Salem Political Snark

One Salem Police Chief candidate seems better than the other

The City of Salem has narrowed the search for a Police Chief to replace retiring Jerry Moore to two candidates, Malik Aziz and Trevor Womack. (That link allows you to submit a question to be asked of Aziz and Womack during their October 30 interviews in Salem.)

I spent some time today Googling Aziz and Womack. Obviously this is a very rough way of coming to a conclusion about which man would be best suited to lead Salem's Police Department. 

But, hey, us bloggers are opinionated, and I came up with an opinion: Malik Aziz.

First, and most obviously, Aziz is Black. This means something given how the Black Lives Matter movement has been casting a light on the treatment of people of color at the hands of police. 

Hiring Aziz would send a message that the police department is committed to ending racial disparities in policing. Sure, there's debate about how much systemic racism exists in the department, but there's clearly a widespread suspicion among a large segment of the community that there is.

Also, Aziz speaks Arabic. That may not mean much in Salem, but it's a cool ability.

Aziz has been a deputy chief in the Dallas, Texas police department and is now a Major, having been demoted in a reorganization recently. A 2016 profile by a Memphis reporter, where he was applying for the police chief job, contains some appealing observations about Aziz. 

Dallas Deputy Chief Malik Aziz likes to describe himself as a community guy who fights crime — and he says having that emphasis on the community has made him a better law enforcement officer.

"I'm a public servant and I'm obligated to make sure people are safe. I'm also obligated to hear people who have concerns. I've never gone to a place wearing my rank. I'm a community guy," Aziz said. "When you grow up in (those) communities, you have a better understanding of how to deal with issues that have been plaguing those communities for decades."

...Aziz has a national profile — perhaps more than any other candidate. He's appeared on CNN, PBS and National Public Radio talking about community policing, race relations, the deadly shooting in Dallas and being a black police officer.

...Sara Mokuria, co-founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality in Dallas, said that while she doesn't know Aziz personally, he reached out to her and they will meet next month.

"He said he wants to bridge the gap and move forward to repair the issues we have regarding police brutality," said Mokuria, whose father was killed by police in 1992.

Aaron Michaels founded the New Black Panther Party in Dallas in the 90s and is critical of the Dallas Police Department, but says Aziz is one of the best deputy chiefs he's ever worked with.

"We couldn't have done some of the things we needed (inside the police department) without him," said Michaels of Aziz.

Michaels says he's known Aziz for about 30 years and that Memphis would be lucky to have him leading the police department.

"He had a hard life coming up and he turned many of the negatives around," he said. "He brings that perspective to the table."

Michaels said Aziz is also not afraid to point out bad officers.

"He's able to spot problem officers."

Aziz currently also is one of six finalists for the Milwaukee, Wisconsin police chief job. He touts his progressivism in a story by a Milwaukee TV station. Since Salem is a progressive city, with six of eight city councilors in the progressive camp, this is another way Aziz would be a good fit for Salem.

A Dallas Police Major hopes he can bring his progressive style to the Milwaukee Police Department as its next chief.

“Whatever city that decides they want Malik Aziz as a progressive police chief, that’s it,” Major Malik Aziz said. “I’m a big city commander. Those things are commonplace, working with communities and progressive cities like Dallas. The Dallas Police Department is a very progressive police department. Very progressive for community relations.”

All that said, Trevor Womack has some strong points in his police background also. 

A Bloomberg story talks about a pioneering program in Stockton, California, where Womack has been deputy police chief. I had trouble reading the story online, but was able to export a PDF file. 
Download What Police-Community Reconciliation Can Look Like - Bloomberg

Standing before the congregation of the Progressive Community Church of Stockton, California, Eric Jones, the city’s police chief, apologized.

It was July 2016, in the furious days after the police shootings of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Those were followed closely by the deadly ambush of police officers in Dallas, Texas, and in Baton Rouge after protests over the Sterling killing.

Nationwide, police departments were assuming a protective posture as outrage roiled cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Los Angeles. But Jones was out in his community, talking about the role of police in everything from pre-Civil War slave-catching to Jim Crow enforcement and the carceral policies of the War on Drugs.

“This needs to be said,” the white police chief told the largely African American congregation. “There was a time when police used to be dispatched to keep lynchings ‘civil,’ That’s a fact of our history that we need to acknowledge.”

...That apology marked the beginning of an unprecedented truth-and-reconciliation process with communities of color in Stockton, a high-poverty city in California’s Central Valley that for years has been struggling with a familiar American crisis. When Jones took over as chief in 2012, its annual murder rate was higher than Chicago’s.

That year, the city of 300,000 saw 71 homicides and an overall crime rate more than twice the national average. A municipal bankruptcy had slashed the size of the police force, and it could barely keep up with 911 calls.

After two decades of zero-tolerance policing tactics, a history of local abuse, and high-profile officer-involved shootings, there was a deep well of mistrust between police and the Stockton communities most beset by violence. A career Stockton officer, Jones had begun taking steps to improve, training his officers on fair practices and using more focused, less invasive strategiesto prevent violence.

But he came to believe that they wouldn’t make real headway on addressing the city’s public safety issues unless he embarked on something more radical: not just apologies but atonement.

...For the last two years, the Stockton Police Department has been working toward reconciliation using a trust-restoration script devised by American criminologists and international experts in transitional justice. Along with a host of departmental reforms, police in Stockton have held a series of dialogues and workshops designed to repair their shattered relationship with the communities they serve.

Rather than broad gestures at police “accountability” that promote measures like body cameras, the city has committed to changing departmental norms wholesale. It’s an uncertain, and maybe never-ending process, one that almost certainly will not conclude with a telegenic Hallmark display of forgiveness. What it might yield instead is a foundation for real trust and greater community control.

...Trevor Womack, one of Jones’s deputy chiefs, stood up. “I think what you just offered right there is one of the most important things in this entire training for me,” he said. “So I grew up in North Stockton. I never, ever had an experience where I was stopped by the police. No one that I knew was ever arrested. Nobody I knew was shot or killed.”

That was the understanding—or lack thereof—that he took to his first assignment as a 21-year-old white cop, when he was detaining and pointing his gun at residents of Southeast Stockton, he said. “I wish I could go back to the day I started and have this kind of conversation. I would have been a whole different police officer.”

That's great. Womack's words are admirable.

But the way I see it, Salem has a choice between hiring a Black man, Aziz, to be police chief who has direct personal experience of discrimination, and Womack, a white man who has had to learn second-hand about how police discriminate against people of color. 

That's why I favor Aziz.

Why the Portland Black Lives Matter protests are so aggravating

Emotions aren't always a reliable guide to truth, but often they indicate that a deeper truth should be sought. 

Something has been bothering me about the nightly Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, just fifty miles away from where I live in Salem, but light years away in terms of how the community is handling police reform.

To offer up one example, in Salem the City Council has embarked on a  months-long performance audit of the Police Department by an outside consultant. This will be a deliberative, fact-based look at how the department carries out its functions, including whether some of those functions would be better performed by people other than police officers.

By contrast, the reform mood in Portland is much more extreme.

Last night I watched a live Facebook feed of Mayor Ted Wheeler gamely trying to converse with Black Lives Matter protesters, both individually and also from a stage. He was booed, jeered, and talked over, though a protest organizer did have some success in getting the crowd to quiet down and listen to Wheeler, since he had been invited to the protest. 

The clear impression I got was that many protesters -- maybe not a majority, but the most vocal of them -- wouldn't settle for anything short of dismantling the Portland Police Bureau and having Wheeler hand over to someone else the job of overseeing it (in Portland, the city council commissioners and mayor head up city departments, an unusual setup).

The Black Lives Matter protests in Salem, compared to Portland, reflect how different the two cities are. Early on a few protesters damaged some property, discharged fireworks at police, and disrupted the downtown area.

But this didn't continue to happen, seemingly in large part because organizers of the protests made it clear that violent acts by those protesting police violence didn't help the Black Lives Matter cause. My wife and I attended a large protest on June 6. It was peaceful and inspiring. The Salem Police Chief spoke at it with no problem.

As I wrote about recently, I find the "Wall of Moms" who have been appearing at Portland protests to be a breath of fresh air. Which is an apt phrase, because just about every night for the past 50+ days, there's been an aggravating tear gas sameness to the Portland protests.

A large crowd shows up. They chant as they walk to the Justice Center and federal courthouse. All is peaceful for a few hours.

Then late at night troublemakers, who I call anarchists because their actions don't seem aimed at achieving any outcome except stirring things up, shoot fireworks at the buildings, light fires, tear down portable fences, throw things at police, and generally do what they can to provoke a police response, which now means mostly federal agents Trump has sent to guard the courthouse.

There's nothing inspiring about the resulting use of tear gas, flash bang grenades, pepper spray, batons, and such. I watch videos and news reports with a feeling of aggravation at everyone involved: police/federal agents, anarchists, Mayor Wheeler, Black Lives Matter leaders -- everybody who could be deescalating the violence at the protests, but isn't.

At least, not effectively. 

I haven't been able to understand why this is happening until I read a great piece by Nick Budnick today, "Rough Justice: Portland police and protesters are locked in a vicious circle. How did we get here?" Budnick cites protesters, police, criminal justice professors, Mayor Wheeler, and others in an informative analysis of what's been going wrong in Portland.

You should read the whole piece. Below are some excerpts to whet your appetite for the full journalistic meal.

My take on the piece basically is this: Everybody is partly right, and everybody is partly wrong. The problem is that the people who are most wrong won't listen to the people who are most right, because they wrongly believe they're completely right. And if that confuses you, read the entire piece and Budnick will clear things up.

For nearly two months, a small portion of downtown Portland has smelled like tear gas. Nights are filled with the sounds of explosions and drums, police warnings to clear the area, and the shouts of protesters. Outside the Multnomah County Justice Center — now blanketed with graffiti calling for the abolition of the police or death to cops — riot-control police square off against citizens wearing gas masks and homemade armor.

...The chaotic situation in Portland, although contained to a tiny area of the city, has already led to more than 400 arrests and cost the local government millions of dollars. And now the arrival of federal officers has made a bad situation worse, galvanizing protesters and reportedly drawing reinforcements from places like Washington state, Texas, and Arizona. It has also led to second-guessing among the local protest community and the Portland Police Bureau alike: How did we get here? Could it have been avoided, and are there any lessons to be learned?

...On May 29, the second night of protests over Floyd’s killing and, more generally, police brutality, a vigil in North Portland was followed by a march downtown. A small group of protesters broke into the Justice Center, setting a fire inside the ground-floor lobby. Looters also ransacked downtown businesses, and dozens of people were arrested.

Since then, protest gatherings have continued at the Justice Center almost every evening, often culminating in nightly violence. At the same time, the large peaceful protests that took place on the east side of the Willamette River have mostly faded away.

Even before federal law-enforcement agents arrived, the PPB’s [Portland Police Bureau's] reliance on conventional crowd-control tactics — namely tear gas, riot munitions, and intimidating bull rushes down city streets — simply wasn’t working. For every city block cleared, protesters dug their heels in further, while video footage of police tactics only served to reinforce the conflict.

...According to experts on mass demonstration and crowd control, central to the PPB’s failed approach is a focus on crowd, instead of individual, behavior. When police use force on an entire group of protesters, many of whom haven’t been committing crimes, “you’re essentially radicalizing the crowd,” said Edward Maguire, professor in criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State University. “There is a psychological change that occurs [among more moderate protesters]: Their views get more extreme. Their perception that violence and disruptive behavior is warranted tends to increase.”

Instead of focusing on tactics of overwhelming force that only serve to anger people, Maguire said police departments like Portland’s need to step back and think about the longer view. “We need to rethink our strategies,” Maguire said, “and that’s not happening.”

...Two Portland police officers, speaking under condition of anonymity, say the sheer intensity of the protests, in combination with protesters’ late-night tactics specifically, created a seemingly untenable situation. “They’ve challenged the traditional method of crowd management, and that’s the unique factor here,” one longtime officer said. “This is very different than all the other demonstrations that we’ve seen over the years because of its sustained level of aggression.”

The officers say a small, organized group of anarchist-identifying agitators have set more than a hundred fires downtown. This subgroup of protestors is also setting off large fireworks and using slingshots to launch ball bearings, bottles of frozen water, and containers of urine and feces — all deliberate and repeated attempts to injure officers.

...The result is an ongoing quagmire in which police use the same controversial tactics night after night — clearing masses of protesters in response to provocations by a few. This strategy has generated a cascade of negative publicity, while failing to stop the vandalism, arson, and attacks on police carried out by a small fraction of protest participants.

“They’re losing the PR battle,” said Jim Moore, a Pacific University government professor who serves as political outreach director of the Tom McCall Center for Civic Engagement. “Regardless of the reforms that [elected leaders] are talking about, when you fire tear gas and flash-bangs, it looks like an occupying army.”

"Wall of Moms" should replace anarchists in Portland protests

Last night I was spellbound while watching a live Facebook feed of Monday's Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Portland, which also is a protest against the federal agents Trump has sent to supposedly protect the federal courthouse, but really is a desperate attempt to boost his fading reelection chances.

I also followed the excellent on-scene reporting of Eddy Binford-Ross, editor of the South Salem High School newspaper, the Clypian -- where she shares photos, Twitter tweets, and stories about the Portland protests. 

The most inspiring part of the protest was another appearance by the "Wall of Moms," mostly yellow-clad mothers who had come out to provide a much-needed female emphasis to the protests that have been happening daily, or almost daily, since late May.

There's something deeply moving about thousands of people peacefully marching along, being led by mothers linking arms in protest against injustice.

But later in the evening, I was hugely irritated by male protesters, better termed anarchists, who Binford-Ross documented tearing down plywood that covered the windows and doors of the federal courthouse, then using what looked like baseball bats to break the glass. 

Dudes, what's the fucking point of doing that?!

It's exactly what Trump wants, to be able to point to protestors/anarchists doing damage to a federal building so he can justify not only keeping federal agents in Portland, but also sending them to other large cities run by Democratic mayors. You're doing Trump's bidding, which is at odds with what the Black Lives Matter movement needs.

The fence in front of the federal courthouse had been removed. At previous protests, fencing had been taken down by protesters and used in a futile attempt to block the areas where federal agents were watching and where they would fire munitions at protesters, then come out to disperse the crowd.

At first I thought, great, the Wall of Moms should face the courthouse in a peaceful stand against the presence of federal agents, and to prevent the anarchists from doing damage to the courthouse that would provoke the agents to use tear gas, flash bangs, and pepper spray against the protesters.

But that didn't happen, maybe because moms have to go home at a halfway reasonable hour to do their mother duties while violent anarchists are free to do their stupid stuff whenever they feel like it.

On the nightly news in Portland I've seen Black leaders pleading to protesters to stop damaging property in downtown Portland because this isn't helping the Black Lives Matter cause. However, I deeply doubt that the anarchists are going to accept the request to engage in dialogue with those leaders.

So that means the protesters themselves, and the Wall of Moms in particular, have to stop the anarchists from doing their destructive thing. 

Look: I'm deeply progressive and highly supportive of the protests. But it is absolutely wrong to destroy property, federal, state, or private. The federal agents are using excessive force, for sure. Yet they are justified in acting to stop the anarchists from damaging the courthouse.

Hopefully tonight's protest, if there is one, will feature a larger Wall of Moms and zero anarchists. Or at least no destructive behavior from the anarchists. 

Oh, almost forgot to mention another super-irritating thing the anarchists did last night, light a fire at the base of a tree in front of the federal courthouse. It's now charred and might not survive. 

Here's some screenshots of Eddy Binford-Ross's tremendous reporting on Twitter via the Clypian account. These are from the end of the protest. Most of the protest was entirely peaceful until the people I'm calling anarchists started destroying property.

I realize some would prefer to simply call them protesters, but there's a long history of "anarchists" in Portland, so I think that word is justified. Heck, there's a Portland Anarchist General Assembly Facebook page (albeit no longer active) and an Anarchist Student Union page with the most recent post being:"We are non-violent with people who are non-violent with us. But we are NOT nonviolent with anyone who is violent with us." - Malcolm X

Here's a definition. I'd say it applies to the jerks who destroy property during otherwise peaceful protests. And not to steal anything, usually. Just to cause conflict.

Salem Police Department job summary points to danger of militarization

Should police officers see themselves as warriors or as peacemakers? Most experts I've seen who have weighed in on this question argue for peacemakers, not this sort of officer.

After all, most of what police officers do has nothing to do with violence. Here's one of the images in a blog post called "Policing Explained in a Few Graphs" by Jerry Ratcliffe, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University. Ratcliffe says:

1. Policing is overwhelmingly a social service

Graph no. 1. This is from the second edition of my book “Intelligence-Led Policing“. The area of each box represents the volume of incidents in 2015 in the City of Philadelphia (about 1.5m in total). These incidents can come from verified calls for service from the public (something really took place as confirmed by a police officer), or from officer-initiated events (such as drug incidents). 

What is clear from the graphic is that violent crime plays such a small part in the day-to-day demands on police departments, even in Philadelphia, one of the more troubled cities in the U.S. While the media frets over homicide, it can be seen in the lower right as one of the least noticeable boxes in the graph. The majority of the police department’s workload is the day-to-day minutiae of life in a big city.

However, I strongly doubt that most would-be police officers would be motivated by a pitch to "do your part to manage the day-to-day minutiae of life in a big city." Or, a medium sized city like Salem.

Here's part of a job summary for entry level officers in the Salem Police Department that someone sent me. I've boldfaced parts that relate to the very small part of a police officer job that involves violence or the need to have a warrior mentality.

As a law enforcement leader in the Pacific Northwest, the Salem Police Department is searching for outstanding candidates for the position of entry level police officer. Our agency has a full complement of special teams and units to include: SWAT, Bomb Squad, Riot Team, Tactical Negotiations Team, Narcotics Unit, DEA Task Force, Detectives, Motorcycle Unit, Mountain Bike Unit, School Resource Officers, Crash Reconstructionist, Computer Forensics, Mental Health Unit, Training Division, Peer Support Team, Civil Investigations Team, and Patrol.

We are the second largest municipality in the state of Oregon whose responsibilities include providing public safety services and peace of mind to the nearly 175,000 residents in the capital city. In September of 2020 the Salem Police Department will move into the largest, stand-alone police facility in the state. This will provide you the opportunity to serve in a state-of-the-art public safety facility.

The Salem Police Department is the recognized leader in our region for technology and training to better serve our community and neighboring agencies. We have a fleet of state-of-the-art patrol cars with the latest computer technology, cameras, automated license plate reader systems, and weapons platforms. As a Salem Police Officer, you will be issued your needed equipment to include: uniforms, weapons (handgun and rifle), boots, duty gear, iPhone, and more.

Officers will use their city-provided iPhone hugely more than their handgun and rifle. But when people think of what police do, talking on a iPhone probably doesn't come to mind.

For some reason the Salem Police Department used its SWAT team during the recent Black Lives Matter protests in Salem, maybe because the SWAT team has so little to do. Regardless, it is painfully clear that when police treat citizens who are protesting injustice as if they were an enemy force, the result usually doesn't turn out well.

Case in point: the nightly protests in Portland. Yes, some of those involved do appear to be anarchists who aren't so much interested in peacefully protesting as in provoking the police to respond with force. 

But when the police react to a tossed water bottle or firework with tear gas, flash bangs, and non-lethal (supposedly) rounds, the counter-reaction is entirely predictable -- additional protests fueled by the police actions. And so it goes, like two elementary school children arguing on a playground. (Do children still say doofus? I could be showing my age.)

"You're a doofus!" 
"No, you are!"
"Takes one to know one, doofus!"
"I may be a little doofus but you're a GIANT doofus!"

After Trump sent federal agents into Portland in a desperate attempt to rekindle his fading reelection chances, the situation got worse in the city. Nightly protests were winding down before Trump unleashed untrained federal personnel wearing camouflage gear and carrying assault rifles on the protesters.

Now we're in what could be called Theater of the Absurd, if the absurdity hadn't already almost cost a protester his life after he was struck in the head by a "non-lethal" round that nonetheless left him with fractures that required facial reconstruction surgery.

Trump's escalation of the situation by further militarizing it has led to a standoff with no apparent end in sight.

This is the danger of police, or pretend police in this case, buying into a warrior rather than peacekeeper mentality. Likely Trump won't allow the federal agents to be withdrawn so long as the protests are continuing, because that would make him look weak given his pseudo-masculine sense of self.

And the protesters probably feel that they can't stop what they're doing and thereby give Trump a win, which would encourage him to try the same stunt of sending federal agents into other liberal cities just to show... I don't know, that he can?

Is this how we want police to behave? The guy being hit in the video below with a baton, and barely flinching, is a Navy veteran who went to a Portland protest because he was upset with the federal agents abducting people off the street and taking them away in unmarked cars, an obvious violation of their constitutional rights.

The video infuriates me. And it adds fuel to the flame of the protests. All because police in general, and the federal agents in particular, view themselves more as soldiers fighting an enemy than as peacemakers keeping people safe.

The Salem Police Department has a big blind spot

Here's the problem I have with how Chief Jerry Moore has defended the actions taken by the Salem Police Department during the recent Black Lives Matter protests.

Everything Moore has said is based on a flawed militaristic meet-force-with-larger-force policing philosophy. It's akin to a man explaining why he broke someone's nose in a bar fight when the real question is, "Was the fight necessary?"

In the 10-page report Chief Moore released about his department's response to the protests, there is no real discussion of the overall approach taken. It simply is assumed that tear gas is fine to use on a group of mostly peaceful people, and that a SWAT team should be called out to help deal with them. 

At around 2330 hours the crowd was informed there was a City curfew in place, and everyone needed to leave. At approximately 2333 hours, after continuing to have explosive projectiles, rocks and bricks thrown at them, MRT deployed CS gas on the main body (consisting of approximately 100 people) of the crowd.

...Since the previous night was the first time we had ever operated with a curfew in place for the city and it was the first time we had responded to actual riots on the streets of Salem, we had tried to make improvements to our previous night’s plans. Among those changes: We activated members of the SWAT team at the outset to help secure the new police building. We also used members of SWAT to assist as arrest teams for MRT. They were utilized due to the ability to get them into the department quickly upon request and because they are the only other team that is equipped with gas masks.

Yet in a Statesman Journal story published yesterday, "Protesters say Police Chief's report doesn't hold the department accountable," a very different perspective is presented. Here's how the story starts out.

Julianne Jackson said she still has uncomfortable dreams about the first weekend of Salem protests just days after George Floyd's death in Minneapolis. 

What began as a peaceful evening on May 31 at the Oregon State Capitol, turned into "one of the most traumatic events of my entire life," Jackson, 35, said. 

"I had never witnessed police militarize in that manner against citizens, I mean, people were screaming and running," she said. "It was so volatile and violent." 

Nearly a month later, city officials released Salem Police Chief Jerry Moore's after-action report June 29, detailing the Salem Police Department's actions during the protests May 30, 31, and June 1.

The report, sent from Moore to City Manager Steve Powers on June 24, recounts the department's efforts to de-escalate tensions between protesters and militia groups in downtown Salem while asking for compliance to the city's emergency declaration and curfew. 

Jackson said she was "shocked" after she read the 10-page memo on Tuesday. 

"I expected them to take this stance, but this is not at all what I witnessed," she said.

Jackson attended the protest with her friends May 31, which she described as a "beautiful event." 

"I think as a person of color — when I arrived at the Capitol — my heart was really full," she said. "I never realized I had that many allies in my community."

It was later in the evening when Jackson, her friend and a couple hundred protesters began to march toward the Center Street Bridge that they were met with a line of Salem police officers. 

The officers were dressed in "full riot gear," she said, with some riding a giant truck and carrying various weapons. "The mood shifted dramatically," she said.

She remembers the protesters repeatedly asking officers to march with them after officers classified the protest an illegal assembly and ordered the crowd to disperse. 

"Their response was to shoot tear gas at people, then it escalated," Jackson said. 

She said there was no explanation, no attempt at reason — it was a "full-on military-style attack."

So officers with the Salem Police Department came prepared for a riot, then they used tear gas on mostly peaceful protesters. Chief Moore doesn't see anything wrong with this, because his world view of how police are to behave is founded on an outmoded assumption: when trouble arises, police officers should be warriors, not peacemakers.

Today Steve Duin has an excellent opinion piece in the Portland Oregonian, "Retraining the police." Here's some of what Duin says after beginning by describing the use of tear gas in a residential area by Portland police, an action state Representative Tina Kotek said was wrong.

Lovell’s response – a two-and-a-half-minute video on Twitter – lays bare the issues that must be resolved if the cops are serious about protecting and serving this city.

Lovell admits his officers are exhausted. He expressed concern for the residential neighborhood. He argued tear gas was a legitimate, less-lethal response to the “violence and destruction.”

“CS gas is uncomfortable but effective at dispersing crowds,” Lovell said. “We would rather not use it … When tools are restricted that help us disperse crowds, the options are limited to batons or physical force. That makes it more likely that people will be injured.”

Lovell has been a Portland cop for 18 years, and that argument speaks to 18 years of training. Training kicks in when you’re threatened or exhausted. Training keeps you alive. You stay ahead of the force curve. You watch the bad guy’s hands. You don’t wait to see the gun.

You make sure you go home at night, no matter what it takes.

For as long as I can remember, most of us bought that argument. We allowed cops the pretext stops, the benefit of the doubt, and the budget requests, trusting their training and warrior pride would keep us safe.

That changed when George Floyd didn’t make it home on the night of May 25.

Lovell is right. Tear gas has a certain charm compared to a cop in riot gear, swinging that baton. But between “I can’t breathe” and the masked imperative of this pandemic, the stinging optics of tear gas are no longer acceptable.

The community’s standards and expectations have evolved, and the Portland Police Bureau must evolve with them.

...What protesters have demanded, night after night, is for Portland Police to train peacekeepers, not warriors, to interact with the community. They want cops to change their rules of engagement.

That's what needs to happen in Salem also. Chief Moore has done a good job managing the Salem Police Department from a traditional "cops are warriors" framework.

But that framework is outmoded. Moore's report on how his officers responded to the protests needs to be viewed in that light. Tear gas, riot gear, SWAT team -- that's old school. Chief Moore has spent many years operating within that way of thinking about police work.

Now citizens are demanding a fresh way of thinking.

Since Moore has announced his retirement, and the search for a new Police Chief is underway, hopefully the Salem Police Department will evolve into a peacemaker mentality where the use of force is seen as a failure, not as something to be defended, and even celebrated as our misguided president does.

Outside person should review recent Salem Police Department actions

In a non-shocking development, following criticism that the Salem Police Department erred in tear-gassing Black Lives Matter protesters and showed favoritism toward heavily armed "militia" members in the downtown area, a review by the Police Department of Police Department actions found that the Police Department did very little wrong.

(Related news: following criticism by my wife that the haphazard way I load the dishwasher will lead to glasses being broken when they bang against each other, I did a review of my dishwasher-loading actions and found that I did very little wrong. Nonetheless, I'll change where the glasses go because I feel like it, and for no other reason.)

Whoever is behind the Reform Salem Police web site disagrees with the Police Department's "Review of Protest Events." They've added a Rebuttal to Chief Moore page to the web site. Excerpt: (The quote from Chief Moore is accurate; seems like the last few words should have been "needed to be changed.")

Chief Moore (page 3): “The department is a learning organization and we have learned a lot over the past few weeks. We have made changes to the issues we recognize and understand needed changed.

If Salem PD was truly a learning organization, Chief Moore and other leaders would have changed their tune when overwhelming video evidence began surfacing. Instead, they continue to cling to debunked talking points and act as if what everyone is seeing with their own eyes, and in many cases, what people lived through via personal experience, is not reality. It’s absolutely disgusting what Salem PD, including and especially Chief Moore, thinks that they can get away with. Equally disgusting is the lack of those in power holding the Department and Chief accountable. Shame on all of those involved.

So we're left with two starkly contrasting views of the appropriateness of what happened in the downtown area from May 30 to June 1. I don't know which is more correct. At the moment, no one does with convincing certainty.

Defenders of the police will hold up the 10-page report from the Police Department as vindication of the general approach taken by officers, though the report does mention several areas where the department could have done a better job. Defenders of the protesters will continue to point to video evidence that officers tilted the scales of justice in favor of the armed people and against those marching in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Regarding the scales of justice, the rebuttal to Chief Moore repeatedly cites the dismissal of all charges against 14 protesters by the Marion County District Attorney as evidence that the Salem Police Department overreacted. It does seem strange that if some protesters truly were engaged in a dangerous riot, as Chief Moore claims, none of them were charged with a crime.

The Reform Salem Police people are calling for state Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to launch a third-party investigation of the Police Department.

A petition in support of this has been signed by 1,628 individuals at the moment. I doubt Rosenblum will agree to an investigation, since the alleged wrongs, though serious, are nowhere near as bad as George Floyd's murder, to offer just one example of extreme police brutality.

It's unfortunate that there's so little capability for effective independent oversight within the City of Salem. Not only the Police Department, but every department, should be held to account for how the public is served, or fails to be served. As it stands, there's no equivalent to the Inspector General that can conduct investigations into wrongdoing within federal agencies.

I made the joking allusion to my reluctance to admit that my dishwasher-loading capability could use improvement because it's human nature to look upon ourselves more generously than a view by an outside observer would consider to be warranted. That's why performance evaluations aren't carried out by the employee themselves, and why students don't grade themselves.

Police Departments are especially resistant to outside oversight. Police unions often put up roadblocks to this. And there's the notion of a "noble cause corruption" at play when attempts are made to question police behavior. Wikipedia says:

Noble cause corruption is corruption caused by the adherence to a teleological ethical system, suggesting that people will use unethical or illegal means to attain desirable goals,a result which appears to benefit the greater good. Where traditional corruption is defined by personal gain, noble cause corruption forms when someone is convinced of their righteousness, and will do anything within their powers to achieve the desired result. An example of noble cause corruption is police misconduct "committed in the name of good ends" or neglect of due process through "a moral commitment to make the world a safer place to live."

Conditions for such corruption usually occur where individuals feel no administrative accountability, lack morale and leadership, and lose faith in the criminal justice system. These conditions can be compounded by arrogance and weak supervision.

Hopefully the controversy over how the Salem Police Department handled the recent protests will lead to better ways of evaluating the department. The City Council is embarking on a performance audit of the department, probably by an outside person. Part of the audit could be an examination of the "Chief said/Critics said" debate over how the protests were handled.

And the audit should include recommendations for how external reviews of the Police Department could be carried out on an ongoing basis. After all, police and fire account for a majority of the general fund spending by the City of Salem. If those dollars aren't being spent efficiently and effectively, taxpayers deserve to know about this.

Check out the Reform Salem Police web site. It presents disturbing facts.

If you're concerned about how the Salem Police Department responded to the recent Black Lives Matter protests, or if you want to learn why people were bothered about what police officers did, check out this new web site: Reform Salem Police.

Screenshot of top of home page

I'm impressed with whoever put the web site together. It documents what the Police Department did during the protests from May 30 to June 1, 2020. 

Notably, using tear gas and flash bangs against mostly peaceful protesters, while not holding armed militia members in the downtown area to the same curfew that was enforced on the protesters.

Obviously the web site has a mission -- Reform the Salem Police Department -- but it builds the case for this in a reasoned, factual manner. Here's an example of the appealing writing style, the concluding message.

A Very Dangerous Precedent

Trampling on people’s civil rights is wrong. Selective enforcement of the law is wrong. City leaders standing up for white supremacists while acting as if every peaceful protestor should be measured by a limited number of bad actors, some of which may very well have been white supremacist agitators, is wrong.

If this precedent is allowed to stand, and what so many of us had to endure gets buried and forgotten about as time goes by, it will send a clear message to heavily armed white supremacists everywhere that they are welcomed here by city leaders, and “appreciated” by Salem PD. We cannot let that happen. We have to ensure that city leaders are held accountable.

Many Salem residents have contacted several lawmakers that represent the City of Salem in Oregon’s Legislature about the contents of this website, just for the lawmakers to either not respond at all, or to tell their constituents that they should be directing their concerns to city leaders – the same city leaders that are failing the citizens that they were elected to serve.

Many of these lawmakers want to pass new policies, which is perfectly fine, however, we cannot effectively move forward if we can’t even acknowledge what actually happened in Salem between May 30 – June 1, and hold those involved accountable.

The contents of this website were previously shared with Salem City Council members, members of the Oregon Legislature, Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum’s office, as well as U.S. Representative Kurt Schrader’s office, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden’s office, and U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley’s office.

This is an issue that is of deepest concern to Salem residents, and quite frankly, it should be to all Oregonians. We cannot become a haven for armed white supremacists. If it can happen in Salem, which is apparently the case based on the substantial evidence contained on this website (and there is more out there), then it can happen anywhere in the state.

It is the Oregon Attorney General’s job to step in when local government officials are not doing their jobs, especially when rights violations are involved. It is Attorney General Rosenblum’s job to ensure that everyone is treated equally under the law (Article 1 Section 20 of the Oregon Constitution), which clearly did not happen in Salem between May 30 to June 1, as the evidence on this website clearly demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt.

This community belongs to all of us. Salem city leaders work for all of us. Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum works for all of us. We must continue to demand that Ellen Rosenblum step up and do the job that we elected her to do. Again, please sign and share the petition found earlier on this page with everyone that you know and encourage them to sign and share it.

City Council caught between passion and prudence on policing reform

After remotely watching most of the discussion at last night's Salem City Council meeting about reforming how the Police Department operates, I was left with a letdown feeling even though I generally agreed with what the council did.

Salem City Council

Here's how a Statesman Journal story about the meeting summarized the outcome.

During a four-hour meeting Monday night, the council eventually approved the $752 million fiscal year budget, which includes $48.8 million for the Salem Police Department.

But Councilor Cara Kaser said they can still make changes in the budget at their discretion up to 10%. 

...Councilors authorized work sessions to include discussions of the use of City funds for non-criminal matters that are handled by the Police Department as well as setting parameters for a performance audit of the police department. The council included discussion of the so-called "8 Can't Wait" campaign into future meetings. 

So the Police Department got its budget approved with no changes, though some changes could happen at a later date. Future council work sessions will discuss the possibility of having non-criminal matters handled by other people, such as mental health professionals, rather than police officers. A performance audit of the Police Department is planned. Discussion of the "8 Can't Wait" proposals (one is banning chokeholds) will have to wait for future meetings.

These are good ideas. Why, then, did I have such a blah feeling after watching the City Council proceedings?

I suspect that it is the same reason many others who are concerned about the George Floyd murder and the lengthy history of police brutality against Black Americans will be underwhelmed by what councilors did last night.

There's a big gap between the passion people feel at watching the video of a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd for almost nine minutes, at hearing that Salem police used tear gas against Black Lives Matter protesters, at learning that armed "militia" in downtown Salem were told by a police officer how to avoid a curfew while it was enforced against protesters, at taking part in rallies and marches against police injustice -- and the calm, measured, prudent, let's-take-time-and-do-it-right demeanor of the City Council in response to that passion.

Understand: I'm unsure about how the council could have acted differently. 

The deadline for passing the City of Salem budget for the next fiscal year was at hand. There was no time left to dig into nitty-gritty details of how the Salem Police Department does its work. Any attempt to cut a portion of the department budget, such as for school resource officers, clearly wasn't going to get the support of a majority of councilors.

All I'm saying is that last night's meeting felt like a Disneyland ride in reverse.

People are OK with standing in line for a long time to enjoy a ride that makes them go Wow! and leaves them with a feeling of fulfillment. But in this case it was the high energy of the Salem protests that led to a Wow! Black Lives Matter! sensation of optimism about change being possible, whereas now the City Council is saying, "Wait patiently for us to take months, or maybe longer, to figure out what, if anything, needs to happen with Police Department reforms."

Part of the problem is that there's a depressing history of people in this country talking a lot about needed reforms, with little or nothing ever happening. After every mass shooting loud calls are heard to do something about gun violence. Then those calls dwindle to a whisper as political inertia reasserts itself.

Maybe the motions passed by the City Council last night will be an exception. But it's easy to see why the Just wait and trust us approach will be met with widespread skepticism.

For example, I liked how Councilor Nordyke spoke about hiring an outside consultant to conduct a performance audit of the Police Department, since they could look upon policing practices in Salem from a perspective untainted by local politics and special interests.

But it didn't take long for her motion to be amended.

Now City of Salem staff will return to the council with a plan for conducting a performance audit -- timeline, budget, goals, all that stuff. Perhaps that will work out.

But I couldn't help but have a "fox guarding the henhouse" feeling, since the Police Department is part of the City of Salem and has many ardent defenders among city staff and elected officials who would prefer that a close look at the Police Department doesn't happen at all.

Somehow the progressive members of the City Council have to find a way to show citizens that they are passionate about reforming the Salem Police Department during the long slog of work sessions, committee meetings, and the like that will be the link between the demand of protesters for real reform and those changes actually happening.

Otherwise I fear that protesters will feel that their voices aren't being heard. And frustration of that sort can lead to undesirable outcomes.