Fresh-cut noble firs nearly doubled in price over five Christmases

NEWS

FINDINGS

WESLEY LAPOINTE Judge Hernandez, who summarized Taylor’s testimony.

Taylor further testified that protesters carrying the banner June 30 were slowing police efforts to move the crowd.

“Because of these circumstances, Officer Taylor attempted to take the banner from the protesters,” Hernandez wrote. “Officer Taylor testified that at this moment he suspected that the protester was trying to retain the banner to use it as a weapon.”

Ultimately, however, Hernandez ruled that Taylor’s munition deployment that night did not comply with the Police Bureau’s Use of Force Directive 1010. Taylor’s actions that night had effectively put the city in violation of a temporary restraining order the court issued on June 26, 2020.

“The incident occurred while it was still light out, and video shows that the long PVC banner was flimsy,” Hernandez wrote. He added that Taylor had “ample opportunity” that night to see the banner was not, in fact, a shield and did not conceal weapons.

“At most,” Hernandez wrote, “the record shows that the individual who was refusing to let go of their sign was engaged in passive resistance.”

Banner Beware

FREE SPEECH: Black Lives Matter protesters march along Southeast Belmont Street.

An internal probe finds that a Portland police officer who regarded a “flimsy” banner as a weapon acted within policy when he fired projectiles at a protester.

BY TESS RISKI tess@wweek.com

Are protest banners weapons? Sometimes, according to the Portland Police Bureau.

A recent investigation by PPB’s internal affairs unit, reviewed by the city’s Independent Police Review, determined that Officer Brent Taylor did not violate bureau directives when he shot five rounds of projectiles at a protester’s legs last June.

The main reason investigators say Taylor acted within policy? Because he believed a banner that protesters carried might conceal or be used as a weapon.

“In the moments prior to deploying his [weapon], Officer Taylor observed protesters utilizing a large banner as what he believed to be a shield,” East Precinct Commander Erica Hurley concluded. “He had concerns the banner could conceal weapons and be used as a weapon.”

The banner was printed with the slogan: “Abolish the PPB.”

THE DOCUMENT

The City Auditor’s Office sent a letter June 7 to Lester Wrecksie, a protester whom Taylor shot in the legs with a projectile launcher during the protest. The letter, obtained exclusively by WW, offers an unusual level of insight into internal affairs investigations, which are typically kept out of public view.

Taylor fired the projectiles at a June 30, 2020, demonstration outside Portland Police Association headquarters.

Video from the incident shows police and protesters, including Wrecksie, engaged in a brief tug of war over a white banner, which promptly falls apart when police yank on the white PVC piping that held it together. Within seconds, the video shows, Taylor fired projectiles at Wrecksie, who was wearing roller skates.

Wrecksie filed a tort claim notice with the city the following December, which prompted the internal affairs and IPR investigations.

The June 7 letter cited a June 4 memo from internal affairs in which Hurley found that Wrecksie’s complaint against Taylor was “not sustained.” She added that Wrecksie was inadvertently caught in a crossfire between Taylor and several other protesters, and that when police later arrested Wrecksie that same night, “he did not make any complaints of injury or pain.”

IPR deputy director Dana Walton-Macaulay and Lt. Scott Konczal of the IA unit signed off on the letter. Walton-Macaulay wrote that Assistant Chief Michael Leasure and acting Capt. Chris Gjovik also reviewed the incident: “In this case they all agreed with Commander Hurley’s findings.”

THE OFFICER

Taylor, a seven-year veteran of the now-dissolved Rapid Response Team, was a fixture at last summer’s protests. He garnered criticism in activist circles after protesters posted videos of him using what they described as excessive force.

In a March 16, 2021, filing, U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez ordered Taylor removed from crowd management duty pending the investigations. The Police Bureau says Taylor has not returned to crowd management duties.

Taylor did not respond to a request for comment.

THE POLICY DEBATE

While the two agencies that review allegations of officer misconduct found Taylor acted within policy directives, a federal judge disagreed.

Taylor previously made a similar defense of his actions in an earlier federal lawsuit stemming from the Police Bureau’s use of force during protests. In that case, filed in June 2020 by Don’t Shoot PDX, Taylor testified that banners and other protest signs “can be draped across plywood shields reinforced with nails and PVC pipes containing screws or concrete, which could be used as weapons to impale an officer,” according to a November order filed by

CHRISTMAS IN JULY Fir Sale

The price of an Oregon Christmas tree nearly doubled in five years.

Climate change stole Christmas.

That’s one takeaway from a July 13 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that reveals one result of Oregon’s increasingly hot summers: more expensive Christmas trees.

Oregon produces the most Christmas trees in the nation. For years, tree growers along the Cascade Range have warned that a seedling shortage, wildfires and dry summers are strangling their harvest.

The USDA report, which compares holiday tree sales in 2015 to those in 2020, confirms that complaint: In five years, the acreage growing Christmas trees dropped 24%, and the total number of trees sold fell 27%.

So tree growers trudged home as penniless as Bob Cratchit? Hardly. They merely increased the price of each tree. In fact, by nearly doubling the average price, from $17.90 to $31.06, Christmas tree purveyors saw gross sales increase 26%, to a healthy $107 million.

Some of those evergreens rose in price faster than others, the USDA report reveals. Every tree just needs a little love, Charlie Brown’s friends told him. But a noble fir? That requires 38 American dollars. AARON MESH.

AVERAGE OREGON PRICE PER TREE

2015 VS. 2020

DOUGLAS FIR $12.82 $21.05

NOBLE FIR

$20.98

GRAND FIR

$16.27

NORDMANN/TURKISH FIR $18.47

DOUGLAS FIR

$17.90 $31.21 $38.68

$36.05

$31.06

Sources: National Agricultural Statistics Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

MAPPED Rest Stops

Portland identifi ed 75 possible sites for safe sleeping. We visited fi ve of them.

On July 16, City Commissioner Dan Ryan released a list of 75 possible properties where Portland officials might erect “safe rest sites” where unhoused people could camp tucked away off the streets. Ryan asked all city bureaus that own land to identify lots in all six quadrants of the city that might be viable for such sites. As might be expected from such a grab bag, the options vary widely—and Ryan’s offi ce pledges it will swiftly eliminate many of the ideas from consideration. “Some of these properties will not be suitable for Safe Rest Villages, and we are still connecting with jurisdictional partners to identify additional properties that may be more ideal,” spokesperson Margaux Weeke said. “[Our] top considerations are square footage, utility hookups, access to transit, environmental impact, and duration of availability.” Removing sites won’t be difficult. What stands out most from the list—second, perhaps, only to the lack of locations in upscale inner eastside neighborhoods—is how few of these sites, in their current state, seem like they could be transformed into safe rest sites by the end of the year. They may be tomorrow’s Band-Aid for the housing crisis, but what they are today is reason for pause. We visited five of those locations in North Portland, each of which shares the drawbacks of multiple other locales.

KENTON COMMUNITY GARDEN

Yes, this is a working garden: green, vibrant and busy. The garden gently slopes downward and is fi lled with rows of planter boxes of tomatoes, sunflowers and lettuce. Two massive zucchini sit on the sole wooden table on the lot. It’s surrounded by a fence, overlooks North Columbia Boulevard, and borders apple trees on one side. It’s owned by the Bureau of Environmental Services and is one of three community gardens on the list.

COLUMBIA BUFFER STRIP

This is, quite literally, a mileslong strip of land sandwiched between residential homes on one side and the busy North Columbia Boulevard on the other, at the industrial edge of the city. The strip is grassy underfoot and dotted with clusters of trees. A few tents are already tucked underneath the groves. A walking path meanders through the center of the roughly 50-foot wide strip. The city has identifi ed three separate stretches of the strip that could be potential sites. It’s also placed over a major sewage line, so it’s owned by the Bureau of Environmental Services.

GRAVEL LOT AT NORTH MISSISSIPPI AVENUE AND KNOTT STREET

A partially overgrown gravel lot in the Eliot neighborhood, it’s one of about 10 gravel lots or parking lots on the list. Trees and shrubbery encroach on the gravel parking lot on one side. It’s a mere hundred feet away from crisscrossing Interstate 5, I-405 and Highway 30 overpasses and echoes with the roar of cars whooshing by. A few car campers are already staked out on the lot, and one grassy portion is covered with purple sweet pea fl owers. It measures 13,500 square feet and is surrounded by apartments, businesses and industrial buildings. It, too, is owned by the Bureau of Environmental Services.

ST. JOHN’S TANK

The lot adjacent to busy North Willamette Boulevard lies near the Willamette River in the St. Johns neighborhood and is tucked between houses on three sides. About three-quarters is fenced. Two huge water tanks tower over the small, rectangular lot. Around the taller, thinner tank, called a standpipe, a spiral staircase winds to the top. The more massive tank stilts on 11 trunklike legs. Both structures would have to be taken down, a project that would cost the Water Bureau at least $200,000. Two grassy lots, each one acre, sit next to a fallow railroad and industrial buildings. One of the lots is surrounded by a tall fence with barbed wire at the top. It consists mostly of overgrown fennel bushes, grass and weeds. It overlooks the Willamette River, and the view of Forest Park offers a bit of romance. Less idyllic: It sits adjacent to an underground sewage well so large that the Portland Building could fit inside. “In places where it’s too flat or sewage needs to go uphill, pump stations push the sewage up so that gravity can take over again,” explains BES, which owns the pump station and four others on the list. The only sign of what lies beneath this site? An unsightly square of concrete. Still, it’s hard to imagine the city suggesting this as housing, any more than a community garden. SOPHIE PEEL.

CLOCKED Hunzeker Watch

He’s still on leave—and we’re still waiting for answers. 127 DAYS:

That’s how long ago Officer Brian Hunzeker resigned from his role as president of the Portland Police Association due to what the union described as a “serious, isolated mistake related to the [Portland] Police Bureau’s investigation into the alleged hit-and-run by Commissioner [Jo Ann] Hardesty.” We still don’t know what he did. The mayor’s office says it doesn’t know what he did. Hunzeker has been on paid administrative leave since May 27.

138 DAYS:

That’s how long it’s been since the Police Bureau opened an internal affairs investigation into the leak of information that wrongly implicated Commissioner Hardesty in a March 3 hit-and-run crash. It has released no results of its inquiry.

126 DAYS:

That’s how long it’s been since the city signed a contract with an outside investigative fi rm to probe the leak. TESS RISKI.