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Matt Davis was news editor of the Mercury from 2009 to May 2010.
A center to “end” homelessness in Portland has been a long time coming. “We first tried this when my daughter was born,” says Margaret Bax, the housing policy manager in City Commissioner Erik Sten’s office. “And she’s about to graduate college.” Sten told the Mercury on October 1 he expected to settle on a site […]
A mental health triage center prioritized by Mayor Tom Potter’s Mental Health/Public Safety Initiative work group in January now looks like it’s slipping lower on Multnomah County’s list of funding priorities—leaving Portland’s cops with no option but to transport people in mental health crisis to jail. Portland has been missing a crisis center since 2001, […]
Since Portland’s Drug Free Zones (DFZ) expired on September 30, drug dealers have taken up residence on the streets of Old Town and Chinatown, say numerous business owners and residents. “In recent weeks, I’m just seeing an enormous number of drug dealers, drug users, people smoking crack in the doorways. I’ve run off crack smokers […]
A 40-year-old man who is already suing the sheriff’s office for beating him in the booking area of the Multnomah County jail has a new allegation to make. He is now claiming he was the victim of a retaliatory assault by a fellow inmate—someone allegedly working in conspiracy with a sheriff’s deputy. Michael Evans filed […]
Civil rights attorneys launched a quartet of legal claims against the Portland Police Bureau this week, urging the bureau to police itself better or face more of the same. Three lawsuits and one tort claim—which reserves the right to sue—were filed against the city on Monday, October 15 by Attorneys Benjamin Haile and Leah Greenwald, […]
A federal judge finally ordered the City of Portland last week to turn over crucial documents regarding James Philip Chasse Jr.—the schizophrenic man beaten and killed by Portland police last September—but added one condition: The attorney for Chasse’s family cannot release any of the information in the documents to the public. That’s not good enough, […]
The Portland Business Alliance’s Clean and Safe program plans to pay a visit—along with Central Precinct graffiti cop Matt Miller—to downtown’s art supply store Art Media in advance of its weekend “Paint Off Block Party.” The event, planned for this Saturday, October 13, is “a spray paint demonstration by emerging Portland artists. “Five local artists […]
A group of prominent homeless and civil rights advocates is meeting this week with city commissioners and the mayor’s office to discuss a new list of oversight suggestions for the controversial downtown private security firm, Portland Patrol, Inc. (PPI). PPI contracts with the Portland Business Alliance (PBA) to carry out “order maintenance” in the downtown […]
Members of Portland’s Surge Protection Brigade—a group of politically active senior citizens, who have become known as the “Raging” or “Pissed-Off Grannies”—are taking their campaign against the war in Iraq to the district attorney’s office, arguing that protesting is not a crime. Sara Graham, 67, and four other women over 60—along with a 56-year-old raging […]
At 9 am on Monday morning, October 1, 94 homeless people were crowded into the Julia West House, exceeding the center’s ideal stated capacity by more than half. Around the corner, an old woman in a ragged fur coat sat on the sidewalk reading a copy of the Portland Tribune, an empty bottle of Wild […]
An African American woman from Southeast Portland plans to sue the city after two police officers burned her stomach on her kitchen’s electric stove and badly cut her right eye on a cupboard, then charged her with resisting arrest. Kemisha Samuels, 25, was asleep upstairs in her Powellhurst-Gilbert apartment off SE Division, on June 17—she […]
Feast of Love is based on a series of vignettes by the novelist Charles Baxter set in Ann Arbor, Michigan. But for one reason or another, says its director, Robert Benton, he couldn’t shoot in Ann Arbor, so he brought a film crew to Portland instead. “Portland didn’t feel too big—kind of like a university […]
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