Salem Political Snark

Another example of Salem police hiding facts from public

This shouldn't come as a surprise, given that so many police departments in the United States act as if they're beyond the law. Which of course is ironic, given that police are supposed to be enforcers of laws.

But there's an unmistakable whiff of arrogance emanating from police officers these days that didn't seem to be nearly as apparent in years gone by. Partly this could be a defensive reaction to recent well-publicized failures of police officers to do their job competently.

Partly this comes with carrying a gun. That makes many people look upon police as if they were ideal human beings, whereas actually they're just normal human beings like everyone else.

Flawed. Prone to mistakes. Mostly trying to do the right thing yet often coming up short.

A few days ago I wrote about how the Salem Police Department was putting roadblocks in the path of journalist Joe Douglass as he tries to learn via a public record request how the department communicated with members of the Proud Boys prior to a May 1, 2021 Second Amendment rally in Riverfront Park.

Now Ardeshir Tabrizian, a journalist at the Salem Reporter, has described how the Salem Police Department has failed to provide a document describing the separation agreement between the department and Steven Bellshaw, who used to be Deputy Chief.

Here's an excerpt from the Salem Reporter story.

A longtime Salem Police Department official left his job in February with no public fanfare and under a separation agreement that has since triggered a state investigation.

Secrecy surrounds the circumstances of the retirement of Deputy Chief Steven Bellshaw after 32 years.

City officials have so far not publicly released the separation agreement – and won’t say what the agreement cost the city, if anything.

More than two weeks have elapsed since Salem Reporter on July 12 requested the city of Salem’s separation agreement with Bellshaw, who retired Feb. 15. 

...The city has provided no indication when or if it would release the separation agreement for public review.

Hopefully the newly hired City Manager for the City of Salem will prod, or order, staff at the Police Department to be much more open with citizens and journalists.

It doesn't look good when any public agency acts all secretive when they get a request for public records. When the agency has the job of law enforcement, it looks even worse.

If the Salem Police Department has nothing to hide, why are they preventing Joe Douglass and the Salem Reporter from getting the information they've asked for?

Joe Douglass pursues how Salem police handled 2021 Proud Boys rally

I give Joe Douglass a lot of credit for how diligently he's sought public records related to how the Salem Police Department handled the May 1, 2021 Second Amendment gun rally in Riverfront Park where the Proud Boys provided "security."

(More accurately, insecurity, since Proud Boys accosted a journalist and other people in the park, demanding that they leave the area, even though the rally had no more of a right to be there than anyone else.)

Since the Proud Boys are a violent hate group that played a big role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the nation's capitol, Douglass is doing a public service by seeking information pertaining to communications between the Proud Boys and Salem police officers.

Unfortunately, Douglass has encountered a lot of roadblocks in his public record request, for which he's been charged $866 by the City of Salem. You can read a compelling account of his dogged pursuit of the truth in a post on his Discrepancy Report web site.

Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite for reading the entire post.

“There is a high likelihood and potential of physical violence, criminal acts, or crime damage,” the [Salem Police Department] mobile response team report on the event says. “This group is associated with Proud Boys, 3 Percenters, and Patriot Prayer. In the recent past, they have engaged in unlawful activities with counter groups as well as law enforcement. This group is well-armed and is usually armed at these events.”

Officers named Stevens and Tooze as hosts of the rally. Tooze, the report claims, told Salem Police Department Sergeant Trevor Morrison that he would oversee security, and that around 18 to 20 members of the Proud Boys would act as security personnel.

The governments of Canada and New Zealand have labeled the far-right group the Proud Boys a “terrorist entity” and the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the organization a hate group. Members of the Proud Boys adamantly refute the labels.

During the unpermitted “May Day 2A Rally,” multiple journalists and activists claimed officers gave preferential treatment to the event’s organizers in part by not having a large police presence and allowing armed members of the Proud Boys to remove people from the public park and allegedly assault them.

Anyone who still supports Trump is a democracy-hater

If there was any doubt that Donald Trump is the worst president in American history, the rock-solid findings of the January 6 committee have put that doubt to rest.

I haven't watched all of my recording of tonight's primetime hearing by the committee into Trump's 187 minutes of utter inaction following the insurrection at the nation's capitol. But I listened to about an hour while driving around, and looked at some of the hearing when I returned home.

It's amazing that there's anyone in the United States who still backs Trump.

If any other president had done 1/1000 of the horrible stuff Trump did in his four years in office, and continues to do at the present moment, there's no way that former president would maintain any credibility, much less be seriously considered for a second term.

This shows how true the frog-in-boiling-water analogy is, even if I doubt a frog would truly remain in a pot while the water was heated to 212 degrees.

Bit by bit, day by day, we Americans were exposed to Trump's lies, incompetence, and malevolence so often, in so many ways, it became easy to view Trump as either a buffoon or a crazy uncle who somehow made it into the Oval Office.

But the January 6 committee has revealed that Trump is even worse than that. He's a lying incompetent malevolent crazy buffoon who also is a wanna-be authoritarian. Trump knew he lost the election to Joe Biden. 

Yet Trump worked hard to stay in office illegally, January 6, 2021 being his last gasp at trying to remain president by any means within his power. This is so un-American, so against the ideals of our constitutional democracy, anyone who continues to support Trump is a democracy-hater.

If that sounds harsh because you're someone who likes that Trump appointed three anti-abortion Supreme Court justices, cut taxes on corporations, imposed tariffs on China, or whatever, think about this.

While the nation's capitol was being attacked by an angry armed mob, chanting "Hang Mike Pence!", Trump sat for over three hours in the White House watching Fox News, ignoring the pleas of his deeply conservative staff to issue a statement decrying the violence and telling the mob to go home.

Is this how you want the Commander in Chief to behave? If a foreign power attacks the United States, are you really OK with the president doing nothing because he figures he'll benefit from the attack? And do you believe Trump would have stood up to Putin after Russia invaded Ukraine when Trump wasn't even willing to act against an insurrectionist crowd invading the capitol?

Sadly, most Republicans still back Trump, or at least aren't opposing him. This shows that the Republican Party has lost not only its moral compass, but also its political instincts. There's no longer any upside to supporting Trump.

It might help a candidate win a Republican primary. However, an ever-increasing share of American voters are beyond tired of Trump's attacks on democracy. There's a good chance they'll give Democrats more election wins this November than was being predicted just a few months ago.

My shameful fantasy involving Donald Trump

Hey, I survived the shame of telling my Donald Trump fantasy to a friend today, Jim, during our usual Sunday get-together at the Urban Grange coffeehouse in West Salem.

So I might as well share that not-so-secret aspect of my political self with the much vaster audience who read this Salem Political Snark blog. (I have a liberal interpretation of much vaster.)

I was describing to Jim the current status of my long-running depression about being a progressive Democrat in a time when everything seems to be going wrong for my side of the political spectrum.

Inflation is skyrocketing. Biden's approval rating is plummeting. Joe Manchin is tanking climate change legislation, along with voting rights, women's rights, and any other right that isn't favored by West Virginia voters. Republicans are poised to take control of the House and Senate. Oregon might end up with either an independent or Republican governor. The Supreme Court is acting like an arm of the Republican Party and has more important cases to rule on that will make conservatives ecstatic.

I told Jim that I was thinking of writing a blog post today about all the things that bother me about being a progressive in a country where liberal successes are few and far between.

But then I realized that my malaise could be described in a simpler fashion: I'm not feeling any positive energy from Democrats. The energy that permeated progressive hearts and minds in 2020 when Biden defeated Trump is gone. And it was more a joy that Biden wasn't Trump than any real excitement about Biden.

The last time I was truly enthused about a Democratic national leader was when Obama ran for president in 2008. Then it really did seem that so much progress was possible.

When Clinton ran against Trump in 2016, again it was the fact that Hillary wasn't Donald which was most appealing. And, that she could make history by becoming the nation's first female president. Didn't happen, of course, thanks to her damn email server and some stupid campaign mistakes.

So what I miss is the feeling of being part of a wave of political change that Republicans are surfing on right now.

I want to imbibe the positive energy that comes with having leaders of your political tribe who are enthusiastic about a vision for the future that actually seems possible to achieve with enough work and determination. 

Which gets me to my no-longer-secret shame about my Donald Trump fantasy. Understand: it's just a fantasy. Plus, when I allow the fantasy to enter my mind, it only lingers there for a few seconds. I try it on for size to see how it feels, then I discard it, because I don't like the feeling.

Well, more accurately I enjoy the emotional tone of the fantasy, but not its content. Here it is.

I imagine myself becoming a Trump devotee. I imagine myself embracing Republican positions on abortion, gun control, immigration, taxes, global warming -- the whole agenda that is tilting in the direction of conservatives these days. I no longer drive a Subaru Crosstrek. I drive a giant loud pickup belching diesel fumes with two big American flags whipping in the breeze as I terrorize electric cars.

In short, I imagine the energy and enthusiasm I'd feel if I traded in my progressive values, which are in a bear market currently, for the rising tide of conservatism that has had way more political victories recently, with more successes on the horizon.

Like I said, I enjoy the feeling of being part of a political movement that has the wind at its back with leaders who know how to energize members of that movement. But it only takes a few moments for me to realize that I could never jump ship and become a Republican. 

So I'm stuck with the Democratic Party. Which makes me feel listless at the moment. Hopefully my mood will improve when, as I strongly suspect will happen, some new younger leaders come forward with a lot more energy and vitality than Biden, Schumer, Pelosi, and Co. are able to muster.

Infuriating: video of cowardly police doing nothing for 77 minutes at Uvalde school

If there ever was any doubt that police officers are just ordinary people -- prone to mistakes, cowardice, disorganization and all the other flaws that beset every human being -- a video from inside the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed by a gunman armed with an AR-15 rifle, should confirm this to even the most fervent police supporter.

Thankfully, someone leaked a 77 minute video of local, state, and federal police standing around in the school hallway while the children and teachers were being murdered, and the Austin American-Statesman newspaper published both the full video and an edited 4-minute video, which I've watched several times. 

I strongly urge you to watch at least the short video. It's the first video in the newspaper story, that appears to be made available to anyone who wants to view the story.

Yes, we already knew that police stood around in the hallway for the 77 minutes, making no attempt to enter the classrooms where the killings took place, even though the door to the classroom wasn't locked. But seeing this via the video was especially infuriating. Here's a still from the video showing the police standing around while children are dying.

This is beyond shameful. It should be criminal. But police enjoy protections that they shouldn't have. The parents of the murdered children should be able to sue each and every cowardly police officer who chose to do nothing for those 77 minutes. At the very least, all of these incompetent officers should be fired.

Here's some excerpts from the Austin American-Statesman story.

A 77-minute video recording captured from this vantage point, along with body camera footage from one of the responding officers, obtained by the American-Statesman and KVUE, shows in excruciating detail dozens of sworn officers, local, state and federal — heavily armed, clad in body armor, with helmets, some with protective shields — walking back and forth in the hallway, some leaving the camera frame and then reappearing, others training their weapons toward the classroom, talking, making cellphone calls, sending texts and looking at floor plans, but not entering or attempting to enter the classrooms.

Even after hearing at least four additional shots from the classrooms 45 minutes after police arrived on the scene, the officers waited.

They asked for keys to one of the classrooms. (It was unlocked, investigators said later.) They brought tear gas and gas masks. They later carried a sledgehammer. And still, they waited.

Officers finally rushed into the classroom and killed the gunman an hour and 14 minutes after police first arrived on the scene. Nineteen fourth graders and their two teachers died in the massacre on May 24, days before the end of the school year.

The video tells in real time the brutal story of how heavily armed officers failed to immediately launch a cohesive and aggressive response to stop the shooter and save more children if possible. And it reinforces the trauma of those parents, friends and bystanders who were outside the school and pleaded with police to do something, and for those survivors who quietly called 911 from inside the classroom to beg for help.

In addition to showing that police don't deserve the fawning admiration that so many people give them, this abject failure of law enforcement demonstrates that if a whole lot of heavily armed officers can't handle a single shooter armed with an assault rifle, the idea that teachers should have guns in the classroom should be dismissed as right-wing fantasy.

There were a whole lot of "good guys" with guns standing around in the hallway for 77 minutes, afraid to enter the unlocked classroom because they feared for their life. Which is a normal human emotion.

But if you choose to be a police officer, you should have the guts to act like one, not just parade around with a gun on your hip, soaking up praise from people who say "thank you for your service," when actually you haven't done anything that countless other Americans in more dangerous professions truly deserve thanks for. 

(Policing is #22 out of the 25 most dangerous professions, not even close to the top.)

An AP story about the video ends with:

Greg Shaffer, a Dallas-based security consultant and retired member of the FBI’s hostage rescue team, said at the very least, the officers in the video should switch to a different line of work.

“I think everyone in that hallway should reconsider their career choice,” he said. “If you don’t have the courage and the mindset to run toward gunfire, as a police officer, then you’re in the wrong profession.”

Climate Action Plan not getting the respect it deserves

Today was a really hot day in Salem. My car's thermometer said 99 degrees when I headed downtown at 4 pm. When I left at 6 pm, I had a reading of 107 degrees after my car sat on a sunny side of Court Street for a couple of hours.

We need to get used to many more hot days, since the effects of human-caused global warming are becoming more obvious with every passing year. 

To its credit, the City Council pushed for a Salem Climate Action Plan, which was accepted by the council in February of this year. Since, an implementation committee has been meeting to make recommended actions in the plan a reality. 

Unfortunately, the Climate Action Plan isn't being taken seriously enough by City of Salem staff and the City Council. This is deeply disappointing. I expected more, since progressives have a solid 7-2 majority on the council. 

The always-interesting Salem Breakfast on Bikes blogger wrote a terrific post on July 5, "Climate Action Plan Committee: Transportation and Passivity." He follows climate action goings-on much more closely than I do, so much so, his blog features a permanent reminder of the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 

If you care about preserving our planet for human habitation, and want Salem to do its part in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, I urge you to read the Breakfast on Bikes blog post about how the $300 million bond measure to be voted on this November doesn't do nearly enough to meet the goals of the Climate Action Plan.

Here's some excerpts to whet your appetite for the entire post.

The approach to the bond - for the next decade, very nearly the period over which we are supposed to reduce our emissions by 50% in 2035, it must be stressed - does not adequately respond to our climate crisis and the need to reduce emissions from driving.

After all, the Climate Action Plan says to "complete Salem's sidewalk network." We should be doing as much expansion of sidewalk and bike lane as we possibly can, not deleting some sidewalk and bike lane to fund other sidewalk and bike lane. These kinds of projects need to be additive. It should be more, more, more, not "balance." Even when there are other funding sources available, "new grant sources," we should push for the maximum on these, not retreat to a false sense of balance.

...As we see with the sidewalk deletions, the bond isn't very well integrated into the Climate Action plan. There is, in fact, a weird theme of "alignment" and passivity in the prospective actions to discussed under agenda item 4, on transportation, at the Climate Action Plan Committee.

On the one hand, making sure the policy actions recommended by the climate plan aligns with other plans is a trivial element of mutual conformance. The multiple plans should be consistent and aligned.

But what is really happening, on the other hand, is that the Climate Plan concepts are being watered down in order to accommodate and align with the weakened concepts in Our Salem and other plans. This is a kind of passiveness and conformity, trying to fit in and not make waves.

And where there are stronger requirements, as seems likely with the Climate Friendly and Equitable Communities rulemaking at the State level, from outside our own process, our Climate Action Plan is going to follow, not lead. (See briefly from May on the CFEC here and here.)

Consistently the Climate Action Plan concepts are framed up as aligning with the demands and standards of other projects. In other words, the Climate Action Plan is wholly in a secondary and subordinate position, always following the lead of other plans, and never primary, never driving action in those other plans.

Generally we are doing the least amount possible, and the Climate Action Plan is just too accommodating. It's too passive.

Hopefully the new City Manager for the City of Salem, Keith Stahley, will be a much more forceful advocate for the Climate Action Plan than the previous manager, Steve Powers, was. Climate was one of Stahley's responsibilities as assistant city manager for the city of Olympia, Washington, where he last worked.

Salem City Council should ban fireworks

Not surprisingly, recently there's been a lot of discussion on Facebook about fireworks, almost all of it negative. Many want a ban on fireworks in Salem.

People find them annoying and dangerous. Pets shake with fear at the loud booms. Wildlife are stressed by the bright lights and scary noises.

Last Fourth of July I wrote "Fireworks should be shunned like cigarettes are." In researching that blog post about the bad side of fireworks, after some Googling I came up with the familiar problems: fires, trauma to pets, scaring wildlife.

I also learned something new. Fireworks are highly toxic. 

Fireworks create highly toxic gases and pollutants that poison the air, the water and the soil, making them toxic to birds, wildlife, pets, livestock — and people — but there are environmentally-friendly alternatives available.

For some strange reason, people around the world have decided that the best way to mark important holidays and events is to have a public fireworks show. We choose to celebrate the birth of a New Year, the freedom of our nation, the triumph of good over evil, by blowing things up.

Most of us are aware that fireworks are dangerous: we either know someone, or know of someone, who ended up in the hospital emergency room due to fireworks, but most people are completely unaware of the more insidious environmental damages and health impacts caused by fireworks.

Our current dog, Mooka, isn't bothered much by fireworks. Last night she barked several times at especially loud booms, even though usually she isn't much of a barker.

But we've had other dogs who were traumatized by them, as I wrote about in a 2013 post, "If you set off loud fireworks, you're terrifying dogs."

Here's a simple fact, lovers of loud fireworks: your enjoyment is being bought at the price of animal pain. Many dogs are terrified of fireworks. So also, I'm sure, are wild animals -- deer, birds, raccoons, etc.

On behalf of our dog, Zu Zu, I just want you to be aware of what you're doing when you set off loud fireworks. I can't inject a sense of compassion into your fireworks-loving brain, though I sure wish I could.

I just want to speak for the stressed-out dogs who can't write a blog post.

And even if Zu Zu could, (she's a pretty damn smart dog) for most of yesterday, July 4, she couldn't have, because she was busy trembling, shaking, anxiously running around the house, hiding in the indoor kennel-with-a-curtain I made for her.

There are lots of dogs like our dog, canines terrified by fireworks.

So I can virtually guarantee that if you live in a populated area, and you're setting off loud fireworks, you're causing severe distress to some dogs. Maybe many dogs.

Given how harmful fireworks are to people, animals, and the environment, why the heck does Salem still allow them? A Facebook post on the page where City Council issues are discussed makes a great case for the City Council banning fireworks. (Kaltwasser is a page administrator.)Nicely said, David Watson. I too am hopeful that the City Council will start a discussion about a citywide fireworks ban. It's definitely needed.

Salem Fire Department is woefully inefficient, fighting few fires

Probably you've noticed that even though structure fires are rare in Salem, huge fire trucks are still frequently seen racing around the city. What the heck are they doing, since they're not fighting fires?

They're doing what government bureaucracies almost always do. If your original reason for being no longer applies, then redefine your mission to avoid becoming irrelevant or having your budget reduced.

So now "fire" departments actually are wasteful ways of responding to medical calls, both emergencies and non-emergencies. Oregon's Phil Keisling wrote about this in his 2015 piece, Why we need to take the 'fire' out of 'fire department.'

It's must reading for those concerned about improving the efficiency of Salem's fire and police departments, which suck up the majority of general fund dollars. Here's how it starts out.

It's arguably the best known, least acknowledged and most inconvenient truth in local government: "Fire departments" -- in the precise meaning of that label -- no longer exist anywhere in America.

Thousands of official entities bear this or a similar moniker. But given what they and their employees actually do, "Emergency Medical, Incident Response and Every-Once-in-a-While-an-Actual-Fire Department" would be far more accurate.

In 1980, according to the National Fire Protection Association, the nation's 30,000 fire departments responded to 10.8 million emergency calls. About 3 million were classified as fires. By 2013, total calls had nearly tripled to 31.6 million, while fire calls had plummeted to 1.24 million, of which just 500,000 of were actual structure fires. For America's 1.14 million career and volunteer firefighters, that works out to an average of just one structure fire every other year.

The parallel with Salem's Police Department is obvious.

With crime rates dropping, most of what police do in Salem doesn't require a cop car or armed uniformed officer. Yet the City Council just authorized six additional police officers, even though solid evidence shows that a mobile crisis response team made up of civilians would provide better services for a high percentage of calls at a much lower cost.

Fellow citizen activist Jim Scheppke shared with me his research about a similar objective in the 2018-2023 strategic plan of the Salem Fire Department. 
Download Salem Fire Department Strategic Plan

Now, I'm not sure what non-emergency means here. Regardless, it's clear that this objective in the Fire Department's Strategic Plan, which was supposed to be completed by July 2020, two years ago, has to do with finding alternative ways to handle medical calls by the department.

Keisling talks about this in his piece.

In 2012, the city of Toronto, over the Fire Department’s objections, changed protocols to deploy ambulances (from a separate government unit) instead of EMT-staffed fire trucks for more than 50 types of medical emergencies. The next year, after city staff recommended a budget that would close four fire stations and cut 84 firefighting jobs--while adding 56 paramedics--firefighter-funded TV ads alleged that the cuts would "put lives at risk."

This isn't just a big-city problem. In 2013, a faculty-led research team for Portland State University's Center for Public Service (which I direct) analyzed two years of 911 calls for three small cities collectively contracting with a nearby city's fire/EMS department. Known medical calls comprised 75 percent of these incidents.

Our team identified a number of lower-cost operating alternatives, such as adding many more ambulances or specially-designed Rapid Response Vehicles (RRVs) to produce faster response times. We learned of one jurisdiction that had strategically purchased a three-bedroom house in a high 911-call generating area near a nursing home for an ambulance and its crew.

Given how strongly fire departments defend their bureaucratic turf, you're not going to be surprised to learn that the progress the Salem Fire Department has made on Objective 1-G above is essentially zero.

When Scheppke asked about progress, he got this response from the department.

Objective 1-G has not been completed and no final report documentation or recommendations have been created.  Some superficial investigation was done initially, however no reports or final recommendations were produced as a result.

But the Salem Fire Department was very successful at getting $26 million for new fire trucks and other equipment put into the $300 million community improvement bond measure to be voted on this November -- because their current trucks supposedly are worn out from all that driving around to non-fire medical calls.

When Scheppke followed up with a question about whether the Salem Fire Department ever intends to pursue alternative ways of handling medical calls, he was told:

The Department does not foresee this objective moving forward given the current budgetary climate.  The objective will be re-evaluated during the next planning cycle in 2024.

"Current budgetary climate" apparently means We're planning to get from the bond measure not only the $26 million for new equipment, but also $14 million for new fire stations, even though we rarely fight fires these days, so we've got no interest in identifying more efficient ways to run the department until we get voters to approve the $40 million that's based on our business-as-usual approach.

OK, but assuming the bond measure passes, city officials should ask some tough questions of the Salem Fire Department before allowing the department to open any additional fire stations or purchase new fire trucks.

Citizens need to know about alternatives to the current wasteful practice of sending fire trucks out on medical calls, and why the department hasn't embraced those alternatives. In other words, the Salem Fire Department should be forced to complete the objective above that was supposed to have been accomplished two years ago.

Better late than never, since probably a large chunk of the $40 million could be spent more wisely than doing the Business-As-Usual thing that the Salem Fire Department prefers, but is a disservice to taxpayers.