Salem Political Snark

Freedom Celebration won't include Salem Police Department

KSLM's right-wing radio talk show host Jeff Kropf has been plugging a Freedom Celebration to be held this Sunday, January 31. I've heard that Trevor Womack, the Salem Police Department chief, won't be attending even though he was invited. 

UPDATE: I've heard that 400 people have registered for this event. Oregon's COVID rules for an Extreme Risk area (where this event will be held) say that a maximum of 50 people can attend an outdoor entertainment event. So it looks like the Freedom Celebration will be in violation of that rule. And it could be a super spreader event, given that most of the right-wingers who attend won't be wearing masks or practicing social distancing.

FURTHER UPDATE: A commenter reminded me that this event is to be held in an airplane hanger, so it is indoors. That means six is the maximum number of people who could attend under current Covid rules. I stand corrected. However, that rule seems a bit unfair if everyone is wearing masks, which admittedly almost certainly won't happen. Grocery stores can let in people to the extent of 50% of capacity, I believe it is, if everyone has a mask on. The problem is that most of those going to the Freedom Celebration wrongly think "freedom" means going maskless.

Wise decision, Chief Womack. 

While your officers are free to attend on their own time, it would have been a bad idea to give credibility to this event -- given that it was Biden-hating Republican extremists like Kropf who sowed the seed of the insurrection at the nation's Capitol that cost the lives of three police officers (one was murdered by the Trump rioters and two have committed suicide following the attack).

If you want to endure a You Tube video where Kropf speaks his mind at a January 1, 2021 rally at the state Capitol in opposition to Governor Brown's Covid "tyranny," here it is.

I watched enough of the video to learn that, among other things, Kropf is against wearing masks to fight the pandemic and that he believes a wacko accusation of Brown having ties to the Chinese Communist Party needs to be investigated.  

Someone sent me a recording of Kropf claiming on his radio show that the Salem Police Department would be attending the Freedom Celebration along with the National Guard, Marion County Sheriff's Office, and other groups. Hopefully none of them will show up in an official capacity.

Jeff Kropf obviously doesn't understand that freedom is defended by many others than the sorts of people invited to the Freedom Celebration: law enforcement, military, first responders. 

Trump's failed attempt to overthrown our democracy by having the results of the free and fair 2020 presidential election overturned shows that judges, election officials, Secretaries of State, advocates for voting rights, lawyers, journalists, and many others who don't carry a gun deserve to be praised at their own Freedom Celebration. 

Those people also have been "fighting the good fight for our freedom," as the Freedom Celebration puts it. But right-wingers like Kropf don't acknowledge this, which is why I'm a proud progressive.

We on the left side of the political spectrum have a much more expansive view of freedom than conservatives do these days, even though genuine conservatives also believe that democracy is protected by assuring that as many people are able to vote as possible, which means making it as easy to vote as possible.

City of Salem has to pay $1 million for excessive force in George Floyd protest

I guess it's a sort of poetic justice.

Today the Salem Reporter has a story about how the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a $1 million damage award against the Salem Police Department after a woman was seriously injured by rubber bullets during a May 31, 2020 protest against police violence in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.

So the Salem Police Department used excessive force during a local protest against the use of excessive force by the Minneapolis Police Department. While there's a certain amusing irony to this, the harm done to Eleaqia McCrae was no laughing matter. 

Here's an excerpt from a September 2020 Salem Reporter story about the lawsuit filed on behalf of McCrae.

The lawsuit said the crowd linked arms and knelt in the street. At 10:03 p.m. Salem police used tear gas on the crowd after the police review said people were throwing objects at them.

“Then, the use tear gas, smoke bombs, pepper grenades, flash grenades, rubber bullets, foam-tipped munitions and batons are deployed when the demonstrators cannot leave. These tactics make it more difficult for law-abiding protesters to comply with police officers’ dispersal orders,” the lawsuit states.

When McCrae got up to leave, the lawsuit said she was shot twice. One bullet hit her chest and the other hit her eye. After being shot in the eye, McCrae bent over in pain and passed out, the lawsuit states.

“She took a few steps, her vision was gone, her ears were ringing. Now blinded in one eye and unable to see out of her other eye due to SPD’s use of tear gas on the peaceful march, Elea McCrae stumbled, fell, and passed out,” the complaint reads.

When she came to, McCrae was taken to the emergency room for her eye where she needed surgery to repair the damage after suffering permanent vision loss, the complaint said.

This wasn't a shining moment for the Salem Police Department, to put it mildly. In July 2020 I wrote a post, "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. 

In September 2o20 I wrote, "Rubber bullet lawsuit undermines credibility of Salem Police Department."

This sure sounds like a Salem Police Department cover-up. There's little or no doubt that McCrae's injuries were caused by rubber bullets. She says that a police officer spoke with her after she was shot in the chest and eye. She was taken to the Salem Hospital Emergency Room.

Yet Chief Moore claimed that he wasn't aware "of any injuries to those in the crowd due to police actions."

Wow. Chief Moore must not have done much investigating before the after-action report was written. Or his police offices lied to him about their not being any injuries to protesters. Or Chief Moore deliberately withheld the rubber bullets injuries from his report.

Whichever possibility is true, it's a big blow to the credibility of the Salem Police Department. Shouldn't the department have contacted the Emergency Room to learn if there were people admitted with injuries caused by the actions of police officers?

They learned about a protester being struck in the head by a brick thrown by another protester. Yet the department was clueless, supposedly, about a protester being shot in the eye and chest by bullets fired by a police officer or officers.

There's no doubt that Chief Moore's after-action report was deeply flawed. The only question is whether this was deliberate or a result of incompetence. 

Hopefully we will learn which is true in the course of the lawsuit being adjudicated.

After a jury awarded McCrae the $1 million, the City of Salem appealed to U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, who reversed the jury's decision. Today's Salem Reporter story says:

The federal judge’s decision to toss the lawsuit last year was remarkable, according to Athul Acharya, executive director of the law firm Public Accountability, who represented McCrae in her appeal. 

“Judges are generally quite deferential to jury verdicts,” he said.

When I checked on what president appointed Immergut to her District Court position, it wasn't surprising that it was Donald Trump. OPB reported on the screwy process that enabled Immergut to be confirmed. 

For the first time in history, the [Senate] committee, on which Republicans enjoy a majority, opted to hold confirmation hearings while the Senate was on a monthlong recess. Democrats were occupied defending the 26 seats up in the November 2018 election. So, when Immergut's confirmation hearing rolled around on Oct. 24, half the dais sat empty. She was asked only three questions over the course of three minutes — all from one senator.

The bad news is that like all federal judges, Immergut has a lifetime appointment, so she'll have many more opportunities to make poor decisions like she did with the McRae excessive force case. The good news, of course, is that the Ninth Circuit reversed her, so maybe Immergut will learn from this that she needs to follow the law more closely in her rulings. 

City of Salem has to pay $1 million for excessive force in George Floyd protest

I guess it's a sort of poetic justice.

Today the Salem Reporter has a story about how the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a $1 million damage award against the Salem Police Department after a woman was seriously injured by rubber bullets during a May 31, 2020 protest against police violence in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.

So the Salem Police Department used excessive force during a local protest against the use of excessive force by the Minneapolis Police Department. While there's a certain amusing irony to this, the harm done to Eleaqia McCrae was no laughing matter. 

Here's an excerpt from a September 2020 Salem Reporter story about the lawsuit filed on behalf of McCrae.

The lawsuit said the crowd linked arms and knelt in the street. At 10:03 p.m. Salem police used tear gas on the crowd after the police review said people were throwing objects at them.

“Then, the use tear gas, smoke bombs, pepper grenades, flash grenades, rubber bullets, foam-tipped munitions and batons are deployed when the demonstrators cannot leave. These tactics make it more difficult for law-abiding protesters to comply with police officers’ dispersal orders,” the lawsuit states.

When McCrae got up to leave, the lawsuit said she was shot twice. One bullet hit her chest and the other hit her eye. After being shot in the eye, McCrae bent over in pain and passed out, the lawsuit states.

“She took a few steps, her vision was gone, her ears were ringing. Now blinded in one eye and unable to see out of her other eye due to SPD’s use of tear gas on the peaceful march, Elea McCrae stumbled, fell, and passed out,” the complaint reads.

When she came to, McCrae was taken to the emergency room for her eye where she needed surgery to repair the damage after suffering permanent vision loss, the complaint said.

This wasn't a shining moment for the Salem Police Department, to put it mildly. In July 2020 I wrote a post, "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. 

In September 2o20 I wrote, "Rubber bullet lawsuit undermines credibility of Salem Police Department."

This sure sounds like a Salem Police Department cover-up. There's little or no doubt that McCrae's injuries were caused by rubber bullets. She says that a police officer spoke with her after she was shot in the chest and eye. She was taken to the Salem Hospital Emergency Room.

Yet Chief Moore claimed that he wasn't aware "of any injuries to those in the crowd due to police actions."

Wow. Chief Moore must not have done much investigating before the after-action report was written. Or his police offices lied to him about their not being any injuries to protesters. Or Chief Moore deliberately withheld the rubber bullets injuries from his report.

Whichever possibility is true, it's a big blow to the credibility of the Salem Police Department. Shouldn't the department have contacted the Emergency Room to learn if there were people admitted with injuries caused by the actions of police officers?

They learned about a protester being struck in the head by a brick thrown by another protester. Yet the department was clueless, supposedly, about a protester being shot in the eye and chest by bullets fired by a police officer or officers.

There's no doubt that Chief Moore's after-action report was deeply flawed. The only question is whether this was deliberate or a result of incompetence. 

Hopefully we will learn which is true in the course of the lawsuit being adjudicated.

After a jury awarded McCrae the $1 million, the City of Salem appealed to U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, who reversed the jury's decision. Today's Salem Reporter story says:

The federal judge’s decision to toss the lawsuit last year was remarkable, according to Athul Acharya, executive director of the law firm Public Accountability, who represented McCrae in her appeal. 

“Judges are generally quite deferential to jury verdicts,” he said.

When I checked on what president appointed Immergut to her District Court position, it wasn't surprising that it was Donald Trump. OPB reported on the screwy process that enabled Immergut to be confirmed. 

For the first time in history, the [Senate] committee, on which Republicans enjoy a majority, opted to hold confirmation hearings while the Senate was on a monthlong recess. Democrats were occupied defending the 26 seats up in the November 2018 election. So, when Immergut's confirmation hearing rolled around on Oct. 24, half the dais sat empty. She was asked only three questions over the course of three minutes — all from one senator.

The bad news is that like all federal judges, Immergut has a lifetime appointment, so she'll have many more opportunities to make poor decisions like she did with the McRae excessive force case. The good news, of course, is that the Ninth Circuit reversed her, so maybe Immergut will learn from this that she needs to follow the law more closely in her rulings. 

Killing in Bush Park will spur efforts to reduce gun violence in Salem

After moving to Salem in 1977, I recall the shock after the first instance of gang violence. I recall that it was a non-fatal shooting, but could be wrong about that. Can't remember the year, but my wife and I guess that it was in the early to mid 1980s. 

Before that time we here in Salem looked upon our town as different from Portland, the big city to the north that did have gangs who fought it out with each other. But though we were known as sleepy Salem, the upside was a feeling that gang violence was something that beset other cities, not us.

Things have changed, as a Salem Reporter story says.

One person died and two young men were injured in a shooting Thursday afternoon at Bush’s Pasture Park, Salem police said in a news release.

Officers are still searching for one suspect.

Police responded to the south side of the park, near the intersection of southeast High and Leffelle streets, around 1:45 p.m. They found a male victim dead and two boys injured with gunshot wounds.

The boys were transported to Salem Hospital for medical treatment. Police did not have the age of the dead victim confirmed.

Police released no information about what prompted the shooting. The medical condition of the surviving victims was unknown.

On Friday a 16-year-old boy turned himself in.

Salem police have arrested a teen boy on accusations of of killing another boy and wounding two others in a shooting at Bush’s Pasture Park Thursday afternoon.

Nathaniel S. McCrae Jr., 16, turned himself in at the Salem Police Department station late Friday evening in the company of a parent. He was arrested without incident, police said in a news release Saturday morning.

...The charges allege McCrae shot and killed 16-year-old Jose Vasquez-Valenzuela, a sophomore at South Salem High School, at the south Salem park.

The teen is also accused of shooting Damien Esquivel-Soto, 15, and a 16-year-old boy who police have not identified. They were transported to Salem Hospital for treatment. 

...In a Friday news release, police confirmed the accounts of several witnesses, saying two large groups of juveniles were at the park when gunfire erupted.

It's so sad that Jose Vasquez-Valenzuela is dead and Nathaniel S. McCrae Jr. is charged with his murder. When you're 16, almost your whole life is in front of you. Unless you're dead or likely headed off to be incarcerated for a long time.

Back in the ancient days of my high school years, the 1960's, teenage boys would fight with their fists, or at worst, pull out a knife. Now guns are everywhere, including in the hands of young people who shouldn't have them.

Last Thursday, the day of the shooting/killing, the Statesman Journal had a story about a community effort to reduce this kind of violence. It included some statistics from the Police Department about who is involved in shootings.

The report mapped out homicides and shootings in the city between 2018 and 2023, showing a cluster of three hot spots in northeast Salem that cover about 5 square miles. During the past six years, 65% of homicides and shootings occurred in those hot spots.

A survey of the demographics found that men, as well as Black and Latino residents, were overrepresented among both suspects and victims.

Hispanic people comprise 22.4% of the total city population but accounted for 45.7% of victims and 58.9% of suspects. About 1% of the city's population is Black, but 12.7% of victims and 5.4% of suspects were Black. White people accounted for 32.1% of suspects and 38.3% of victims.

It seems clear that while this is partly a policing problem, the root causes are societal. I can't believe that many young men decide that their goal in life is to become a tough guy who carries a gun and shoots people who offend them for some reason. That is forced upon them by tough circumstances.

Salem's leaders, including Mayor Chris Hoy, are doing the right thing by engaging the entire community in coming up with a plan this year to reduce gun violence that will be implemented in 2025. Getting "tough on crime" is too simplistic. The root causes of gun violence in Salem have to be identified and addressed. 

How could a man twice sexually assault women at Minto Brown Park?

Yesterday I got an email from a woman who was understandably upset at learning that David Belluno, who sexually assaulted a woman at Minto Brown Park last Monday afternoon, had sexually assaulted a different woman at Minto Brown Park back in 2018. 

David Belluno

Her message said:

Hi Brian, as I'm sure you've seen, the same criminal let go in 2018 attempted the same crime (attempted kidnapping, rape, assault, etc.) over the weekend in Minto Brown park. I know from your posts that you revere this park as much as I do. I was shocked to see this and I'm sure your blog readers will be as well.

 

I have already emailed the Marion County DA ([email protected]) as I think others should as well. I was hoping you could persuade your readers to do the same. Obviously the DA won't police itself. And please let me know any other avenues you'd recommend for pressuring the right people to finally put this animal away. I'm new to Salem so not as familiar with the "machine" as you are.

 

I definitely sympathize with anyone who is outraged that Belluno was freed in 2019 after being charged with first-degree kidnapping, first-degree sexual abuse, attempted first-degree rape, attempted unlawful sexual penetration, unlawful use of a weapon and fourth-degree assault. 

A December 2019 Salem Reporter story says that those charges were dropped after it was determined by a Marion County Circuit Court judge that Belluno wasn't fit for trial. He was committed to the Oregon State Hospital, but the story describes in detail why the judge eventually determined after a series of psychological assessments that the law required him to be released.

(This issue is so important, I'm hoping the Salem Reporter is OK with me sharing the story as a PDF file so those who aren't subscribers can learn how Belluno came to be freed.)
Download Judge drops charges against man arrested last year for alleged attack in Minto-Brown Island Park

It seems to me that this case points to the difficult balancing act that has to occur when someone with serious mental problems or limitations commits a serious crime. Belluno appeared to be competent enough to realize that he was better off at the State Hospital than in jail, but not competent enough to be tried for his alleged crimes.

Hopefully Belluno's case is an aberration, rather than commonplace. There's certainly grounds for finger-pointing at everyone involved in his 2019 release, but my reading of the Salem Reporter story led me to feel that by and large, his 2019 release was the fault of a hole in our legal and mental health systems, as noted in a Salem Reporter story about the most recent attack.

A psychologist at the time diagnosed Belluno with a mild intellectual disability and determined that he was unable [to] help in his own defense.

Judge Courtland Geyer determined that because Belluno’s mental health was unlikely to improve to the point that he could stand trial, Oregon law required that the charges be dismissed.

Katie Suver, former Marion County deputy district attorney, told Salem Reporter in 2019 that Belluno’s release magnified what she called a “hole in the process.”

Suver said at the time that an expert hired by her office determined that, with the right treatment, Belluno might improve enough to face the charges, but Geyer ruled that he couldn’t mandate such treatment. 

The judge dismissed Belluno’s charges “without prejudice,” meaning they could be refiled.

Currently Belluno is being held in jail without bail and is facing charges for both the 2018 and 2022 attacks.

Salem Reporter editor criticizes secrecy of Salem city officials

Below is a indictment of what sure seems to be a coverup by officials at the City of Salem following a public records request by Salem Reporter concerning a suspicious $53,500 payment to former deputy police chief Steve Bellshaw.

Written by editor Les Zaitz, I'd intended to only use excerpts from Zaitz' column, since I respect the right of Salem Reporter to make content available only to subscribers, of whom I'm one.

But the more I thought about it, the more important it seemed to have this column read by as many people as possible. So I'm hoping Zaitz will be OK with this blog post, which includes the entire column. If he isn't, I'll edit the post.

Government transparency is vital. As you'll read in the column, Salem city officials are actively trying to keep the public from learning what went on with what I'm tempted to call Bellshawgate (obviously gave in to that temptation).

Zaitz is asking people to email the Interim City Manager, Kristin Retherford:

Citizen voices can call for city leaders to reverse course. You can do that by writing an email to Interim City Manager Kristin Retherford ([email protected]). Describe why you think the people of Salem deserve this information. Explain what you want to happen – and copy us.

And Zaitz describes how the Marion County District Attorney's office not only rejected the appeal by Salem Reporter of the public records request denial by the City of Salem, but is displaying a disturbing lack of commitment to the public knowing what government is doing. 

Read on. Zaitz has written a compelling column.

Salem city officials are determined to keep from you the information on why a top official under investigation was able to leave office with an unearned $53,500.

Salem Reporter is working to change that, but powerful forces are lined up against us.

Faith in government and transparency in public affairs are at stake.

Here’s the issue.

Earlier this year, a deputy police chief in the Salem Police Department was under suspicion for some sort of misconduct.

As we have since learned, city leaders couldn’t advance their investigation because – and this is surprising – they couldn’t find an investigator.

Instead, they cut a deal with the executive, Steve Bellshaw. He would retire from his city job, pack up his office and walk out with an extra $53,500.

This seemed striking and seemed to warrant an explanation. Why would a top city official get paid to walk away while under investigation?

The city took nearly three weeks to release the single document, doing so only after our news organization initiated legal action to force its disclosure.

Salem city officials deflected question after question. Some questions were addressed with statements – but no explanation. On one occasion, a city official suggested that it was routine to pay off city employees leaving their jobs in these circumstances.

Salem Reporter learned about the payment after obtaining an agreement between Bellshaw and the city.

Getting even that document wasn’t easy.

The agreement required the city and Bellshaw to stay silent about terms, including the payout. No one was to say a word publicly.

When Salem Reporter asked for the agreement, the city took nearly three weeks to release the single document, doing so only after our news organization initiated legal action to force its disclosure.

And the city didn’t make it easy to get even routine information. Asked for the date Bellshaw was put on administrative leave, a city official wouldn’t answer, instead telling Salem Reporter a records request would be needed to get the date.

There is nothing sensitive about that date and the city official later conceded that was so. The deflection to a public records request had a aura of retribution to it – we’re going to make this hard for you at every single turn.

When the city declared every document about the matter was off limits, we followed Oregon law. Salem Reporter petitioned Marion County District Attorney Paige Clarkson, seeking an order requiring the city to release the documents. In such circumstances, Clarkson’s office acts as an informal court.

READ IT: Salem Reporter’s petition for disclosure 

District attorneys are charged with assessing the government’s claims to confidentiality. Some records are off limits by law, but there is no prohibition from releasing most. In Oregon, the public interest in seeing what government is doing generally trumps confidentiality. Our highest courts side with citizens over government in even close calls.

Salem Reporter outlined in a petition to Clarkson the reasons why the public ought to see the Bellshaw records. We cited over and over and in detail what was the public interest. This wasn’t snooping in some administrative aide’s personnel file. This was learning about potential corruption and the peculiar spending of public money.

In the resulting order, Clarkson’s office sided with the city. Amy Queen, the deputy district attorney who wrote the order that was endorsed by the district attorney, could not find one compelling reason for the public to see so much as a sentence.

READ IT: District attorney’s order 

The decision was surprising because courts in Oregon have been particularly clear that information about possible misconduct by high-ranking officials ought to be given to citizens.

In emails, Queen said she has never ordered the Salem Police Department to release public records. In fact, she said, she has never ordered any government agency to disclose records it wanted to keep away from citizens.

She explained that her “review process of many petitions have resulted in the government agency disclosing the records at issue” without being ordered to do so.

I have decades of experience in public records law. That explanation suggested to me that Queen warned public officials they would face an order to disclose if they didn’t release the documents. That gives agency officials the chance to avoid a public order that says they improperly withheld public records.

When I asked Queen to clarify, she didn’t answer. Instead, Clarkson suggested in an email there was a “misunderstanding” of Queen’s message that she wanted to ensure “does not lead to any mischaracterization, or implication thereof, related to a public agency’s disclosure of a record after a petition is filed,” she said.

She went on to write that any “request for clarification” from her office made to a government official is shared with the petitioners. But that doesn’t explicitly deny that her office gives government a heads up it is about to lose the case. On Monday, she amplified that she found my read of the review process “completely inaccurate.”

There is one other concerning aspect to all of this that suggests that government is stacked against the people.

Queen is married to a Salem Police Department officer. (Clarkson was too – until her husband left last year for another job). That means Queen is ruling on whether her husband’s employer is improperly withholding information from the public. In addition, one of the largest donors to Queen’s current campaign to become a state judge: the Salem Police Employees Union, which gave $3,000 on Aug. 18.

That seems a significant conflict – and one not disclosed by Queen, Clarkson or the resulting order that said the public wasn’t entitled to a single piece of paper about this matter.

Queen didn’t respond to questions about the matter and neither did Clarkson. They stayed silent. Clarkson didn’t respond to a telephone message and an email last week inviting her to discuss the apparent conflict.

Instead, Clarkson pointed out Salem Reporter could sue in state court if we didn’t agree with the order. Clarkson knows state courts are jammed, clearing cases backed up by the pandemic. She knows such litigation is expensive and takes years – hardly the route to transparency.

But the community has seen this before. Salem city officials for years fought one newspaper’s request to see a police report. The city likely spent a small fortune on the fight. And it lost. On top of that, courts told the city to pay $100,000 or so in legal costs run up by the newspaper that simply was trying to hold government accountable.

Salem city officials can brush off Salem Reporter, using the new shield that Clarkson’s office fashioned for them. We anticipate being denied even more records we have requested.

What they can’t do, however, is blunt public opinion and this is where you come in.

Citizen voices can call for city leaders to reverse course. You can do that by writing an email to Interim City Manager Kristin Retherford ([email protected]). Describe why you think the people of Salem deserve this information. Explain what you want to happen – and copy us.

Meantime, we won’t relent in our reporting on your behalf. In the matter of a deputy police chief who had to clear out his office on a Sunday while under supervision, we’ll keep pressing too.

Les Zaitz is editor of Salem Reporter. Contact him by email at [email protected].

A surprising conclusion from my City of Salem public record requests

After the May 1 gun rights rally at Salem's Riverfront Park where the Proud Boys provided insecurity by intimidating citizens, who included a journalist, I submitted several public record requests to the City of Salem.

One sought information regarding how it was that up until April 30, the city web site said permits would be required for events in parks beginning May 1, yet the gun rally didn't have a permit. 

Another requested documents about communications regarding the gun rally between City Manager Steve Powers, Police Chief Trevor Womack, and Public Works Director Peter Fernandez. 

In the end I learned as much about the frustrating way the City of Salem handles public records requests -- or at least these requests -- as I did about the substance of those requests. But I'm going to describe those frustrations in a separate blog post.

I do need to mention that I never did learn some of what I asked for. 

As I described in "Typogate" adds a twist to Proud Boys gun rally, at some point between late 2020 and late March 2021, the City of Salem "Reserve a City Facility or Park" web page changed from saying "Due to COVID-19, parks and other City facilities are not available for reservation" to "Due to COVID-19, parks and other city facilities are not available for reservation through April 30, 2021. Reservations are being accepted for outdoor events in parks occurring May 1, 2021 or after."

I'd asked for documents concerning who authorized and made the change to the page saying that reservations were being accepted for events on May 1 and after. I never got any, which leaves unsettled the question of how the page came to say this.

At first city officials said this was a typo, with a "3" being left out of May 1, which would have made it May 31. But this doesn't explain the statement that "parks and other city facilities are not available for reservation through April 30, 2021," with April clearly not being a typo.

On May 10, City Councilor Tom Andersen asked City Manager Powers to explain the confusion about why the city web site said permits were required as of May 1. Suspicions were raised when, after numerous citizens asked city officials why the gun rally didn't need to have a permit, the web page in question was changed on April 30, a day before the gun rally, to say that permits were being required as of May 31.

Powers said, "That web page, that section of the web page that’s been referred to, it was incorrect and frankly also poorly worded before it was corrected." I was hoping for a better explanation, as I said in "City Manager gives poor excuse for permitless Proud Boys rally."

However, I asked for park reservation requests for events occurring between March 27 and April 30, 2021. Twenty-five reservations were accepted for this period, but almost all of them were for the use of athletic facilities (one was for a farmer's market).

So even though city officials weren't as open and transparent as they should have been regarding the web site error, it's true that no events in Salem parks were being scheduled prior to May 31, even though for more than two months the web site said something different.

My conclusion is that the City of Salem is less like a smoothly functioning machine and more like a creaky collection of flawed human parts that sometimes gets things right, and sometimes gets things wrong, yet almost always tries to put forward a public face of correctness.

This doesn't mean that willful self-serving actions by city staff at odds with the public interest don't occur -- they surely do -- just that disorganization and a fervent desire to appear competent often better explain WTF? reactions by citizens to staff behavior. 

I got lots of documents peripherally related to my public records request for communications between the City Manager, Police Chief, and Public Works Director. Many, if not most, were public relations attempts by city officials to justify their response to the Proud Boys gun rally.

Since as mentioned above, several citizens were intimidated and threatened by armed Proud Boys, with no Salem police in the immediate area of the gun rally, one would think that Police Chief Womack and City Manager Powers might have said something like "We could have handled the police response to the gun rally better and will be letting you know how we're going to learn from this experience and improve our response to future similar events."

All that said, here comes the promised surprise conclusion in the title of this post.

Which is on a blog called Salem Political Snark. Sure, I came up with that name when the Mayor, City Council, and City Manager were considerably more conservative than is the case now, and thus more deserving of snarkiness given my progressive leaning. 

However, I'm still prone to suspect that city officials in Salem deserve criticism, in part because almost all of my previous public record requests have revealed that what those officials say in public doesn't always match up with what is happening behind the scenes.

In this case, though, I read through the documents I got with a surprising degree of Buddha-like compassion.

Not that I have much of that sort of compassion, despite my fondness for Buddhist philosophy. What surprised me was the extra feeling of compassion I had after perusing those documents, since before I'd gotten more irritated after reviewing public City of Salem documents, not less.

What struck me is something I alluded to above. By and large, City staff are hard-working, competent, pleasant people who are trying to do the best job they can. Yes, they're flawed. So are we all. Perfection isn't an attainable human quality. As I remember my 4th grade teacher, Eleanor Marshall, saying to us students: "Do your best. Angels can do no better."

Somehow a miscommunication or some other sort of error resulted in the city web page saying permits were required as of May 1. I was told that requests for web site changes sometimes happen verbally, so this could explain why I didn't get any records relating to who authorized or made the May 1 wording.

Regardless, mistakes happen.

I felt like I needed to learn more about how the web site changed from a May 1 date when park permits were required to a May 31 date. It appears that city staff gave me as much information as possible about this, even though I didn't get all that I asked for.

Some of the documents I got pertained to the public record requests I submitted. (I paid for one of them; I got a fee waiver for the other request, which was appreciated.) I realize that responding to public record requests isn't a favorite activity of city staff, since this takes time away from their other duties.

Thus I'm grateful for the information that I received. As noted above, I'll write another blog post about the problems I had with the public record requests, including some ideas for improvements in this area. 

One key thing I want to say to officials at the City of Salem is this:

Don't worry about not being perfect. Worry about creating a climate where all city employees are rewarded for admitting mistakes and finding ways to do better. Like most organizations, I see the City of Salem as being overly concerned with managing public relations instead of being open with the public when errors were made. 

People can recognize the difference between spin and sincerity. Less spin and more sincerity, please.

Proud Boys debacle shows how Salem Police need to change

The Salem Police Department has a new chief, Trevor Womack. But it doesn't have a new way of going about policing.

That's a big problem.

Hopefully Chief Womack is up to the task of carrying out needed reforms, restoring confidence in the department, and altering the mission of the department in light of a national movement to shift policing from a militaristic warrior model to a peacekeeper guardian model.

This is a complex job. It will take a lot of wisdom to carry out. 

Womack, along with other police chiefs, has to deal with a lengthy history of policing in America being dominated by a mentality that views officers as akin to soldiers fighting a war against criminals, rather than as citizens helping to bring about peace in their community. 

These different approaches to policing were on full display on May 1 when Salem police chose to sit by while the extremist Proud Boys militia group threatened people in a public park while serving as supposed "security" for a gun rights rally. 

Well, what I mean by full display is that the warrior crime-fighting model was plainly evident, while the guardian peacekeeper model was notable by its absence.

No uniformed Salem police officers were seen anywhere near the gun rally. So the Proud Boys were free to threaten several people with dire consequences if they didn't leave the rally area, even though the rally had no permit and was being held in a public park.

The Proud Boys also threatened a journalist, telling him he couldn't observe the rally from a close-in location, but only from farther away in the park.

Yet the Salem Police Department considered that they did a great job, issuing a misleading statement that said, in part, that because no criminal behavior by the Proud Boys was observed by their officers, how they handled the gun rally event was a success.

What irked many people, including those threatened and harassed by the Proud Boys, was that uniformed Salem police didn't see the wrongdoing being done by militia members because they chose not to come close to the gun rally area.

This is the opposite of what a guardian would do, what a peacekeeper would do.

If Salem police were acting as guardians, they would have had a substantial presence at the gun rally. Then they would have seen a group of Proud Boys going up to people they didn't like, telling those people they had to leave or something bad would happen to them.

A guardian wants to be clearly visible so citizens can reach out to them for help. But a warrior is only worried about overt criminal behavior. 

So Salem police ignored the threats being made to people in a public park, because their focus was on waiting for the Proud Boys to do something dramatically criminal. 

Apparently no one at the Salem Police Department thought that citizens who wanted to observe the speakers at the gun rally needed to be guarded against threats being made by armed members of the Proud Boys militia group that took part in the January 6 insurrection at the nation's capitol.

Thus those citizens were left to fend for themselves, while undercover police officers reportedly were in the park, but obviously doing something else than guarding the rights of people watching a gun rally in a public space.

If uniformed officers had been at the rally, those threatened by the Proud Boys could have yelled to them, saying, "Officer, come over here. There's a problem." That's how a guardian would have acted: walking over to the person being threatened with expulsion and telling the Proud Boys, "You can't do that."

For some reason the Salem Police Department can't understand why people were so upset when groups of armed Proud Boys wearing tactical vests roamed around the gun rally area of Riverfront Park telling citizens that if they didn't leave, something bad would happen to them.

A spokesman for the department even said that it was OK for the Proud Boys to order people to leave the park, according to a Statesman Journal story.

Upkes also pointed to the nuance of whether escorting people out of the park was illegal. Simply telling someone to leave the public area — and even walking with them — isn't necessarily a crime. But pairing that order with the threat of violence, menacing or harassment is, he said. 

Well, that's exactly what happened -- threats of violence, menacing, harassment. But since Salem police chose to take a "see no evil" approach to the Proud Boys, they didn't observe the threats made to several people observing the gun rally.

It would have been so simple to have a half dozen or so uniformed police officers standing at the edges of the gun rally, ready to step in if the Proud Boys or anyone else started to cause trouble.

Yet the Salem Police Department chose not to take this guardian approach.

Were they afraid to confront the Proud Boys? Did they feel that these armed militia members in tactical vests looked like us, so posed no problem? How badly would the Proud Boys have needed to act before Salem police would have done something?

This was a failure by the Salem Police Department. Hopefully lessons will be learned from it.

Like, it would have been much better to prevent trouble by having a guardian police presence at the gun rally, rather than sitting back and waiting for an obvious crime to be committed requiring a warrior response.

Proud Boys return to Salem, threatening reporters again

Well, that didn't take long.

Just six days after the Salem Police Department did absolutely nothing to prevent the Proud Boys extremist militia group from threatening a journalist and other citizens observing a gun rally in a public park, today a couple of Proud Boys banned media from taking photos or video in front of a public building in downtown Salem.

And why wouldn't they?

The Salem Police Department and other city officials have coddled the Proud Boys, seemingly because they're afraid of these armed right-wingers. The Proud Boys now know that Salem is a place these white supremacists are welcome in.

Here's some of the tweets journalist Tim Gruver shared about an anti-mask protest the two Proud Boys attended. If this depresses you, scroll further down for some Gruver tweets about a left-wing protest today against Salem Police Department inaction and racism in our city.

(His "no one escorted out" tweet refers to the Proud Boys forcing some people to leave the gun rights rally in Riverfront Park, even though the rally had no permit and was in a public place.)

On the plus side...

"Typogate" adds a twist to Proud Boys gun rally

If there's one thing I've learned from quite a few years of delving into goings-on at the City of Salem, it is that often what city officials claim to be true, actually isn't. 

Sure, sometimes that discrepancy can be attributed to a honest mistake. However, I know for a fact that sometimes City of Salem staff purposely shade the truth in a CYA (Cover Your Ass) fashion. 

Lying is a blunter term than "shade the truth," of course.

As I've written about in two previous blog posts (here and here), how the Salem Police Department handled a May 1 gun rally at Riverfront Park where the gun-toting violent right-wing insurrectionist Proud Boys provided "security" left a lot to be desired, to put it mildly.

A statement issued by the Police Department said "the City of Salem did not issue a permit for the event due to pandemic restrictions. Parks, however, remain open for public use on a first-come first-served basis."

Well, it sure seems that this excuse for why a permit wasn't issued isn't true. I'll explain.

Up until April 30, the day before the May 1 gun rally, a City of Salem web page said that permits are being accepted for outdoor events in parks occurring May 1, 2021 or after. But on April 30 the permit date was changed to May 31 -- taking away the need for the gun rally to have a permit.

Salem City Councilor Tom Andersen said in a post-rally KMUZ interview that the reason for this last-minute change was a "typo" on the web page. Namely, that a "3" was omitted from May 1, which should have been May 31.

UPDATE: A commenter on this post just left a great observation that I'd somehow missed. This seemingly puts to rest the "typo" explanation.

If it was truly a typo then why did they set the end of the “open use” period to April 30th? If it was a typo it should state no permit required through May 30th and on May 1 [typo should be 31st] permits will be required.

So that explanation, which I assume Andersen got from a city official, had nothing to do with pandemic restrictions. That makes the Police Department statement wrong, but not outrageously wrong.

Hey, I'm a writer.

I hate typos, though I make them frequently. I find typos on government web sites all the time, so at first resonated with that explanation for the April 30 change to the date a permit was required from May 1 to May 31.

However, I was curious how long this supposed "typo" had been hanging out on the City of Salem web page.

I decided to fire up the Internet Archive Way Back Machine. Below is a screenshot of how that City of Salem web page appeared on September 19, 2020 and March 27, 2021.

You can see that on September 19, 2020 the City of Salem said "Due to COVID-19, parks and other City facilities are not available for reservation."

 

But on March 27, 2021 the page had changed to say "Due to COVID-19, parks and other city facilities are not available for reservation through April 30, 2021. Reservations are being accepted for outdoor events in parks occurring May 1, 2021 or after."

 

Thus the Proud Boys gun rally should have reserved space at Riverfront Park for the May 1 event. There was plenty of warning about this requirement, since at least since March 27 the City of Salem web site said that after May 1 a reservation was needed for an event.

 

So the supposed “typo” that City officials are saying caused the change on April 30 had been in existence for over a month.

 

It sure seems like some people in Salem would have been inquiring about parks reservations during that time period, or that a City of Salem employee would have noticed the May 1 date, if on March 27 the city really had meant to only require permits after May 31.

 

Otherwise, we have to believe that no one applied for a reservation from March 27 to April 30, even though almost certainly summer weddings and other nice-weather gatherings were being planned at that time.

 

Someone in the Public Works Department, or City Manager Steve Powers, needs to explain how it is that the May 1 date was on the web site for over a month before it was changed the day before the gun rights rally.

 

You can see that the May 1 date occurs in two places on the March 27 page, so the “typo” was repeated twice. This makes it more unlikely that it was actually a typo.

 

I also noticed that whoever edited the March 27 web page changed "City" to "city" several times (correctly, in my opinion), which seems to show a certain carefulness and competence, further reducing the possibility that May 1 was a typo that somehow remained on the City of Salem web page for more than a month.

 

City Manager Steve Powers has some explaining to do.

Who authorized the March 27 change to the City of Salem web page saying that a permit/reservation was needed for a park event to be held May 1 or after? Is there documentation of what date was given to the web page editor, May 1 or May 31?

Who authorized the April 30 change to the City of Salem web page changing the effective date for a required permit/reservation to May 31? Is there documentation of why this change was made on that particular date, since it was the day before the Proud Boys gun rally on May 1?

Salem Police Department misleads about Proud Boys rally

I was already deeply irritated at the Salem Police Department, after learning that they stood by and did nothing on May 1 while armed members of the Proud Boys right-wing militia group forced people they didn't like to leave the public Riverfront Park, harassed journalists, and reportedly beat up someone who was taking a photo of them.

(See my previous post, "Salem police sit by as Proud Boys take over Riverfront Park.")

Now I've even more irritated at the Police Department after reading their attempt to make it seem like they did everything right and nothing wrong as the Proud Boys provided "security" at a gun rights rally that lacked a permit, so had no right to exclude either citizens or journalists from the rally area.

Here's the self-serving message from the Police Department that was released today. My comments and observations are interspersed in red. 

Good afternoon,

 

We understand that there is information circulating on social media that there was no police presence at Riverfront Park for the rally. That information is incorrect. The following is information we have updated to our FB timeline:

 

Several accounts of the police department response to the rally at Riverfront Park on Saturday, May 1, 2021 are circulating on social media.

 

More than several. And they're getting a lot of well-deserved attention. My humble little blog post has gotten about 7,000 page views so far. People are justifiably upset at the failure of the Salem Police Department to protect citizens from the Proud Boys.

 

Primary claims seem to be concerning the lack of police presence and allowing individuals to be assaulted or removed from the park by members of the Proud Boys group.

 

True. But you forgot another concern -- the fact, not a claim, that at least one journalist, and maybe more, was harassed by Proud Boys who told him that he couldn't report on the rally even though he had a perfect right to be there in a public park.

 

The rally was attended by approximately 150 to 200 people, including families with children. A stage was set for guest speakers and several tents were set up for the sharing of food and items.

 

Approximately 30 individuals dressed in Proud Boy attire were observed lawfully carrying pistols. No rifles were seen carried in the public space. No individuals counter-protesting were present.

 

Salem Police officers, some highly visible and others less visible, were present throughout the entire rally and actively monitored the event. Officers patrolled the area checking for violations of alcohol use in the park. No violations occurred.

 

I've read numerous Facebook comments from people who were at Riverfront Park and saw no visible police presence. So please provide photographs of uniformed Salem Police officers in the immediate vicinity of the rally -- the stage and auditorium-like seating. If you can't do that, I'll continue to believe the people who say no Salem police were present at the rally.

 

The dispatch center received only two calls for service at the park during the event and officers immediately responded to each.

 

This doesn't mean there weren't more incidents of Proud Boys trouble-making. For example, Les Margosian, one of those forced to leave the rally area by a group of Proud Boys, had no cell phone with him, so he wasn't able to make a call for service. And since he saw no Salem police around, Margosian couldn't go up to an officer and complain about how the Proud Boys were abusing him.

 

Dispatch also received two separate false reports. One caller reported intoxicated individuals terrorizing people near the carousel. The second caller reported Proud Boys group members with clubs, chains and knives attacking people in the middle of the park. Officers were in each area at the time of the calls and no such activities were occurring.

 

OK. So officers were in parts of the park away from the rally. My point remains: why weren't they at the center of Proud Boys harassment, the rally itself? Also, is the Salem Police Department denying the accuracy of a Reddit post by someone who says they were beaten by Proud Boys in the park, called the police, and was interviewed at their home by an officer who downplayed the beating?

 

We have also learned through social media commentary after-the-fact that two or three individuals may have been escorted out of the park by Proud Boys or their affiliates. We encourage anyone who experienced such actions to please contact the police department (503-588-6123, option 1) to file a police report.

 

"May" is an affront to the people who were forced out of the park by Proud Boys. There's a video of a man being escorted out of the park by a group of Proud Boys. Les Margosian, mentioned above, is a 78 year old man who was threatened by Proud Boys and forced to leave the rally area. Stop with the "may" and face reality, Salem Police Department.

 

We will investigate all reported incidents. Please remember, in any emergency circumstance where there is an immediate danger to person or property, call 9-1-1 when it is happening.

 

Lastly, the City of Salem did not issue a permit for the event due to pandemic restrictions. Parks, however, remain open for public use on a first-come first-served basis.

 

Untrue. Citizen activist Jim Scheppke has shown that a permit was required for the event up until the day before, when someone at the City of Salem changed the permit requirement date to begin at the end of May. So this was a conscious effort by city officials to accommodate the gun rights rally and Proud Boys by not requiring a permit for the gun rally.

 

Please remember, the City of Salem cannot stop constitutionally protected activities, nor can the Salem Police Department.

 

No one, or at least hardly anyone, was calling for this. So stop with the "please remember." The gun rally isn't the issue. Not requiring a permit for the rally is one issue. The bad behavior by Proud Boys with no evident police presence is the other issue.

 

We understand the concerns of those who read the social media commentary. We share those concerns because officers were in the area, and if those circumstances were occurring, any criminal behavior could have been addressed with immediacy.

 

To repeat, I'm not aware of a single report from anyone who was in Riverfront Park on May 1 that there were uniformed Salem Police officers in the immediate area of the gun rally. It appears that officers may have been elsewhere in the park, but not in the area where the Proud Boys were harassing people. So how could bad behavior be addressed if no officers were around to witness it?

 

For additional information about protests, rallies and assemblies in the city of Salem or for police response to such activities, visit https://bit.ly/protests-faqs.

 

Also, the Salem Reporter has a story out today, "Salem leaders say they're constrained by the Constitution when handling far-right events." 

As noted above, the headline is accurate, but the sentiment is a bunch of crap. People understand the Constitution. Free speech and carrying a gun isn't the issue here.

The issue is that a violent extremist group, the Proud Boys, were allowed to cause trouble at the gun rights rally with no attempt by the Salem Police Department to protect the rights of journalists, citizens watching the rally, and by one account, a person who took a photo of Proud Boys and was then beaten by them.

Here's an excerpt from the story.

Margosian, 78, sat down at the amphitheater to listen to the event’s speakers. He said 15 minutes later he was accosted by four men wearing Proud Boys attire, black shirts with a yellow “PB” on the chest and armed with handguns.

“They came and sat down next to me and said, ‘We’re going to escort you out of here. You cannot stay any longer,’” he said.

Margosian said he asked what would happen if he didn’t leave.

He recalled one of the men saying something to the effect of, “You can do it your way, or we can do it ours.”

Margosian took that to mean he would be assaulted if he didn’t leave.

He left the park feeling angry and “kind of a hopeless feeling.”

“Angry at City of Salem for allowing things to get to this point. Angry that people had kicked me out of my own city park,” he said.

As of Monday afternoon, Margosian said he hadn't pressed charges but planned to.

Margosian has said that the Proud Boy who told him he had to leave is the same man I featured in a screenshot of a video made by another person forced to leave the park by Proud Boys.

He should be pretty damn easy to find, since he wasn't wearing a face covering. Hopefully if Margosian does file a complaint, the Salem Police Department will locate this guy and hold him accountable for what he did.

Lastly, I found a quote from a Police Department spokesperson, Lt. Treven Upkes, in a Statesman Journal story, "Salem police respond to complaints of inaction at Riverfront Park Second Amendment rally," way off-base.

I want Police Chief Womack to confirm that it is department policy that telling people to leave a public park is perfectly fine. If this is true, that policy needs to change. Excerpt from the story:

Community members expressed concern the Police Department was showing favoritism by not having a heavy presence at the rally. 

Those concerns were further compounded by rumors that the Proud Boys' security teams were telling people to leave, escorting people out of the public park and had even assaulted someone for taking photos of the event. 

...Upkes also pointed to the nuance of whether escorting people out of the park was illegal. Simply telling someone to leave the public area — and even walking with them — isn't necessarily a crime. But pairing that order with the threat of violence, menacing or harassment is, he said.