Homelessness poses special challenges for H1N1 preparations

From the Sept. 18 edition of Street Roots.

Flu season, and perhaps a particularly nasty one, is on the horizon for everyone. On the streets, it looms like a pall.

The network of homeless providers face challenges unlike those for the housed populations, and with the H1N1 (formerly called the Swine Flu) vaccine still weeks away from being delivered to the public, and still then prioritized for distribution, questions remain as to how an outbreak would be managed at the street level. How would a serious outbreak play out in the shelter system, with its dormitories of mats and cots, or the clinics that are working under heavy loads with a vulnerable population, or simply the realities of another rainy season outdoors?

For the answers to those questions, all eyes seem to look to the county.

“There are couple of realities we’re going to face, particularly for those who utilize shelters,” says Gary Oxman, health officer for Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties. “There’s a danger there of transmission of disease in those settings. Obviously, vaccination is a part of that strategy.”

Oxman said they anticipate receiving the H1N1 vaccine in the coming weeks, and it will be administered to those priority groups identified by the CDC and adopted by the state.

Those priorities are for pregnant women, children and their caregivers, health care workers and emergency personnel. It would also notably include people with high-risk health conditions.

Return of the dragon – heroin takes over Portland’s streets

From the Sept. 18 edition of Street Roots.

On a sunny Monday during the early afternoon, a 27-year old homeless man only wanting to be identified as “Joe” for this story walks down a hill overlooking I-405 and sits on a piece of cardboard laid out among, bushes, empty bottles and litter. The sounds of cars and buses are all around. Joe takes out a blue bag, unzips it, and takes out a twisted-up piece of white wax paper. Inside the paper is an almost imperceptible amount of a gooey, dark brown substance. Joe says it’s a couple dollars worth of black tar heroin.

“I treat this like a medicine,” Joe says. “Oh shit, a cop just went down the street.” He quickly gets up to move.

“You’re focusing on doing something pretty intricate and you have one eye scanning so you don’t get caught and hemmed up,” he says as he walks down the street.

Stopping at an intersection, Joe looks around. “I think we’re good,” he says. He walks down along a hill overlooking another part of I-405. Tucking himself in between two bushes and setting his backpack next to him, he takes out a needle from a Ziploc bag of 10 he recieved at Outside In’s Syringe Exchange Clinic. Holding it in one hand, he takes the tin cup out of his backpack and puts the heroin in it. He also takes out a small water bottle, puts it on the ground, and puts a red lighter on his leg.

Pulling the syringe with his mouth, he pulls water out of the bottle and shoots it into the tin cup. Holding the cup with a twisted bread tie, he heats it for about 20 seconds with the lighter.

With the syringe’s plunger, Joe mixes the liquid. Licking the end of the plunger, he sucks the heroin into the syringe.

“She didn’t give me a tourniquet,” he says, looking through the Ziploc bag.

He takes off his belt and wraps it tightly around his bicep. His veins begin to pop out, and faintly lining his arm are the scabs and scars from previous injections.

Slowly, he inserts the needle, his fist clenched. But he doesn’t inject. Instead, he moves the needle left to right inside his arm, looking for and missing the much-sought-after vein. Murmuring to himself in pain, he pulls the needle out. A small bead of dark blood follows.

“Maybe there’s something wrong with this needle,” Joe says. “I’m just used to having the tourniquet.”

Swiping the blood onto his fingertip, he licked it off. Every time Joe saw a drop of blood as he poked his arm three more times, he’d lick—not to miss a single grain of heroin.

On the fourth injection, Joe stopped moving the needle. Holding it still for a moment, he slowly pushed the plunger with one finger, staring at the point of entry the entire time, watching until every drop of light amber fluid disappeared into his arm.

He loosens the belt before he lets the needle out. Blood trails down his arm. Wiping his arms with his hands, he licks his fingers.

“Sometimes it turns into a bloody mess and you’re just trying to get your fix,” he says as he uses an alcoholic wipe given to him at the needle exchange clinic operated by Outside In.

Joe says he does not feel that much different after taking the heroin. “This is even for me,” he says, not describing the high any further.

On his way up the embankment, Joe stops to talk to a panhandler sitting at the corner. Crossing the I-5 bridge back to downtown, he quickly walks in the direction of a surplus store, his gait almost gliding.

Joe says he will probably shoot up in another four to six hours.

A growing trend

Dennis Lundberg and Mike Reese rarely see eye to eye. But recently, the outreach worker for the homeless youths organization Janus Youth and the commander of the Portland Police Bureau’s central precinct have found common ground on a unlikely topic: the rise of heroin use in Portland.

Heroin use, Lundberg and Reese say, ebbs and flows in Portland with the seasons. Summertime is when the presence of the drug reaches it peak, coinciding with the presence of a seasonal homeless population frequenting downtown. As the weather cools and dampens, the amount of heroin declines as some youths leave town.

Opportunity awaits us at every corner

Editorial from the Sept. 18 edition.

The world is a very daunting place. From war to health care, the environment to the economy, and the H1N1 flu – people are feeling the squeeze. Locally, it’s no different. From the front page story on this edition of Street Roots to unemployment rates in Oregon to young Oregonians coming home in body bags; like we said, it’s a daunting place.

Saying that, we also live in a beautiful city, among amazing and innovative people, rich and poor, with a will to make the world we live in a better place.

Both big and small contributions are being made daily to make the city and region we live in a healthy and sustainable environment. From Metro’s stand on urban sprawl to the Portland Trail Blazers’ “Make It Better” Campaign, from the Reed College students raising money for sex trafficking victims to the vendor selling you this newspaper, amazing things happen.

Watching many of the newly elected officials in Portland navigate the recession while trying to improve the quality of life for Portlanders and Greshamites is assuring. You get the feeling that with the political intelligence and craftiness of many of the commissioners at the county – something special is on the horizon.

Nick Fish is finding his way. It’s not easy being the housing commissioner in Portland. He has taken shots from the left, including from Street Roots, while balancing a frozen market, a housing bureau reorganization and an increase of homelessness. And still, it feels like he’s just getting his engines started and that we have yet to see what he has planned for affordable housing and people experiencing homelessness in the region.

While City Hall does feel more strange than Street Roots has ever seen it (and we can’t quite put our finger on it), there’s still great things happening. Commissioner Randy Leonard can’t seem to get enough of creating more public restrooms. And we can’t get enough of cheering him on. Sam Adams and Amanda Fritz may pull off the unthinkable on the sidewalks issues – and make both advocates and businesses happy. So, geez, it’s not all bad.

When President Barack Obama was elected into the Oval Office in November, Street Rooters, like many other Portlanders, had a sense of renewed optimism. It’s time to channel that energy. It’s time to stand up. No sitting on the sidelines. (Sidewalks are OK.)

There’s hundreds of non-profits and/campaigns working for the greater good in the region. Environmental issues, poverty, agricultural and immigrant movements, civil and human rights, there’s no shortage of great things to contribute to. No engine can ever pick up steam without a single spark to set it off. So be it pedal power or political engagement, there’s an important place for you in this town’s future.

Lastly, treat yourself right. It’s contagious. Then maybe, that daunting world, will have to take a back seat to the change we are becoming. There’s no time like now. The chance won’t come again.

Portland attorney and former interrogator Travis Hall talks about what interrogation once was, and what it should be again

From the Sept. 18 edition of Street Roots

Earlier this month, a federal appellate court ruled that former U.S. Attorney General John Ashscroft could be held personally responsible for the wrongful detention of detainees in the war against terrorism. The move exposes Ashcroft to civil lawsuits, and comes on the heals of lawsuits filed against former Bush adminstration attorney John Yoo, author of some of the so-called torture memos.

And in August, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder launched a preliminary investigation into the possible illegal use of torture by CIA interrogators.

These actions are the latest course taken by the Obama administration and civil libertarians in their pursuit of accountability in the detention and torture of suspects, and it takes another step closer in finding a resolution in the nation’s tragic exploration into torture.

Travis Hall is a former Army interrogator and an associate with the law firm Bateman Seidel in Portland. He also practices military law, representing active duty, reserve, and National Guard service members in adverse administrative proceedings and courts-martial. Hall also is a member of the Amnesty International Working Group for the Counter Terrorist with Justice Campaign.

Prior to joining Bateman Seidel, Hall was a captain in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in the Army. He was a trained interrogator in military intelligence. In his six years with the JAG Corps, Hall represented soldiers with the most complex legal challenges, including one of the soldiers charged in the case that later became the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary, “Taxi to the Dark Side. “

After 9/11, the Army assigned Hall as one of the legal planners for the invasion of Iraq, focusing on the reconstitution of the Iraq legal system. He was one of the first judge advocates deployed in Baghdad in 2003, and he conducted the initial surveys of the Iraqi criminal courts, jails, and prisons.

We started the conversation with Hall’s own training and experience as an interrogator.

Travis Hall: When I went through interrogation school, it was just as the Cold War was winding down and counterinsurgency actions were starting to pick up and Bosnia was one of the first modern campaigns that dealt with interrogation for a low intensity conflict that involved cells verses a large organized armies. Initially, interrogation practice deals with training to exploit prisoners of war on the battlefield to provide intelligence to commanders to take action. At the interrogation school, the first week is spent exclusively, eight hours a day, for the first five days, on the Geneva Conventions, and you’re tested before you even conduct a mock interrogation, with regard to interrogating prisoners of war. And anybody who deviated from those rules at the school was kicked out of the program. In fact, I specifically remember that there was a discussion about how torture is counterproductive, principally because during the history of conflict, most individuals willingly cooperate without using any enhanced interrogations techniques. And there are a number of reasons for that. The second reason is that with the right amount of stress, either physical or psychological, a person is going to tell you what it is that they perceive is going to stop the abuse, and that information may or may not be true, and oftentimes is completely inaccurate.

Third, information obtained through coercive techniques, you can’t use on the battlefield. Because you can’t rely on the information, intelligence information has to be corroborated by two sources before you can take any action on it. So information obtained under duress is completely worthless information. Maybe as an interrogator you think you’re getting somewhere. In reality you’re wasting your time. And once you cross that line into using coercive techniques, that individual is not going to willingly cooperate with you, period, or anybody else who wears the uniform.

BREAKING NEWS: Homeless campers release statement

A group of around 20 individuals experiencing homelessness released a statement tonight about the protest in front of City Hall.

“We are here tonight to show that this is the only campsite that is safe inside the city of Portland and that we really need places that we are able to go for the night and know that we are going to be safe. By safe, we mean that we’ll be able to pitch a tent or sleep in a shelter or live in a tent city without harassment from the police.”

The statement goes on to say that individuals experiencing homelessness need more access to services, including emergency shelter year round. The group also asks the city to allow for another tent city within the city limits of Portland.

In July of last year, Street Roots’ Amanda Waldroupe explored what another tent city in Portland might look like.

In May of this year, Street Roots called for another tent city as a possible alternative in an editorial titled, Another Dignity Village? Why not?

Currently, the city is looking at several alternative proposals surrounding camping, including allowing for another tent city. The camping ordinance itself is currently being challenged in court by the Oregon Law Center. In August, a district judge gave the green light to a group of homeless people in the class action suit after the city tried to have it thrown out of court.

Read more about the protest and alternatives the city is exploring in the next edition of Street Roots this Friday.

Posted by Israel Bayer

BREAKING NEWS: Homeless people camp and protest once again at City Hall

For the second time in less than two years, a group of homeless people are camping outside of City Hall to protest an ordinance they view as criminalizing and stopping them from getting a good night’s sleep.

Beginning at 9 o’clock this evening, 20 individuals set up their sleeping bags and other belongings along the southern side of the front entrance of City Hall. Art Rios, who is organizing the protest, says that the people are camping this year for the same reason as they were last year.

“We want the anti-camping ordinance to be suspended,” he says. “We want a campsite that’s safe.”

The anti-camping ordinance is a city-wide ordinance that bans camping on public property. Homeless people and many advocates says the ordinance criminalizes homeless people who are forced to sleep in public spaces at night because they do not have access to shelters or other places to sleep.

For three weeks during May 2008, a group of homeless people ranging in size from 40 to 120 people protested and camped outside of City Hall to protest the anti-camping ordinance and the sidewalk obstruction ordinance (known as the “sit-lie” ordinance), which illegalized sitting or lying down on the sidewalk during the day. In June 2009, that ordinance was ruled unconstitutional by Judge Stephen Bushong in district court.

Rios says that he plans to have organized camps at City Hall Monday through Friday, 9pm to 7am. That, he says, is enough to get eight hours of sleep, but also will not “interrupt City Hall’s business,” as well as get the attention of politicians, advocates, bureaucrats and the public.

“I want to show the City…that a camp size of 10 to 15 people can be here and not bother their day to day process,” Rios says.

There is currently a sub-group of the Coordinating Committee to End Homelessness, the group charged with implementing and overseeing the City’s 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness, that is currently looking at ways for homeless people who do not have access to shelter to sleep outside at night. The group is hoping to some of those proposals in place in the next three to six months. Rios is skeptical.

“I hear about all these proposals, and there is no action happening,” Rios says.

Check the October 2 edition of Street Roots for more information about the City’s efforts, as well as more information about the protest.

By Amanda Waldroupe

New vendor advisory committee at Street Roots

The new Street Roots Vendor Advisory Committee. The group came up with a mission statement and will be responsible for overseeing a process to elect vendors to the Board of Directors. The group will also be putting together a vendor newsletter and working on ways to improve the vendor program, including creating a vendors speakers bureau, monthly trainings for new vendors hosted by senior vendors and overseeing a monthly social event for vendors. Ideas for the social event ranged from a domino’s night at SR to Sunday football to planning a fishing trip. Stay tuned.

Mission statement: The Vendor Advisory Committee exists to empower and give voice to Street Roots vendors.

Street Roots preps new office in East Portland

Street Roots new office on NE 81st & Halsey will open in December thanks to Visions Into Action and the United Way of Columbia-Willamette and our partners at JOIN.  Twenty new sales locations for vendors experiencing homelessness and poverty are expected to open up in East Portland.

Israel Bayer and Eddy Barbosa work at new location.

What happened to James Chasse?

Today marks the third anniversary of the death of James Chasse at the hands of the Portland Police Bureau. The Mental Health Association of Portland, who is spearheading a documentary about the case, asked City Hall today to release the facts on the Police Bureau’s internal report. The organization also released a 4-page report titled: What Happened to James Chasse?

Dear Mayor Adams, Commissioner Saltzman, Chief Sizer,

Today marks the third anniversary of the death of James Chasse.

Attached is a petition, signed by over 250 persons, which asks for the immediate release of the Portland Police Bureau’s internal investigation of what happened to James Chasse, and a report of the status of what happened to James, and what happened after James died, collected by our organization.
Three years ago we began to track the documents and news articles about what happened to James Chasse, and how those responsible responded to his death.  What was revealed is silence, delay and obfuscation can be somewhat countered by community concern and an obstinate online presence.

So with no budget for public relations we decided to simply tell the truth over and over and over to anyone who would listen.  We posted all publicly-available documents online. We posted all the photographs, videotapes and audio material we could find.  We posted and linked to every news story written about James Chasse.

We knew our concerns would be put off by City Hall, there would be no criminal trial, the officers responsible would not be disciplined, and every bureaucratic response would be clouded in budgetary constraints. We knew our cause – transparency – would lose at every opportunity, except in the court of public opinion.

We were determined to tell the truth and not to forget.

Because the truth is James is not the first person with mental illness to be hurt by police officers, but he could have been the last. We’ve created a report of these changes for you and attached it to this letter.  The report gives a short list of the positive accomplishments we see as directly related to James Chasse’s death, changes by the Portland Police Bureau, by the City of Portland, by Multnomah County and by the Oregon State legislature.

What the City and County have done is significant and today worth noting. Portland is a safer community because positive changes have occurred.

But important action remains undone. Releasing the internal investigation will illustrate why the process the Police Bureau used to determine whether something was wrong with how Kyle Nice, Christopher Humphreys and Bret Burton killed James Chasse failed to bring justice.

What the internal investigation withholds is the result of the police Use of Force Committee, which met months ago in secret.  The Committee found the three officers followed their training and broke no rules and concluded none of the officers used excessive force.

According to the findings of the Grand Jury and Attorney General, they broke no rules and an innocent man is dead.  That finding is unacceptable.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

As you enter negotiations for a new contract with the police union this fall, you must find the capacity for a chief to discipline and terminate officers regardless of civil litigation.  Impunity is a corrupting influence and must be addressed quickly, directly and publicly.
Sincerely,

Roy Silberstein, President, Mental Health Association of Portland

Extra! Extra!

A friendly Street Roots vendor will be waiting tomorrow with the new edition of the newspaper.

Return of the Dragon: Amanda Waldroupe goes deep inside Portland’s drug culture and talks with users, outreach workers, police and reports on the massive resurgence of heroin and its deadly consequences on the streets.

Homelessness poses special challenges for H1N1 preparations: Are Portland’s services ready? Joanne Zuhl reports.

Students ride for sex trafficking victims: Grassroots efforts from Reed College students to raise money for survivors of sex trafficking are morphing into real change. Erica Boulay reports.

Street Roots talks with Portland attorney and former Iraq war interrogator Travis Hall on what interrogation once was, and what it should be again.

Vendor Leo Rhodes and prison activist Ruth Kovacs deliver columns on human rights and Street Roots asks readers to take action to secure health care for all. Plus, hard hitting poetry from Jay Thiemeyer and many more.

Act Now! Support health care for all!

We are encouraging readers to call their local reps to support health care for all. We think it’s important to work to not only put pressure on elected officials, but to help spread the word and to help change public perception about the issue. If you have a family member or friend on the fence, please give an extra hour this week to take them out to coffee or on the phone to explain why health care for all is important.

Support the 10 principles put together by Health Care For America Now!

-  A truly inclusive and accessible health care system in which no one is left out.
- A choice of a private insurance plan, including keeping the insurance you have if you like it, or a public health insurance plan that guarantees affordable coverage without a private insurer middleman.
- A standard for health benefits that covers what people need to keep healthy and to be treated when they are ill. Health care benefits should cover all necessary care including preventative services and treatment needed by those with serious and chronic diseases and conditions.
- Health care coverage with out-of-pocket costs including premiums, co-pays, and deductibles that are based on a family’s ability to pay for health care and without limits on payments for covered services.
- Equity in health care access, treatment, research and resources to people and communities of color, resulting in the elimination of racial disparities in health outcomes and real improvement in health and life expectancy for all.
- Health coverage through the largest possible pools in order to achieve affordable, quality coverage for the entire population and to share risk fairly.
- A watchdog role on all plans, to assure that risk is fairly spread among all health care payers and that insurers do not turn people away, raise rates, or drop coverage based on a person’s health history or wrongly delay or deny care.
- A choice of doctors, health providers, and private and public health insurance plans, without gaps in coverage or access and a delivery system that meets the needs of at-risk populations.
- Affordable and predictable health costs to businesses and employers. To the extent that employers contribute to the cost of health coverage, those payments should be related to employee wages rather than on a per-employee basis.
- Effective cost controls that promote quality, lower administrative costs, and long term financial sustainability, including: standard claims forms, secure electronic medical records, using the public’s purchasing power to instill greater reliance on evidence-based protocols and lower drug and device prices, better management and treatment of chronic diseases, and a public role in deciding where money is invested in health care.

Call Oregon Senators

Ron Wyden, 503-326-7525, Jeff Merkley, 503-226-3386

Representatives Earl Blumenauer, 503.231.2300, David Wu, 503-326-2901 and
Peter DeFazio, 541-465-6732.

To e-mail go to Health Care for America Now! and send a letter to local officials.

Will success spoil Michael Franti?*

From the Sept. 4 edition of Street Roots.

The song is infectious. A bouncing celebration of drum-n-strum bliss — and love, the cuddly kind, love between a boy and a girl, shakin’ it on the dance floor.

Michael Franti and Spearhead’s hit song “Say Hey,” isn’t angry; it’s not seething with the venom of a disenfranchised generation. It isn’t about seizing the day and thwarting regret — well, actually, it is — but the other stuff, Franti’s bread and butter, has never made it this far, this fast. Franti has carved a career out of politically charged lyrics and emotionally powerful works that both scold and embrace, if not entrance, the listener, because his activism — on issues of homelessness, war, and climate change — is inseparable from his music, giving him a cult following among throngs in both the hip hop and social justice movements that has never been jeopardized by commercial or corporate interests.

Until now. “Say Hey” is big, getting bigger. Mainstream big, unlike anything he’s done before.

But then, just as the song cracked Billboard’s top 40, perhaps out of rebellion or in an effort to put the man’s feet back on the ground, Franti’s appendix exploded.

In the sky

by Mike Vance

Tears, projectile weeping, my eyes puke

The triage, the moments of truth

After two hours the nurse comes by

and closes the curtain

I lay there and shake while I squirm

Finally, the doc comes in

The poking and probing (ah fuck!)

The incisions are made, he pries open the wounds

Puss erupts from my frail arms

I watch with twisted fascination

Gasp. (What the fuck?)

Three paramedics close me in

As I snap out of death’s hand

I look down, my shirt is cut down the center

What the hell is this about?

You were dead

You OD’d

OK, but how did I get clear over here

from way over there?

Just be quiet son

You’re coming with us

Just get me some mac-n-cheese so I can go home.

I stumble from the hospital scrubs and all

and went to the liquor store

Goddamn, did I think I was tough?

Kathie, we’d like you to come down

and identify your son

Sorry ma’am

HEALING LESSIONS – HOW THE U.S. CAN ADOPT A HEALTH CARE SYSTEM THAT’S FAIRER AND COST LESS

From the Sept. 4 edition of Street Roots

Anger and taunting in the public forum. Accusations of fascism. Rumors of proposed government death panels — rumors that opponents of reform did virtually nothing to quell. Gun-toting men waiting for their congressional representatives in the parking lot. The discussion, if it can be dignified with that word, over the state of the nation’s health care system is scuttling along the slimy sea floor of American politics.

Which is why it’s an ideal time for some actual information. What is it costing us to look after our nation’s sick? Who pays — literally and figuratively — for the threadbare patchwork of American health insurance coverage, a system that drop-kicks 700,000 people each year into bankruptcy because they can’t pay their medical bills? That, because they couldn’t see a doctor, puts 20,000 more in the grave? Are we really faced with a choice between things as they are and that conservative bogey, “socialized medicine”?

For such apt questions, T.R. Reid’s book couldn’t hit the shelves at a better time. “The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Health Care” (Penguin Press) is a look at how wealthy democracies like ours — like France, Japan, Germany and the U.K. — provide health care, and the choices they faced as they constructed systems that are each unique but that all do a better job of keeping their citizens healthy, and they do it for less.

What do those countries have that we don’t? Each has decided that it has a basic duty to look after the health of its citizens.

Reid’s book would be just an exercise in comparative policy studies but for having busted his shoulder while in the U.S. Navy. A military surgeon had bolted the joint back together, but that was way back in 1972. “By the first decade of the 21st century,” writes Reid, “I could no longer swing a golf club. I could barely reach up to replace a lightbulb overhead or get the wine glasses from the top shelf.”

And so, “hoping for surcease from sorrow,” Reid takes his shoulder on the road. The result is a readable, informative, clearheaded look at health care elsewhere in the industrialized world, accompanied by the persistent questioning: Why not us?

Adam Hyla: When did you begin this book?

T.R. Reid: I’d like to say that in the spring of 2006 I knew that in the fall of 2009 our country would be obsessed with health care, but I really can’t say we planned it that way — we really lucked out. The timing worked out fine. I actually delivered the book a year late, and my editor was mad at me for being so late, but now I tell her I planned it like this. (laughter)

A.H.: Eighty-five percent of Americans tell pollsters that health care is a basic human right, yet so far in this national debate, that doesn’t seem to be very well-reflected.

T.R.R.: Yeah, every time we take on this issue the basic moral question gets lost in a discussion of winners and losers, hospital company profits and insurance company earnings. That’s always happened in our country. Every single country I visited made the basic moral commitment that every single person in our rich country who needs access to health care should have access to it. The richest country in the world has not made that guarantee.

I came off my ’round-the-world tour pretty optimistic; I think if we do make that commitment we can provide it for all, because all these other countries have.

A.H.: Why haven’t we made that commitment? Why are we so down in the weeds?

T.R.R.: I don’t know. I really struggle with that. With my book, I had three main tasks: to explain how other countries cover everybody at reasonable costs, and I think I got that; the other was to explain why other countries cover everybody, and I think I got that. That raises the question, why hasn’t the world’s richest country made this commitment?

Chasse case languishes alongside squandered progress

From the Sept. 4 edition of Street Roots.

As we approach the third anniversary of the death of James Chasse, there are several crucial questions still floating in legal and political limbo.

None is more vital than a long-overdue Portland Police Bureau internal investigative report on what happened to James Chasse.

We know some things, such as what happened to James: an innocent man, he was chased and attacked by three police officers who gave him a savage beating in front of dozens of witnesses. The officers then failed to inform the ambulance service of the beating, and who then, instead of taking him to a hospital, took the mortally wounded James on a meandering tour of town before eventually arriving at the downtown jail.

James died having suffered 16 broken ribs, a punctured lung, massive internal bleeding and 46 abrasions or contusions on his body, including six to the head and 19 strikes to the torso. Hogtied, in shrieking pain, he died a mere hour after his first contact with an officer.