Held to answer

It was a beautiful fall day, late afternoon, when I called on Candace Avalos, candidate for Portland City Council District 1.

She was sitting on her front porch, looking at her phone and seemed surprised to see me. 

Out of 98 candidates for Portland’s new, expanded 12-seat city council, Avalos is one of the most high profile — and the one for whom the new Ranked Choice Voting system may have been designed.

In the 2020 city council primary, Avalos lost to Carmen Rubio (now running for mayor). At the time, Avalos chalked up her defeat as a hill too high to climb.

This election the hill isn’t quite so high. The winner will only need 25 percent of the vote to win, and there will be three winners in four geographic council districts instead of four commissioners elected city-wide. Avalos served on the Charter Review Committee that designed the new voting system. 

I’ve been following Avalos’s career for several years, ever since she was a Portland State University student adviser and serving on Portland’s Citizen Review Committee, the city’s oldest police oversight group.

I had sent her an email with a list of questions, telling her to pick and choose which ones she wanted to answer (which in itself can be revealing). I never heard back.

So I decided to pay her a visit, particularly since Avalos blocked her home address on her candidate application. This jumped out at me. 

Avalos is a longtime proponent of openness and transparency in city government and policing. She would probably prefer it if police were required to live among the people they arrest. (That way they might not be inclined to arrest them.) 

But is she concerned about her own personal safety? Perhaps now she understands how some Portlanders felt in 2020 when their property — and their livelihoods — weren’t as important as rioters expressing their free speech.

“People here are super-passionate. It’s in our DNA,” Avalos said as chair of the Citizen Review Committee, which critiqued the Portland Police Bureau’s response to the 2020 riots.

Avalos and some of her CRC members seemed to think the police should have found a way to plunge into the chaos of a riot and arrest only those protesters — out of the thousands — who were causing damage. Could there be a danger in having officers, badly outnumbered, entering the thick of a riot and being overwhelmed? It didn’t seem to be a concern of cop critics.

By comparison, a woman old enough to be her mother who turns up outside her front porch would hardly be frightening.

There was a railing between Avalos’s porch and where I stood. I touched the railing and said, “Hi, Candace.” We were looking almost eye-to-eye.

She seemed to recognize me as some kind of familiar face but not sure where from. I told her I was a reporter from Portland Dissent and that I had sent her some questions.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” she said.

I told her I was visiting her home because she didn’t reply to my email. One of my questions was: Why did she elect to block her address? Is she afraid of the public that she wants to represent?

“I’ve had death threats. … Ever since 2020,” Avalos replied.

Well, yes, but lots of people get death threats in their line of work. Anytime someone puts themself out on a public stage there is going to be the risk of criticism or threats. (In places like Portland, all a person needs to do to get threatened is work the counter at a convenience market or cannabis dispensary.

Avalos said it’s worse when you’re a public figure.

Then why is she running for City Council?

“I don’t want to talk about that. …I’m tired. I’ve had a long day campaigning.”

We were actually having kind of a pleasant conversation. I suggested she look at the questions I sent her. She said she would and would get back to me.

Then I heard a male voice say, “Is everything all right, Candace?”

I turned around, and there was a white guy, late 30s-early 40s holding a cell phone.

“It’s all right, Jesse (Jessie?),” Avalos said. Then she added to me. “He’s president of the homeowners association.”

“You’re on private property,” Jesse said. “You need to leave.”

I ignored him and asked Avalos, “If you get elected, are you going to try for president of the council?”

This was one of the questions on my list. It’s important because the president of the council will set the agenda. Avalos served as chair of the Citizen Review Committee, which reviewed citizen complaints brought against the police. She pushed for citizens to have more aggressive oversight. She knows how to run a  public meeting and designate committee assignments.

There was a brief glimmer in Avalos’s eyes, and she looked interested. She got ready to say something and then stopped.

“No. Really I can’t talk right now.”

I asked if I could take her picture. She hesitated, like she was about to say yes and then said, “No, I don’t want my porch to be recognized or the number on my house.”

Jesse stuck his nose in again. 

“You need to leave, or I’m calling the police.”

I laughed and told him, “Good, call the police.”

Avalos said, “No, Jesse, don’t.”

“This is private property,” Jesse said again.

“This is Portland,” I told him. “Have you seen how private property is treated? Call the cops.”

Following the rioting of 2020 and the many subsequent reviews of how the police handled protests, Avalos defended the rioters who just wanted to “express their First Amendment rights” and ended up inhaling tear gas along with those whose freedom of speech involved property damage.

Her Citizen Review Committee’s Crowd Control & Use of Force Workgroup in 2021 released a set of recommendations on how to change the police response to protests in Portland.

 “There are real policy solutions to these things so we want that to be taken seriously,” Avalos told KOIN.

Her committee’s report recommended that officers wear “softer” patrol uniforms or clothing that doesn’t suggest the expectation of violence.

“Having ordinary patrol uniforms instead of these paramilitary uniforms that have all these gadgets and look very threatening that automatically escalate the situation,” Avalos said.

Her workgroup also recommended an increase in anti-bias training hours with a focus on community review. In other words, Antifa and their supporters would tell the Portland Police Bureau how to handle protests and then grade cops on their performance.

Now that she’s running for City Council in District 1, Avalos recently told Willamette Week that her No. 1 priority would be public and community safety. What Willamette Week didn’t ask Avalos, and I wanted to, was: You often seemed more critical of police than the criminal clientele they deal with. If elected to the Portland City Council, how do you want the police to deal with the criminal community?

Again, in her Willamette Week interview, she stated that if rioting breaks out following the presidential election, “police need to always follow the Constitution as well as Portland Police Bureau policies and procedures.” What Willamette Week didn’t ask Avalos, and I wanted to, was: What responsibilities do protesters have? Should she be elected, and should the city’s streets be taken over by rioters, would she be willing to stand on the front lines with the Portland Police Bureau and see first-hand what it looks like from that perspective so she could offer suggestions?

Back at 12421 SE Caruthers St., Jesse was getting a feel for police work. He followed me back to my car, where I had parked on a public street.

I stopped to take pictures of two signs affixed to trees that said “Private Property of Lincoln Place Home Owners Association No Trespassing For Any Reason” and a freestanding sign that said “Neighborhood Watch We Report All Suspicious & Activities to our Law Enforcement Agency.”

It wasn’t that long ago that “Neighborhood Watch” was denounced by former City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, who belonged to the same progressive political cohort as Avalos. Eudaly  believed that Neighborhood Watch led to vigilante watchdogs and racial profiling. With the increase in crime, the organization is beginning to enjoy a resurgence as a way for neighbors to help each other. Mayoral candidates endorsed it this week at a City Club forum.

Looking at those signs outside Avalos’s place, I had to wonder at the contradiction. She was such a passionate defender of Antifa and their supporters taking over downtown, night after night, in the summer 2020. Yet she lives behind two signs — and a guy named Jesse — warning of no trespassing “for any reason.”

How did all those Portland rioters throw a protest without trespassing?

Thankfully for Jesse, it’s unlikely Antifa will be paying Avalos a visit. 

When I stopped to take those photos, it was more than he could handle. He got on his phone and called someone — presumably the non-emergency line — to report a woman trespassing. He got my clothing description wrong and my age off by a decade. Maybe he was nervous — a woman old enough to be his mother refusing to take no for an answer. Armed with a notebook. Writing stuff down. Scary business.

Finally I got into my car. Jesse bravely took photos of my license plate, and on his phone and announced loudly, “Her license plate is expired.” (My license plate expires in October 2024.)

Jesse finally walked away, and I drove off. No cops came. No surprise.

Now that he’s had a taste of police work,  maybe he will want to apply for the hundreds of vacancies at the Portland Police Bureau.