By Bryan Denson, The Oregonian
State Sen. Avel Gordly encouraged protesters Sunday to stand behind Portland’s chief of police as authorities seek to determine how an officer came to shoot to death an unarmed man, James Jahar Perez, on March 28 in the north end of the city.
“He needs to have our support,” Gordly implored a crowd estimated at 700 that filled Terry Schrunk Plaza downtown. And, she said of Chief Derrick Foxworth, “He needs to have our back.”
The senator asked the crowd to point their fingers at the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that are inscribed on the wall of the Justice Center across the street from the park. Pointing her own index finger, she recited the words: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
The Sunday evening gathering, under a placid blue sky, drew community and religious leaders from many races, faiths and ethnicities. Some carried signs that read “Justice” on one side and “Justicia” on the other. Other signs mirrored the anger that connected the crowd: “Stand together or die alone,” “Stop them from killing us Fox” and “Take the racism out of police work.”
One speaker after another preached a peaceful -- but by no means quiet -- response to the shooting death of Perez by 29-year-old Officer Jason Sery.
Police say Sery and his partner, Officer Sean Macomber, pulled Perez over in his car on the evening of March 28 for failing to signal within 100 feet of making a turn in his car. Less than 30 seconds after the stop, Sery fired his 9 mm handgun three times. Perez’s heart was punctured by one of three bullets in his chest.
Police say Sery thought Perez had a weapon. An autopsy showed that Perez had almost lethal levels of cocaine in his body at the time of the shooting.
Many in the crowd were angry at city police, a knot of whom gathered across the street to monitor the gathering. Police kept a respectful distance, intentionally keeping a low profile.
Police and protest coordinators had met in advance to discuss how they could ensure a peaceful demonstration, according to Central Precinct Cmdr. Rosie Sizer, who stood beneath the words of King that Gordly had pointed out.
“We met with the coordinators, and they were just terrific,” Sizer said, pointing out that they had a plan to mediate disturbances by anyone who became overly agitated or acted out. The group summoned its own security team, including volunteers from the Nation of Islam, to ensure a peaceful gathering.
Many of the speakers were angry but restrained Sunday, the day after Perez’s family buried him.
“In hurt, let us find the power to make great strides in our new civil rights struggle,” implored 18-year-old Charles McGee, a member of the Portland Unity Coalition. “And in the face of anger and hurt, let us insist that the leaders of our city press forward and to ensure that no officer who shoots and kills unarmed citizens have a place on our streets.”
Gordly told the crowd that the city had studied the problems of its police force long enough and that much of the problem falls on training. “It takes more training and time to become a licensed hairdresser or barber in Oregon than it does to become a police officer,” she said, drawing cheers. “In Oregon, police officers get 10 weeks of training -- the national standard is 22 weeks.”
Moments after her speech, Gordly complained that officers were young, inadequately trained and armed.
“You give them a gun, and it’s a recipe for disaster,” she said. “We know that. If you know that, we (need to) change the recipe. . . . You get what you train for. And what you get is, they’re trained to shoot.”
The senator said she had met with Foxworth several times since the shooting of Perez.
“He’s focused,” she said. “He’s committed. He’s very, very clear on where the changes need to occur.”
All the talk and all the cries for justice were too little for 60-year-old Floyd Cruse, a former Black Panther who buttonholed Gordly after her speech. Loudly he told the senator that shadowing the police -- with video cameras and tape recorders and eyewitness accounts -- was a time-tested remedy to preventing overly aggressive police tactics.
Cruse, who described himself as minister of information for the Panthers’ Portland chapter in the late 1970s, a time when the group shadowed city police, said that the strategy worked to prevent violence against citizens.
“These guys,” he said, indicating the crowd, “are gonna go out of here and nothing’s gonna happen. At a minimum, we can shadow ‘em.”
Across the street, Sizer considered the strategy with a smile. Police can scarcely make a scene in any neighborhood, she said, when residents aren’t shooting video or snapping photos with a camera phone.