“Some things you can't escape

Death, taxes, and a racist society that make 

Every nigga feel like a candidate

For a Trayvon kinda fate

Even when your crib sit on a lake

Even when your plaques hang on a wall

Even when the President jam your tape”

—J. Cole, “Neighbors,” 2016

NO HOODS

A new Netflix documentary, The Perfect Neighbor, has introduced millions of viewers to Marion County, Florida, detailing the slow drip of death that was visited upon one neighborhood through the lens of nearly two years of police body camera footage. Directed by Spike Lee protegè, Geeta Ghanbir, the film explores how Susan Lorincz, a White baby boomer held her mostly Black neighborhood hostage through calculated racial terror. While employing a number of tools to keep her neighbors on eggshells, including verbal threats against the children and physical violence, few were as gleefully utilized as calling the police. 

Just as with any horror film, viewers are fixed with the feeling of wondering why someone positioned to help, won’t help. But then, as you continue to watch—you are constantly reminded this is not a horror film. This was real life horror. And you are reminded that, in this country, not all hate wears hoods. And in this country, “public safety” is a wonderful Jedi-mind trick which made it synonymous with law enforcement.

Six times over the course of two years Lorincz called the police to the neighborhood. Each time, to complain about the Black children playing—as children do. Dancing, singing, gaming—as children do. And each time, the police came and listened to her—as many do.

On June 2, 2023, one of her neighbors, Ajike Owens, finally had enough. Owens’ 12-year-old son reported that Lorincz had not only yelled at him (again), but thrown a skate towards him to boot. Mama bear knocked on her neighbor’s door to defend her cub. As mothers do. 

The decision would prove fatal. 

Lorincz shot Owens through her door—then called the police. With red-and-blue siren lights pulsating against Lorincz’s home, Owens lay still in her yard, gasping her last breaths. 

HATE KNOWS NO BORDERS / THE LOTTERY

He was born here. He killed here. 

In 2017, Jeremy Christian stabbed three people on a MAX train in Portland. Two of the people died, and one survived. The lone survivor, my guy Micah Fletcher, along with the victims, met this terrible fate after standing up for two teenage girls wearing hijabs, who Christian had been berating on the MAX stop-after-stop. Christian had encountered police the night before, in a similar incident on the MAX where he was spilling filth about anyone who wasn’t a White man. A Black woman asked him to lower his voice—instead he got louder. And louder. And as she exited the train, Christian threw a bottle at her. She maced him, and sprinted away.

When officers arrived, Christian—a felon well-known to law enforcement—was desperately trying to wash the sting out of his eyes in a nearby fountain. Despite the stinging evidence on his face, and a MAX platform full of bystanders, alongside the victim herself ID’ing him as the aggressor—the police didn’t believe her. Christian got away. 

This inaction would prove fatal. 

Spurred by the wicked MAX murders and ever-rising hate crimes inspired by “Mr. Stand Back and Stand By’s” first term, the City of Portland launched a new initiative called Portland United Against Hate. The campaign aimed to increase reporting of hate and bias incidents. 

Personally, I’ve never formally reported any hate or bias infractions against me. For example, being called a nigger by passing pedestrians on MLK Boulevard. Or spat at from a truck, and by passing pedestrians in Gresham. Or a homeowner freaking out because I dared show up to the listed open house tour to explore buying her home. Or… or… or. I know this is the case for many of my peers and family members. I simply have been Black in Oregon for my entire life. I know the vibes. 

That said, after Portland United Against Hate launched its ReportHatePDX tool in 2018, more than 300 incidents were logged between then and 2020. Similarly, Oregon DOJ shares that reports to their Bias Response Hotline jumped more than 200 percent between 2020-2023, growing from 910 to 2,932.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has long maintained a relationship with the FBI (ugh), said the nation’s top cops have under-reported the persistence of hate crimes by embarrassing stretches. In the weeks following Charlie Kirk’s murder, FBI Director Kash Patel cut ties with the group. While the SPLC had deemed Kirk’s Turning Point USA “a case study of the hard right” just a year ago, Patel didn’t cite this as the reason for the sudden split. But smoke, meet fire. 

Such facts don’t just beg the question of why these numbers are so woefully undercounted—but why is law enforcement the official stop-gap between hate and “justice” in the first place? 

I don’t advocate that these stories rest in the shadows. But the track record of the police on these issues finds frightening synergy far too often. 

At the time of Christian’s attack, Mark Kruger, a member of the Portland Police force who once erected a public shrine to five Nazi generals at Rocky Butte, was still with the bureau. By the time he retired in 2020, he’d not only been promoted multiple times, he was the highest paid cop on the force—raking in a clean quarter-million dollars annually. Who said our economy was trash? 

Just two years later it was reported that a member of the Portland Police Bureau was exchanging friendly texts with the leaders of Patriot Prayer, while the far-right group planned a “counter-protest” to an anti-police violence rally. 

Speaking of neighbors, as of 2021, nearly 82 percent of Portland Police Bureau’s rank-and-file lived outside of the Rose City. 

Comparatively, to serve in the state legislature, one must live in the district they seek to represent. In 2018, Janelle Bynum bore the stark distinction of being the only Black woman serving in the Oregon Legislature. As she canvassed her Clackamas County district, bidding for re-election, a constituent called the police on her. Moments later, the sheriff arrived on the scene, and asked the representative “what she was selling.”

After explaining she was there for votes, the sheriff let her be. The two took a selfie. 

"When people do things like this, it can be dangerous for people like me,” the now US congresswoman said.

The woman who called the non-emergency line on Bynum later apologized. 

Her decision would not prove fatal. 

This lottery, we often deal with.  

This lottery, in fact, requires a level of vigilance even in the face of seemingly friendly faces. In my former days as a reporter, Mike Bivins was a fellow journalist I occasionally saw on the beat. In the closing weeks of 2020, he congratulated me online for winning my election as a vice president of the Portland NAACP, and shared some stories about his awakening around race as a youth. 

By 2022, he would be on the other side of the headlines after going on a racist rampage against a Muslim community center, two synagogues, and my former elementary classmate’s now defunct soul food restaurant, Everybody Eats. 

This year, Bivins was sentenced to five years in prison, a place famously known for de-radicalizing racists. Christian, for example, had done multiple stints in jail and prison before emerging ahead of the MAX stabbings as a self-proclaimed “neo-Nazi,” though he had no formal documented organizational ties. Reform! 

Months before Bivins’ attack, Benjamin Smith also struck. After issuing a death threat to his cousin in 2021, Smith was visited by the FBI in his home. Afterwards, the bureau decided Smith wasn’t worth the resources. 

Less than a year later, Smith—reportedly sickened by the BLM protests that had been staging near his apartment alongside Normandale Park—had enough. Armed, he confronted them. 

His decision would prove fatal. 

The unarmed group was there in solidarity with protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin where police killed Amir Locke during a no-knock warrant.In its initial communications about the incident, Portland Police Bureau characterized it as a “confrontation between an armed homeowner and armed protesters”

Smith was not a homeowner. And the protesters were not armed.

Facts are hard. 

For example: Oregon’s founding was literally Webster’s dictionary definition of “racist.” One hundred and fifty years after the state’s blood-soaked founding, some still continue to tussle with that fact. Yet, folks like fourth-generation Oregonian, and second-time Republican candidate for governor, Christine Drazan, is on record as saying there is no systemic racism in Oregon. 

York would beg to differ. 

Boo this person. 

Loudly.

For the 2023-2025 Biennium, the Oregon Legislature budgeted $6.6 billion to its “public safety” program—funding police, jails, prosecution, and other related initiatives. 

Drazan believes this is not enough. 

She is not alone.

Facts are hard.

BODY CAMERAS = SAFETY?

Owens’ mother, who gave her blessing to the film, has been using The Perfect Neighbor and her daughter’s story to try to bring an end to Florida’s notorious Stand Your Ground law. While Stand Your Ground entered into the national dialogue in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s murder in 2012 at the hands of renowned walking hate symbol George Zimmerman, the law was not actually invoked during his trial.  

Stand Your Ground not only allows people to take the law into their own hands, it facilitates the gun resting in the palm, and whispers in the ear of those who know: “squeeze” — for there are no consequences, for some. 

What The Perfect Neighbor outlines, is that the benign moments of a racially and politically fractured society can explode at any moment. 

Riding the MAX. Campaigning. Protesting. Going to your parents’ house after grabbing Skittles. Defending your child. 

And this story is told with heart-wrenching perfection—all from the chest-eye view of the police. 

Body cameras are one of the gold standards of Police Reform™ advocate conversations. Since coming onto the scene in the mid-2000s, the promise of this technology was a shared accountability: if the cameras are on, then we are on the same playing field. 

By 2026, the US Department of Justice will have provided $184 million in federal grants for body cameras to law enforcement agencies across the country over the past decade alone. 

All four of the officers at the scene of George Floyd’s murder wore body cameras. The footage was used during their respective trials. But it was actually 17-year-old Darnella Frazier’s full-body cell phone footage that captured the horror of Floyd’s last gasps which set off a global movement for the ages.

So yes—documentation matters. But to what extent?

According to a ProPublica report, just 44 percent of shootings involving police wearing body-cams actually have the footage entered as evidence in the instances when a trial even happens.. 

In the summer of 2024, Portland Police launched its body camera program. It was the last major city in the US to do so, dragging themselves to the milestone. 

The program will cost local taxpayers $10 million over the next five years. 

Let’s hope it’s not a $10 million down payment on a production budget. 

Meanwhile, three weeks after President Trump was re-elected to his second term, Lorincz was sentenced to 25 years in prison. 

Decisions have consequences. 

Neighbors: Are we safe yet?