Speaker 1: We're back and we're suing the cops. Uh talking. I
Speaker 1: just had a conversation in between episodes about the fact
Speaker 1: that both of us and everyone we know is suing
Speaker 1: the Portland police in some way. It's fun. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: how it's just so much a part of life that
Speaker 1: I just forget about it, and every once in a
Speaker 1: while I remember that, Um, I am suing the City
Speaker 1: of Portland. Good times. I I don't love lawsuits, but
Speaker 1: they happen. Um. Yeah, So Tuk, how are you his?
Speaker 1: His life changed radically for you in the last five minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a kombucha Now everything's looking up. Is a
Speaker 1: huge improvement. What flavor, grapefruit nice? It's exciting. I just
Speaker 1: want to information. You know, I haven't opened it yet,
Speaker 1: but I'll tell you. I'm sure. I'm sure it's great.
Speaker 1: A rinking. I have a diet orange crush um, and
Speaker 1: actually pretty recently I waterboarded a friend of mine with
Speaker 1: diet orange crush as an experiment, and it turns out
Speaker 1: it's terrible. Shocked that if you combine if you combine
Speaker 1: diet orange crush and waterboarding, it's bad. I know. Well,
Speaker 1: I can update this kombucha is good, fantastic. What are
Speaker 1: you drinking, Sophie. It's a brambleberry hybiscus tea. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: everyone's fancy today. It's very well. Orange crush is very fancy. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's several words involved in describing It's not like water,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like diet orange crush, bramble berry iced tea,
Speaker 1: a lot of consonants. Now that you guys are just
Speaker 1: hooked on this conversation, this is the whole podcast. So
Speaker 1: I've decided that it's going to be too bleak to
Speaker 1: keep going with this conversation, and so I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about beverages for an hour. Welcome to Behind the
Speaker 1: Beverages about things that drink. Uh no, this is this
Speaker 1: is a podcast about bad people, um the worst people.
Speaker 1: And today we're talking again about the Portland Police Association
Speaker 1: and kind of just about the Portland Police which is
Speaker 1: shockingly one of the most influential police departments and unions
Speaker 1: in the entire country, maybe the most. You could make
Speaker 1: a case, although the NYPD isd um so after after
Speaker 1: single handedly doing more damage to Portland's economy than the
Speaker 1: decades of protests that would follow. The Portland Police Association
Speaker 1: was in a pretty good position as nineteen seventy dawned.
Speaker 1: Their first big test of the modern era came in
Speaker 1: May of that year, when students and faculty at Portland
Speaker 1: State University went on strike to protest the Kent State
Speaker 1: shootings in the Vietnam War. After four days, the protesters
Speaker 1: struck an agreement with the city to end the strike.
Speaker 1: So that's good, right, protesters go on strike and solidarity
Speaker 1: over a shooting in another state. The city's like, we
Speaker 1: get what you're doing. Let's negotiate a way to bring
Speaker 1: this to an in then the negotiate a way to
Speaker 1: bring this to an end. Sounds ideal and very democratic.
Speaker 1: But before the protesters could start to disassemble the structures
Speaker 1: they'd set up for the occupation, the Portland Police Riot
Speaker 1: control team showed up to take down a hospital tent.
Speaker 1: Protesters felt betrayed by this, since they had already worked
Speaker 1: out a plan to end the strike with the city.
Speaker 1: They walled off the tent with their bodies. This piste
Speaker 1: off the riot cops, who are more or less the
Speaker 1: same as the riot cops we have today. The riot
Speaker 1: squad tear gas the students and professors and then charged
Speaker 1: into the gas cloud to beat them with batons. Yeah
Speaker 1: sounds right, sounds like they do. Yeah. One officer noted
Speaker 1: that the violence was not pretty, but the streets were cleared,
Speaker 1: which again would have happened if the cops hadn't shown up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: An activist who was present, Lester Lamb, recalled his friend's
Speaker 1: head being split open like a pumpkin by a riot
Speaker 1: cops baton. Thirty one people went to the hospital for
Speaker 1: injuries sustained from police violence. Um. The whole mess set
Speaker 1: off an avalante of condemnation from local media, which had
Speaker 1: either ignored or been critical of the protests before the
Speaker 1: cops beat everybody up. After what became called the park
Speaker 1: Block Riots, the PPB faced some of the first mass
Speaker 1: criticism for violence to protesters in its history. This was
Speaker 1: largely due to the fact that its victims had been
Speaker 1: mostly white. Um. Go figure. The bad pr was enough
Speaker 1: that the Portland Police Bureau made a public statement where
Speaker 1: they agreed to never use force against non violent protesters. Again.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, they well, it's so nice. How that paved
Speaker 1: the way for them just being so chill and cool today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why. For example, when people sat in an intersection
Speaker 1: last May. They did not beat them in the face
Speaker 1: with sticks that would go against their promised. The controversy
Speaker 1: over the park block riots faded soon enough, and the
Speaker 1: Portland Police Association succeeded in winning another contract in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two and yet more money. They withdrew from the
Speaker 1: International Police Union they'd helped to start in March of
Speaker 1: that year after deciding that it lacked focus in direction.
Speaker 1: The Portland Police Association was now an independent union because
Speaker 1: they also pulled out of AFTS MET with no ties
Speaker 1: to any national organization. It remains that way to this day,
Speaker 1: loyal to no one but itself. Yeah, they don't want
Speaker 1: any influences that might give them like a conscience or something,
Speaker 1: you know, stay here to their ideology. Not even influences
Speaker 1: that would lead them to support other cops who weren't
Speaker 1: Portland cops. It's pretty good. So the p p A
Speaker 1: had ensured that its officers were highly paid and basically unaccountable.
Speaker 1: Now that the President had been said that Portland cops
Speaker 1: could go on strike if they were angry and created
Speaker 1: the local economy, there was very little that the city
Speaker 1: government could hold over them. As you might expect this
Speaker 1: emboldened the worst officers in the department to carry out
Speaker 1: acts of horrifying racial violence. On March fourteenth, nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: Portland police officer Kenneth Sandford shot seventeen year old Ricky
Speaker 1: Johnson in the back him Johnson was the fourth person
Speaker 1: of color shot and killed by Portland police in five months,
Speaker 1: and his death ignited a city wide outrage. The details
Speaker 1: of the killing were just sketchy enough that even the
Speaker 1: city's white majority couldn't all sit by and pretend it
Speaker 1: hadn't happened. In essence, two kids with an empty, broken
Speaker 1: gun had been ordering Chinese food and then robbing cab
Speaker 1: drivers who dropped it off. One of those drivers called
Speaker 1: the cops, and they set up a sting operation. Now,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that everything in the PPBS by laws
Speaker 1: said that this kind of operation should only be conducted
Speaker 1: by multiple officers, they sent one guy in. They dressed
Speaker 1: him as a cab driver, and he had a gun
Speaker 1: hidden in an empty to go box of food. When
Speaker 1: he showed up at the house, the kids pulled a
Speaker 1: gun on him, so he pulled his own gun. What
Speaker 1: happened next is debated. The cop claimed that Ricky knelt
Speaker 1: down and prepared to fire, so he shot the boy dead.
Speaker 1: Ricky's friend claimed that both boys ran like hell and
Speaker 1: dropped the gun immediately, and then the officers shot Ricky
Speaker 1: in the back. The physical evidence supported the second version
Speaker 1: of events. Investigators found the broken gun ten feet away
Speaker 1: from Ricky's body, and Ricky had been shot in the
Speaker 1: back of the head, which probably wouldn't have happened if
Speaker 1: he'd been facing the officer. Just physics and such, many
Speaker 1: white Portlanders were able to see that while armed robbery is,
Speaker 1: you know, not good, shooting a fleeing robber in the
Speaker 1: back of the head is worse. The rage was augmented
Speaker 1: by the fact that the PPB had murdered again three
Speaker 1: other black men over the course of the last several months.
Speaker 1: All of the cases had been sketchy in some way.
Speaker 1: Kenneth Allen, aged seven, was murdered in a prostitution sting.
Speaker 1: His death was ruled a justifiable homicide because he had
Speaker 1: a gun, but the gun was never found and introduced
Speaker 1: into evidence. The cops just said that he had one,
Speaker 1: and also he was shot multiple times in the back.
Speaker 1: Um hmmm, yeah, it's just sucking me up a little bit.
Speaker 1: How I guess this isn't pp A because it's right
Speaker 1: across the river or popleb. But like such a similar
Speaker 1: thing is happening, like right now across the Rand Vancouver
Speaker 1: and cool. Just just how it goes forever, Just how
Speaker 1: it goes forever. This is the song that never ends.
Speaker 1: Charles Minifrey was killed after twenty mile car chase which
Speaker 1: started when Canby, Oregon cops pulled him over without probable cause.
Speaker 1: I witnessed his report that minife had his hands in
Speaker 1: the air and was standing outside his car when he
Speaker 1: was shot to death. None of the witnesses to his death,
Speaker 1: or the witnesses to any of the other deaths of
Speaker 1: black men killed by Portland police during this period, were
Speaker 1: called to testify in court. And again, all of these
Speaker 1: men were black men who lived in Albina. Uh. None
Speaker 1: of their deaths provoked any outcry until Officer Sanford shot
Speaker 1: Ricky Johnson in the back of the head. Everyone living
Speaker 1: in the year of the George Floyd Uprising knows how
Speaker 1: this works. It's kind of impossible to predict when the
Speaker 1: violent death of a person of color at the hands
Speaker 1: of cops will provoke outraged and enough white people that
Speaker 1: the police actually have to address it. Um. But it
Speaker 1: did here um. And I should note here that in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two there were also plenty of back the
Speaker 1: blue types who defended the PPB from all of its murdering.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote from Katherine Nelson again here. One citizen
Speaker 1: even sent officer Sandford, who shot the seventeen year old,
Speaker 1: a twenty dollar check for his vacation fund and offered
Speaker 1: to provide him with a babysitter. The donor, Esther Nichols,
Speaker 1: stated that a community cannot say or accept that black
Speaker 1: is bad, so it has to be the police that
Speaker 1: are wrong. What. Yeah, I'll read that again. Esther Nichols,
Speaker 1: who gave money to the cop that killed that guy,
Speaker 1: stated that the community cannot say or except that black
Speaker 1: is bad, so it has to be the police that
Speaker 1: are wrong. Cool esther, You see, rad Esther, Esther, thanks
Speaker 1: for being really openly racist as opposed to just claiming
Speaker 1: you support cops. Uh, that's at least honest. She's like
Speaker 1: the progenitor of all the cop go fund me is now.
Speaker 1: But it's just one person, master. Yeah, you seem cool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Johnson's death revealed that a large portion of Portland's white
Speaker 1: residents held racist views and respected the decision of the
Speaker 1: police to use extreme violence against black citizens. Uh Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Johnson's death inspired black Portland's to create the Black Justice Committee.
Speaker 1: The b j C teamed up with several existing advocacy
Speaker 1: organizations to pushed the city to order an inquest into
Speaker 1: Johnson's death. A public inquest is essentially a trial that
Speaker 1: occurs after a suspicious death, and it was hoped that
Speaker 1: this would make it clear that criminal behavior had been,
Speaker 1: you know, evident on behalf of the officer involved. The
Speaker 1: Portland Black Student Union was another group that pushed for
Speaker 1: the same cause. Now, when awful lot of Portland's were
Speaker 1: willing to support a public inquest, this was a very
Speaker 1: popular cause. It was, after all, a pretty basic thing
Speaker 1: to do and not exactly a revolutionary demand, like we
Speaker 1: should investigate the suspicious killing. Is you can get most
Speaker 1: people on board that thing. There were, however, some boot
Speaker 1: liquers who thought this went too far. Opponents of the
Speaker 1: inquest wrote into local papers complaining that Johnson's death was
Speaker 1: being turned into a race issue. Watford Read of Portland
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to the police chief in which he
Speaker 1: complained that a public inquest would prove black people are
Speaker 1: privileged in Portland. Pardons when they're murdered, they're privileged. Uh
Speaker 1: Uh fucking jelical catch ship where everyone's just like the Actually,
Speaker 1: the most privileged thing would just be to send to
Speaker 1: the heavens right now. Uh. It would be fun if
Speaker 1: his argument was like, well, no, this planet is terrible
Speaker 1: and being to send out of life. Uh. Mayor Neil
Speaker 1: gold Schmidt, who was basically the same as every other
Speaker 1: mayor of Portland as ever, had knew that outrage over
Speaker 1: the Johnson shooting was too popular for him to come
Speaker 1: out against the inquest, but he was also terrified of
Speaker 1: the p p A, who were clearly more powerful than
Speaker 1: the city government. So gold Schmidt tried to thread the
Speaker 1: needle by supporting the inquest in order to appease the
Speaker 1: liberals and stating publicly that he expected Officer Sanford to
Speaker 1: be totally vindicated. He actually announced that he thought the
Speaker 1: inquest would be a good opportunity for black Portlanders to
Speaker 1: learn why it was totally okay to shoot a seventeen
Speaker 1: year old in the back of the head. Great Mayor
Speaker 1: solid marrying He does sound a bit like our current mayor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna totally about Portland is all the good mayor's,
Speaker 1: all the great mayors that we have here. So the
Speaker 1: p P as president at this point was a total
Speaker 1: dick bag named Stan Peters, which is a dick bag name,
Speaker 1: like it's a name of a jerk. Uh so he was.
Speaker 1: Peters was enraged by even the mild support the mayor
Speaker 1: gave to the idea of an inquest. Um He was
Speaker 1: just like, this is like the fact that you would
Speaker 1: even question one of my cops shooting somebody is offensive
Speaker 1: to me. The police chief was a little bit more
Speaker 1: reasonable and decided the benefits of having an inquest outweighed
Speaker 1: the risks. In the end, the inquest happened, and it
Speaker 1: revealed some pretty damning stuff about the conduct of Portland
Speaker 1: police officers from Katherine Nelson. Witnesses who testified included Melva Thrower,
Speaker 1: a neighbor on North Gandon Bean. She testified that the
Speaker 1: officers used profanity and handled Zachary roughly upon his arrest.
Speaker 1: That was the other kid who was with the kid
Speaker 1: who got shot to death. She stated that they threw
Speaker 1: Zachary on top of the police car before tossing him
Speaker 1: into the back seat. When Zachary asked about Johnson, they
Speaker 1: said that bitch is dead and asked where does that
Speaker 1: motherfucker live? Instead of focusing on the treatment of Zachary,
Speaker 1: More questioned the officers about throwers testimony and asked if
Speaker 1: they used profanity. The officers admitted that profanity was used,
Speaker 1: but they couldn't remember what profanities. Another officer claimed that
Speaker 1: he heard loud language but could not determine that they
Speaker 1: were profanities. After the assistant district attorney question Stanford, the
Speaker 1: six person jury voted as to whether Sanford should be
Speaker 1: held accountable. Vote returned five to one that Sanford's actions
Speaker 1: were justifiable. The only black jury member casted the soul
Speaker 1: vote against Sanford's innocence. So lots going on there. One
Speaker 1: is that after hearing that they had referred to they
Speaker 1: had like said that bitch is dead and asked where
Speaker 1: he lived and all that sort of stuff, and had
Speaker 1: abused an arrested person. The district attorney's concerned was that
Speaker 1: they'd used profanity, which is problem here. The real issue
Speaker 1: cops are cursing. You can murder people, but you can't
Speaker 1: call them a bit afterwards, that's offensive. That's gonna make
Speaker 1: people angry. Yeah. Um, and yeah. Also that obviously all
Speaker 1: of the white people and the jury voted that the
Speaker 1: cop was right to shoot that kid, and uh, the
Speaker 1: only black jury member was the only vote against his innocence.
Speaker 1: I will state here that the story did not end
Speaker 1: happily for officers Sanford. Despite being described as a model
Speaker 1: officer prior to the shooting, Sandford received increasing complaints about
Speaker 1: his performance after the inquest. He was suspended from duty
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five for accepting a gift from a
Speaker 1: citizen in nineteen seventy seven for the use of illegal
Speaker 1: drugs while off duty. Later that year, he was put
Speaker 1: on permanent disability for PTSD. And this next bit is interesting,
Speaker 1: not that I expect people to have sympathy for this guy,
Speaker 1: but that it makes the point that the Portland Police
Speaker 1: Union is actually bad for officers in some ways to
Speaker 1: the p PBS. Culture of resistance supported by the p
Speaker 1: p A negated Sanford's professional and moral accountability. P p
Speaker 1: A president Stan Peters claimed Stanford would receive psychological help
Speaker 1: after Johnson's death, yet there is no evidence that he
Speaker 1: did to so easily brush aside. Johnson's death is just
Speaker 1: afiable emphasized not only the inadequate services Portland police officers
Speaker 1: received from the Bureau, but also the unspoken norm that
Speaker 1: black lives did not matter. This obviously and ultimately disrespected
Speaker 1: the sacred deus of black lives throughout Portland and question
Speaker 1: the worth of black people kind of like, it's bad
Speaker 1: for everyone for white supremacy to be enshrined by institutions. Arguably,
Speaker 1: but does that stop it? No, not at all. This
Speaker 1: is bad for everyone. Should we stop it in the
Speaker 1: next fifty years? No, absolutely not. Let's keep having the
Speaker 1: same fight went on. We don't have anything else to
Speaker 1: do in society. Everything else is good, Yeah, everything else
Speaker 1: is smooth. Them just chugging right along, like that train
Speaker 1: the police used to shoot Longshore from. So the rest
Speaker 1: of the early seventies continued the by now well worn
Speaker 1: pattern of Portland police only suffering consequences when they offended
Speaker 1: the white majority with their actions. In nineteen, the Bureau
Speaker 1: was rocked by a series of scandals in the Narcotics Division,
Speaker 1: most of which revolved around the fact that the entire
Speaker 1: Narcotics Division was addicted to illegal drugs one PPB detective
Speaker 1: testified that narcotics officers frequently did huge amounts of cocaine
Speaker 1: before going out on drug rates. Mean, I'm gonna be honest,
Speaker 1: I've seen them riding along on their Riot vans and
Speaker 1: thought it would be fun to do a funckload of
Speaker 1: blow and then like hang off the side of a
Speaker 1: four D F three fifty rolling around the streets. That
Speaker 1: does seem rad is It's just like how not subtle
Speaker 1: it is? That just like makes my brain explode, where
Speaker 1: it's like, let us do drugs before busting people for
Speaker 1: drugs for drugs good, because that way we'll have more drugs, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: which is actually getting ready to oh my god, it's
Speaker 1: a perfect cycle. There is at least one clear case
Speaker 1: of the PPB murdering and then faking the suicide of
Speaker 1: a drug dealer in order to get his heroine. Um good,
Speaker 1: good guys Portland' narcotics cops. Uh. And in fact, when
Speaker 1: that dead kid's mom pressed for an investigation into his death,
Speaker 1: she received a phone call from a white dude who
Speaker 1: was probably a Portland narcotics officer. He told her to
Speaker 1: back off on the investigation unless she wanted more family
Speaker 1: members dead. Yeah, that's good. Um, good police good, fine,
Speaker 1: that's fine police work. So the detective Dupay who was
Speaker 1: the uh, I guess the best Portland copper're going to
Speaker 1: talk about in this he's the one who reported that
Speaker 1: Portland narcotics officers were doing a shipload a blow before
Speaker 1: going out on drug raids. He investigated the murder of
Speaker 1: this drug dealer and he submitted a report to the
Speaker 1: police chief with his findings, which were pretty damning to
Speaker 1: the Portland Police Bureau. Years later, when he attempted to
Speaker 1: get a copy of the report, I think to give
Speaker 1: to a reporter, but I'm not sure, a clerk told
Speaker 1: him that it had been shredded as soon as he
Speaker 1: filed it, like almost immediately. That's good stuff, good stuff.
Speaker 1: If you're wondering why didn't anyone do anything about these
Speaker 1: drug adduled out of control cops, the answer is p
Speaker 1: p A. President Stan Peters one of the worst people
Speaker 1: to ever live in the city of Portland. He was
Speaker 1: a potent negotiator, though, and when the city negotiators angered
Speaker 1: him during a contract dispute like this is the story
Speaker 1: that everyone tells about Stan Peters. He was negotiating with
Speaker 1: the city for more money, and when they wouldn't play
Speaker 1: ball with him, he drew his gun and slammed it
Speaker 1: on the table and told them these are my ground rules. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I just sat here. They can see I just sat
Speaker 1: here with my mom and went for like thirty straight seconds.
Speaker 1: And they just they just keep out doing themselves. It's
Speaker 1: of themselves, and they keep doing ship. That is again
Speaker 1: literal criminal stuff, right, It's a thing. No, it's just
Speaker 1: a thing where like I feel like we get desensitized
Speaker 1: to it, Like I get desensitized at anything that they
Speaker 1: do because I'm just like, yeah, of course they're doing that.
Speaker 1: And then you know, you know what the protests that
Speaker 1: we were at, Like someone outside would be like, wait,
Speaker 1: they're you know, snatching people up in on my fans
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, is that not normal? And They're
Speaker 1: like that's not They're not supposed to do that. I'm like, oh, interesting,
Speaker 1: So like when they do that, I'm just like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess technically or not supposed to do that just
Speaker 1: seems like something they would do. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: local cop that we all know, Brett Taylor, who is
Speaker 1: most famous in the city of Portland for kind of
Speaker 1: randomly stabbing car tires during riots, um, for no real
Speaker 1: purpose that I can see most of the time. I
Speaker 1: originally knew him as cop who won't stop pointing his
Speaker 1: gun at people's heads. That's when call him. It was
Speaker 1: a long moniker, but he just let everyone else would
Speaker 1: like point out the ground. He would just be still
Speaker 1: having at your head. But yeah, then he switched to
Speaker 1: just like really just hating car tires. Yeah he's he's
Speaker 1: really fucking loves to stab car time. Does he have
Speaker 1: the joy in his body language? Yeah? Um. He Among
Speaker 1: other things, we had like a recent like city like
Speaker 1: in testimony or whatever on police violence, and somebody came
Speaker 1: on who he had shot in the groin and Brett
Speaker 1: had to testify that he had never knowingly targeted the
Speaker 1: growing area. And in another point, he was talking about
Speaker 1: having addressed protesters and like he was stopped by the
Speaker 1: modern said, by addressed, you mean you threw grenades at them? Uh,
Speaker 1: fucking love the Portland police. They're cool. Then they're cool.
Speaker 1: Now start a conversation with a grenade. I love dialogue.
Speaker 1: So stan uh, the guy who negotiates with a handgun
Speaker 1: wound up having an influence that extended far, far beyond
Speaker 1: the bounds of the Rose City from pickets, pistols, and politics.
Speaker 1: Shortly after Peters became the union president, he introduced a
Speaker 1: concept that was relatively new to police officers, political involvement.
Speaker 1: Peter's predecessor, David Callison, had dabbled lightly, even inviting controversy
Speaker 1: by offering a PPA endorsement and a few local races,
Speaker 1: but Peter's scope was broader than that. He wanted the
Speaker 1: Union to be a political force to be reckoned with.
Speaker 1: He was tired of the city and state officials writing
Speaker 1: rough shot over police with seemingly little interest in its
Speaker 1: rank and file concerns or causes. He wanted the police
Speaker 1: to be listened to better. Yet, he wanted politicians to
Speaker 1: quake in their boots if the police were not happy. Huh,
Speaker 1: And so he pulled his handgun out. Yeah, I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: he did do that. Um. He's also the start in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways of police nationwide getting directly involved
Speaker 1: in political races and having police unions directly endorsed candidates
Speaker 1: and taking partisan stances. We can also thank the p
Speaker 1: p A for a lot of that. Yeah no, I yeah,
Speaker 1: And that showed up last month, this month. Gosh, every
Speaker 1: month is a years long. Yeah, I mean this month. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every month of this year has lasted longer than all
Speaker 1: of the history we're covering in this podcast. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is true. But you know what doesn't take long tuck
Speaker 1: goods and services. Yeah, it doesn't take long to develop
Speaker 1: an appreciation for the fine products and services that support
Speaker 1: this Podcas asked, can't wait we are back? Okay. So
Speaker 1: the p p A had made history by becoming the
Speaker 1: first successful police union, and it made history again here
Speaker 1: by setting a precedent that police unions would involve themselves
Speaker 1: directly in local and eventually national races. Stan was clear
Speaker 1: that his motivation for doing this was to make local
Speaker 1: elected leaders afraid of him. This, he knew, was the
Speaker 1: only way that the bureau could protect itself from the
Speaker 1: dangers of democracy. Yeah, Portland police were going to keep
Speaker 1: shooting people and engaging in rampant corruption that was going
Speaker 1: to continue to piss Portlanders off. If they wanted to
Speaker 1: avoid real consequences for this behavior, the p p A
Speaker 1: would have to insert themselves into politics, So they started
Speaker 1: donating the city council candidates paying to run ads attacking
Speaker 1: leaders who threatened to force any kind of accountability on them.
Speaker 1: Other police unions around the country paid attention, and true
Speaker 1: to form, followed suit. In nineteen seventy, one of those
Speaker 1: coke adult narcotics cops we've been talking about, Officer David Crowther,
Speaker 1: was shot dead during a drug rate on a motorcycle gang.
Speaker 1: Since he was, I mean, I don't know specifically that
Speaker 1: he was a coke head, but other Portland's cops say
Speaker 1: the narcotics cops were all coke heads, So one one
Speaker 1: assumes I am sorry if I unfairlylandered him as a
Speaker 1: coke head just because he was in a unit of
Speaker 1: coke heads. Um, and there's nothing wrong with being a
Speaker 1: coke head as long as you weren't also carrying out
Speaker 1: drug rates. You know, no shame on cocaine. Uh weren't
Speaker 1: you wistfully tweeting about cocaine like yesterday? It was mostly
Speaker 1: a joke. It's been a long time and happened in
Speaker 1: countries where it's legal. Let's just say that. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah, since he was, you know, possibly a
Speaker 1: cokehead cop who may very well have helped murder people
Speaker 1: because again, his unit definitely murdered at least one person
Speaker 1: in stage it as a suicide. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say it was a tremendous tragedy that David Crowther got
Speaker 1: shot busting another gang um. But the hilariously pro p
Speaker 1: p A book Pistols, Pickets and Politics notes the violent
Speaker 1: death of a fellow officer was a terrible blow to
Speaker 1: the members of the Portland Police Bureau and devastating to
Speaker 1: the Drug Unit. But it was not the end of
Speaker 1: the nightmare. And what that book calls a nightmare was
Speaker 1: the fact that Internal Affairs had opened an investigation into
Speaker 1: the murders, drug dealing and drug abuse by numerous members
Speaker 1: of the Narcotics Division. What a nightmare being held accountable
Speaker 1: for our actions. That's for other people. Yeah, I too
Speaker 1: have nightmares that I will get in trouble for doing
Speaker 1: a shipload of drugs and murdering people. Uh yeah. One
Speaker 1: of the most damning complaints against the Drug Unit was
Speaker 1: that they had planted drugs on suspects in order to
Speaker 1: charge innocent people with felony crimes they had not committed.
Speaker 1: But that's not the nightmare. The nightmare the nightmares them
Speaker 1: getting caught. Yes, now I should note that police planting
Speaker 1: fake drugs or drugs that they stole from other people
Speaker 1: and then planting them all people who didn't have those drugs.
Speaker 1: This happens constantly all around the country. Google the Dallas
Speaker 1: fake drugs scandal if you want another example of huge
Speaker 1: numbers of officers being involved in the planting of fake
Speaker 1: drugs on people. Anyway, law and order is important, um so.
Speaker 1: The internal affairs investigation was completed in the summer of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty and it led to the resignations of two
Speaker 1: officers who'd been assigned to the narcotics unit. One of
Speaker 1: those officers was later arrested on charges of illegally obtaining
Speaker 1: narcotics from a drug dealer with the intent to deal.
Speaker 1: He was convicted, and the p PA did not sue
Speaker 1: to get this cop back his job. So that's we
Speaker 1: found a line. The investigation revealed at least fifty nine
Speaker 1: cases where people had been convicted due to falsified evidence
Speaker 1: from Portland's cops, and thirty five more cases that were
Speaker 1: in the process of being like like argued out based
Speaker 1: on the same bogus evidence. And all of these cases,
Speaker 1: nearly a hundred, were overturned. Even Officer Crowther's killer was
Speaker 1: released from prison after it was proven that the cops
Speaker 1: who testified at his trial head led on the stand. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's very funny. Actually, that's extremely funny because he's absolutely
Speaker 1: a murderer and they just couldn't stop themselves from lying.
Speaker 1: Uh so, you know he's an extra murderer. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would say, you're shooting yourself in the foot, but maybe
Speaker 1: you're shooting your friend in the back. Yeah. So by
Speaker 1: the time rolled around, the Portland Police were not doing
Speaker 1: particularly well in the Winning Hearts and Minds department, and
Speaker 1: things got worse for them on March twelve. The Burger
Speaker 1: Barn was at the time one of very few black
Speaker 1: owned businesses in Portland. It was, of course, in Albina.
Speaker 1: The cops claimed that the Burger Barn was a major
Speaker 1: gathering place for criminal activity. Gangsters and drug dealers and
Speaker 1: pimps would all that meet there all the time. And
Speaker 1: I have no idea if this was true. Considering the
Speaker 1: fact that the PPBS whole Drug Unit was a bunch
Speaker 1: of coke hed murderers who planted fake drugs on people,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take what they say with a grain
Speaker 1: of salt. Here, Like the p p A book like
Speaker 1: just sort of goes like, well, criminals were gathering here,
Speaker 1: and cops were just so angry that that all these
Speaker 1: people they couldn't catch were always gathering at this restaurant
Speaker 1: and that's why they did what they did. But it's
Speaker 1: like they also led all the time. So yeah, um yeah. So,
Speaker 1: as the story goes to Portland police officers got fed
Speaker 1: up with all of the bad men hanging out at
Speaker 1: this restaurant and they decided to get revenged with what
Speaker 1: the p p as biographer describes as a prank. This
Speaker 1: prank involved gathering up for dead possums and dumping them
Speaker 1: at the doorway of the burger barn. Now, if you
Speaker 1: aren't aware, the word possum has been a derogatory slur
Speaker 1: for black people since the early eighteen hundreds. It has
Speaker 1: the same etymology as the use of like the term
Speaker 1: raccoon as in the same sense, like that they come
Speaker 1: from the same origin point. This was not a prank
Speaker 1: by dumping dead possums at the door of a black
Speaker 1: owned business. These cops were making what amounted to a
Speaker 1: death threat, right, Like, that's what that means, um, not,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't call it a prank. The officers took no
Speaker 1: steps to be stealthy about what they were doing. And
Speaker 1: according to the Power family, who owned to the restaurant,
Speaker 1: and this was just the latest in a long line
Speaker 1: of harassing actions from the Portland Police, they believed this
Speaker 1: harassment was designed to scare away their customers and destroy
Speaker 1: the business. You should probably also keep in mind that
Speaker 1: while the Portland Police claimed this restaurant was a famous
Speaker 1: taunt of drug dealers and pimps, for literal decades prostitution
Speaker 1: and drug dealing in Albino had been carried out under
Speaker 1: the approval and sometimes the direction of the Portland Police. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So an investigation was launched and the officers responsible admitted
Speaker 1: what they've done immediately. They were not publicly identified because
Speaker 1: there was a clause in the pp A contract that
Speaker 1: said officers who were disciplined should not be disciplined publicly.
Speaker 1: In other words, the p p A contract guaranteed that
Speaker 1: officers who harmed people would not be publicly named or punished,
Speaker 1: which some might suggest means they probably wouldn't be punished
Speaker 1: at all. This is now the standard nationwide. So yes,
Speaker 1: it's frustrating and consistent. It's not great. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of now when just for people who aren't aware, maybe
Speaker 1: everyone ideas, uh, they actually covered all the name badges
Speaker 1: and numbers on the Portland Police and so there is
Speaker 1: actually no way to hold them accountable. And the only
Speaker 1: thing you can do is like submit a description to
Speaker 1: PPP and they're like, oh, yeah, well we'll look into
Speaker 1: it privately. You know, you're not allowed to like name
Speaker 1: the person who shot you in the head, because that
Speaker 1: would be going too far according to the p p A.
Speaker 1: Apparently that would be. But whenever they arrest people, they
Speaker 1: will tweet out all of their identifying information. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: those people are getting dogs. It's fair, fair, is what
Speaker 1: it is? Fair, cool, good, just or just. Now. In
Speaker 1: this case, there was enough public outrage that the p
Speaker 1: p A couldn't just sweep things under the rugs and
Speaker 1: do an internal investigation. The officers responsible, Craig Ward and
Speaker 1: Jim Galloway, voluntarily appeared at a press conference before black
Speaker 1: community leaders. They identified themselves and apologized, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote here from Pickets, Pistols, and Politics. Ward and Galloway
Speaker 1: claimed they had acted out of frustration, not racial hatred.
Speaker 1: When they made their late night deposit of the possums
Speaker 1: at the restaurant's door. But the black community, already incensed
Speaker 1: over incidents of alleged discrimination by police, labeled the possum
Speaker 1: dumping is more evidence of racism and deliberate targeting of
Speaker 1: blacks by police. Just a month and a half earlier,
Speaker 1: Black United Front co chairman Ron Herndon and neighborhood activists
Speaker 1: Vestia Loving had called on the United Nations to investigate
Speaker 1: human rights violations in the Oregon because of the high
Speaker 1: percentage of blacks that had they said, had been killed
Speaker 1: by police over the previous ten years. Um yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that people had called on the UN to
Speaker 1: investigate or get police for racism. Um. Probably not the
Speaker 1: last time, but yeah, that's wild. Yeah, yeah, we could
Speaker 1: use another UN investigation, although that would probably just increase
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theories that Antifa's part of a UN scheme
Speaker 1: to take over the United States. Is that actually already
Speaker 1: absolutely I missed that one with the U n There's
Speaker 1: too many Antifa's doing too show it once it's time
Speaker 1: to keep jack. I I wasn't going to throw out
Speaker 1: criticisms here, but I do think they're they're going a
Speaker 1: little bit broad um, they're trying to provide rest brators,
Speaker 1: they're making suit for my family, and they're taking over
Speaker 1: the u N. So. The Black United Front is one
Speaker 1: of the advocacy groups that I don't think they'd formed
Speaker 1: over the outrage in Rickie Johnson's death, but they had
Speaker 1: really like come together in a big way after that
Speaker 1: because a number of groups that formed after Johnson's death
Speaker 1: had been merged into the United Front. They gave a
Speaker 1: press conference themselves where they pointed out that the possum
Speaker 1: incident was part of a pattern of police harassment of
Speaker 1: black Portland's. The p p as paid biographer rights. Begrudgingly,
Speaker 1: the people of Portland's seemed to agree. For the most part,
Speaker 1: public sympathy lay with the power family in the black community,
Speaker 1: not with the police. Yes, I'm so proud of everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they figured it out. Yeah, two protesters picketed city hall
Speaker 1: and lo and behold, this forced the police chief and
Speaker 1: commissioner to fire officers ward in Galloway. Great, surely that's
Speaker 1: the end of the story. And no one ever did
Speaker 1: anything racist again, No, uh no, they immediately did something
Speaker 1: racist because Stan Peters was still the head of the
Speaker 1: Portland Police Association, and he was pissed as hell. Quote,
Speaker 1: it appeared that no one was willing to stand up
Speaker 1: for Ward and Galloway, no one but stand Peters. As
Speaker 1: president of the Portland Police Association, it was his duty
Speaker 1: to protect the rights of members. Once the executive board
Speaker 1: determined that warden Galloway had not committed a crime and
Speaker 1: that they had a legitimate grievance due to their summary
Speaker 1: dismissal from their jobs, the union, led by Peters, rose
Speaker 1: up to defend them. Is good, It's so cool that
Speaker 1: they just like, I want to make sure that you
Speaker 1: have your legal right to be racist. Yeah. The p
Speaker 1: PA was saying that as long as Portland cops didn't
Speaker 1: break the law, it was okay for them to racially
Speaker 1: harass citizens. Like that's the argument Peters is making. Peters
Speaker 1: was a rampaging racist and sexist by the way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I could tell from your intro. He yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that. Good can see this this dude with
Speaker 1: the terrible mustache, Robert Yes, you know he has a
Speaker 1: mustache by the name stand Peters, and the fact that
Speaker 1: he was a cop, like he has to have had
Speaker 1: a mustache. The universe would have shattered into a thousand
Speaker 1: pieces if he had been a clean shaven He's like,
Speaker 1: this is a terrible face. I'm guessing this is the
Speaker 1: right guy. Yeah, No, he's he's he looks exactly. If
Speaker 1: you just picture old timey cop in your head, it's
Speaker 1: Stan Peters, like seventies cop. Yeah. I just it just
Speaker 1: reminds me so much of like, not Stan Peters in
Speaker 1: his face. I don't know about that, but it just
Speaker 1: reminds me so much about like people who somehow conflate
Speaker 1: the Second Amendment with like the right to say whatever
Speaker 1: the funk you want and still keep your job. It's
Speaker 1: like that thing. It's like, Oh, because you legally can
Speaker 1: threaten people's lives by leaving dead possums outside of their job,
Speaker 1: you also should be able to keep your job and
Speaker 1: still do that, because those two things are the same. Also,
Speaker 1: I would guess that if protesters made an explicit death
Speaker 1: threat towards officers in a similar way to the officers
Speaker 1: had threatened to kill members of the Power family, they
Speaker 1: would probably be arrested. M some people made some death
Speaker 1: threats against me, and all I get to do is say,
Speaker 1: hope that won't kill me. Well, yeah, but you know
Speaker 1: you're not a cop to No, I know, made a mistake,
Speaker 1: just kidding. Should have been a copy in your life
Speaker 1: would matter. Wow. I just opened the photo and it
Speaker 1: is truly everything I imagined and more. Yeah, he doesn't
Speaker 1: go and I kind of imagine him being bald. He
Speaker 1: does have some top hair. Wow, this mustache. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: know it is a It is a cop stash. It
Speaker 1: is a powerful cop stash. He's like leaning against a desk,
Speaker 1: just like it. Rules. Don't mean the stereotype, but he
Speaker 1: is cop ugly. Yeah, no, he looks he looks like
Speaker 1: a cop. If you saw him on the street and
Speaker 1: you were a director and you were trying to cast
Speaker 1: a cop, you'd be like, hey, like, let me get
Speaker 1: your digits. This does look more like the still from
Speaker 1: a Hollywood film about an old timey cop than it
Speaker 1: does an actual old timey cop. Yeah, he looks like
Speaker 1: the guy who like yells at Dirty Harry for shooting
Speaker 1: too many people. But in reality, Stan Peters never yelled
Speaker 1: at anyone for shooting too many people. He was like,
Speaker 1: he didn't shoot enough people this month? Why are there
Speaker 1: so many alive people in this town? Uh? Yeah? So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Stan Peters makes the union rise up to defend
Speaker 1: these officers who were fired for making racist threats. And
Speaker 1: this was actually pretty groundbreaking. UM. Thanks to the p
Speaker 1: p A, it was common for unions around the country
Speaker 1: to weigh in on disciplinary matters when cops did bad
Speaker 1: stuff UM, and officers could appeal punishments for bad behaviors,
Speaker 1: but once a cop was fired, they tended to stay fired.
Speaker 1: Stan Peters set out to change that. First, he demanded
Speaker 1: the case go to binding arbitration, which the contract allowed
Speaker 1: him to do. Then he organized a petition drive to
Speaker 1: fire the police commissioner. He sent ballots to the pp
Speaker 1: A members to get a vote of no confidence in
Speaker 1: both the chief and the police commissioner. And last, but
Speaker 1: not least, he announced a protest march to compete with
Speaker 1: the Black United Fronts March. This one would consist of
Speaker 1: off duty cops, their family members, and local supporters versus
Speaker 1: Black lives mattering thing. Okay, what years? This this is nine?
Speaker 1: Okay yep. The p PAS march gathered a staggering eight
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty people waving signs that said reinstate the blue, two,
Speaker 1: justice not politics, and may the Force be with you.
Speaker 1: Craig and Jim Star wars pretty new at the time.
Speaker 1: Um fucking nerds. Uh. Many police elements, including sharpshooters, protected
Speaker 1: the march, which is interesting because it was a private
Speaker 1: organization doing a march being protected by public funds in
Speaker 1: a way that I'll guarantee you, the Black United Front
Speaker 1: protesters weren't protected. Not a thing that ever happened again
Speaker 1: say repeatedly. Um. So. Some brave counter protesters did show
Speaker 1: up with pigs heads on spikes, which infuriated Stan Peters.
Speaker 1: Um and udos to those folks. But on the whole,
Speaker 1: the march was a massive success for the p p A.
Speaker 1: All the pressure exercised by Peters eventually did its job.
Speaker 1: The arbitrator decided that termination of both officers had been
Speaker 1: too harsh a penalty. Both men were reinstated to their jobs.
Speaker 1: This would turn out to be quite possibly the most
Speaker 1: influential thing the Portland Police ever did. From pickets, pistols,
Speaker 1: and politics, the City of Portland versus Ward and Galloway
Speaker 1: case is still the leading police discipline case in the
Speaker 1: United States and in labor lost circles. It is the
Speaker 1: arbitration decision referred to most often. Its legal nomenclature is
Speaker 1: simply City of Portland. So you know, we started this
Speaker 1: by saying that all fired cops and some cities more
Speaker 1: like seventy to get reinstated by union appeals. The legal
Speaker 1: underpinning of that is City of Portland. That is the
Speaker 1: name of the case that is most often referred to
Speaker 1: when police firings are revealed. But a cool city that
Speaker 1: I live in, a great legacy to be here. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of roses too, you know, Robert. It's
Speaker 1: okay because as we were discussing right before this, there's
Speaker 1: a current lawsuit that I'm not allowed to talk about
Speaker 1: called Woodstock versus City of Portland, and we're just gonna
Speaker 1: slide that one in and that's going to be the
Speaker 1: one everyone references now. Make the city. Yeah, figures crossed.
Speaker 1: Figures crossed. So I found an interesting interview with labor
Speaker 1: historian Norman Diamond on the website Street Roots. He was
Speaker 1: actually on the Portland Labor Board when all this was
Speaker 1: going on, so he's very familiar with how the pp
Speaker 1: A works because again, like the p p A was
Speaker 1: part of the Labor Board at this point, and he
Speaker 1: pointed out that initially the p PA's goal was, quote,
Speaker 1: if any of our members commits an act subject to discipline,
Speaker 1: we want them to have union representation. That's reasonable. Their
Speaker 1: claim was cops have to have the same rights as
Speaker 1: anybody else in society, and I do agree with that,
Speaker 1: but he says, with successive contracts, they extended those rights
Speaker 1: beyond anything the rest of us have. Now, the event
Speaker 1: of a shooting, you can't question a police officer until
Speaker 1: two days have passed. Their superiors can't, the District attorney's
Speaker 1: office can't, and that's part of the labor contract. So
Speaker 1: they have a chance to meet with other officers involved
Speaker 1: in the shooting to get their story straight and go
Speaker 1: over everything with their lawyers, and then after two days
Speaker 1: they can bring back what becomes the official version. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: what the fuck? They're like, Yeah, it's really just like you.
Speaker 1: Your union means that. Our union says you get to
Speaker 1: have this specified collision time. And now that's very common
Speaker 1: around the entire country. Because of the Portland Police, I
Speaker 1: can't even like fully process that because it's just so
Speaker 1: obviously correct, right, I Mean that's what we're saying this
Speaker 1: whole time, right, It's like every single thing in it's
Speaker 1: like you're not being subtle about it. You're just like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's like me being just like literally doing criminal things
Speaker 1: behind the cops, and so I just get to do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, when the when the is like big protests
Speaker 1: started up after George Floyd's murder, I was kind of
Speaker 1: there was there was an element of me that was like,
Speaker 1: you know, Portland's not a big city, and our police
Speaker 1: department is not a big police department, and it's not
Speaker 1: a nationally it wasn't, at least now it's more famous.
Speaker 1: It was not a nationally famous police department. And it
Speaker 1: seems strange to me that this city would become the
Speaker 1: nexus of so much resistance to the police. And it
Speaker 1: makes more sense now because the Portland police are the
Speaker 1: center nationwide of a lot of our problems with police
Speaker 1: violence and brutality. Like I wish it worked in reverse,
Speaker 1: where like, oh, Portland's started all of it. And so
Speaker 1: if something happened to Portland Police like every other police station,
Speaker 1: like why something happened, I mean like contractually, like legally,
Speaker 1: like something got taken away, then it's like, oh, that
Speaker 1: actually just ribbles out to everywhere. But I have a
Speaker 1: feeling it doesn't work in reverse. No, it would not.
Speaker 1: It's going to require an agonizing and probably decades long
Speaker 1: process of yeah, good time. In ninety five, Portland police
Speaker 1: responded to a shoplifting incident at a seven eleven. They
Speaker 1: noticed a fight happening in the stores parking lot, and
Speaker 1: the p p As biography describes it, telling Lee as
Speaker 1: between two white men and a tall black man. It's
Speaker 1: interesting to me that they didn't feel the need to
Speaker 1: describe any of the physical attributes of the white men. Um, No,
Speaker 1: I gotta know he's tall. So the cops decided that
Speaker 1: this tall black man must be responsible for whatever was happening,
Speaker 1: and they put him in a sleeper hold, which killed him.
Speaker 1: It turned out that the victim, Lloyd Stevenson, was a
Speaker 1: former marine and a father of five, as well as
Speaker 1: the security guard at fred Meyer More outrage swept through
Speaker 1: the city. The city government acted quickly, banning the police
Speaker 1: from using choke holds. Seems kind of familiar. I think
Speaker 1: we've heard this story before. Of course, the police complained.
Speaker 1: Portland police were trained to use force and gradually escalating
Speaker 1: levels from one to six. Level one is the presence
Speaker 1: of a cop. Level two is voice commands. Level three
Speaker 1: is physical restraint, Level four is the carotid artery hold
Speaker 1: that killed Aid, and level five is the use of
Speaker 1: a nightstick or mace. In six is of course deadly force,
Speaker 1: but of course really so was four because the grodit
Speaker 1: hold killed people. Yeah. Now, the Portland police complained that
Speaker 1: taking their chokehold away would escalate things dangerously, leaving them
Speaker 1: with less non lethal options to respond to crime with
Speaker 1: because most cops didn't like to carry night sticks because
Speaker 1: they were heavy and thought carrying mace was a hassle,
Speaker 1: So just all they would have as a gun like
Speaker 1: this will give us basically, this will say that this
Speaker 1: will make our only option be shooting people. Um now, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you don't let us kill them this way, we'll
Speaker 1: have to kill them this other way because we can't
Speaker 1: carry mace around because we can't it's too heavy mace.
Speaker 1: To Portland's cops, Monte and Wickersham were particularly angry at
Speaker 1: being banned from choking people, and the p p A
Speaker 1: biography notes that they were in the process of being
Speaker 1: trained to give chokeholds at the time, so it kind
Speaker 1: of leaves you with the impression that, like they were
Speaker 1: so excited to choke people and then they got their power.
Speaker 1: Well I don't get to choke anybody now, I'm new
Speaker 1: to being a cop. Come on, do you say their
Speaker 1: names are Monty and Wicker Shim's Monty and wickershim. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they sound British as hell. They a couple of bobbies
Speaker 1: in the in the old p p A. They like
Speaker 1: they traveled here because they're like I hear you get
Speaker 1: to choke people more in the Portland Police Bureau. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny. When I was a little conservative, well I
Speaker 1: guess more conservative than I am now. I remember a
Speaker 1: videos circulating around that was like a bunch of British
Speaker 1: cops like like a circle of them all around one
Speaker 1: man with a machete and they had like chairs I think,
Speaker 1: and we're like like basically like all in a huge
Speaker 1: circle trying to like calm this, like stop this guy
Speaker 1: from swinging a knife, and eventually de escalated him and
Speaker 1: nobody died. And it was like portrayed as like, look,
Speaker 1: how silly it is because English cops don't have guns.
Speaker 1: This is what it takes to deal with a man
Speaker 1: with a machete. And I was like, well, but they
Speaker 1: didn't kill anybody. Like everyone walked away alive. Isn't this
Speaker 1: a good story? Yeah, we're gonna arm everyone with the
Speaker 1: chairs now they're going to be heavy, but no one's
Speaker 1: going to die. Yeah. So I'm gonna quote here from
Speaker 1: the p p AS biography, Monty and Wickersham reacted to
Speaker 1: the situation with the typical black humor of police officers.
Speaker 1: They had T shirts printed with the slogan don't choke him,
Speaker 1: smoke him. Yeah. Sorry, Yeah, that's just the typical black
Speaker 1: humor of police officers. Making a T shirt about an
Speaker 1: innocent man you choke to death? Good times? Uh? I
Speaker 1: mean as somebody who's wearing a novelty police violence T
Speaker 1: shirt right now, I guess I can't talk. But it's
Speaker 1: a little different. Someone in the city of Portland has
Speaker 1: found it don't choke him smoke um T shirt at
Speaker 1: like a fucking vintage store, like and didn't know what
Speaker 1: it was for. The biography goes on the state. The
Speaker 1: message they wished to convey was clear. If the karated
Speaker 1: hold was no longer available to police, why not just shoot? Why?
Speaker 1: Why else are we going to do a lot to
Speaker 1: shoot people? Yeah? They started selling the T shirts in
Speaker 1: the Justice center's break room on the exact same day
Speaker 1: if Lloyd Stevenson's funeral um classy. They were fired and
Speaker 1: the case went into arbitration. The union argued that the
Speaker 1: officers apparent insensitivity had been unintentional because the officers hadn't
Speaker 1: known that Stevenson's funeral was taking place the same day.
Speaker 1: The firings were overturned and the officers reinstated. You know,
Speaker 1: I am loving this city of Portland, citing more and
Speaker 1: more every time. Is their job back? Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1: You know what's better than people mocking murder victim and
Speaker 1: then getting back pay. I would say, honestly most things,
Speaker 1: but possibly products and services. Yeah, very certainly, products and services.
Speaker 1: We are back. Okay. So there have been a lot
Speaker 1: of horrible crimes committed by the Portland Police and defended
Speaker 1: by the p p A. We've gone through a number
Speaker 1: of them. Um, we only have so much time in
Speaker 1: our lives and in this episode, so in the sake
Speaker 1: of brevity, I'm going to outline just one more and
Speaker 1: this time the victim is not a black man. It's
Speaker 1: a twelve year old boy. Oh good. Yeah. A home
Speaker 1: invader broke into the house where Nathan Thomas, the aforementioned
Speaker 1: twelve year old child and his parents lived. The police
Speaker 1: arrived while the invader was in the house, and the
Speaker 1: man grabbed Nathan as a hostage and held a knife
Speaker 1: to his throat. The home invader was twenty years old, drunk,
Speaker 1: and reportedly suicidal. Now, this is obviously a nightmare situation,
Speaker 1: and like right, my criticisms of the police aside, there's
Speaker 1: not going to be a perfect way to handle this.
Speaker 1: This could there's a good chance that he would have
Speaker 1: died no matter what had happened. This is a bad situation.
Speaker 1: That said, the tactic the cops chose to deal with
Speaker 1: this hostage situation was shall I say, less than delicate.
Speaker 1: Instead of doing any of the kind of things you
Speaker 1: might expect police to do during a hostage situation that
Speaker 1: threatens the life of a twelve year old, five different
Speaker 1: Portland officers opened fire from outside of the house with
Speaker 1: their handguns, pumping dozens of rounds into the house. The
Speaker 1: hostage taker was shot fourteen times. Nathan was also shot,
Speaker 1: and he died in the hospital. Just five guys start
Speaker 1: shooting into the building. What's even the point at that point, Like, sensibly,
Speaker 1: you're there to help, like you're not. But like ostensibly
Speaker 1: they're there to help the kid, but they're not, so
Speaker 1: why are they're And it's also like I will say,
Speaker 1: it can be justified to use a firearm in that situation,
Speaker 1: But you don't use a pistol, all right, you don't try.
Speaker 1: You don't try from outside of a house too. I
Speaker 1: shoot a lot of handguns, right, They're very inaccurate compared
Speaker 1: to a rifle, Like, they are only good at short distances,
Speaker 1: and they are not for pursue. Shouldn't work. That's not
Speaker 1: what a handguns for. Um, you would have a sniper
Speaker 1: come in and try to shoot the guy threatening a
Speaker 1: twelve year old with it. That's a reasonable time to
Speaker 1: use a sniper. They just had five guys start shooting
Speaker 1: handguns into the building. Um, it's so fucked up. The
Speaker 1: president of the p p A at the time was
Speaker 1: a guy named Morse, and he showed up on the
Speaker 1: scene with a p p A lawyer as soon as
Speaker 1: he heard that his cops had gotten down a small child.
Speaker 1: Now I want to read you this next paragraph from Pickets, Pistols,
Speaker 1: and Politics because it has to be one of the
Speaker 1: most sociopathic things I have ever read in my entire life.
Speaker 1: As the father of three young sons, Morse's heart went
Speaker 1: out to the family of Nathan Thomas. The boy's accidental
Speaker 1: death was devastating, but Morse, a Marine Corps veteran and
Speaker 1: a longtime police officer, was a man who had been
Speaker 1: thoroughly trained to maintain his focus and perform his duty
Speaker 1: no matter how much he heard inside. As he dialed
Speaker 1: the telephone number had contacted one sleepy lawyer after another,
Speaker 1: his focus was on the five police officers who needed
Speaker 1: his help. M cool stuff, good guys. So I just
Speaker 1: even just calling it like an accidental death, and it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not convinced it was an accident. I don't think
Speaker 1: you just have five people shooting handguns into a house
Speaker 1: and be like that, oh oops, if someone died, if
Speaker 1: five people shoot handguns into a house filled with people.
Speaker 1: What you're saying, because I love nonverbal communication, and the
Speaker 1: nonverbal communication that you're giving off when you and four
Speaker 1: other men of fire handguns into a house is I
Speaker 1: don't really care who I hit inside that house exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: So obviously, um, none of these guys were fired or
Speaker 1: seriously disciplined for wild and wildly. Uh. Now, don't worry though,
Speaker 1: talk the p P as biographer wants us all to
Speaker 1: know that the police cared about what had happened and
Speaker 1: they wanted to make it right. Quote. The association's concerned
Speaker 1: for youngsters was demonstrated in a gesture of grief and
Speaker 1: sympathy after the death of Nathan Thomas. A few weeks
Speaker 1: after the boy's death, Union contributed two d fifty dollars
Speaker 1: to the American Cancer Society Nathan had received treatment for
Speaker 1: Hodgkins disease and was in remission at the time of
Speaker 1: his death, and two hundred and fifty dollars to the
Speaker 1: Nathan Thomas Soccer Scholarship Fund. Nathan was the member of
Speaker 1: a soccer team, so that's good. Yeah. I always say,
Speaker 1: if you just kill a twelve year old kid for
Speaker 1: no reason, just donate two hundred fifty dollars to a
Speaker 1: soccer team and it's all fine. That's yeah. Now, they,
Speaker 1: I will say they. The family of Nathan also reached
Speaker 1: out to the police later because they were working to
Speaker 1: raise money to build a soccer field in Nathan's memory
Speaker 1: at Laurel Hurst Park, which is near where he lived.
Speaker 1: UM and the p PA did contribute five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to the soccer field, so that's more money. Yeah. They
Speaker 1: love to sponsor soccer. Yeah, they're big soccer fans. Do
Speaker 1: you think we can get them to defund PPB if
Speaker 1: we tell them that we just need to raise more
Speaker 1: money for soccer. A lot of soccer fields that might
Speaker 1: do the trick to so that I would want to
Speaker 1: defund p p B. I'm an objective journaliective skin in
Speaker 1: this game. Any go ahead. Yeah, as a journalist, opinions
Speaker 1: are obviously forbidden. Now, there are a number of important
Speaker 1: things I didn't cover in this series, like how p
Speaker 1: p A president Stan Peters hated the idea of woman
Speaker 1: cops and non white cops and deliberately made the union
Speaker 1: unwelcoming to them. I felt like focusing on the travails
Speaker 1: of police officers, even like obviously I it's weird because
Speaker 1: like I don't think we should have cops if we're
Speaker 1: going to have them, Yeah, everyone should have the equal
Speaker 1: opportunity to be a cop, I guess, but I didn't
Speaker 1: want to focus on that in this episode as opposed
Speaker 1: to all of the horrible things that the police did. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Stan Peters super racist, and there was a whole
Speaker 1: fight within the union to make it less racist. That's
Speaker 1: a thing that happened. Um So, you know, in the
Speaker 1: sake of fairness, I wanted to denote that. Um yeah.
Speaker 1: I do want to close though, by talking some more
Speaker 1: about the p eb's infamous Red Squad. In nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: the mayor of Portland assured the city's liberal population that
Speaker 1: the Red Squad had been disbanded. This was a lie,
Speaker 1: and they later learned that year that it had just
Speaker 1: been renamed the Intelligence Division and was actively keeping tabs
Speaker 1: on suspicious characters at the Oregon a c l U. Um,
Speaker 1: gotta keep an eye on them a c l U folks.
Speaker 1: In November six, local press published rumors that the Red
Speaker 1: Squad had been secretly re established as a new entity
Speaker 1: under the name Criminal Intelligence Division, presumably as part of
Speaker 1: a renewed red scare of the Reagan years. The police
Speaker 1: denied this, admitting that the Criminal Intelligence Division existed, but
Speaker 1: claiming that it does not monitor peaceful or public activities
Speaker 1: and does not target groups or individuals. But that's true, right,
Speaker 1: mm hmmm. I'm gonna quote next from a write up
Speaker 1: by Michael monk in officers Sewart officially detailed to spy
Speaker 1: on radicals and subversives, attended and submitted a confidential report
Speaker 1: on a meeting by a coalition of peace, labor, and
Speaker 1: environmental groups to discuss the Civilian Police Review Board. One
Speaker 1: of the victims of that surveillance sued Portland for violation
Speaker 1: if his civil rights four years later, and one a
Speaker 1: two thousand dollar award in court. Although the court decision
Speaker 1: was not reported by The Oregonian, it led to public
Speaker 1: hearings on the Red Squad in nineteen by the Metropolitan
Speaker 1: Commission on Human Rights. Although denied press coverage even by
Speaker 1: the Willamette Week, the Commission grilled Red Squad commander Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Larry Findling and Sergeant Norman Sharp. They admitted they used
Speaker 1: paid agents, volunteer informers, and other techniques to monitor dissenters,
Speaker 1: and agreed that even the reasonable suspicion of something as
Speaker 1: trivial as trespass triggers their response. The mc HR proposed
Speaker 1: a series of controls on the Red Squad to Mayor Cats.
Speaker 1: Not only did the mayor reject the proposals, she dismantled
Speaker 1: the mc HR yeah Portland's got a long tradition to
Speaker 1: good Mayor's nothing but quality in Portland Mayor's I was
Speaker 1: trying to make a joke earlier about very cats being good,
Speaker 1: and I'm so glad it didn't work out. Nope, it
Speaker 1: turns out leaders are bad. So the Red Squad spent
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteen nineties violatingly civil rights of dissidents.
Speaker 1: In October of nine, it sent an undercover agent to
Speaker 1: spy on protesters opposing Bill Clinton's air war on Iraq.
Speaker 1: In two thousand, on May Day, the Red Squad's black
Speaker 1: van videotaped the faces of demonstrators who hadn't actually broken
Speaker 1: any laws, which is again a crime that's criming. The
Speaker 1: Red Squad's behavior was egregious enough that they piste off
Speaker 1: Circuit Court Judge Michael Marcus, who ordered the Oregon Police
Speaker 1: to stop tracking citizens who aren't breaking the law. Two
Speaker 1: years later, information surface that they were still doing that.
Speaker 1: It is currently against Oregon law for them to survey
Speaker 1: the lawful demonstrators, But we can only assume the Red
Speaker 1: Squad is still doing what it always did, what every
Speaker 1: name it operates under now. Anyway, that's the story of
Speaker 1: the Portland Police and the Portland Police Association. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: will rest easy knowing that I'm definitely not being surveilled
Speaker 1: by the Red Squad because it doesn't exist anymore and
Speaker 1: they're stopped it. They're just chilling. Cool now. Thanks. I
Speaker 1: appreciate knowing this context that not only are things bad now,
Speaker 1: but they always always have been bad, and there was
Speaker 1: plenty of time to fix it and we just didn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know this inspires me to kick the can
Speaker 1: right down the road to the next generation to people
Speaker 1: I can't even go to the burger barn. That story
Speaker 1: made me just want to go to the burger barn
Speaker 1: and support the burger barn. It doesn't even exist anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the real strategy. Tragedy tragedy trategy. I don't know,
Speaker 1: my brain stopped when you said willam It Week. I
Speaker 1: was like what, and I'm yeah, I think that was
Speaker 1: either they changed their name or that was the name
Speaker 1: they used to operate under. I don't know. It's will
Speaker 1: lam It weak, but oh it is. That was weekly. No,
Speaker 1: it's lambit week. But it was like Williamite Week versus
Speaker 1: well lamb It Week. It's like a very non Portland pronunciation.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, Robert, where are you from here? Get
Speaker 1: out of here? Yeah, I'm like the Portland police, I'm
Speaker 1: not a Portland that he came. No, Yeah, but that
Speaker 1: came up in my head when we were talking about
Speaker 1: the police the whole time, is like, at what point
Speaker 1: did they stop living in Portland? You know? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I don't have good information on that, but yeah, it
Speaker 1: is people should know that about to Portland police live
Speaker 1: outside the city, many of them in another state, Washington. Um,
Speaker 1: it's cool stuff. It's cool and good. Yeah, cool and good.
Speaker 1: So Tuck, you got anything to plug? Yep. Uh. Still,
Speaker 1: much like in the last episode, I still make a
Speaker 1: podcast about gender. The new season is dropping right around
Speaker 1: when this episode drops, and we have programs to uh
Speaker 1: provide money for housing, medication, food, really basic things for
Speaker 1: trans people, particularly black, Indigenous trans people and trans people
Speaker 1: of color. So if anyone wants to contribute to any
Speaker 1: of that, they can go to patreon dot com slash gender.
Speaker 1: That's patreon dot com slash gender Awesome, patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash gender. And also we have if you're if you're
Speaker 1: listen to this and we're like, boy, Portland is and
Speaker 1: it's problem with Cops is more interesting than I thought
Speaker 1: it was. We have a podcast about that called Uprising,
Speaker 1: and it's about everything that happened in Portland this summer. Um,
Speaker 1: please check that out again. Uprising it's a podcast that's
Speaker 1: more things about Portland that will frustrate you, but there's
Speaker 1: never enough. Yeah, never enough. A lot of great audio
Speaker 1: of things exploding though. So if you were like, my
Speaker 1: headphones haven't triggered me yet, that's what I'm gonna say.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that sounds cool to listen to. No,
Speaker 1: I have PTSD trigger warning the podcast yeah uh podcast
Speaker 1: m