You can’t buy love, but in Portland, Ore. the city is throwing money at hate.
“GRANT OPPORTUNITY! Stand up against hate and create a more welcoming community for all of Portlanders” says City Commissioner Chloe Eudaly’s website.
The city of Portland is disbursing $350,000 in grants to organizations fighting hate.
Hate is very big right now in Portland.
In May, two men were stabbed to death on a commuter train when they intervened on behalf of a Muslim girl being ridiculed for wearing a hijab. Portland United Against Hate, a partnership of progressive groups involved in the hate grants, suggested a link between the election of Donald Trump and hate crimes. From its website:
“We hear the outcry of our communities. In recent months, many community organizations report increasing incidents of hate crimes and intimidation, including bullying and violence stemming from racism, xenophobia, religious bigotry, islamophobia, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, stigma, and misogyny. This affects every area of our lives, including our workplaces, schools, places of worship, healthcare facilities, the marketplace, and more. We reject this hateful behavior.”
Some hate, though, is more acceptable than other hate.
For most of July, there was some creative and well-received hate on display at “Human Being,” an art show at Gallery 114 in Northwest Portland. This was art with some serious cachet – inmate art from three Oregon prison inmates – David Drenth, Jerome Sloan and Vernon Bernard Patrick (who signs his work b. pat).
Their names probably won’t immediately ring any bells in Portland and vicinity. The rough edges of their crimes have been smoothed over by time.
Here’s how Street Roots, a news weekly sold by homeless vendors, described Drenth and Sloan: “Both Sloan and Drenth are serving life sentences for their roles in murders that occurred decades ago. Drenth, 58, was 27 when he was sentenced, and Sloan, 42, was 20. Neither man pulled the trigger himself, but in Oregon, anyone in a group that commits a felony that results in loss of life is guilty of murder.”
Note the reference to “decades ago” and the assumption that both men are telling the truth when each says he didn’t pull the trigger. There are good reasons why the felony murder rule exists. First, when multiple killers are involved, they simply point their fingers at the other guy. Second, the crime might not have happened had the killers not helped each other. It makes no difference “who pulled the trigger.”
So who died? In matters of art, that is an impolite question and shouldn’t be asked.
In life, the question is crucial.
Drenth killed 46-year-old Thomas Erskine Elms and his 18-year-old daughter, Lorrina Kay “Lori” Elms at their ranch near Crow in Lane County. Drenth had been charged with two counts of aggravated murder but agreed to plead guilty to two counts of felony murder in 1984, after agreeing to testify against four co-defendants. He also pleaded guilty to being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm, which should tell you something about the life he led up until he murdered the father and daughter.
The motive for the murder? A car, gold jewelry and guns, according to news accounts of the day.
In his art on display at Gallery 114, Drenth used colored pencil on brown paper to show his life at Oregon State Penitentiary. One long mural called “Screw,” (prison slang for guard) “shows the tight-lipped sneers & glowers I experience every day.”
I wonder what the looks on the faces of the father and daughter were like right before they were shot. I’m guessing they didn’t sneer or glower.
“Prison is one mere wisp above death,” Drenth said in a statement accompanying his art in the gallery. Without art he could not have survived 34 lonely years.
You know who really hasn’t survived? The father and daughter he killed, especially 18-year-old Lori. She would be well into middle age by now. She missed a lot of life.
In another work, Drenth blended images of the state Capitol building with prison bars to represent what he called the whimsical world of Oregon’s “justice system.” (The scare quotes are his.)
Drenth gave an interview to Willamette Week and had this request: “Please write to my parole officer and tell him my art deserves to be seen.”
Jerome A. Sloan, the other felony murderer who does art behind bars, killed Radio Cab driver Roger B. Penn in 1994.
The cabbie had picked up Sloan and Robert A. Kelley in Northeast Portland and was later found shot twice in the back of the head. He was slumped over the steering wheel of his cab, the motor running, the windshield wipers moving back and forth in the rain, according to The Oregonian’s archives.
The motive for the killing? Money. Sloan and Kelley had committed a series of armed robberies in two months, including one where a clerk was shot in the abdomen.
Sloan, an inmate at Snake River Correctional Institute, works in colored pencil and draws realistic portraits interspersed with clock parts and eyes. He uses the money he makes from his art to support his son, according to Street Roots.
Until Sloan murdered him, Roger Penn drove a taxicab to support his two sons.
The third inmate artist, Vernon Bernard Patrick or b. pat, gave the Gallery 114 exhibit its title, “Human Being.” This piece, a child-like painting, shows a brown face gritting his teeth in anguish, brown rivulets crawling down the side of his face and chin and “Human Being” written across his shirt.
Using a variety of media – everything from paint to crayons, magazine photos to cereal boxes – Patrick depicts various violent scenes. The words “Crime Scene on MLK Street” run vertically along a drawing of a man who’s been shot, and the words underneath are “One Bullet in the head but the dude ain’t dead.”
Patrick’s work earned a posted warning that it might be disturbing to some viewers. In his corner of the gallery “report on the realm of hell” was scrawled in purple on the white wall, the paint running down like blood.
“Self study of the wounded soul” shows a brown finger holding the word “hope.”
In an explanation of his art, Patrick wrote on brown paper “Cries from the Cage,” which begins, “I exist in a cage … for social, political and conscientious reasons my cage is called a cell. … The sad truth is: human beings are drastically rearranged by the experience of living in a cage .. the most provocative factor and horrendous reality of the cage is that … no matter how much, or how often the prisoner tries, the steel won’t bend, it won’t break. There is nothing human about the cage… My art is a rare report on my personal feelings, about human efforts and about the reach of pathetic expressions in the realm of hell. …”
To its credit, Street Roots – unlike other media that covered this exhibit – delved into Patrick’s criminal history. But it’s immediately clear why. This newspaper is sold by Portland’s homeless, and Patrick “made headlines in 2009 when he lured a homeless woman to a Portland motel room where he brutally beat her,” writes Emily Green.
Even that’s too sanitized for what Patrick did. According to The Oregonian’s archives, he struck the 38-year-old woman in the head with a pistol and wine bottle and ordered her at gunpoint to undress. When she tried to leave, he used the broken wine bottle to cut the woman on her face, arm and back.
She fought for her life, according to police reports, and tore down the motel room’s curtains. Officers found her standing naked and bleeding from the head at a MAX train platform.
Patrick received six years in prison and served his time. He could have made it to the exhibit except in May he was arrested in Washington County on suspicion of stalking, first-degree sexual abuse and parole violation. He remains in jail on $25,000 bail.
I had to miss the opening reception of “Human Being” in early July, which according to some media reports was attended by almost 500, but I made it to the last day of the exhibit. Several of Patrick’s works had “sold” labels next to them. Most were priced at $125, although a few were higher. Maybe he’ll eventually make enough to post bail.
While I was at the gallery a young man named Matthew showed up to claim one of Patrick’s paintings. I wish I had asked him why he bought it, and where he planned to display it.
Was the fact that it was painted by a prison inmate part of the attraction? What story would Matthew tell about the painting if someone noticed it? “Oh, I bought that at a gallery showing art by prison inmates.”
Does the prison connection add status to both the buyer and artist? By comparison, imagine saying: “Oh, I bought that at a gallery showing art by Costco employees.”
I don’t begrudge Sloan, Drenth and Patrick their art. I do find fault with political and community leaders and media who encourage inmates to cast themselves as victims – particularly in a city like Portland that makes a fetish of “hate,” as long as it suits the purposes of certain identity groups.
Two of the prison artists featured in this exhibit – Sloan and Patrick – are black. How many of their victims were white? Did race hatred silently factor into their choice of victims?
Weren’t all of the violent acts these three men engaged in a sign of hate towards someone else?
Perhaps Drenth, Sloan and Patrick can use their knowledge of hate to subsidize their art.
They could form an organization – Prisoners United Against Hate sounds good – and apply for a grant from the city of Portland.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
Related:
Where is Portland getting the money for these hate grants? I’m guessing the city took the funds from the annual summer symphony on the waterfront, which they are not supporting this year.
What could possible be a greater example of hate that helping destroy the life of another human being – the crime called murder?
And credit to HTA for naming the victims, whose names are inavriably lost in the fog of history.
But to be clear felony murder is NOT “anyone in a group that commits a felony that results in loss of life is guilty of murder.”
In Oregon and most states only the most serious felonies – rape, kindnapping, armed robbery, or arson that result in death can be charged as felony murder, and simply being “part of a group” is not sufficient proof. The death has to occue in the commissio, in furtherance, or flight from the crime. The classic case is the armed robber whose getaway driver accidentally runs down and kills a customer. But for the robbery, no death would have occurred and YES, they are responsible.
Folks around here used to hate the Neocons, though I doubt they could define the term much less push too far along in its etymology.
Today’s hate is the Alt-right. The ghost of Goebbels must whisper these sorts of terms in the ears of modern journalists. Perhaps Maxine and Keith meet in secret conclave and come up with them through a seance and then pass them along to the 4th Estate(aka Lizzy Acker).
Maxine’s a pretty ripe hater which helps her newfound cachet as a SJW. Impossible not to think of Barbara Jordan when considering Waters, Lee, and actually the entire CBC.
Trump’s election has reignited local haters:
“increasing incidents of hate crimes and intimidation, including bullying and violence stemming from racism, xenophobia, religious bigotry, islamophobia, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, stigma, and misogyny.”
The world is once again full of people and things for Portlanders to hate. As we can see, happy days are here again.
Portland’s most woke struggle with hate:
http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2017/08/outraged_portland_school_board.html
Hate has a hierarchy around here.
Actually, who is hating whom or what in this hard-hitting story? Or, is hate missing and something else present?
Before we hated him we loved Neil G. which is even more confusing because he too got a long term cover up. But he’s a white male Jews and so should be right above me at the bottom of the caste system for haters.
Man, it’s confusing. Enough to make a guy rethink his support for P.G.T Beauregard.
It’s too bad that hate is getting such a bad rap right now because there are a couple of individuals in that story worth hating. Some of the commenters seem to have figured out the backstory.
This article only caught my eye because of a very familiar name mentioned. Those names were Thomas & Lori Elms.
Tom and I worked together in Eugene for several years in the mid 70’s before they moved to Eastern Oregon to a ranch he had bought.
I knew all of his kids when they were just young girls, and his wife, Sandy. It would be years before I ran into them again at Sacred Heart Medical Center in the early 80’s.
I was visiting a parent of mine who was also in the recovery room where Sandy had just had surgery herself. Tom wanted me to come back and visit him and Sandy again but I never made it back.
It was only a few years prior, that Tom’s brother, Willson Conley Elms, an Idaho Fish and Game Warden was murdered by Claude Dallas in Idaho.
I attended the dual funeral for both Thomas and Lori, and I remember the senior Mr. Elms speaking “just how much can a father take”.
I am so sorry for how your friend and his daughter died, and the pain those deaths added to the senior Mr. Elms’ earlier grief. That is a lot of violence to lay on one father.
I’ve been closely following efforts at promoting prison reform in this country. One of the popular mantras that is repeated in the media is how prison is unfair to the families of the inmates. According to this line of thinking, the families are being virtually imprisoned along with their loved ones.
What is unsaid is how unfair crime is to victims’ families. Some of them are left in a prison for which there is no parole. These three prison artists were so fixated on themselves, they didn’t see the pain they caused others. Unfortunately, the Portland media gave them a fair amount of favorable publicity, which adds to the injustice of what happened to the victims and their families.
[…] ‘Report From the Realm of Hell’ […]
I was over looking at your Jeremy Christian story and found a link to this. Fucking outrageous. David Drenth, Jerome Sloan and Vernon Patrick are good reasons for the death penalty. Will the art lovers who made excuses for these vicious men defend the MAX train killer. Does Christian have any artistic talent?
I was stalked by Vernon Patrick. He terrorized me for a year. He looked me in the eyes and smiled during his sentencing, after making a plea deal, as he told the judge, ADA, his own defense attorney, and an entire courtroom that he knew where I lived, where and when I worked, and where and with whom I spent my time. Before the ADA could finish her request for a stalking protective order, the judge granted it.
Vernon Patrick had hundreds of pictures of me going about my daily life. His phone and a few memory cards found contained thousands of pictures of multiple women and teenage girls who, as far as I know, are unidentified to this day. He drove through my neighborhood every day until he figured out which house was mine. When I told him I was not interested in associating with him, he escalated. He would wait for me outside of my neighborhood and attempt to stop me with his car blocking the only safe walkway for pedestrians. When the police told him to leave me alone, he waited for me in his car at the MAX station I used. The morning they arrested him, his car was not 20 feet away from the entrance of my neighborhood.
I lived in absolute fear until he was in prison. Before he was released, I had to make sure my house was completely secure. I carried anything I could potentially use as a weapon just to take my dog into my own backyard.
That man had a long history (convictions) of assaulting women, kidnapping, human trafficking, felon in possession of a firearm, and had even been charged with attempted MURDER of the woman he beat in 2009. The only reason he wasn’t convicted of the attempted murder charge was because his victim, understandably, refused to testify out of fear. He told me on multiple occasions that he had connections that could make people disappear.
I showed up to EVERY SINGLE HEARING for my case, partially for myself, but also for all of his other victims who could not bring themselves to be in the same room as him. He pled guilty because there was more than enough evidence to put him in prison for over a decade for what he did to me and his other known final victim. Because of his plea deal, he was out 2 years after being arrested. Two months after his release, I got the phone call that he was dead. I cried from the relief of not having to look over my shoulder every single second. I am sure there are people who loved him out there, and I feel bad that they lost their loved one, but I am forever grateful that he will never have another chance to victimize another soul.
Thank you so much for your comment.
I did not know that Vernon Patrick had died. As you know, he had an extensive criminal history and was given many second chances. I don’t feel any sadness at his death. I do feel anger at what he put you through. I’m impressed you were able to speak up — not only for yourself, but on behalf of his other victims.
Do you know the circumstances of his death?
I never found out how he died. The most I knew was from the ADA at the time. She had said he had a lot of health issues before he was sent to prison. I know he was sentenced to 2 years through his plea deal, 1 year of it was considered time served since he was in jail pending trial.
I received the phone call from VINE a few months after he was released saying he had passed away. I felt horrible for his friends and family but extreme relief for myself, his other victims, and the ones that could have been his future victims. I had spent the time after his release until the day I found out he died in absolute fear.
As for his criminal history, the charges and convictions I was able to find on him, along with what I was told by Hillsboro PD and the Washington County Sherrif’s Office, are the things you don’t want to hear after having been stalked by that person. I completely and fully understand why his past victims refused to testify against him. I just hope they all have been notified and found peace.
I would like to speak with the writer of this column, Mr sloan had his sentence commuted last year without notice to our company. This past Easter Sunday we had a driver murdered. This was the first murder of a Radio Cab driver since Sloan murdered Roger Penn. I am hoping the writer may be able to help me fill in some details about Roger’s family. We do not have any of that information from that long ago. Thankyou.
Darin Campbell, manager, Radio Cab Company