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Rapping Back #78:
Portland Copwatch member Dan Handelman analyzes the Police "Union" newsletter, the "Rap Sheet" for the People's Police Report

Hypocritical Hollering about Handcuffs and Houseless Harms Healing

In our last issue, we noted how the Portland Police Association (PPA) had greatly reduced the number of articles they posted to their Facebook page over the course of four months. While up slightly, the Police "union" only published 30 pieces from mid-April to mid-August. Continuing an ongoing trend, the largest proportion of the content (14, or 47% of posts) consisted of "bluewashing," or painting positive pictures of the police while ignoring the institutional and individual harms done.

PPA President Daryl Turner revealed the PPA's true attitude in several of the key articles, particularly one from July 1 focusing on the protests in Portland after another clash between alt- right demonstrators and anti-fascists (Antifa) on June 29 (see article). In the piece, which was quoted widely, Turner asked "Where are the voices condemning violence," completely unaware of the hypocrisy of what appears to be the city's most violent single institution-- which has engaged in 14 deadly force incidents in the last two years leaving eight people dead (see article). Because an alt-right blogger was the recipient of violence, Turner claims that if Antifa had been harmed, there would have been an independent investigation called. Instead, he says Mayor Ted Wheeler is "using the rank and file as a shield against the media" (not sure how that works), complaining that the PPB can't protect free speech because their "hands are tied." In a rebuttal email, PCW noted that this kind of language was used by those who wanted to increase the US military's firepower in the Viet Nam war. Along the same lines, Turner asks Wheeler to tell both sides to stop using violence and to "remove the handcuffs from our officers and let them stop the violence through strong and swift enforcement actions." To their credit, the Chief and Mayor both pushed back on the notion that there is any policy stopping the PPB from enforcing the law, but neither acknowledged the elephant in the room-- that Turner wants to use state violence to show people that violence isn't how to solve your problems.

On July 30, Turner returned to the topic: "We don't need to reinvent the wheel, we just need to use back-to-basics policing." He called for "pole cameras" to record the then-upcoming August 17 protest, even though collecting such information could be in violation of state law. He asked for officers to be "empowered with the resources to enforce the laws," later calling for "zero tolerance" (August 8), and crowing about the over-militarized final result as a "blueprint for future protests" (August 17).

Turner closed the July 30 piece with the words "Enough is enough," the name of both an anti-gang violence group and a neighborhood group organized against houseless people.

In a piece posted a few weeks earlier (on June 10), Turner went to bat for the officer who had killed David Downs the previous day. Stating that "no matter how officers try to de-escalate, no matter how many other force options officers have available, officers may have no choice but to protect life by using deadly force." Portland Copwatch (PCW) has written repeatedly about the use of the term "the officer had no choice" to make the death seem inevitable, though it is really a way officers tell themselves that when they are the ones using violence they are justified. (And our legal system supports them.) Along the same lines in the four-paragraph post, Turner claims officers never "want to have to use deadly force." He asserts the officers, detectives *and dispatchers* all showed "heroism" in this situation-- underscoring the inappropriate merging of 911 operators into the PPA months ago (PPR #77). He closes by talking about the loss of life, the tragic nature of the incidents, how the "hostage" was rescued and "no one else in the community was harmed." Except Mr. Downs, whose name Turner doesn't even invoke.

In the first, but not likely the last, piece highlighting the work of the Emergency Communications staff who are now PPA members, an article cross-posted from Multnomah County 911 recounts how a dispatcher talked a woman through childbirth (June 22).

Hating on Houseless Humans

Having already made himself a hero to the anti-houseless crowd, Turner continued his campaign in an interview with the Oregonian, posted to the PPA's Facebook feed on June 11. The headline was "Plan for Poop Problem" and it describes the City's plan to reduce the $316 per call cost of cleaning up human waste by paying $900,000 for portable toilets, some of which will be decorated with PDX Airport carpet or Trailblazers colors. Turner says the hard working taxpayers of Portland "deserve better," calling the humanitarian gesture a "pet project destined for failure" and recalling the "Portland loos." The loos were a brainchild of former Commissioner Randy Leonard, a patented self-contained stainless steel contraption which never quite took off the way they were envisioned.

In a separate piece he wrote on June 5 as a lead-in to a Forbes article about diseases among Los Angeles' houseless community, Turner makes the argument that such money would be better spent on mental health and drug rehab programs, complaining that the City is "only" focused on housing. This brings back PCW's call to demand that all officers have to go through a houseless immersion program, learning how to live on the street for at least 24 hours with no money, home, or identification. Turner says "the situation is bleak and getting worse." He quotes from the Forbes piece that in LA's suburbs 60% of calls are about "transients," and the cops say their only choices are to "do nothing, take the person to an ER to be stabilized, or make an arrest." Note that none of those options are to find the person housing, a bathroom, somewhere to store their belongings, a shower or other human needs, many of which the City is taking steps to provide-- albeit minimally because of the millions of dollars they waste on police salaries and overtime. Turner claims there's nobody to handle houseless people because of the "understaffed police," despite the verified reporting that about 50% of PPB's arrests have been of houseless persons (see article).

Ironically, perhaps, in his May 14 speech at the annual memorial for officers who die in the line of duty (last one in Portland that wasn't from an accident: 1998), Turner held up the diversity of the PPB including its members who are immigrants, and said their job is to treat everyone the same whether they are a "CEO of a company or living in a cardboard box under a bridge." Really, does that mean the other 50% of PPB's arrests in 2017 were of CEOs, because I don't remember reading that. Turner ruins the dignified nature of these thoughts by calling out the tribulations officers face: "false narratives, anti-police rhetoric and political agendas."

Backfiring Community Outreach: Pride Draws Critiques from Two Directions, Other "Engagement" Raises Eyebrows

The PPA posted a photo from the Bureau of officers at the Portland Gay Pride Parade on June 16. Leading up to the march, which marked 50 years since the uprising against homophobic New York Police at the Stonewall Inn, several activist groups questioned why police should march in the parade at all. Two comments on the PPA's Facebook post, however, went in quite the other direction, questioning why the PPB is "pandering to special interest groups" and whether there will be a "straight pride parade." As of August 20, the PPA did not block or remove these comments.

A photo posted on May 5 (Cinco de Mayo) shows Officer Jason Francis, a Euro-American cop (who was the subject of a misconduct appeal in 2007-- PPR #42 and who injured a woman by dragging her up a driveway in 1996-- PPR #19), next to a Latino convenience store clerk he befriended. The caption says Francis knew the clerk liked Lucha Libre wrestling and brought back masks from a vacation to Mexico. Somehow, this seems a little like cultural appropriation with a side of racism more than appropriate community outreach.

Putting Your Mouth Where the Money Is: Lobbying Through Facebook

On May 8 and 9, the PPA posted an excerpt from, then a link to an entire news release from Chief Danielle Outlaw which praises the work of the Gun Violence Reduction Team. They note that 322 "illegal" firearms were seized and that calls about shootings are down by 28% since the Team changed its focus from "Gangs" to "Gun Violence" in October. Only at the end of Outlaw's piece does it become clear why these statistics were released at this particular time of year: she says that terminating the program would be a mistake. This was clearly an effort to undercut Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty's effort to defund the GVRT at City Council on May 22 (see article).

Similarly, the mainstream media played a role in pushing to keep Portlanders paying for armed law enforcement in schools. On June 5, the PPA reposted a story by local ABC affiliate KATU-2 about Officer Carlos Ibarra, a School Resource Officer (SRO). Ibarra says that his job is not to look for students acting inappropriately, but to "keep [them] out of the criminal justice system." The gushing story recounts how Ibarra is willing to listen to students and looks for "red flags" so he can "put out fires," mentioning Ibarra's past (and, admittedly noble) action of getting housing for a homeless family in 2014. However, the piece talks about the unknown future of the SRO program while Council and the School Board argue about who should pay for the SROs (PPRs #76&77 and see article).

On April 18, the PPB posted (and PPA re-posted) a photo a of a School Resource Officer touching hands with kids at Cesar Chavez for High 5 Day.

On August 8, Turner posted a screed about the need to hire more police quickly because "nearly 150 cops will become eligible to retire" in August 2020. Returning to repeated complaints about how officers are stretched to the limit (see article), Turner asks how they are supposed to respond to "livability issues [and] gun violence" while also responding to the needs of vulnerable people in the community. In un-politically correct terms, Turner lists "the mentally ill, disabled, [and] houseless" rather than using the same language he does for "those facing addiction issues" (which lifts up their individual humanity without inappropriately labeling people). Turner singles out Commissioners Fish and Fritz as supportive of the cops-- leaving off Commissioners Eudaly and Hardesty. Quite political.

September, 2019
Also in PPR #78

Portland Copwatch
PO Box 42456
Portland, OR 97242
(503) 236-3065/ Incident Report Line (503) 321-5120
e-mail: copwatch@portlandcopwatch.org

Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.

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