The loss of a life isn’t always tragic. Sometimes it makes perfect sense.
Take John A. Elifritz, for instance.
On his last day on earth in Portland, Ore., Elifritz, 48, acted like a man with a long criminal history and a meth habit.
After several hours of threatening to cut his own throat, menacing other people, stealing a car, raging at another driver, he finally barged into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at Cityteam Ministries homeless shelter and waved a knife around.
“Oh, god … please god,” men are heard shouting on video during the scene last weekend before Elifritz was shot dead by Portland police.
OK. A good shoot or bad shoot?
It’s under investigation. At this point, it depends on how your politics align. Elifritz was white. Had he been black, his stock would have gone up, and the street protests would have made national news.
But Elifritz was affiliated with a white supremacist group. His stock went down.
While the Portland shooting appears justified, the sight of so many cops vs. one man armed with a knife looks wrong. Seven Portland police officers and one Multnomah County sheriff’s deputy were involved in the shooting, plus 12 other officers were witnesses.
Maybe the police were anticipating crowd-control problems, which is not unreasonable given Portland’s history of protests. Nevertheless, it looked like officers swarmed the scene to gawk at the spectacle. It might have been better had they been stationed nearby in case they were needed.
A more pertinent issue is why people like Elifritz have found an accepted place in our communities.
Two days after the shooting, a dozen or so men and a couple of women gathered outside Cityteam Ministries waiting for the shelter to open while late afternoon traffic streamed by on Grand Avenue.
There was the ubiquitous sign posted out front, “No Camping No Loitering.”
One young man with a Mohawk haircut growing out, squatted on the sidewalk, two inches of butt-crack showing. He kept twisting his head right to left, laughing to himself, eating a bag of chips, finally shaking the last crumbs into his mouth.
Another man was barefoot and face down on top of a sleeping bag. A bare-chested Native American man with long braids sat on the sidewalk and rested his back against the building. Nearby another man sat, barefoot, picking at the crook of his arm.
These kinds of men are often polite to a female citizen passing by. Some look eager to tell their unreliable stories. If you’ve already heard hundreds of these stories, it’s hard not to be cynical. Still, it’s easy to feel sorry for them. They are surrounded by life that has little to do with their lives.
The Cityteam Ministries’ neighbors include Mood Yoga, Greenleaf Juicing, Next Adventure outdoor store, Kachka (a popular Russian restaurant), Milagro Theater (“authentic, vibrant, provocative”). A few more blocks away is New Deal Distillery and Tasting Room, Lucky Lab Brewpub, Helium Comedy Club, Farma (considered one of the classier marijuana dispensaries).
There is no one Skid Row in Portland. Addicts, vagrants, thieves, the mentally ill are scattered throughout the city’s commercial areas.
As timing would have it, a couple of days after Elifritz died, Portland city officials announced plans for a new 100-bed homeless shelter. Columbia Sportswear chief executive Tim Boyle is offering $1.5 million to jumpstart the Oregon Harbor of Hope, as it will be called.
Boyle’s gift was significant because several months ago he wrote an op-ed in The Oregonian threatening to move his downtown business in response to aggressive panhandlers harassing customers and employees. He means well, but what’s next? Will his employees be required to learn how to use the drug naloxone to save someone from overdosing?
Oregon Harbor of Hope will offer the homeless a place to sleep, eat and shower plus provide links to health care and social services. Portland already has similar shelters, including one named for former Mayor Bud Clark. How will Oregon Harbor of Hope be different? Not much probably.
Boyle’s $1.5 million will buy him some goodwill. But money and good intentions, coupled with bad political decisions, have made things worse for America’s drug addicts, leading to more homelessness and more property crimes.
Four months ago, an investigation by the Orange County Register found a link between the rehab industry and the increasing number of homeless people flocking to some communities.
“(T)reatment patients can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical payments from insurance companies,” the newspaper found. There are even “junkie hunters” who seek addicts for rehab facilities.
“Rehab programs often consist of initial stays in a licensed treatment center, followed by a period in sober living homes, which are largely unregulated environments that can be rife with drugs.”
Addicts can move in and out of treatment for years. They recover, relapse, slip into homelessness, get back into insurance-covered treatment, recover, relapse, etc. Many drug addicts turn stealing into an occupation.
Two years ago, California’s Democratic-majority voters unwittingly gave drug-addled thieves a stamp of approval with the passage of Proposition 47, which released thousands of property criminals from prison to be “supervised” in community-based programs.
After Elifritz was shot, a woman named Carlee Durke stood outside Cityteam Ministries holding a sign reading, “Support Each Other Support Abolition No Cops.”
Here’s some good news for drug addicts and their supporters like Durke pushing to abolish drug laws: You won! Congratulations!
For all practical purposes, the state of Oregon has legalized drugs. The only people who go to jail strictly for drugs are dealers possessing a certain amount of drugs to sell. What sends drug addicts to jail (if they go to jail) are the crimes they commit to support their habit, or while they are high and having what their advocates call “a mental health crisis.”
Durke should change her sign to read, “Support Thieves Support Burglars No Cops.”
One of the most alarming findings in the Register’s story: “(D)ata on any link between rehabs and homelessness isn’t easily available, in part, because rehab operators have gone to court – and won big money – from cities that try to regulate the industry.”
City attorneys in Orange County have advised their law enforcement agencies to be careful about the numbers they keep monitoring drug addicts, who are being given federal protections for being “disabled.”
Just what we need – another protected class. This time, drug addicts.
What do we do about addicts like Elifritz? Instead of a Harbor of Hope, perhaps we should give them the drugs they desire in a controlled environment – after they have signed a medical release holding no one accountable except themselves.
Things will have to get worse before it comes to that. If the past is any indication, Portland will continue to accommodate addicts in progressive style – more shelters, needle exchanges and more requirements for police officers to find soothing ways to deal with violent people.
As it is, Portland officers who contacted Elifritz early on his last day backed off and let him go because they have been counseled by everyone from elected officials to the city’s various citizen watchdog groups to “de-escalate” all encounters with the “mentally ill.” The cops retreated, and Elifritz went on to steal a car and go on a rampage.
Portland leaders’ devotion to all things progressive has skewed their judgment. Last year, city leaders hailed the opening of the Unity Center for Behavioral Health, a small psychiatric hospital created by four area health care systems as a short-term option for people suffering a mental health crisis.
The center is now being sued by two former nurses who said they were fired after complaining about assaults on staff. State investigators found there had been about 300 assaults suffered by employees in the first seven months of operation.
The shooting of Elifritz comes as the Portland Police Bureau is due for a review under a federal court order to change how it interacts with the mentally ill. And it comes as Mayor Ted Wheeler has enthused about his new Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing (PCCEP).
“For the first time, there will be formal and direct collaboration between the police bureau and a citizen body on policy development. … It’s long overdue.”
The mayor has apparently forgotten the late Community Oversight Advisory Board, a citizen group that met for two years and finally had to disband after their meetings were overtaken by anti-police malcontents, many of whom declared themselves mentally ill and off-limits to authority.
The new citizen group will be useful to police reformers, but it will likely do little to aid the truly mentally ill, the homeless or addicts like Elifritz.
Had Elifritz stabbed someone at Cityteam Ministries, whose fault would it have been?
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
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It was a necessary shoot. No man, woman or police dog should’ve sacrificed their life for Elfritz. His family’s lawyered up by now and brushing up his life story for a settlement. Sorry your loved one turned himself into a meth zombie. You don’t deserve a dime.
Every day I must manage a lunatic homeless person whose behavior requires that he leave the premises.
Wednesday evening last I had to manage three separate incidents of 3 separate women who were acting out some form of madness.
The best relief I can see is an abrogation of their civil rights and compulsory captive care. A clean bunk, medication, and food. Responsible people to maintain them.
That little bit of relief resides in a la la land of Utopianism.
Moreover, no matter how gently or firmly I am in our dealings, I try always to be prepared for a life-threatening fight.
I am thanked by lookers on sometimes. Most of the time not. No one ever moves close enough to be of help or at hazard.
A sloppy cowardice prevails among the citizenry and lawmakers alike. It helps in the predatory professionalization of rehab that you note above.
I do not know if this has a practical reality, but I have suspected a feminizing society has a hand here. By this I mean the disrepute of stern action and sharp accountability in civic life. The softly, softly culturally specific remedies, pleadings, or excusings.
I also had a scrap with a doper/drinker last week. When I pulled up my car I nudged his bicycle which was laying against the curb. The bike in turn nudged him. He fell to the ground and ala Red Foxx with a heart attack started howling for EMTs and police.
By way of response I grabbed the back of his hoodie and twice tried to yank the man to his feet. Two truckers who had been watching from a partially obscured vantage point ran up. They demanded that I quit beating the man and threatened me.
I had not beat him, but I had trespassed him 3 or 4 times in the past as he gets in among the parked trucks and no good comes of it. I answered his rescuers with disgust. Advised them to check the footage from their camera and hoiked my victim off of the property. He threatened me with revenge in voice devoid of his previous whine and weakness but edged with hate and meanness.
Wouldn’t want to be a cop.
“I do not know if this has a practical reality, but I have suspected a feminizing society has a hand here.”
As much as I hate to say it, I think the feminization of America has had some downsides. One of them is using the mommy approach to solve all problems, which is no better than always using the daddy approach.
I’ve said this before: We have more women in responsibility in all of our major institutions than ever before, yet things aren’t getting better. They’re getting worse. This is a subject worthy of serious consideration by the media.
The kind of authority that works in a day care center doesn’t translate to the adult world.
Finally, a practical approach:
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/19/some-churches-offer-drastic-advice-stop-calling-the-police/
I wouldn’t be surprised if Portland’s Unitarians endorse that approach. It will work until someone gets raped.
Deescalation is a good thing. The way deescalation is being touted by know-nothing talking heads as a magical cure-all that — if only employed by those nasty cops — can all but eliminate police use of force is a very bad thing. It is selling a false narrative that will get cops fired and/or even convicted for doing their job correctly.
No actual field mental health professionals would have gone into that shelter to talk Elfritz down. The ones around here won’t even talk to a person threatening to jump off of a bridge where there are zero threats of violence. Why? The professionals know that people in mental health crisis are unpredictable and dangerous.
A few days after I posted my essay, I attended a “town hall” put on by the city of Portland and the consultants who are overseeing a court-ordered agreement on police reforms.
It was attended by the usual small handful of Portland residents who are critical of the police. Not surprisingly they were upset over the death of John Elifritz. One guy said he was a former bouncer and had experience with difficult people. He described how he de-escalated an encounter with a troubled man by offering him a sandwich.
The audience loved this story.
The next day was an all-day hearing before U.S. District Judge Michael Simon. Some of the same people were there, plus the police chief, the mayor, the city attorney, the U.S. Attorney for Oregon and the Albina Ministerial Alliance for Justice and Police Reform. Nobody told a sandwich story, but neither did anyone speak in defense of the police.
Several people seemed hopeful that the Unity Center could be a good resource for police. There was no reference to injuries the Unity Center staff have suffered at the hands of mentally ill people.
I honestly think some police reformers would rather see a cop killed than admit their progressive politics are part of the problem.
A sandwich? Any particular kind? Is turkey better than pastrami? I think I read somewhere that turkey calms people down.
Typical Portland warm and fuzzy BS. The shooting wasn’t perfect but justifiable. I didn’t like the lookyloo aspect either. The optics they call it now. You got to consider the venue and what could’ve gone wrong.
Did the geniuses at this meeting you went have any other
Bright ideas? Maybe they could applyt to the Police Bureau. I Thank God I’m Retired.
There were a few other ideas. A fellow who calls himself “Lightning” suggested at the town hall that Portland’s neighborhood associations be asked to help with the mentally ill. He must not read the news. Several neighborhood associations have made it clear they don’t want the mentally ill, especially those who camp out, in their neighborhoods.
But Nicole Grant, senior advisor to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, was also at this meeting and said she liked Lightning’s idea.
Lightning repeated the idea the next day to U.S. District Court Judge Michael Simon: “I want people involved in the mental health issue that do not carry weapons.”
Also during the court hearing, city council candidate Jo Ann Hardesty (temporarily on leave from her post as executive director of the Portland NAACP), suggested that firefighters — not the police — be the first responders on calls involving the mentally ill.
Based on my experience with firefighters, if they arrive at a call and find that it involves a crime or violent subject, they stage and wait for the police.
Regarding firefighters staging and waiting… That’s the thing about dealing with those in mental health crisis out in the uncontrolled wilds: everyone wants someone else to do it. In today’s 911 world, that means police get sent.
People get the wrong idea about patrol officers from TV. Cops don’t primarily deal with crime, they deal with public disorder. Crime is a form of disorder, but so are lots of other non-criminal issues like downed trees, noisy neighbors, nosy neighbors reporting on their (reportedly) noisy neighbors, the weird guy losing a loud argument with a tree, homeless people appearing to need some unknown sort of assistance while they hang out in a park, and of course those who threaten to hurt themselves and (once in a rare while) others.
Cops generally show up, figure out what sort of disorder is happening, and then deal with it or pass it on to the correct specialist. The problem is, there are no specialists to whom to pass off the mentally ill — at least not until they’ve been disarmed, restrained, or otherwise made safe.
That’s an excellent summation, Matt. Especially this line: “Cops don’t primarily deal with crime, they deal with public disorder.”
There is so much more public disorder now, it’s one of the reasons why police don’t respond to other crimes like they used to.
And you’re right — “there are no specialists to whom to pass off the mentally ill.”
This was one of the fascinating lessons of the Community Oversight Advisory Board, which was supposed to advise Portland on how police could improve their treatment of the mentally ill. These meetings were overtaken by protesters. Two members of the board included a psychologist and a psychiatrist. They seemed fairly helpless in the face of the public disorder generated at these meetings.