Michael Glover speaks to his dog, Gidget, in a Native American
dialect, so that no one else can control her. If someone comes near
while he’s asleep, Gidget barks.
“But she’s not just my watchdog,” he says. “She’s my friend.” Glover
has been homeless in Portland since January 18, and like most people on
the streets here he has a few stories to tell. He served in the Army
for 10 years and made sergeant, has been shot three times, has a
replacement knee, and is “missing about four-and-a-half feet of
intestines” thanks to the bullets. After the Army he drove trucks for a
living for two years, out of Montana.
“But unbeknownst to me my dispatcher was diddling my wife for eight
months while I was on the road,” he says.
When Glover came home to find the two of them in bed, he says he
thought a stranger was raping his wife, so he grabbed the dispatcher by
his scrotum and his throat and “tossed him out the window.” Glover
spent two years in jail for attempted manslaughter before an appeals
court overturned the conviction, he says. After receiving a pardon and
having the charge expunged from his record, Glover returned home to
find his wife had divorced him, sold their property, and was nowhere to
be found.
“We had 13 years of marriage, $78,000 in the bank, 10 acres, a
two-story house, a Harley-Davidson, and a Ford truck,” he says. Now
he’s in Portland with only a 75-pound backpack, and Gidget to keep him
company.
Last Thursday night, April 10, Glover was asleep under the Burnside
Bridge with Gidget, who was watching over him and four friends near
Naito Parkway. Some distance away, over by the MAX tracks, there had
been a series of fights over the course of the evening. Glover and his
friends kept their distance. When another fight broke out just after 1
am, Glover says four cop cars showed up.
“The kids who were fighting took off running, and the police didn’t
even chase them,” Glover says. “Instead the woman police officer
shouted that the Burnside Bridge was now closed to all us fucking bums,
and that she wanted all of us fuckers to get up and out of there
now.”
Four cops walked the length of the bridge to the river, rousting
people, says Glover, who says he saw two cops kick four people awake.
The cops say they responded to a fight call but deny using force to
roust any homeless.
The next night, the Mercury watched as a cop car drove under
the bridge at 10:30 pm. One woman yelled at the officers driving past
to “leave us to sleep.”
“That’s all we need,” said Glover, who predicted the cops would be
back in 10 minutes. Ten minutes later, two more officers came by in
another squad car, and told everyone to wake up and leave. Glover said
he didn’t recognize these officers from the previous evening.
“We’re homeless, where are we going to sleep?” Glover asked.
“I’ll tell you where you can’t sleep,” responded one of the
officers, listing the Morrison, Burnside, and Steel Bridges.
Cops are supposed to give homeless people 24-hours notice before
evicting them under the city’s camping ordinance.
“They’ve had plenty of warning,” the cops told the Mercury,
when this reporter asked why they were moving people along without
first posting a warning. “We don’t like doing this, you know.”
When he first arrived in Portland, Glover slept under the Steel
Bridge with walking pneumonia. He says he woke up one morning to find a
cop had put Nyquil, orange juice, some dog food, and some aspirin down
by his sleeping bag, for which he was grateful.
“So I’m not bashing all officers,” he says. “Only the ones who did
that violence to people and who use these Gestapo tactics. I’m a man of
law and order—but this stinks.”