JUST BEFORE HE SPOKE to more than 1,000 people at a rally at the Maranatha Church on NE 12th and Mason on Tuesday night, February 16, Reverend Jesse Jackson practiced his speech on assorted Portland ministers and community members in a side chapel.

“Are you with me so far?” he asked them—having said that if the police bureau reinstates the officer who shot Aaron Campbell as planned the next morning, it would be an “insult to the community.”

“Yes,” they all murmured, and so began the reverend’s call and response.

“If he comes back tomorrow morning…” he said. “If he comes back tomorrow morning…” they repeated.”We show up…” he said. “We show up…” they repeated. “At high noon…” he said. “At high noon…” they said. “And show him out!” “And show him out!”

Those words form the kernel of an extraordinary public standoff between Mayor Sam Adams, Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman, and one of only two living Americans to have ever had his face printed on a postage stamp—over the city’s decision to reinstate Officer Ronald Frashour on Wednesday morning, February 17. Frashour shot Campbell in the back on January 29 and was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by an “all-white grand jury,” in Jackson’s words, on February 9.

Earlier, Adams and Saltzman met with Jackson privately. Adams thanked Jackson for a “useful, straightforward, and blunt” meeting when talking to reporters afterward, but both he and Saltzman stopped short of saying they would suspend Officer Frashour until an investigation is completed into the shooting.

“Our priority right now is for the grand jury proceedings to be made public,” said Mayor Adams.

“It’s one thing for the grand jury proceedings to be made public, but there’s a police chief in command,” Jackson responded. “That man will come back to work. His presence will injure the credibility of the entire police department. His mere presence will trigger lawsuits. Police officers cannot go and sit idly by as if this was a traffic accident.”

A reporter from KOIN pressed Saltzman on this point. “The reverend has said it would be offensive for that officer to go back to work and yet he’s going to be back on the street tomorrow. Are you not going to make some calls tonight and look into it tonight?” he asked.

“I will look into it tonight,” said Saltzman. “But I do want to stress that this officer is not going back to his old job. He will be going back to neighborhood livability duties.”

“You hear that title?” said Jackson. “Neighborhood livability. What a title. Neighborhood livability.”

Even before Jackson’s arrival in town, community members were expressing outrage over the shooting. It was described as a “modern-day lynching” at a tense city-sponsored “restorative listening session” the night before. The session, on Monday, February 15, had been scheduled long before the Campbell shooting, as a chance for African American community members to engage in “healing dialogue” on gentrification and race issues.

“I’m not talking about Jesse Jackson,” said Reverend Renee Ward, a panelist at the session. “I’m talking about Aaron Campbell, Kendra James, James Chasse—it’s got to stop. My son is 10 years old and he’s scared of the police.”

Ward, who works as a crisis responder with the Portland Police Bureau, said there are renegade officers who “need to be flushed out.”

The following morning before Jackson’s visit, Police Chief Rosie Sizer defended her bureau, saying she thought community members expected “perfect outcomes” from her bureau, and that people and the media tend to “coalesce around tragedy.”

The chief stood next to a pair of charts showing that citizen complaints against the bureau are down 48 percent since 2004, while officer-involved shootings are down 54 percent in the last six years compared to the previous six years.

But Sizer herself testified against Officer Frashour in federal court last September [“Not Policing Themselves,” Oct 1, 2009]. The Mercury asked Sizer, that if even she thinks the officer is trigger happy what’s to prevent the community from thinking that her policies and procedures are inadequate to bring “renegade officers” under control?

“I didn’t call anybody trigger happy,” Sizer responded. “We collect data on our people and we examine that data, and supervisors have access to that data as part of the bureau’s early-warning system. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘renegade officers.'”

Sizer said she hoped that Jackson could “bring healing to the family,” adding that she didn’t know if Jackson was “an expert on use-of-force issues.”

“But before healing can happen,” Jackson said to that evening’s crowd, “you need to take the glass out of the wound.”

The Albina Ministerial Alliance was already organizing a rally to be held on the Justice Center steps, when the Mercury went to press late on Tuesday night.

“Wednesday, February 17, 2010,” read the announcement. The time? “Noon.”

Matt Davis was news editor of the Mercury from 2009 to May 2010.

15 replies on “High Noon”

  1. We live in a civilized scociety, people who obey the laws and act civilized typicaly do not have problems with the law, we expect the police to keep our scociety safe for us but then we scrutinize them for doing what we expect.. Now throw in the Jessie Jackson freak show and you really get a mess… Why is he here, would he be here if the person was a different color no way, he is the most racist person and he does it for the wrong reason he does it for publicity not because he beleives in what he is doing he takes a sensitive subject and blows it out of proportion, all to gain publicity he should be ashamed of himself….Just my thoughts on that piece of crap Jessie Jackson.

  2. Hey Matt! Do you think federal funds are going to these blogsters? I’m thinking they’re on some kind of Republican scholarship … and the are each assigned an array of sites and are required to spew vitrol for two hours a day, in order to get their tuition paid. We know the CIA is paying tuition … I’ll bet their job is to watch posts, and establish dossiers.

    I mean, who has the time? I look at Blue Oregon. Like yours, there is some excellent writing at the top. And – let’s call them tailgunners – there are legions of race-baters, side-trackers, and instigators who have the time and energy to derail discussion. I’ve seen them fake the names of actual community leaders atop their inane rants.

    It smacks of Nixon’s COINTEL program, with a twist on Clinton’s quick response team. COINTELPRO was designed to use fake letterheads, false attributions, etc. to keep the left from trusting one another, let alone be organized.

    Next time I see you, I’ll offer you a bounty to prove my suspicions. I’ll bet this is happening all across the blogosphere, and someone could run the Internic paths back to a couple of servers, perhaps near a campus that has been co-opted from any mission of acculturating citizens, to a safe harbor for dirty tricks campaigns.

  3. @Hardhonesty: While I’d like to believe that, I think the truth is far simpler: The good stuff has left TV, it is all reality TV all the time, and so even the people with half a brain* have started looking for other hobbies instead of sitting on the couch watching the tube. And they’ve found the internet. The advantage of the TV was it kept them mindlessly drugged and out of everyone’s way, but now they can interact with other people with a laptop perched on their beer gut and it is not a good thing. What you are seeing is the dregs of society, most of us don’t have to deal with them in real life on a regular basis, but we are seeing them online now…

    *I went out with a girl that watched a lot of reality TV on Saturday. I think more than half her brain was missing, it was weird, she couldn’t follow a conversation, she’d ask the same question twice, not because I hadn’t answered it or anything, but… I’d like to think she was trying to make conversation and was failing miserably. Maybe she was really nervous or something, maybe her attention span is shot, or something. In other ways she seemed smart enough, I mean, she is getting a master’s degree…

  5. @Ariel (with your grammer corrected)
    “Why is he here? Would he be here if the person was a different color? No way. He is the most racist person and he does it for the wrong reason. He does it for publicity not because he believes in what he is doing.”

    Couldn’t have said it better myself. Talk about a flame baiter – this guy is the king of flame baiting others and inflaming a hate war. He comes from the old generation of race war – and that time is over. It’s time for a different tactic instead of calling incidents like this an ‘execution’.
    Were the police in the right? Not in my book – but this guy is NOT helping the cause of justice or openness by showing up and spouting 50’s and 60’s era race-war speech.

  6. @Ariel

    Clearly, you represent a world view that is emblematic of such problems to begin with. Calling Jesse Jackson a “piece-o-crap” is clearly a hysterical bent from a deeply racist person who sees NO problem with cops murdering un-armed citizens, epsecially those who’re people of colour.
    If you don’t watch your ass Ariel, they’ll come for YOU eventually… & by then who will speak up for you?

  7. Damos, I think you nailed Aeriol for exactly what she really is, an angry gay white woman, with no black friends, and no perspective as to what it is to be a person of color.

    To call any other human being a “piece of crap” is self-evident of her self-hatred. To suggest that people of color do not draw more attention from the police than whites, is absurd. If she were to listen to Jesse Jackson on Sunday mornings, she’d see that he is a thoughtful, caring man with a gift to communicate to suffering people of all races.

    As far as referring to this shooting as an execution, consider this: If the bean bags shot at Campbell’s back were intended to make him reach behind, and the police dog was released to startle him into running, and then as pre-arranged, Frashour waited for Campbell to make any sudden move so he could fire, this would be pre-meditated murder. And if Aeriol were black and had a lifetime of bad experiences with the police, then she’d would definitely have a different point of view about Jesse Jackson’s observation about the shooting.

    Damos, I left a comment for you on the Green article about Krueger I hope you will read.

  8. How many white people have been mistakenly shot by Portland PD in the last few years, I wonder? I don’t ask that rhetorically — I think if white people have been mistakenly shot in equal or great proportion than blacks or minorities, than this is a non-issue. Case closed. On the other hand, if blacks in particular are being disproportionately affected by Portland PD’s ‘imperfect outcomes’, then regardless of the cause the police department needs to make a highly visible effort to improve those outcomes, if only to contain the public relations damage. Gather some data, Rosie!

  9. There’s no question at all that [some] Whites are targeted by violent cops – the recent murders of James Chasse & Fouad Kaddy prove that. Not to mention the tasing/brutilizing of Roberta Kelly by murderous pig Ronald Frashour. But in those & in EVERY SINGLE OTHER CASE in-which a White person is shot, tased, beated, or whatever by cops, it’s ALWAYS been some sort of priviledge that was relinquished on the part of the [White] victim:

    mentally ill
    poor
    young/poor
    homeless
    female
    gay/transgendered, etc.

    By contrast, last year’s arrest of [Harvard grad] Henry Louis Gates Jr. proves that Blacks are subjected to cop abuse on ALL social levels!

    The ‘old’ rules in this country are still the damned same: WHITE, WEALTHY, MALE/PATRIARCH, PRIVILEGED, [preferably] STRIAGHT, [preferably] LAND-OWNING, CHRISTIANS still make all the rules!

  10. If you call a society that enslaves African people and slaughters a nation of 67 million native, men, women, children and elders of countless tribes civilized, you obviously are mistaken about what civilized means.

    For the people who want to criticize Jesse Jackson, it must take a lot of effort to try convince yourself, let alone others, that fighting for civil rights is bad and shooting unarmed, citizens is okay. I guess old American traditions die hard.

  11. This is just stupid.
    If Aaron Campbell had been a white kid, NO ONE WOULD BE MAKING ANY FUSS AT ALL.

    But aside from that…
    Don’t blame this cop. That’s not something I say lightly, but I’ve read through some of the details in this case, and I think this guy actually thought he was protecting his fellow officers. If he didn’t know he was unarmed (which apparently some of the cops knew, but didn’t tell the tactical team about this rather important fact), and that he had stated that he didn’t plan on hurting himself or anyone else.

    It’s a shame this guy had to die. It’s also a shame that some cop is going to have to live the rest of his life knowing that he shot an unarmed man who wasn’t actually posing a threat. He will remember that forever.

    If anything, if the findings of the grand jury are correct, I think these things would make this man a better cop than he was yesterday. He’ll have the guilt to make him really think things out before pulling a trigger again.

    … hopefully.

  12. @Mathew D, I have to question the intelligence of anyone who goes out with you. Speaking to half brains, look at your posts buddy.

    I totally agree with pinki, civilized society is an oxy-moron, much like mercury bloggers disguised as “reporters” or just ordinary”citizens” and not on a payroll of a City Hall staffer.

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