Love Our Arts & Culture Coverage?
You can help fund it!

Give now
Avatar photo

Phil Busse
Posted inNews

FREEDOM DENIED

The Local Bureau of the INS Has a Nasty Habit: Immigrants Go to Jail, but They Don’t Come Out.
Avatar photo Phil Busse

Tucked in the rocky foothills of the Columbia Gorge, North County Correctional Facility is a squat, humorless building. Like most county jails, NORCOR is designed to temporarily house drunks, short-term misdemeanor offenders and in-transit felons–no TV, no radio, no windows. It is where Tan Duc Nguyen, a spry 26-year-old Vietnamese, thought he would spend the […]

Posted inNews

Crime Scene

Out On a Ledge
Avatar photo Phil Busse

As a local fire crew rumbled past the Robert Duncan Plaza last Thursday, one firefighter leaned out his window and yelled, “you’ve got balls, dude.” He smiled and gave the thumb-ups to a young, dark-haired man perched on a ledge thirty feet above the concrete sidewalk. On Friday, July 7, “freelance” activist Tre Arrow scaled […]

Posted inNews

Crime Scene

Gunshots Heard
Avatar photo Phil Busse

In early June, four Reed College students, hanging out in Portland over summer break, headed downtown to smoke, drink, talk loud, and play pool. The air was still and they were giddy–a perfect summer evening. That is, until two Portland patrol officers slammed them against a brick wall and shook them down.The students parked their […]

Posted inNews

Tricks of the Trade

Avatar photo Phil Busse

“The key to shoplifting,” explained Nick, a 30-year-old attorney, “is pretending like you own the item.” Two weeks earlier, Nick (not his real name) walked into a local Fred Meyer to pick up photos he had developed there. “They asked if I wanted to pay at the photo counter or the check-out,” he explained. “That’s […]

Posted inNews

Interview by Jake

Oken-Berg and Hatfield on the Death Penalty
Avatar photo Phil Busse

EDITORS NOTE: For more than four decades, Mark Hatfield has been the combustion engine for Oregon politics, as governor and senator. By the time Senator Hatfield established his political reputation as a no-nonsense politician, Jake Oken-Berg wasn’t even a gleam in his parents’ eyes. Born in 1980, during Hatfield’s third term as an Oregon senator, […]

Posted inNews

Arming Criminals

Gun Control Law Limps Toward November’s Ballot
Avatar photo Phil Busse

CRIMINALS, REJOICE! Anyone with a history of violent crime or domestic abuse who shows up at this month’s gun show at the Expo Center can purchase a handgun. Oregon lawmakers politely call it a loophole: unlike licensed dealers, pesky background checks are not required for firearms peddlers at gun shows. For the past few years, […]

Gift this article