THE PORTLAND POLICE are off the hook in the May shooting of 25-year-old Keaton Otis near Lloyd Center—last week a grand jury, to no one’s surprise, found the officers involved in the shooting not liable for any crime.
The grand jury isn’t the only group that’s fine with seeing the city move on: Both the Otis family and the Portland Police Bureau seem happy to bury the hatchet. I’m surprised. This is a tragic encounter that left a police officer wounded and a young Portlander shot with 23 bullets. You’d think someone, somewhere would be angry, right? Ah, Portland.
This Tuesday, June 1, at a press conference graced by Police Chief Mike Reese and Mayor Sam Adams, the word everyone kept repeating was “healing.” And “community,” but that’s no different from every single other meeting held in Adams-era Portland.
After showing an animated PowerPoint eerily resembling Pac-Man, Chief Reese turned up the compassion.
“My heart and the hearts of everyone in my organization go out to the family of Keaton Otis for the loss of their loved one,” said Reese.
“It’s a terrible tragedy. You have a young man who is mentally ill in possession of a handgun,” he continued, later.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching too much of The Wire, but I thought police typically raise some hell when an officer gets shot, not extend condolences to the shooter’s family.
In the wake of three civilian fatalities due to police bullets this year, it’s clear that the police are focusing on the “good cop” style of public relations. If I weren’t cynical about the sentiment being just smart PR, I would say it’s a welcome change.
The still-ongoing investigation into the incident did turn up some interesting details, however. For one, skeptics have been asking for weeks why Otis was initially pulled over.
“Was it because he was a young black man?” asked OPB reporter April Baer, who can maybe get away with that kind of direct questioning because she is very pregnant and also a crack shot with a police handgun (trust me).
Reese explained that the cops thought Otis looked suspicious because he was slouching, looking at them in his rearview mirror, and also wearing a hood in hot weather.
Wait—what happened to the good-cop talk? If the police are going to get suspicious of every slouchy, hoodie-wearing Portlander, they might as well arrest the entire staff of the Bye and Bye right now.
“Both the Otis family and the Portland Police Bureau seem happy to bury the hatchet. I’m surprised. This is a tragic encounter that left a police officer wounded and a young Portlander shot with 23 bullets. You’d think someone, somewhere would be angry, right? Ah, Portland.”
Well as a Black man just afew years older than Otis, i’m still pretty angry over his execution (& the way his corpse was mis-treated post mortem). Fact of the matter is, Otis WAS a victim of racist-profiling. Reese himself admits that the ONLY reason those pigs started trailing Otis was b/c he was “slouching” & wearing a hoodie in [apparently] hot weather (i don’t even recall it being that damned hot on May 12th).
I feel that there’s still PLENTY to be pissed about, even if others seem willing to “bury the hacket”.
“Fact of the matter is, Otis WAS a victim of racist-profiling.”
While that’s entirely possible, how do we actually KNOW that it’s true? None of us are mind-readers, after all. Besides, how often do the Portland Police pull over people of other races for “slouching and wearing a hoodie in hot weather”? It seems unlikely to me that the only people they’ve ever pulled over for meeting those criteria are black men.
Don’t get me wrong, those criteria still sound inadequate to me, (and Otis’ death is still a TRAGEDY) but they do seem to imply larger questions regarding profiling. Some examples might be: how do police build a profile of potentially dangerous people without resorting to visual markers either directly or tangentially tied to race? Are cultural factors (such as certain types of clothes, vehicles, tattoos, music, etc) that may potentially used as criteria with which to create profiles of potentially dangerous people necessarily tied to race, or can they be applied unilaterally? Should they even be used at all?
In other words, are there indicators (behavioral or otherwise) that police can/should employ to keep tabs on “bad guys” that are not racially specific, and if so, what are they, and can both the public and the police manage to find agreement on them and their usage?
R.I.P.Otis.You were wrongly killed.Thats no joke.The joke is how fast we become bored with most everything.Society needs to slow down and smell the flowers and pay forward the love.Fuck the “RAT RACE”.Ain’t no reason to zip past humanity.I say we profile all Haters!!!! We round them up,strip them naked and squeeze the Kool-aid out of their hearts.
Wongly killed? He shot a police officer, you idiot!
And I’d suggest their reasons for pulling him over were obviously good enough, since out of all the other cars on Lloyd, they managed to catch the one crazy fucker with a handgun.