July 02, 2003

(Updated) Media Roundup On 'Catastrophe' Of Kendra James Forum

Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.

Far enough into the day to be able to roundup the coverage of last night's Kendra James forum, or at least stories which have appeared since the two I linked last night.

First, there's an almost non-existent story from KOIN that's not worth even quoting. OPB does a decent job capturing many of the evening's most memorable statements and overall tone.

Meanwhile, The Oregonian has at least three pieces on the forum today, in addition to including the URL to its special report (which features the full transcript of the forum) on the front page of the morning edition.

One front-page story opens with a Kroeker comment I mentioned last night:

Pushed by an increasingly hostile crowd, Portland Police Chief Mark Kroeker on Tuesday night defended the police officer who shot Kendra James but said he had reservations about some of the tactics used in the May 5 traffic stop.

Kroeker said he had "concerns" about Scott McCollister's decision to enter a car in which James, 21, was struggling to avoid arrest. But the chief said the shooting was not racially motivated or "malicious."

"The actions of the officer and the tactics of the officer need to be reviewed in a disciplined way," Kroeker said. "But the officer should go back to work."

His comments drew immediate heckling from a crowd of more than 450 who attended an often tense five-hour public forum at the Mount Olivet Family Life Center.

To be honest, I'd somewhat counter the idea that Kroeker expressed any real concerns over McCollister's actions the night of the shooting. My impression, at least, was that his concerns, if any, can't be too intense, or he would not be quite so adamant that there's a way to properly return McCollister to duty.

The article also reflects the general sense of how the forum went down:

Although Tuesday's forum was intended to encourage dialogue and improve police-community relations, many in the crowd left frustrated with more questions than answers -- despite efforts by the police chief, detectives and training officers to explain their investigation.

Indeed, as the article relates, the community panel and the crowd both became so weary of the Bureau presentation, that it was cut short in order to let those gathered begin to offer questions and comments. Click through for a sense of how that question period progressed.

Also on the front page this morning is another piece further examining the mood of the evening:

For two hours, the community that turned out for a forum Tuesday night on the Kendra James shooting sat quietly in their seats, except for smatterings of applause. More than 400 people -- many with arms folded, heads cocked in listening pose -- sat through presentation after presentation by ministers, facilitators and police.

Finally, the Rev. Roy Tate, president of the Albina Ministerial Alliance, grabbed his microphone. He wanted to know if the detectives' slide show was almost done.

"I think the community has heard enough. I think the community wants to speak," he said.

It was as if Tate had pressed an escape valve. The applause rose like hot steam.

Finally, there's today's Steve Duin column -- headlined "Shamed by questions they usually ignore" -- in which he pulls no punches right from the start, clearly illustrating the cultural divide between the community and the police:

That was a disaster. That -- the Kendra James "community forum" -- was a community policing catastrophe.

On Tuesday night, the Portland Police Bureau arrived en masse at Mount Olivet Baptist Church and left in a complete mess. Confronted with the kind of questions they routinely ignore or dismiss, the cops looked absolutely ridiculous in an emotional five-hour standoff in North Portland.

They responded to logical questions with superficial dodges. They answered the genuine with the rehearsed.

I do not think it an understatement to assert that this forum was a nearly historic moment in the ongoing struggle between the Portland community and the Portland police. There was perhaps an opportunity for at least some hope of progress, but in the end the forum did little more than draw into stark relief just how deep and wide is that cultural chasm.

By all means, because this shooting incident and all it has brought to a higher more public level is so frightfully important, read everything you can about last night's forum. But if you skip anything, do not skip Duin's column. It forces into sharp relief so much of what is left undone, and also offers a real sense of the sorts of astute questions that the public thinks to ask and yet officials seem utterly unprepared to answer -- sometimes leaving one to wonder if they ever bothered to ask them at all themselves.

We bury these issues at our own peril. Not because of the euphemism (read: veiled racism) that we might have a "long hot summer." But because no civil society can long survive in any form worth having, or with any real legitimacy, when the deeply wounded passions of so many people are met with the cool robotic reserve of indifference.

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