Part Two: The Worst Police Union In History

His life changed radically for you in the last five minutes. Yeah, I got a kombucha Now everything's looking up. Is a huge improvement. What flavor, grapefruit nice? It's exciting. I just want to information. You know, I haven't opened it yet, but I'll tell you. I'm sure. I'm sure it's great. A rinking. I have a diet orange crush um, and actually pretty recently I waterboarded a friend of mine with diet orange crush as an experiment, and it turns out

it's terrible. Shocked that if you combine if you combine diet orange crush and waterboarding, it's bad. I know. Well, I can update this kombucha is good, fantastic. What are you drinking, Sophie. It's a brambleberry hybiscus tea. Oh wow, everyone's fancy today. It's very well. Orange crush is very fancy. Okay, there's several words involved in describing It's not like water, you know, it's like diet orange crush, bramble berry iced tea, a lot of consonants. Now that you guys are just

hooked on this conversation, this is the whole podcast. So I've decided that it's going to be too bleak to keep going with this conversation, and so I'm going to talk about beverages for an hour. Welcome to Behind the Beverages about things that drink. Uh no, this is this is a podcast about bad people, um the worst people.

And today we're talking again about the Portland Police Association and kind of just about the Portland Police which is shockingly one of the most influential police departments and unions in the entire country, maybe the most. You could make a case, although the NYPD isd um so after after single handedly doing more damage to Portland's economy than the decades of protests that would follow. The Portland Police Association was in a pretty good position as nineteen seventy dawned.

Their first big test of the modern era came in May of that year, when students and faculty at Portland State University went on strike to protest the Kent State shootings in the Vietnam War. After four days, the protesters struck an agreement with the city to end the strike. So that's good, right, protesters go on strike and solidarity over a shooting in another state. The city's like, we get what you're doing. Let's negotiate a way to bring this to an in then the negotiate a way to

bring this to an end. Sounds ideal and very democratic. But before the protesters could start to disassemble the structures they'd set up for the occupation, the Portland Police Riot control team showed up to take down a hospital tent. Protesters felt betrayed by this, since they had already worked out a plan to end the strike with the city. They walled off the tent with their bodies. This piste off the riot cops, who are more or less the

same as the riot cops we have today. The riot squad tear gas the students and professors and then charged into the gas cloud to beat them with batons. Yeah sounds right, sounds like they do. Yeah. One officer noted that the violence was not pretty, but the streets were cleared, which again would have happened if the cops hadn't shown up. Yeah. An activist who was present, Lester Lamb, recalled his friend's head being split open like a pumpkin by a riot

cops baton. Thirty one people went to the hospital for injuries sustained from police violence. Um. The whole mess set off an avalante of condemnation from local media, which had either ignored or been critical of the protests before the cops beat everybody up. After what became called the park Block Riots, the PPB faced some of the first mass criticism for violence to protesters in its history. This was largely due to the fact that its victims had been

mostly white. Um. Go figure. The bad pr was enough that the Portland Police Bureau made a public statement where they agreed to never use force against non violent protesters. Again. Oh cool, they well, it's so nice. How that paved the way for them just being so chill and cool today. Yeah, that's why. For example, when people sat in an intersection last May. They did not beat them in the face

with sticks that would go against their promised. The controversy over the park block riots faded soon enough, and the Portland Police Association succeeded in winning another contract in nineteen seventy two and yet more money. They withdrew from the International Police Union they'd helped to start in March of that year after deciding that it lacked focus in direction. The Portland Police Association was now an independent union because they also pulled out of AFTS MET with no ties

to any national organization. It remains that way to this day, loyal to no one but itself. Yeah, they don't want any influences that might give them like a conscience or something, you know, stay here to their ideology. Not even influences that would lead them to support other cops who weren't Portland cops. It's pretty good. So the p p A had ensured that its officers were highly paid and basically unaccountable.

Now that the President had been said that Portland cops could go on strike if they were angry and created the local economy, there was very little that the city government could hold over them. As you might expect this emboldened the worst officers in the department to carry out

acts of horrifying racial violence. On March fourteenth, nineteen seventy five, Portland police officer Kenneth Sandford shot seventeen year old Ricky Johnson in the back him Johnson was the fourth person of color shot and killed by Portland police in five months, and his death ignited a city wide outrage. The details of the killing were just sketchy enough that even the city's white majority couldn't all sit by and pretend it

hadn't happened. In essence, two kids with an empty, broken gun had been ordering Chinese food and then robbing cab drivers who dropped it off. One of those drivers called the cops, and they set up a sting operation. Now, despite the fact that everything in the PPBS by laws said that this kind of operation should only be conducted by multiple officers, they sent one guy in. They dressed him as a cab driver, and he had a gun

hidden in an empty to go box of food. When he showed up at the house, the kids pulled a gun on him, so he pulled his own gun. What happened next is debated. The cop claimed that Ricky knelt down and prepared to fire, so he shot the boy dead. Ricky's friend claimed that both boys ran like hell and dropped the gun immediately, and then the officers shot Ricky in the back. The physical evidence supported the second version

of events. Investigators found the broken gun ten feet away from Ricky's body, and Ricky had been shot in the back of the head, which probably wouldn't have happened if he'd been facing the officer. Just physics and such, many white Portlanders were able to see that while armed robbery is, you know, not good, shooting a fleeing robber in the

back of the head is worse. The rage was augmented by the fact that the PPB had murdered again three other black men over the course of the last several months. All of the cases had been sketchy in some way. Kenneth Allen, aged seven, was murdered in a prostitution sting. His death was ruled a justifiable homicide because he had a gun, but the gun was never found and introduced into evidence. The cops just said that he had one, and also he was shot multiple times in the back.

Um hmmm, yeah, it's just sucking me up a little bit. How I guess this isn't pp A because it's right across the river or popleb. But like such a similar thing is happening, like right now across the Rand Vancouver and cool. Just just how it goes forever, Just how it goes forever. This is the song that never ends. Charles Minifrey was killed after twenty mile car chase which started when Canby, Oregon cops pulled him over without probable cause.

I witnessed his report that minife had his hands in the air and was standing outside his car when he was shot to death. None of the witnesses to his death, or the witnesses to any of the other deaths of black men killed by Portland police during this period, were called to testify in court. And again, all of these men were black men who lived in Albina. Uh. None of their deaths provoked any outcry until Officer Sanford shot

Ricky Johnson in the back of the head. Everyone living in the year of the George Floyd Uprising knows how this works. It's kind of impossible to predict when the violent death of a person of color at the hands of cops will provoke outraged and enough white people that the police actually have to address it. Um. But it did here um. And I should note here that in nineteen seventy two there were also plenty of back the blue types who defended the PPB from all of its murdering.

I'm gonna quote from Katherine Nelson again here. One citizen even sent officer Sandford, who shot the seventeen year old, a twenty dollar check for his vacation fund and offered to provide him with a babysitter. The donor, Esther Nichols, stated that a community cannot say or accept that black is bad, so it has to be the police that

are wrong. What. Yeah, I'll read that again. Esther Nichols, who gave money to the cop that killed that guy, stated that the community cannot say or except that black is bad, so it has to be the police that are wrong. Cool esther, You see, rad Esther, Esther, thanks for being really openly racist as opposed to just claiming you support cops. Uh, that's at least honest. She's like the progenitor of all the cop go fund me is now. But it's just one person, master. Yeah, you seem cool. Yeah.

Johnson's death revealed that a large portion of Portland's white residents held racist views and respected the decision of the police to use extreme violence against black citizens. Uh Meanwhile, Johnson's death inspired black Portland's to create the Black Justice Committee. The b j C teamed up with several existing advocacy organizations to pushed the city to order an inquest into

Johnson's death. A public inquest is essentially a trial that occurs after a suspicious death, and it was hoped that this would make it clear that criminal behavior had been, you know, evident on behalf of the officer involved. The Portland Black Student Union was another group that pushed for the same cause. Now, when awful lot of Portland's were willing to support a public inquest, this was a very

popular cause. It was, after all, a pretty basic thing to do and not exactly a revolutionary demand, like we should investigate the suspicious killing. Is you can get most people on board that thing. There were, however, some boot liquers who thought this went too far. Opponents of the inquest wrote into local papers complaining that Johnson's death was

being turned into a race issue. Watford Read of Portland wrote a letter to the police chief in which he complained that a public inquest would prove black people are privileged in Portland. Pardons when they're murdered, they're privileged. Uh Uh fucking jelical catch ship where everyone's just like the Actually, the most privileged thing would just be to send to the heavens right now. Uh. It would be fun if his argument was like, well, no, this planet is terrible

and being to send out of life. Uh. Mayor Neil gold Schmidt, who was basically the same as every other mayor of Portland as ever, had knew that outrage over the Johnson shooting was too popular for him to come out against the inquest, but he was also terrified of the p p A, who were clearly more powerful than the city government. So gold Schmidt tried to thread the needle by supporting the inquest in order to appease the liberals and stating publicly that he expected Officer Sanford to

be totally vindicated. He actually announced that he thought the inquest would be a good opportunity for black Portlanders to learn why it was totally okay to shoot a seventeen year old in the back of the head. Great Mayor solid marrying He does sound a bit like our current mayor. Yeah, I was gonna totally about Portland is all the good mayor's, all the great mayors that we have here. So the p P as president at this point was a total dick bag named Stan Peters, which is a dick bag name,

like it's a name of a jerk. Uh so he was. Peters was enraged by even the mild support the mayor gave to the idea of an inquest. Um He was just like, this is like the fact that you would even question one of my cops shooting somebody is offensive to me. The police chief was a little bit more reasonable and decided the benefits of having an inquest outweighed the risks. In the end, the inquest happened, and it revealed some pretty damning stuff about the conduct of Portland

police officers from Katherine Nelson. Witnesses who testified included Melva Thrower, a neighbor on North Gandon Bean. She testified that the officers used profanity and handled Zachary roughly upon his arrest. That was the other kid who was with the kid who got shot to death. She stated that they threw Zachary on top of the police car before tossing him into the back seat. When Zachary asked about Johnson, they said that bitch is dead and asked where does that

motherfucker live? Instead of focusing on the treatment of Zachary, More questioned the officers about throwers testimony and asked if they used profanity. The officers admitted that profanity was used, but they couldn't remember what profanities. Another officer claimed that he heard loud language but could not determine that they were profanities. After the assistant district attorney question Stanford, the six person jury voted as to whether Sanford should be

held accountable. Vote returned five to one that Sanford's actions were justifiable. The only black jury member casted the soul vote against Sanford's innocence. So lots going on there. One is that after hearing that they had referred to they had like said that bitch is dead and asked where he lived and all that sort of stuff, and had abused an arrested person. The district attorney's concerned was that they'd used profanity, which is problem here. The real issue

cops are cursing. You can murder people, but you can't call them a bit afterwards, that's offensive. That's gonna make people angry. Yeah. Um, and yeah. Also that obviously all of the white people and the jury voted that the cop was right to shoot that kid, and uh, the only black jury member was the only vote against his innocence. I will state here that the story did not end

happily for officers Sanford. Despite being described as a model officer prior to the shooting, Sandford received increasing complaints about his performance after the inquest. He was suspended from duty in nineteen seventy five for accepting a gift from a citizen in nineteen seventy seven for the use of illegal drugs while off duty. Later that year, he was put

on permanent disability for PTSD. And this next bit is interesting, not that I expect people to have sympathy for this guy, but that it makes the point that the Portland Police Union is actually bad for officers in some ways to the p PBS. Culture of resistance supported by the p p A negated Sanford's professional and moral accountability. P p A president Stan Peters claimed Stanford would receive psychological help after Johnson's death, yet there is no evidence that he

did to so easily brush aside. Johnson's death is just afiable emphasized not only the inadequate services Portland police officers received from the Bureau, but also the unspoken norm that black lives did not matter. This obviously and ultimately disrespected the sacred deus of black lives throughout Portland and question the worth of black people kind of like, it's bad for everyone for white supremacy to be enshrined by institutions. Arguably, but does that stop it? No, not at all. This

is bad for everyone. Should we stop it in the next fifty years? No, absolutely not. Let's keep having the same fight went on. We don't have anything else to do in society. Everything else is good, Yeah, everything else is smooth. Them just chugging right along, like that train the police used to shoot Longshore from. So the rest of the early seventies continued the by now well worn pattern of Portland police only suffering consequences when they offended

the white majority with their actions. In nineteen, the Bureau was rocked by a series of scandals in the Narcotics Division, most of which revolved around the fact that the entire Narcotics Division was addicted to illegal drugs one PPB detective testified that narcotics officers frequently did huge amounts of cocaine

before going out on drug rates. Mean, I'm gonna be honest, I've seen them riding along on their Riot vans and thought it would be fun to do a funckload of blow and then like hang off the side of a four D F three fifty rolling around the streets. That does seem rad is It's just like how not subtle

it is? That just like makes my brain explode, where it's like, let us do drugs before busting people for drugs for drugs good, because that way we'll have more drugs, Yeah, exactly, which is actually getting ready to oh my god, it's a perfect cycle. There is at least one clear case of the PPB murdering and then faking the suicide of a drug dealer in order to get his heroine. Um good,

good guys Portland' narcotics cops. Uh. And in fact, when that dead kid's mom pressed for an investigation into his death, she received a phone call from a white dude who was probably a Portland narcotics officer. He told her to back off on the investigation unless she wanted more family members dead. Yeah, that's good. Um, good police good, fine,

that's fine police work. So the detective Dupay who was the uh, I guess the best Portland copper're going to talk about in this he's the one who reported that Portland narcotics officers were doing a shipload a blow before going out on drug raids. He investigated the murder of this drug dealer and he submitted a report to the police chief with his findings, which were pretty damning to

the Portland Police Bureau. Years later, when he attempted to get a copy of the report, I think to give to a reporter, but I'm not sure, a clerk told him that it had been shredded as soon as he filed it, like almost immediately. That's good stuff, good stuff. If you're wondering why didn't anyone do anything about these drug adduled out of control cops, the answer is p p A. President Stan Peters one of the worst people

to ever live in the city of Portland. He was a potent negotiator, though, and when the city negotiators angered him during a contract dispute like this is the story that everyone tells about Stan Peters. He was negotiating with the city for more money, and when they wouldn't play ball with him, he drew his gun and slammed it on the table and told them these are my ground rules. Sorry, I just sat here. They can see I just sat here with my mom and went for like thirty straight seconds.

And they just they just keep out doing themselves. It's of themselves, and they keep doing ship. That is again literal criminal stuff, right, It's a thing. No, it's just a thing where like I feel like we get desensitized to it, Like I get desensitized at anything that they do because I'm just like, yeah, of course they're doing that. And then you know, you know what the protests that we were at, Like someone outside would be like, wait, they're you know, snatching people up in on my fans

and I'm like, oh, is that not normal? And They're like that's not They're not supposed to do that. I'm like, oh, interesting, So like when they do that, I'm just like, oh, yeah, I guess technically or not supposed to do that just seems like something they would do. There's a there's a local cop that we all know, Brett Taylor, who is most famous in the city of Portland for kind of randomly stabbing car tires during riots, um, for no real

purpose that I can see most of the time. I originally knew him as cop who won't stop pointing his gun at people's heads. That's when call him. It was a long moniker, but he just let everyone else would like point out the ground. He would just be still having at your head. But yeah, then he switched to just like really just hating car tires. Yeah he's he's really fucking loves to stab car time. Does he have

the joy in his body language? Yeah? Um. He Among other things, we had like a recent like city like in testimony or whatever on police violence, and somebody came on who he had shot in the groin and Brett had to testify that he had never knowingly targeted the growing area. And in another point, he was talking about having addressed protesters and like he was stopped by the modern said, by addressed, you mean you threw grenades at them? Uh,

fucking love the Portland police. They're cool. Then they're cool. Now start a conversation with a grenade. I love dialogue. So stan uh, the guy who negotiates with a handgun wound up having an influence that extended far, far beyond the bounds of the Rose City from pickets, pistols, and politics. Shortly after Peters became the union president, he introduced a concept that was relatively new to police officers, political involvement.

Peter's predecessor, David Callison, had dabbled lightly, even inviting controversy by offering a PPA endorsement and a few local races, but Peter's scope was broader than that. He wanted the Union to be a political force to be reckoned with. He was tired of the city and state officials writing rough shot over police with seemingly little interest in its rank and file concerns or causes. He wanted the police to be listened to better. Yet, he wanted politicians to

quake in their boots if the police were not happy. Huh, And so he pulled his handgun out. Yeah, I mean, yes, he did do that. Um. He's also the start in a lot of ways of police nationwide getting directly involved in political races and having police unions directly endorsed candidates and taking partisan stances. We can also thank the p p A for a lot of that. Yeah no, I yeah, And that showed up last month, this month. Gosh, every

month is a years long. Yeah, I mean this month. Yeah, every month of this year has lasted longer than all of the history we're covering in this podcast. Yeah, this is true. But you know what doesn't take long tuck goods and services. Yeah, it doesn't take long to develop an appreciation for the fine products and services that support

this Podcas asked, can't wait we are back? Okay. So the p p A had made history by becoming the first successful police union, and it made history again here by setting a precedent that police unions would involve themselves directly in local and eventually national races. Stan was clear that his motivation for doing this was to make local elected leaders afraid of him. This, he knew, was the only way that the bureau could protect itself from the

dangers of democracy. Yeah, Portland police were going to keep shooting people and engaging in rampant corruption that was going to continue to piss Portlanders off. If they wanted to avoid real consequences for this behavior, the p p A would have to insert themselves into politics, So they started donating the city council candidates paying to run ads attacking leaders who threatened to force any kind of accountability on them. Other police unions around the country paid attention, and true

to form, followed suit. In nineteen seventy, one of those coke adult narcotics cops we've been talking about, Officer David Crowther, was shot dead during a drug rate on a motorcycle gang. Since he was, I mean, I don't know specifically that he was a coke head, but other Portland's cops say the narcotics cops were all coke heads, So one one assumes I am sorry if I unfairlylandered him as a coke head just because he was in a unit of

coke heads. Um, and there's nothing wrong with being a coke head as long as you weren't also carrying out drug rates. You know, no shame on cocaine. Uh weren't you wistfully tweeting about cocaine like yesterday? It was mostly a joke. It's been a long time and happened in countries where it's legal. Let's just say that. Um yeah, so uh yeah, since he was, you know, possibly a cokehead cop who may very well have helped murder people because again, his unit definitely murdered at least one person

in stage it as a suicide. I'm not going to say it was a tremendous tragedy that David Crowther got shot busting another gang um. But the hilariously pro p p A book Pistols, Pickets and Politics notes the violent death of a fellow officer was a terrible blow to the members of the Portland Police Bureau and devastating to the Drug Unit. But it was not the end of

the nightmare. And what that book calls a nightmare was the fact that Internal Affairs had opened an investigation into the murders, drug dealing and drug abuse by numerous members of the Narcotics Division. What a nightmare being held accountable for our actions. That's for other people. Yeah, I too have nightmares that I will get in trouble for doing

a shipload of drugs and murdering people. Uh yeah. One of the most damning complaints against the Drug Unit was that they had planted drugs on suspects in order to charge innocent people with felony crimes they had not committed. But that's not the nightmare. The nightmare the nightmares them getting caught. Yes, now I should note that police planting fake drugs or drugs that they stole from other people and then planting them all people who didn't have those drugs.

This happens constantly all around the country. Google the Dallas fake drugs scandal if you want another example of huge numbers of officers being involved in the planting of fake drugs on people. Anyway, law and order is important, um so. The internal affairs investigation was completed in the summer of nineteen eighty and it led to the resignations of two

officers who'd been assigned to the narcotics unit. One of those officers was later arrested on charges of illegally obtaining narcotics from a drug dealer with the intent to deal. He was convicted, and the p PA did not sue to get this cop back his job. So that's we

found a line. The investigation revealed at least fifty nine cases where people had been convicted due to falsified evidence from Portland's cops, and thirty five more cases that were in the process of being like like argued out based on the same bogus evidence. And all of these cases, nearly a hundred, were overturned. Even Officer Crowther's killer was released from prison after it was proven that the cops who testified at his trial head led on the stand. Okay,

that's very funny. Actually, that's extremely funny because he's absolutely a murderer and they just couldn't stop themselves from lying. Uh so, you know he's an extra murderer. Yeah. I would say, you're shooting yourself in the foot, but maybe you're shooting your friend in the back. Yeah. So by the time rolled around, the Portland Police were not doing particularly well in the Winning Hearts and Minds department, and

things got worse for them on March twelve. The Burger Barn was at the time one of very few black owned businesses in Portland. It was, of course, in Albina. The cops claimed that the Burger Barn was a major gathering place for criminal activity. Gangsters and drug dealers and pimps would all that meet there all the time. And

I have no idea if this was true. Considering the fact that the PPBS whole Drug Unit was a bunch of coke hed murderers who planted fake drugs on people, I'm going to take what they say with a grain of salt. Here, Like the p p A book like just sort of goes like, well, criminals were gathering here, and cops were just so angry that that all these people they couldn't catch were always gathering at this restaurant and that's why they did what they did. But it's

like they also led all the time. So yeah, um yeah. So, as the story goes to Portland police officers got fed up with all of the bad men hanging out at this restaurant and they decided to get revenged with what the p p as biographer describes as a prank. This prank involved gathering up for dead possums and dumping them at the doorway of the burger barn. Now, if you aren't aware, the word possum has been a derogatory slur

for black people since the early eighteen hundreds. It has the same etymology as the use of like the term raccoon as in the same sense, like that they come from the same origin point. This was not a prank by dumping dead possums at the door of a black owned business. These cops were making what amounted to a death threat, right, Like, that's what that means, um, not, I wouldn't call it a prank. The officers took no

steps to be stealthy about what they were doing. And according to the Power family, who owned to the restaurant, and this was just the latest in a long line of harassing actions from the Portland Police, they believed this harassment was designed to scare away their customers and destroy

the business. You should probably also keep in mind that while the Portland Police claimed this restaurant was a famous taunt of drug dealers and pimps, for literal decades prostitution and drug dealing in Albino had been carried out under the approval and sometimes the direction of the Portland Police. Um. Yeah, So an investigation was launched and the officers responsible admitted

what they've done immediately. They were not publicly identified because there was a clause in the pp A contract that said officers who were disciplined should not be disciplined publicly. In other words, the p p A contract guaranteed that officers who harmed people would not be publicly named or punished, which some might suggest means they probably wouldn't be punished at all. This is now the standard nationwide. So yes,

it's frustrating and consistent. It's not great. It reminds me of now when just for people who aren't aware, maybe everyone ideas, uh, they actually covered all the name badges and numbers on the Portland Police and so there is actually no way to hold them accountable. And the only thing you can do is like submit a description to PPP and they're like, oh, yeah, well we'll look into

it privately. You know, you're not allowed to like name the person who shot you in the head, because that would be going too far according to the p p A. Apparently that would be. But whenever they arrest people, they will tweet out all of their identifying information. Yeah, all those people are getting dogs. It's fair, fair, is what it is? Fair, cool, good, just or just. Now. In this case, there was enough public outrage that the p p A couldn't just sweep things under the rugs and

do an internal investigation. The officers responsible, Craig Ward and Jim Galloway, voluntarily appeared at a press conference before black community leaders. They identified themselves and apologized, and I'm gonna quote here from Pickets, Pistols, and Politics. Ward and Galloway claimed they had acted out of frustration, not racial hatred. When they made their late night deposit of the possums

at the restaurant's door. But the black community, already incensed over incidents of alleged discrimination by police, labeled the possum dumping is more evidence of racism and deliberate targeting of blacks by police. Just a month and a half earlier, Black United Front co chairman Ron Herndon and neighborhood activists Vestia Loving had called on the United Nations to investigate human rights violations in the Oregon because of the high percentage of blacks that had they said, had been killed

by police over the previous ten years. Um yeah, I didn't realize that people had called on the UN to investigate or get police for racism. Um. Probably not the last time, but yeah, that's wild. Yeah, yeah, we could use another UN investigation, although that would probably just increase the conspiracy theories that Antifa's part of a UN scheme

to take over the United States. Is that actually already absolutely I missed that one with the U n There's too many Antifa's doing too show it once it's time to keep jack. I I wasn't going to throw out criticisms here, but I do think they're they're going a little bit broad um, they're trying to provide rest brators, they're making suit for my family, and they're taking over

the u N. So. The Black United Front is one of the advocacy groups that I don't think they'd formed over the outrage in Rickie Johnson's death, but they had really like come together in a big way after that because a number of groups that formed after Johnson's death had been merged into the United Front. They gave a press conference themselves where they pointed out that the possum incident was part of a pattern of police harassment of

black Portland's. The p p as paid biographer rights. Begrudgingly, the people of Portland's seemed to agree. For the most part, public sympathy lay with the power family in the black community, not with the police. Yes, I'm so proud of everybody. Yeah, they figured it out. Yeah, two protesters picketed city hall and lo and behold, this forced the police chief and commissioner to fire officers ward in Galloway. Great, surely that's

the end of the story. And no one ever did anything racist again, No, uh no, they immediately did something racist because Stan Peters was still the head of the Portland Police Association, and he was pissed as hell. Quote, it appeared that no one was willing to stand up for Ward and Galloway, no one but stand Peters. As president of the Portland Police Association, it was his duty

to protect the rights of members. Once the executive board determined that warden Galloway had not committed a crime and that they had a legitimate grievance due to their summary dismissal from their jobs, the union, led by Peters, rose up to defend them. Is good, It's so cool that they just like, I want to make sure that you have your legal right to be racist. Yeah. The p PA was saying that as long as Portland cops didn't break the law, it was okay for them to racially

harass citizens. Like that's the argument Peters is making. Peters was a rampaging racist and sexist by the way, Yeah, oh yeah, I could tell from your intro. He yeah, it's like that. Good can see this this dude with the terrible mustache, Robert Yes, you know he has a mustache by the name stand Peters, and the fact that he was a cop, like he has to have had a mustache. The universe would have shattered into a thousand pieces if he had been a clean shaven He's like,

this is a terrible face. I'm guessing this is the right guy. Yeah, No, he's he's he looks exactly. If you just picture old timey cop in your head, it's Stan Peters, like seventies cop. Yeah. I just it just reminds me so much of like, not Stan Peters in his face. I don't know about that, but it just reminds me so much about like people who somehow conflate the Second Amendment with like the right to say whatever the funk you want and still keep your job. It's

like that thing. It's like, Oh, because you legally can threaten people's lives by leaving dead possums outside of their job, you also should be able to keep your job and still do that, because those two things are the same. Also, I would guess that if protesters made an explicit death threat towards officers in a similar way to the officers had threatened to kill members of the Power family, they

would probably be arrested. M some people made some death threats against me, and all I get to do is say, hope that won't kill me. Well, yeah, but you know you're not a cop to No, I know, made a mistake, just kidding. Should have been a copy in your life would matter. Wow. I just opened the photo and it is truly everything I imagined and more. Yeah, he doesn't go and I kind of imagine him being bald. He does have some top hair. Wow, this mustache. Yeah, I know it is a It is a cop stash. It

is a powerful cop stash. He's like leaning against a desk, just like it. Rules. Don't mean the stereotype, but he is cop ugly. Yeah, no, he looks he looks like a cop. If you saw him on the street and you were a director and you were trying to cast a cop, you'd be like, hey, like, let me get your digits. This does look more like the still from a Hollywood film about an old timey cop than it does an actual old timey cop. Yeah, he looks like the guy who like yells at Dirty Harry for shooting

too many people. But in reality, Stan Peters never yelled at anyone for shooting too many people. He was like, he didn't shoot enough people this month? Why are there so many alive people in this town? Uh? Yeah? So um, yeah, the Stan Peters makes the union rise up to defend these officers who were fired for making racist threats. And

this was actually pretty groundbreaking. UM. Thanks to the p p A, it was common for unions around the country to weigh in on disciplinary matters when cops did bad stuff UM, and officers could appeal punishments for bad behaviors, but once a cop was fired, they tended to stay fired. Stan Peters set out to change that. First, he demanded the case go to binding arbitration, which the contract allowed him to do. Then he organized a petition drive to

fire the police commissioner. He sent ballots to the pp A members to get a vote of no confidence in both the chief and the police commissioner. And last, but not least, he announced a protest march to compete with the Black United Fronts March. This one would consist of off duty cops, their family members, and local supporters versus Black lives mattering thing. Okay, what years? This this is nine?

Okay yep. The p PAS march gathered a staggering eight hundred and fifty people waving signs that said reinstate the blue, two, justice not politics, and may the Force be with you. Craig and Jim Star wars pretty new at the time. Um fucking nerds. Uh. Many police elements, including sharpshooters, protected the march, which is interesting because it was a private organization doing a march being protected by public funds in a way that I'll guarantee you, the Black United Front

protesters weren't protected. Not a thing that ever happened again say repeatedly. Um. So. Some brave counter protesters did show up with pigs heads on spikes, which infuriated Stan Peters. Um and udos to those folks. But on the whole, the march was a massive success for the p p A. All the pressure exercised by Peters eventually did its job. The arbitrator decided that termination of both officers had been too harsh a penalty. Both men were reinstated to their jobs.

This would turn out to be quite possibly the most influential thing the Portland Police ever did. From pickets, pistols, and politics, the City of Portland versus Ward and Galloway case is still the leading police discipline case in the United States and in labor lost circles. It is the arbitration decision referred to most often. Its legal nomenclature is simply City of Portland. So you know, we started this by saying that all fired cops and some cities more

like seventy to get reinstated by union appeals. The legal underpinning of that is City of Portland. That is the name of the case that is most often referred to when police firings are revealed. But a cool city that I live in, a great legacy to be here. We

have a lot of roses too, you know, Robert. It's okay because as we were discussing right before this, there's a current lawsuit that I'm not allowed to talk about called Woodstock versus City of Portland, and we're just gonna slide that one in and that's going to be the one everyone references now. Make the city. Yeah, figures crossed. Figures crossed. So I found an interesting interview with labor

historian Norman Diamond on the website Street Roots. He was actually on the Portland Labor Board when all this was going on, so he's very familiar with how the pp A works because again, like the p p A was part of the Labor Board at this point, and he pointed out that initially the p PA's goal was, quote, if any of our members commits an act subject to discipline,

we want them to have union representation. That's reasonable. Their claim was cops have to have the same rights as anybody else in society, and I do agree with that, but he says, with successive contracts, they extended those rights beyond anything the rest of us have. Now, the event of a shooting, you can't question a police officer until two days have passed. Their superiors can't, the District attorney's

office can't, and that's part of the labor contract. So they have a chance to meet with other officers involved in the shooting to get their story straight and go over everything with their lawyers, and then after two days they can bring back what becomes the official version. I'm sorry, what the fuck? They're like, Yeah, it's really just like you. Your union means that. Our union says you get to have this specified collision time. And now that's very common

around the entire country. Because of the Portland Police, I can't even like fully process that because it's just so obviously correct, right, I Mean that's what we're saying this whole time, right, It's like every single thing in it's like you're not being subtle about it. You're just like, oh, here's like me being just like literally doing criminal things

behind the cops, and so I just get to do it. Yeah, you know, when the when the is like big protests started up after George Floyd's murder, I was kind of there was there was an element of me that was like, you know, Portland's not a big city, and our police department is not a big police department, and it's not a nationally it wasn't, at least now it's more famous. It was not a nationally famous police department. And it seems strange to me that this city would become the

nexus of so much resistance to the police. And it makes more sense now because the Portland police are the center nationwide of a lot of our problems with police violence and brutality. Like I wish it worked in reverse, where like, oh, Portland's started all of it. And so if something happened to Portland Police like every other police station, like why something happened, I mean like contractually, like legally, like something got taken away, then it's like, oh, that

actually just ribbles out to everywhere. But I have a feeling it doesn't work in reverse. No, it would not. It's going to require an agonizing and probably decades long process of yeah, good time. In ninety five, Portland police responded to a shoplifting incident at a seven eleven. They noticed a fight happening in the stores parking lot, and the p p As biography describes it, telling Lee as between two white men and a tall black man. It's interesting to me that they didn't feel the need to

describe any of the physical attributes of the white men. Um, No, I gotta know he's tall. So the cops decided that this tall black man must be responsible for whatever was happening, and they put him in a sleeper hold, which killed him. It turned out that the victim, Lloyd Stevenson, was a former marine and a father of five, as well as the security guard at fred Meyer More outrage swept through the city. The city government acted quickly, banning the police

from using choke holds. Seems kind of familiar. I think we've heard this story before. Of course, the police complained. Portland police were trained to use force and gradually escalating levels from one to six. Level one is the presence of a cop. Level two is voice commands. Level three is physical restraint, Level four is the carotid artery hold that killed Aid, and level five is the use of

a nightstick or mace. In six is of course deadly force, but of course really so was four because the grodit

hold killed people. Yeah. Now, the Portland police complained that taking their chokehold away would escalate things dangerously, leaving them with less non lethal options to respond to crime with because most cops didn't like to carry night sticks because they were heavy and thought carrying mace was a hassle, So just all they would have as a gun like this will give us basically, this will say that this

will make our only option be shooting people. Um now, yeah, if you don't let us kill them this way, we'll have to kill them this other way because we can't carry mace around because we can't it's too heavy mace.

To Portland's cops, Monte and Wickersham were particularly angry at being banned from choking people, and the p p A biography notes that they were in the process of being trained to give chokeholds at the time, so it kind of leaves you with the impression that, like they were so excited to choke people and then they got their power. Well I don't get to choke anybody now, I'm new to being a cop. Come on, do you say their names are Monty and Wicker Shim's Monty and wickershim. Yeah,

they sound British as hell. They a couple of bobbies in the in the old p p A. They like they traveled here because they're like I hear you get to choke people more in the Portland Police Bureau. Yeah, it's funny. When I was a little conservative, well I

guess more conservative than I am now. I remember a videos circulating around that was like a bunch of British cops like like a circle of them all around one man with a machete and they had like chairs I think, and we're like like basically like all in a huge circle trying to like calm this, like stop this guy from swinging a knife, and eventually de escalated him and nobody died. And it was like portrayed as like, look, how silly it is because English cops don't have guns.

This is what it takes to deal with a man with a machete. And I was like, well, but they didn't kill anybody. Like everyone walked away alive. Isn't this a good story? Yeah, we're gonna arm everyone with the chairs now they're going to be heavy, but no one's going to die. Yeah. So I'm gonna quote here from the p p AS biography, Monty and Wickersham reacted to the situation with the typical black humor of police officers. They had T shirts printed with the slogan don't choke him,

smoke him. Yeah. Sorry, Yeah, that's just the typical black humor of police officers. Making a T shirt about an innocent man you choke to death? Good times? Uh? I mean as somebody who's wearing a novelty police violence T shirt right now, I guess I can't talk. But it's a little different. Someone in the city of Portland has found it don't choke him smoke um T shirt at like a fucking vintage store, like and didn't know what it was for. The biography goes on the state. The

message they wished to convey was clear. If the karated hold was no longer available to police, why not just shoot? Why? Why else are we going to do a lot to shoot people? Yeah? They started selling the T shirts in the Justice center's break room on the exact same day if Lloyd Stevenson's funeral um classy. They were fired and

the case went into arbitration. The union argued that the officers apparent insensitivity had been unintentional because the officers hadn't known that Stevenson's funeral was taking place the same day. The firings were overturned and the officers reinstated. You know, I am loving this city of Portland, citing more and more every time. Is their job back? Yeah, it's great. You know what's better than people mocking murder victim and then getting back pay. I would say, honestly most things,

but possibly products and services. Yeah, very certainly, products and services. We are back. Okay. So there have been a lot of horrible crimes committed by the Portland Police and defended by the p p A. We've gone through a number of them. Um, we only have so much time in our lives and in this episode, so in the sake of brevity, I'm going to outline just one more and this time the victim is not a black man. It's

a twelve year old boy. Oh good. Yeah. A home invader broke into the house where Nathan Thomas, the aforementioned twelve year old child and his parents lived. The police arrived while the invader was in the house, and the man grabbed Nathan as a hostage and held a knife to his throat. The home invader was twenty years old, drunk,

and reportedly suicidal. Now, this is obviously a nightmare situation, and like right, my criticisms of the police aside, there's not going to be a perfect way to handle this. This could there's a good chance that he would have died no matter what had happened. This is a bad situation. That said, the tactic the cops chose to deal with this hostage situation was shall I say, less than delicate.

Instead of doing any of the kind of things you might expect police to do during a hostage situation that threatens the life of a twelve year old, five different Portland officers opened fire from outside of the house with their handguns, pumping dozens of rounds into the house. The hostage taker was shot fourteen times. Nathan was also shot, and he died in the hospital. Just five guys start shooting into the building. What's even the point at that point, Like, sensibly,

you're there to help, like you're not. But like ostensibly they're there to help the kid, but they're not, so why are they're And it's also like I will say, it can be justified to use a firearm in that situation, But you don't use a pistol, all right, you don't try. You don't try from outside of a house too. I shoot a lot of handguns, right, They're very inaccurate compared to a rifle, Like, they are only good at short distances, and they are not for pursue. Shouldn't work. That's not

what a handguns for. Um, you would have a sniper come in and try to shoot the guy threatening a twelve year old with it. That's a reasonable time to use a sniper. They just had five guys start shooting handguns into the building. Um, it's so fucked up. The president of the p p A at the time was a guy named Morse, and he showed up on the scene with a p p A lawyer as soon as he heard that his cops had gotten down a small child.

Now I want to read you this next paragraph from Pickets, Pistols, and Politics because it has to be one of the most sociopathic things I have ever read in my entire life. As the father of three young sons, Morse's heart went out to the family of Nathan Thomas. The boy's accidental death was devastating, but Morse, a Marine Corps veteran and a longtime police officer, was a man who had been thoroughly trained to maintain his focus and perform his duty

no matter how much he heard inside. As he dialed the telephone number had contacted one sleepy lawyer after another, his focus was on the five police officers who needed his help. M cool stuff, good guys. So I just even just calling it like an accidental death, and it's like, I'm not convinced it was an accident. I don't think you just have five people shooting handguns into a house and be like that, oh oops, if someone died, if five people shoot handguns into a house filled with people.

What you're saying, because I love nonverbal communication, and the nonverbal communication that you're giving off when you and four other men of fire handguns into a house is I don't really care who I hit inside that house exactly exactly, So obviously, um, none of these guys were fired or seriously disciplined for wild and wildly. Uh. Now, don't worry though, talk the p P as biographer wants us all to know that the police cared about what had happened and

they wanted to make it right. Quote. The association's concerned for youngsters was demonstrated in a gesture of grief and sympathy after the death of Nathan Thomas. A few weeks after the boy's death, Union contributed two d fifty dollars to the American Cancer Society Nathan had received treatment for Hodgkins disease and was in remission at the time of his death, and two hundred and fifty dollars to the Nathan Thomas Soccer Scholarship Fund. Nathan was the member of

a soccer team, so that's good. Yeah. I always say, if you just kill a twelve year old kid for no reason, just donate two hundred fifty dollars to a soccer team and it's all fine. That's yeah. Now, they, I will say they. The family of Nathan also reached out to the police later because they were working to raise money to build a soccer field in Nathan's memory at Laurel Hurst Park, which is near where he lived. UM and the p PA did contribute five thousand dollars

to the soccer field, so that's more money. Yeah. They love to sponsor soccer. Yeah, they're big soccer fans. Do you think we can get them to defund PPB if we tell them that we just need to raise more money for soccer. A lot of soccer fields that might do the trick to so that I would want to defund p p B. I'm an objective journaliective skin in this game. Any go ahead. Yeah, as a journalist, opinions

are obviously forbidden. Now, there are a number of important things I didn't cover in this series, like how p p A president Stan Peters hated the idea of woman cops and non white cops and deliberately made the union

unwelcoming to them. I felt like focusing on the travails of police officers, even like obviously I it's weird because like I don't think we should have cops if we're going to have them, Yeah, everyone should have the equal opportunity to be a cop, I guess, but I didn't want to focus on that in this episode as opposed to all of the horrible things that the police did. Um. Yeah, but Stan Peters super racist, and there was a whole fight within the union to make it less racist. That's

a thing that happened. Um So, you know, in the sake of fairness, I wanted to denote that. Um yeah. I do want to close though, by talking some more about the p eb's infamous Red Squad. In nineteen seventy four, the mayor of Portland assured the city's liberal population that

the Red Squad had been disbanded. This was a lie, and they later learned that year that it had just been renamed the Intelligence Division and was actively keeping tabs on suspicious characters at the Oregon a c l U. Um, gotta keep an eye on them a c l U folks. In November six, local press published rumors that the Red Squad had been secretly re established as a new entity under the name Criminal Intelligence Division, presumably as part of

a renewed red scare of the Reagan years. The police denied this, admitting that the Criminal Intelligence Division existed, but claiming that it does not monitor peaceful or public activities and does not target groups or individuals. But that's true, right, mm hmmm. I'm gonna quote next from a write up by Michael monk in officers Sewart officially detailed to spy on radicals and subversives, attended and submitted a confidential report on a meeting by a coalition of peace, labor, and

environmental groups to discuss the Civilian Police Review Board. One of the victims of that surveillance sued Portland for violation if his civil rights four years later, and one a two thousand dollar award in court. Although the court decision was not reported by The Oregonian, it led to public hearings on the Red Squad in nineteen by the Metropolitan Commission on Human Rights. Although denied press coverage even by the Willamette Week, the Commission grilled Red Squad commander Lieutenant

Larry Findling and Sergeant Norman Sharp. They admitted they used paid agents, volunteer informers, and other techniques to monitor dissenters, and agreed that even the reasonable suspicion of something as trivial as trespass triggers their response. The mc HR proposed a series of controls on the Red Squad to Mayor Cats.

Not only did the mayor reject the proposals, she dismantled the mc HR yeah Portland's got a long tradition to good Mayor's nothing but quality in Portland Mayor's I was trying to make a joke earlier about very cats being good, and I'm so glad it didn't work out. Nope, it turns out leaders are bad. So the Red Squad spent the end of the nineteen nineties violatingly civil rights of dissidents.

In October of nine, it sent an undercover agent to spy on protesters opposing Bill Clinton's air war on Iraq. In two thousand, on May Day, the Red Squad's black van videotaped the faces of demonstrators who hadn't actually broken any laws, which is again a crime that's criming. The Red Squad's behavior was egregious enough that they piste off Circuit Court Judge Michael Marcus, who ordered the Oregon Police

to stop tracking citizens who aren't breaking the law. Two years later, information surface that they were still doing that. It is currently against Oregon law for them to survey the lawful demonstrators, But we can only assume the Red Squad is still doing what it always did, what every name it operates under now. Anyway, that's the story of

the Portland Police and the Portland Police Association. Yeah, I will rest easy knowing that I'm definitely not being surveilled by the Red Squad because it doesn't exist anymore and they're stopped it. They're just chilling. Cool now. Thanks. I appreciate knowing this context that not only are things bad now, but they always always have been bad, and there was

plenty of time to fix it and we just didn't. Yeah, but you know this inspires me to kick the can right down the road to the next generation to people I can't even go to the burger barn. That story made me just want to go to the burger barn and support the burger barn. It doesn't even exist anymore. Yeah, that's the real strategy. Tragedy tragedy trategy. I don't know,

my brain stopped when you said willam It Week. I was like what, and I'm yeah, I think that was either they changed their name or that was the name they used to operate under. I don't know. It's will lam It weak, but oh it is. That was weekly. No, it's lambit week. But it was like Williamite Week versus well lamb It Week. It's like a very non Portland pronunciation. And I'm like, Robert, where are you from here? Get out of here? Yeah, I'm like the Portland police, I'm

not a Portland that he came. No, Yeah, but that came up in my head when we were talking about the police the whole time, is like, at what point did they stop living in Portland? You know? Yeah, And I don't have good information on that, but yeah, it is people should know that about to Portland police live outside the city, many of them in another state, Washington. Um, it's cool stuff. It's cool and good. Yeah, cool and good.

So Tuck, you got anything to plug? Yep. Uh. Still, much like in the last episode, I still make a podcast about gender. The new season is dropping right around when this episode drops, and we have programs to uh provide money for housing, medication, food, really basic things for trans people, particularly black, Indigenous trans people and trans people of color. So if anyone wants to contribute to any of that, they can go to patreon dot com slash gender.

That's patreon dot com slash gender Awesome, patreon dot com slash gender. And also we have if you're if you're listen to this and we're like, boy, Portland is and it's problem with Cops is more interesting than I thought it was. We have a podcast about that called Uprising, and it's about everything that happened in Portland this summer. Um, please check that out again. Uprising it's a podcast that's more things about Portland that will frustrate you, but there's

never enough. Yeah, never enough. A lot of great audio of things exploding though. So if you were like, my headphones haven't triggered me yet, that's what I'm gonna say. I was like, oh, that sounds cool to listen to. No, I have PTSD trigger warning the podcast yeah uh podcast m