A front-page Portland Tribune story connecting last week’s gang-related shooting outside Rosemary Anderson High School to ongoing protests over police violence and fractured ties with Portland’s black community has been scrubbed online by the paper’s publisher amid concerns it wasn’t sufficiently developed.
The short article—headlined “Who’s Doing the Shooting? In Portland, It’s Not the Police”—opened by calling the shooting a “vivid reminder that most violence against minorities in Portland is committed by other minorities — not the police.” It then followed with a note that “in fact, police provided extra security” at the school when it reopened, before restating its premise.
Despite ongoing protests over alleged police brutality against minorities, Friday’s shooting was an example of the far more typical gang-related violence in minority communities. Four young Portland blacks were shot by a black gunman.
Later, it listed some recent shootings believed to be both gang-related and cases in which the shooters and victims also were African American. And then it again connected the shootings to the ongoing protests, led in part by groups like Don’t Shoot Portland: “Despite that, a previously scheduled protest against police mistreatment of minorities took place in downtown Portland on Saturday afternoon.”
That’s a heady and controversial angle—especially so without adequate space and sourcing. But the story lasted only a few more paragraphs, mostly spent tying up loose ends on the latest in the shooting. Protesters have repeatedly bristled at suggestions or worse from critics that ongoing fallout from poverty and institutional racism, including gang strife, should somehow trump our outweigh equally pressing concerns over police accountability.
One reader, emailing us Tuesday, called the Trib‘s story “the most racist, inflammatory article published since Don’t Shoot PDX began protesting for police accountability.”
After tracking down a copy of the story via a Google cache, the Mercury reached out to reporter Jim Redden and his bosses last night for comment.
Redden, in an interview this morning, confirmed the call to pull the story belonged to publisher Mark Garber—who saw the piece after it had gone through Redden’s editor and a proofreader, and been reviewed by other reporters at the paper. (The story still lives in newsboxes all over town.)
But Redden insisted he didn’t see the piece as particularly “inflammatory.” It was late in the paper’s production cycle, and Redden said he was merely looking for a fresh angle to keep the story from looking stale.
“Anybody who’s a crime reporter or who’s looked into the issue at all knows the vast majority of violence and deaths are caused by other blacks in the community,” he says. “When the shooting happened, followed by [a march throughout downtown Portland on Saturday afternoon,] there was something that illustrates what the situation is. I tried to put the two current stories into one. I didn’t think of it as anything provocative.”
That said, Redden allowed, Garber had some concerns when he finally saw the piece. So he made the call to yank it.
“It was too short to try and raise those kinds of issues and should have had more context and the actual stats,” says Redden, describing some of the issues Garber would have liked addressed. “What do criminologists say? What do black activists say?”
But Redden also insisted the subject was “worthy” and “obvious,” and that he was hoping a conversation would play out in the comments under his story before it was pulled.
“It is a legitimate question for the protesters. They’re certainly focused exclusively on police killings of blacks,” says Redden. “Okay fine. But if you go to any of the actual statistics… you certainly see far more blacks are killed by other blacks.
“It does seem like there’s a naïvete or something among the protesters, if their goal is really and truly to save black lives.”
The full text of the story is below.
Last week’s shooting near Rosemary Anderson High School is a vivid reminder that most violence against minorities in Portland is committed by other minorities — not the police.
In fact, police provided extra security around the North Portland alternative high school when it reopened Monday.
Despite ongoing protests over alleged police brutality against minorities, Friday’s shooting was an example of the far more typical gang-related violence in minority communities. Four young Portland blacks were shot by a black gunman. He fled the scene with two other black male suspects. Police arrested two of them Saturday and are looking for the other one.
Police are investigating the shooting as gang related. It is at least the fifth time since June that a minority has been killed or wounded in a suspected gang shooting in the Portland area. Recent incidents include a man who was wounded outside the Clackamas Town Center, a pregnant woman shot inside her Southeast Portland apartment, three men shot in downtown Portland, five people shot at a Southeast Portland strip club, and a drive-by shooting on North Fesseden Street. Two of those victims died.
Despite that, a previously scheduled protest against police mistreatment of minorities took place in downtown Portland on Saturday afternoon. It was one of numerous protests inspired by recent grand jury decisions in other states to not indict white police officers who killed unarmed blacks. A protester who was hit by a car was cited for standing in the street.
Three of the four victims are continuing to recover in the hospital. The include Taylor Michelle Zimmers, 16, who was upgraded from critical to serious condition on Saturday. Hospitalized in fair condition are David Jackson-Liday, 20, and Labraye Franklin, 17. The fourth victim, Olivia Lynn Batson, 17, was treated at the scene.
The two suspects who have been arrested are Lonzo Murphy, 22, and Marquel Dugas, 18. Murphy was convicted of Third Degree Assault and Second Degree Robbery in 2013. Dugas was convicted of Third Degree Assault and Second Degree Robbery in March of this year.
The shooting happened around the corner from the alternative high school at 717 North Killingsworth Court. Police say all four victims are either current or former students at the school, which is next to Jefferson High School and across the street from Portland Community College.
According to students at the school, the shooting happened shortly after the start of the noon lunch break. One described hearing a “pop pop” sound they thought was something dropped in the kitchen, but then other students started screaming that someone had been shot. Queeni Hillman said her cousin then came into the school holding his stomach and collapsed on the floor in pain. She was later comforted by her mother, Dalessa Miller, after talking to reporters at the scene.
One of the victims, La’Braye Franklin, had interned with Portland Mayor Charlie Hales over the summer. He had publicly testified in support of Rosemary Anderson High School before the Portland School Board.
School administrators are working to return things to normal. They invited the community to an open house Sunday where crisis counselors were available to talk with anyone traumatized by the shooting.
What a piece of shit. I’ve seen this argument a thousand times and it’s always the same tunnel-vision. First, it’s bullshit to assume that no one in communities that have struggle with gang violence speaks up. Just because you’re not listening doesn’t mean someone isn’t talking.
But more importantly: The reason there aren’t big demonstrations about gang violence is because no one has ever questioned whether a black man accused of a violent crime would be arrested, indicted, and sentenced.
Booya!
UPDATE: The Portland Tribune is now known as The Portland I’m Just Saying (Cousin Larry, Ed.).
What Jim Redden wrote does not really fall under the category of journalism. It was an opinion piece masquerading as journalism. Even after the fact, he does not seem to see that you can’t conflate the issues of gang violence and police violence. The two are linked only tangentially. The one does not justify the other.
The fact that Mr. Redden appears to be so tone deaf on these issues calls into question his understanding of either issue as well as his idea of journalistic objectivity. That he has a job at the Tribune does not shine a positive light on their journalistic standards.
Redden should maybe avoid using comment sections of Oregonlive stories on the protests as his primary source of… “information.”
This piece is an embarrassment. But it’s not a story. It’s a badly written and poorly thought out opinion piece that ignores an obvious logical fallacy. Holding police accountable and wanting to end black on black crime are not mutually exclusive. Nor are they really related. Would any reporter with two brain cells to rub together ever suggest that we shouldn’t protest police brutality until we’ve solved white on white crime? Redden, you are not a journalist. And I say this with 20 years in the business. You should be ashamed of yourself.
“What Jim Redden wrote does not really fall under the category of journalism. It was an opinion piece masquerading as journalism.”
As opposed to the totally objective articles which appear in the Mercury.
“With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism.” – Hunter S. Thompson
They always have their two cents full of bias and lacking content. Just another example of mass media ran by political elites is serving their agenda not being a medium of information and communication (yes tribune family is massive media, even if this outlet is local).
Does higher crime rates in poor and sometimes black neighborhoods and alternative schools filled with people from those neighborhoods imply they inherently criminal people compared to the suburbs? No. So to a degree it’s reasonable to say they are responding to their environment.
Still we lock them up for not having the discipline and character or whatever not to overcome that environment. Do we do the same for a cop? If a cop is just doing his job and just responding to the environment his job required him to go into and he does not have the discipline, skill, and character to respond approprietly to that environment do we send him to jail?
Double standard system – one of many arguments this narrow minded outlet of the Tribune family failed to consider.
as well as another great example of how our media system is not conducive to deliberation each others arguments but only attacking each other. We won’t hear from him, we will just attack him, and he’ll respond with more stupid shit that serves his bias view. Through it all we will never understand the other side or develop a consensus. But it’s fun talking shit:)
Redden’s timing was the only thing really wrong with the piece.
Maybe the Portland Mercury has pulled the story it was doing on one M. Meo, also critical of the police.
Wow, so black on black crime means cops killing, unarmed innocent black people is cool . . . .wonderful logic path that.