Posted inCity Council Police reform

Crisis response team for Salem showing some life

Good news! City Councilor Vanessa Nordyke sent me a message today about state grant money being available for a Salem mental health crisis response team similar to Eugene's highly successful CAHOOTS program.  This comes after the crisis response effort Nordyke has been pushing for met with a setback in September, when the Marion County Board of Commissioners balked at allowing Salem to use state funds that went to counties for crisis stabilization services. As you can read below, $10.5 million in state grant money is coming directly to Salem, so Nordyke hopes a chunk of that can be used for…
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Posted inCity of Salem Homeless Police reform

We need to keep Salem from having Portland’s problems

I used to have Portland envy. Not so much that I wanted to move there -- I've had a Salem address since 1977 -- but Portland seemed like the cool kid to our north, while Salem was decidedly geeky. Now, though, I'll happily take Salem, even if termed So-Lame, over Portland's increasing dysfunction.  Every night my wife and I watch the Portland late night news on KGW. I used to fast forward through a couple of minutes of crime news, because I don't like the "If it bleeds, it leads" sort of journalism.  Throughout 2021, and especially recently, shootings, vandalism,…
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Posted inCitizen involvement City Council Police reform

Salem Police Department survey has problems, like the department

The Salem Police Department wants people to take a survey about the strategic plan being developed to guide how the department operates in coming years. I completed the survey today. And I could have completed it over and over, for as long as I wanted, because the survey allows people to respond more than once to it. This alone makes the value of the survey dubious.  Letting people fill out the survey multiple times makes it vulnerable to vote manipulation by vested interests -- either pro-police or anti-police -- who want to skew the results in their favored direction.  The…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Police reform

Setback for Salem mental health crisis response team

Led by Vanessa Nordyke, last June the Salem City Council appropriated $135,000 for a mental health crisis response team similar to the CAHOOTS program that has been a big success in Eugene -- where a medic and crisis worker handle about 17% of the police department's call volume, saving about $12 million a year at a cost of about $2.1 million a year. But now the Salem project is on life support, according to a Salem Reporter story, "Salem, United Way halt plans for mental health crisis responder program."  The city of Salem paused its plans to start a program…
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Posted inCity Council Police reform

Derek Chauvin conviction just small step toward police reform

I'm glad that I was in my car, listening to CNN, when the judge read the jury verdict in the Derek Chauvin case. As I heard the judge say "guilty of second degree murder," "guilty of third degree murder," "guilty of manslaughter," my right arm made the same happy motion upward as the arms of the women below. But right next to this Washington Post headline story was a disturbing story of a police killing of a 16 year old girl in Columbus, Ohio, "Ohio police fatally shoot teen girl just before Chauvin verdict: 'This stuff just never ends.'" This…
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Posted inCity Council City of Salem Police reform

Police budget should be cut to pay for crisis response team

City Councilor Vanessa Nordyke is pushing for Salem to have a crisis response team similar to the CAHOOTS program that has been successfully used in Eugene since 1989.  Here's a description of CAHOOTS, courtesy of the White Bird Clinic. 31 years ago the City of Eugene, Oregon developed an innovative community-based public safety system to provide mental health first response for crises involving mental illness, homelessness, and addiction. White Bird Clinic launched CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) as a community policing initiative in 1989. The CAHOOTS model has been in the spotlight recently as our nation struggles…
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Posted inPolice reform

Let’s stop talking about “accidental” police shootings

Another day, another black man "accidentally" shot and killed by a police officer.  BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. — The suburban Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot a 20-year-old unarmed Black man during a traffic stop Sunday apparently meant to fire a Taser but instead made an “accidental discharge” from her gun, the police chief said Monday. This is stretching the meaning of accidental beyond the bounds where the word makes sense. An accidental discharge of a gun would happen if, say, it was lying on a table during an earthquake with the safety off, fell, hit the floor, and somehow the…
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Posted inPolice reform Salem Police Department

So senseless: Salem police kill suicidal man

It's not as infuriating as the George Floyd murder by a Minneapolis police officer, but I'm still deeply bothered by a Salem police officer, Clinton Sealey, killing a suicidal man, Natzeryt Viertel. Neighbors say that Viertel struggled with mental health issues. He was threatening to take his life. He had a gun. That shouldn't be a death sentence. The Salem Police Department failed Viertel. He should have gotten help from the police, not bullets in his body. Almost certainly Chief Womack and others in the department will find excuses for why Viertel was killed. But those excuses won't bring Viertel…
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Posted inPolice reform Salem Police Department

Salem Police performance audit has weaknesses

Tomorrow night, March 15, the Salem City Council will have a work session on the draft performance audit of the Salem Police Department (SPD) that was prepared by a consulting firm. Here's the PDF file.Download Hillard Heintze Report for the City of Salem Oregon - 03-08-21 copy The consultants' report is nicely written and clearly laid out. But I've got some problems with it.  My main concern is on page 9: Although a formal, detailed staffing analysis was not part of the scope of our assessment, we noted the number of sworn officers and the total number of SPD employees…
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Posted inPolice reform Salem-Keizer school district

Latinos Unidos Siempre wins school resource officer fight

Congratulations to Latinos Unidos Siempre (Latinos United Always) for succeeding in their battle to have School Resource Officers -- police -- removed from Salem-Keizer schools. They're celebrating on their Facebook page. We have won!! After 25 years of resisting the school to prison and deportation pipeline today we have made a huge stride into being closer to abolishing it. The School Resource Officer contract will not be renewed thanks to the work of youth leaders in Latinos Unidos Siempre and to the many community members who have supported and fought alongside us.   During the March 9th Salem-Keizer School Board…
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Posted inCity of Salem Police reform Salem Police Department

One Salem Police Chief candidate seems better than the other

The City of Salem has narrowed the search for a Police Chief to replace retiring Jerry Moore to two candidates, Malik Aziz and Trevor Womack. (That link allows you to submit a question to be asked of Aziz and Womack during their October 30 interviews in Salem.) I spent some time today Googling Aziz and Womack. Obviously this is a very rough way of coming to a conclusion about which man would be best suited to lead Salem's Police Department.  But, hey, us bloggers are opinionated, and I came up with an opinion: Malik Aziz. First, and most obviously, Aziz…
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Posted inPolice reform

Why the Portland Black Lives Matter protests are so aggravating

Emotions aren't always a reliable guide to truth, but often they indicate that a deeper truth should be sought.  Something has been bothering me about the nightly Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, just fifty miles away from where I live in Salem, but light years away in terms of how the community is handling police reform. To offer up one example, in Salem the City Council has embarked on a  months-long performance audit of the Police Department by an outside consultant. This will be a deliberative, fact-based look at how the department carries out its functions, including whether some…
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Posted inPolice reform

“Wall of Moms” should replace anarchists in Portland protests

Last night I was spellbound while watching a live Facebook feed of Monday's Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Portland, which also is a protest against the federal agents Trump has sent to supposedly protect the federal courthouse, but really is a desperate attempt to boost his fading reelection chances. I also followed the excellent on-scene reporting of Eddy Binford-Ross, editor of the South Salem High School newspaper, the Clypian -- where she shares photos, Twitter tweets, and stories about the Portland protests.  The most inspiring part of the protest was another appearance by the "Wall of Moms," mostly yellow-clad…
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Posted inPolice reform Salem Police Department

Salem Police Department job summary points to danger of militarization

Should police officers see themselves as warriors or as peacemakers? Most experts I've seen who have weighed in on this question argue for peacemakers, not this sort of officer. After all, most of what police officers do has nothing to do with violence. Here's one of the images in a blog post called "Policing Explained in a Few Graphs" by Jerry Ratcliffe, a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Temple University. Ratcliffe says: 1. Policing is overwhelmingly a social service Graph no. 1. This is from the second edition of my book “Intelligence-Led Policing“. The area of each…
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Posted inPolice reform

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…
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Posted inCity of Salem Police reform

Outside person should review recent Salem Police Department actions

In a non-shocking development, following criticism that the Salem Police Department erred in tear-gassing Black Lives Matter protesters and showed favoritism toward heavily armed "militia" members in the downtown area, a review by the Police Department of Police Department actions found that the Police Department did very little wrong. (Related news: following criticism by my wife that the haphazard way I load the dishwasher will lead to glasses being broken when they bang against each other, I did a review of my dishwasher-loading actions and found that I did very little wrong. Nonetheless, I'll change where the glasses go because…
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Posted inPolice reform

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

If you're concerned about how the Salem Police Department responded to the recent Black Lives Matter protests, or if you want to learn why people were bothered about what police officers did, check out this new web site: Reform Salem Police. Screenshot of top of home page I'm impressed with whoever put the web site together. It documents what the Police Department did during the protests from May 30 to June 1, 2020.  Notably, using tear gas and flash bangs against mostly peaceful protesters, while not holding armed militia members in the downtown area to the same curfew that was…
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Posted inPolice reform

City Council caught between passion and prudence on policing reform

After remotely watching most of the discussion at last night's Salem City Council meeting about reforming how the Police Department operates, I was left with a letdown feeling even though I generally agreed with what the council did. Salem City Council Here's how a Statesman Journal story about the meeting summarized the outcome. During a four-hour meeting Monday night, the council eventually approved the $752 million fiscal year budget, which includes $48.8 million for the Salem Police Department. But Councilor Cara Kaser said they can still make changes in the budget at their discretion up to 10%.  ...Councilors authorized work sessions to include discussions…
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