Chief Promises Racial Profiling Plan By Mid October

Yesterday’s meeting of the mayor’s racial profiling committee got way off its agenda, as usual, to allow members of the group to hit back at the media for suggesting the group has achieved very little in almost two years, and for Oregon Action’s Jo Ann Bowman and Police Union Boss Robert King to argue with each other about whether racial profiling even exists, and then, of course, for the rest of the group to get emotional about how we need “to come up with solutions to the problem,” and soon.

As the by now predictable proselytizing was going on, the committee, and this reporter, tucked into some magnificent food, supplied by Dalo’s Kitchen. Chicken, garlic spinach and lentils with Ethiopian bread. Delicious. But apart from the food, I’m glad I stuck around until the end, when Sheila Warren, who is running the community campaign to end racial profiling, delivered a passionate plea to Chief Rosie Sizer to deliver on a written plan already.

“We want a work plan,” said Warren, in tears. “I feel like even around the circle [this afternoon] there was some profiling going on of black people today. We want you guys to come up with a work plan. I have to live with the fact that I’m profiled every day. The things you are doing are wonderful, but why can’t we come up with a written work plan so that we can check off each of the things on the list?”

Warren was referring to remarks made by Portland Police Officer Deanna Wesson, who has been instrumental in driving forward small meetings between police and minority communities over the last few weeks.

“I see the immigrant community wanting to be a part of this,” Wesson had said earlier. “But where are the black people born in this country?”

Bowman, and fellow committee member Carl Goodman, assistant director of the county’s Department of Community Justice, had told Wesson that the African American community is having a hard time overcoming years of mistrust with the police.

Warren also took Chief Sizer to task over a recent meeting she had had with her, along with fellow racial profiling advocate Sam Sachs, saying she felt Sizer paid more attention to Sachs, who is white, than she did to Warren, because of their respective skin colors.

Sizer told Warren that the bureau has hired a technical writer, and that she expected him to have completed the written plan by “mid October.”

“I hear from different individuals about what you’re doing in the community,” Warren said. “But I haven’t heard it, I haven’t seen it, and it feels like we’re not going anywhere.”

I guess that’s where the black people born in this country are on all this: Having their worst fears about the inability of the committee to deliver on its promises confirmed.