encounter with the cops.
Likewise, the meetings of the Citizen Review Committee are dominated by someone who has filed a complaint against the police.
The truth is that most people in Portland don’t have run-ins with the police. Most people are busy working and living their lives; they don’t cause trouble or public disturbances.
What this board could use is some members who represent folks who are more likely to have a need to call the cops — bartenders, bouncers, shopkeepers, late-night store clerks, shelter staff. It would be useful to hear their perspective. They depend on the cops to deal with someone who appears to be “mentally ill” and is causing problems.
It is hard to contribute to discussion of public matters when its subject travels between the inane, the insane, the trivial, and the juvenile.
Contemporary life has trivialized that which is essential.
I mean anything you write is pointless when those actually addressing real problems are gooey nutters whom responsible people treat with deference and respect. And, those responsible people ratify the mad actions of activists and give them money to boot.
Maybe it’s because of those long-ago summers I worked on forest-fire lookouts, but I’m used to howling in the wilderness.
I wonder how many voters in Britain who opted to leave the E.U. felt like they had been howling in the wilderness. Now they’ve been heard.
Yes, this Brit escape for the Common Market comes as a surprise. Some things I take (or took) as inevitable: Hilary’s presidency, The Rule of Brussels, a Portland made safer for nude bicyclists, a ghastly finale for someone of my race and gender, and the expanded prosecution of free or non-conformist (rational) thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKerbOi_mrI
Thanks for the link. I thought about it again when I was looking at Willamette Week and found a brief, “J’s for Jesus,” about people smoking joints made out of Bible pages at a Gay Pride event. I bet they wouldn’t dare try that with pages from the Quran.
Well, everyone defines wit differently . . .
Marat/Sade (1967) + subtitles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJc4I6pivqg
Now who can argue with that? I think we’re all indebted to Mary Eng for clearly sharing what needed to be shared.
And she did it all while recovering from her recent ruckus at Portland City Hall.
[…] Held Hostage by the ‘Mentally Ill’ […]
Haha to the Katie houle stuff she is crazy she is not a victim of check her arrest record she was arrested for domestic violence.