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Hall Monitor
As Reported Sexual Assaults Rise, PSU May Create Its Own Police Force by Sarah Mirk
ORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY is a small city within a city—but a team of just 17 security guards patrols the 30,000-student urban campus. Now, the school is considering a controversial plan to create its own police force of sworn officers who, unlike the guards, would carry guns and be able to investigate serious crimes, like sexual assaults. The proposal took on tragic urgency this week, after a 27-year-old student walking to her dorm room early Monday, November 26, reported being hit over the head and sexually assaulted by a man she didn’t know. The woman woke up in an alley behind her dorm at SW 10th and Market and called campus security, who then called Portland police. PSU is unique among its 21 urban peer universities in not having a campus-run, independent police force. Unless a survivor of sexual assault reports the crime almost immediately afterward (as happened in this week’s case), campus security will call Portland police officers, who—since it’s not a crime-in-progress—can take several hours to show up, interview the survivor, and begin an investigation. “To me, it’s an embarrassment that in 2012 we’re conducting sexual assault investigations in this manner,” says Director of Public Safety Phil Zerzan. “This was the first thing that jumped out at me when I took this job, it was like a time machine stepping back into the ’70s.” PSU faces distinct challenges as the state’s largest university whose smack-in-the-middle-of-downtown campus has no real borders. According to the campus security office, 80 percent of people arrested on campus are not associated with the school. Meanwhile, reported sexual assaults have increased on campus from two in 2009 to nine in 2011, three-quarters of which were perpetrated by people the victims knew. An increase in re-
by Denis C. Theriault
ports could actuall be a good sign, as PSU has made strides to ensure sexual assault survivors can swiftly make a report, be paired with an advocate, and receive medical care all on campus. But the police element remains external. “I have people coming into my office every day saying they feel unsafe,” says Dean of Student Life Michele Toppe, noting that stu-
dent protests. Adding a professional police force to the campus touches a nerve at a time when the city has been struggling with its own issues of police accountability. “I don’t like cops, but the [current security] are the nicest cops I’ve come across,” said Thomas Buccido, a film production major. Public Safety Director Zerzan pointed out that PSU already does have armed cops on campus: Portland police, whenever they’re called. A PSU police force could be overseen directly by the university and have more specific training than Portland police. Zerzan pointed to the case of last year’s infamous pepper spraying of University of California, Davis students by campus police, noting that the officer involved was fired. “Ask yourself if you’d have the same response from the municipal authority we currently contract with to provide safety,” said Zerzan. Portland has been unable to fire officers involved in high-profile use-of-force abuses (most notably Officer Ron Frashour) and is in the midst of reform folPORTLAND STATE SECURITY: Not packing. CHEYENNE SOPHIA RUTH lowing a federal investigation that found dents—portaging laptops and expensive books that officers’ systematic treatment of people around an unfamiliar city—can make easy tar- with mental illness is unconstitutional. Other students at last week’s forum wongets. “I’ve waited a really long time for police to dered how much having a police force would show up when I needed them.” PSU’s police proposal would lower the actually reduce sexual assaults on campus. “The big problem is not lack of police officers, number of security staff, from 17 security guards to 10 security guards. But it would add but rape culture. What we need to support is mak16 sworn police officers and three sergeants, ing women feel safe,” said Sarah Levy, a member while establishing standards for training and of PSU’s International Socialist Organization. Of course, funding prevention and counoversight. The university says it has yet to seling is crucial, says PSU Women’s Resource prepare a cost estimate. At a public forum last week, students ex- Center Assistant Director Jessica Amo, who pressed mixed opinions on the plan, many supports the campus police-force proposal, worrying about oversight of the force and “but it’s not an either-or. We need to be advancfearing that armed police officers could ing on all fronts. After an incident has occurred, harshly respond to minor incidents and stu- we need to have solid services.”
Rough Road to Prosperity
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Facing Cuts, Transportation Bureau Covets Citywide Street Fee by Denis C. Theriault
ACED WITH another gaping budget hole, partly thanks to Oregon’s unreliable gas tax, the beleaguered Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) is sharpening its pitch in hopes of selling city leaders on a series of controversial revenue measures, the Mercury has learned. Topping the list, so far? A citywide street maintenance fee—long coveted by transportation advocates—that would be tacked onto every Portland property owner’s water and sewer bill. It would mark the city’s third stab at a fee, and passing it would require some political finesse. The past two attempts, under then-City Commissioners Charlie Hales and Sam Adams, fell short amid business pressure. Bureau leaders also are mulling over a Portland-specific gas tax (seen as a stopgap measure that may be too tough a sell); marketbased, inflation-indexed pricing at the city’s meters and parking garages; bridge tolls; and an emissions-based tax. PBOT Director Tom Miller has pondered those ideas at public meetings on the bureau’s finances. But plans for a street maintenance fee and market-price parking have become serious enough that a specially convened PBOT task force of outside financial advisors has placed them atop the draft of a report expected to go before Portland City Council as
soon as next month. Miller wasn’t available for comment before the Mercury’s press time. The 2007 bid for a street fee, if successful, would have earned $24 million a year, according to the latest draft of the task force’s report— which the Mercury eventually obtained after it was sent out, along with an internal message, to the wrong email list. “The gas-tax model is broken and it has no foreseeable ‘quick fix,’” reads the report, still roughly worded, missing charts, and filled with placeholder text. Soon after it says, “Most criti-
“The gas-tax model is broken.” −PBOT task force’s draft report cal and perhaps most important, we recommend that council immediately reengage its two previous efforts to establish a street maintenance fee.” A year after making more than $15 million in ongoing cuts, PBOT this fall is facing a $4.5 million shortfall. But concern over the future of Portland’s transportation budget predates the latest round of spending reductions. Both shortfalls are driven in part by falling
gas-tax revenues—something that isn’t likely to turn around. The state’s gas tax rate has remained static since 2009, with little political will to hike it or tie it to inflation. Meanwhile, with fewer people driving fewer miles in more fuel-efficient vehicles, income has failed to keep up with projections. Advocates and transit officials dream of swapping the gas tax for a tax on vehicle miles traveled—but that fight’s a long way off. Although PBOT plans on presenting the final task force report to city council next month, the revenue ideas will have to be pushed by whoever takes over the bureau next year. That decision will be up to Hales, the city’s first street-fee champion, who returns to city hall in January as mayor. Hales also wasn’t available for comment. But he was on record during this year’s mayoral campaign supporting a shift from the gas tax and generally supporting new local fees to pay for transportation. “The gas tax as a mechanism is a dinosaur; it’s only a question of how much longer before we have to switch to some new system,” he told transit magazine Portland Afoot this year. “Whether I keep the transportation bureau as one of my own bureaus [or] not, as mayor, I’ll certainly be a lead participant in the discussion.”
Cop Union Boss Makes His Point
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WICE THIS MONTH, Daryl Turner—the president of the rank-and-file Portland Police Association—went public with an extremely damning critique of the federally mandated use-of-force reforms that his members must soon abide by. Seizing on a high-profile string of reported police injuries in recent weeks, Turner is playing a cold game to drive a message he wants his members to hear: Using constitutional levels of force, especially during encounters with people perceived to be suffering from a mental illness, is going to get officers hurt—or worse. And he’s got their backs. First, he took to his union’s newsletter, Rap Sheet, to vent about the city’s agreement with the US Department of Justice. Then he amplified that message in an interview the Oregonian published over the holiday weekend. “It’s giving the officers cause for pause, because they’re thinking in their mind about the DOJ,” Turner told the daily paper, “and they don’t think they’re going to get the support of their leaders.” But Turner’s complaints overlook something. Those proposed changes—prizing de-escalation, pushing restraint on Taser use, and judging cops on the decisions that lead them to use force—have yet to take effect. They’re still being worked on, revised, and polished. And, curiously, police accountability advocates on the other side of the issue have lodged serious concerns that they won’t go far enough to actually ease police misconduct.
The police union wasn’t invited to reform talks. No shit. So what’s really going on? Sources in city hall say Turner—who hasn’t returned my calls asking his thoughts about the federal reforms—is shouting loudly and dramatically because that’s about the only way Mayor Sam Adams will actually listen to him. Turner is mostly out to hammer home the point that no one in city hall consulted him or his executive board when working out the city’s deal with the feds. Turner does have regular check-ins with Chief Mike Reese and the Portland Bureau of Human Resources, about a host of issues. But a records request to Adams’ office appears to broadly confirm that complaint. Asked for emails and written correspondence to and from the union specifically about the federal settlement, Adams’ staffers supplied absolutely nothing. As in zilch. Turner may not appreciate being shut out of Adams’ third-floor offices—but sources say it should come as no surprise. Turner was unsparingly harsh and personal over Adams’ decision to crusade against an arbitrator’s decision to reinstate Ron Frashour, the cop who killed Aaron Campbell. He accused Adams of showing “questionable integrity” and launching a “personal vendetta.” He accused Adams and Reese of conspiring to fire Frashour before Reese was appointed chief—a charge found unproven by an independent city investigation convened at Turner’s request. And, sources say, it’s long been noticed among Adams loyalists that Turner has never properly thanked the mayor for presiding over a generous contract in 2011, and protecting cops from layoffs, despite citywide budget cuts. Right now, Turner isn’t someone anyone in city hall wants to do business with. Relations may improve next month, when Mayor-elect Charlie Hales takes over the police bureau… but maybe not by much. Hales says (for now) he’s keeping Reese around, and it’s no secret that Reese also holds little esteem for Turner. It could be, if we’re to see a federal deal that everyone can get behind, that Turner—and not his sparring partners—ought to be the one who adjusts.
November 28th, 2012 portlandmercury.com
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