0:02

Podcast pod cast podcast.

0:05

I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards,

0:07

a podcast where we talk about people

0:10

who are bad um with people

0:12

who aren't bad. And today the person who

0:14

isn't bad to talk about the people who are bad

0:17

is Tuck Woodstock. Tuck, how

0:19

are you doing today? I'm okay. Thank

0:21

you so much for having me with such a generous introduction.

0:23

Not bad, I'll take it. Yeah, I'm

0:25

going for it. Uh, Tuck. You

0:28

are a Portland area journalist

0:30

and podcaster and someone who I got tear

0:32

gass with a bunch during you

0:34

know, the whole year. Really, how

0:38

are you doing today, Tuck? I'm

0:40

okay, I'm alright. The sun is shining,

0:43

which helps I think

0:45

that there's this been, this weird gift

0:47

where yes, we do have to just cower inside

0:49

because there is a pandemic, but we're getting like

0:51

a little bit of extra so on out of it. So

0:54

I'm just trying to take it where I can get it, you know, Yeah,

0:57

take it where you can get it is a good motto for

1:01

um. I just also feel like I

1:03

didn't get the sun in the summer because we were both working

1:05

like nine pm to five am, which is conveniently

1:07

the only time in Stark in the summer, and so I was like,

1:10

well, I was just out the entire

1:12

night all summer, so I get some sun now.

1:14

So you would wake up about an hour and a half

1:16

before dusk and go out to get to your

1:18

guest again. Yeah, the number of times that we all

1:20

went to bed like as the sun was rising, I had to

1:22

like invest in some like iyemasks, you know, it

1:24

was ridiculous. Yeah, it was,

1:27

in other words, a very healthy summer. And it was

1:29

a healthy summer. It

1:31

was a healthy summer because of our friends

1:33

in the Portland Police Bureau are are good

1:35

buddies. Um. And you

1:37

know, when you're talking about the Portland Police Bureau,

1:40

you're also talking about the Portland Police Association,

1:43

which is the Portland Police Union and

1:45

oddly enough, one of the most important

1:47

unions of not the most important police unions

1:50

in the entire country. Do you know much about the p

1:52

p A. You know, I

1:54

know what I've heard while I was standing

1:56

outside their union building and people were chanting

1:59

at them, and I

2:01

know that they don't love any effort

2:03

to defund the p p b uh

2:06

and that's about as much as I know. I

2:08

know, like the guy in charge doesn't

2:11

love the protests, which

2:13

you know, shocking personally, but no,

2:15

I don't know that much. I'm excited to learn more about

2:18

the people who's building we've been standing outside

2:20

of all year. Yeah

2:22

yeah, yeah, uh well, that's what

2:24

we're gonna do today. And because this

2:26

is a this is actually a subject,

2:29

you know it. We're focusing on Portland today,

2:31

but the p p A is a subject that I think everyone,

2:33

at least in the United States should

2:35

have some interest in because, as as

2:37

it turns out, they kind of the Portland

2:39

Police Union kind of set the

2:42

tone for every police union in the United

2:44

States because it was the first it was the first successful

2:47

police union in the country. So I want

2:49

to start by talking a little bit about

2:51

police unions in general so we can contextualize

2:54

why they're a problem. Um So, A

2:56

two thousand, eighteen Oxford University study

2:58

of police unions in the one hundred largest

3:00

US cities found that police protections

3:03

in union contracts are directly

3:05

and positively correlated with police

3:07

violence and abuse towards citizens.

3:10

This includes protections like contractual

3:12

guarantees that officers found engaging in misconduct

3:15

should not be publicly shamed, that they

3:17

shouldn't be questioned within two

3:19

days of a shooting or another act of fatal

3:21

violence, and that they shouldn't be publicly

3:24

identified after assaulting citizens. Shockingly,

3:27

this causes police to hurt more people. Um,

3:30

really surprising stuff. That's

3:32

why I love unions, right, It's like all the cool

3:34

worker protections, Like you get to just kill people

3:36

without any sort of repercussion or notice whatsoever.

3:39

That's why I love a union. Go

3:41

ahead. I remember when the steel Workers union

3:43

went on strike because they weren't getting to murder enough

3:46

people, and we were all like, yeah, you should get to

3:48

murder more people. Yeah, yeah.

3:51

Uh. Two thousand nineteen studied

3:53

by the University of Chicago found that when Florida's

3:55

sheriff's deputies received collective bargaining

3:57

rights the main power imparted by unions,

4:00

incidents of violent police conduct in Florida

4:02

increased by across the states.

4:06

This is not a subtle correlation. Now.

4:09

Professor Rob Gilso's research, which will

4:12

be published in an upcoming study, found that nationwide

4:14

police ability to collectively bargain led to

4:16

a significant rise in police killings of civilians,

4:18

and of course, people of color were subject to an outsized

4:21

number of those killings. This may have

4:23

something to do with the fact that police unions regularly

4:26

sue to reinstate officers who are fired

4:28

for killing innocent people. Nationwide,

4:30

they succeed about of the time, but

4:32

in some cities the number is north of seventy.

4:35

Uh. San Antonio would be one example. In

4:38

Minneapolis, it's like fifty or

4:40

so. UM. Now, w b e

4:42

Z, a Chicago radio station, found that between

4:44

two thousand and seven and two thousand fifteen, Chicago's

4:47

Independent Police Review Authority, which

4:49

the union fought for um because

4:51

they only wanted cops to judge as the cops rather

4:53

than civilians to be able to fire cops. Uh.

4:55

This body investigated four hundred police

4:58

shootings and found officers were justified and

5:00

three four hundred incidents.

5:03

So you know, I'm surprised

5:05

about this too. That's really generous of them.

5:08

Yeah, that's I'm glad they found those

5:10

two bad cops. And they're like, see,

5:12

we're a legit organization. Where doesn't that you

5:14

know, we're real, We're real. Yeah.

5:18

In Minneapolis, the police union also succeeded

5:21

in replacing its Civilian Review Board with an

5:23

Office of Police Conduct Review and over eight

5:25

years, the public filed more than misconduct

5:28

complaints. Twelve of those resulted in

5:30

punishment. Again,

5:33

I perfectly legitimate organization. That's

5:35

really twelve bad ones. Uh.

5:39

Like, it's one of those things. I interviewed

5:42

a cop years and years ago about

5:44

like police misconduct, and you know, one

5:46

of the statements he made to me is like, well, when when

5:49

journalists get accused of bad behavior, do

5:51

you tend to assume that like they were in the right

5:53

or the wrong to like make the case that that's why

5:55

cops back other cops. And I was like, I get what you're

5:58

saying, But also if I to hear

6:00

that out of twenty complaints

6:02

of misconduct by journalists only twelve

6:05

or found valid, I'd say, no, it's got to be at least thirteen hundred,

6:07

right, Like, I know journalists also

6:10

are the complaints the journalists murdered

6:12

people? Because I would take those more

6:14

seriously personally. It

6:17

does it does have something to do with what the complaints

6:19

are about, right Like yeah,

6:23

So yeah, that's just a little

6:25

bit about unions, because today again

6:27

we're gonna be talking about the union that started

6:29

it all. Because every statistic I've

6:31

just cited here, Uh, and all

6:34

the murders and beatings that those statistics represent,

6:36

all the crimes against actual in human beings,

6:39

can be tied in some ways back

6:41

to a single specific police union, the

6:43

Portland Police Association. Now

6:45

the Portland Police were not always unionized,

6:47

but they were always kind of ship like most

6:49

police agencies in the United States, their story

6:52

goes back further than the concept of police unions.

6:54

From eighteen fifty one to eighteen seventy,

6:56

the city of Portland was policed by a marshal who

6:58

was elected or appointed to a two year term.

7:01

He could hire deputies and these were basically just

7:03

like freelance guys with guns and badges

7:05

until the eighteen sixties. It wasn't until

7:07

eighteen seventy that Portland was enough of a real

7:10

city to merit its own police force, initially

7:12

called the Portland Metropolitan Police Force.

7:15

At the time, the city had about nine thousand residents

7:17

and the police force was seven people, which

7:20

it seems like a good number for a police

7:22

force to be compared to the current number, and I would

7:24

take it. Yeah, yeah, seven cops.

7:27

I think they'd be nicer. Um.

7:31

Things grew rapidly from there, and in nineteen

7:33

o eight Portland became the first city anywhere

7:36

in the USA to hire a female officer, So

7:38

that's good. More

7:40

woman cops. Yeah.

7:45

The Bureau was also the first to use radios.

7:47

In the early nineteen tens, they joined the proud tradition

7:50

of US law enforcement cracking the schools of left

7:52

wing labor organizers. And that's going to bring me

7:54

briefly to the tale of Portland's Red Squad.

7:56

Have you ever heard of the Red Squad? Now, I'm

7:58

so excited we still have one. But

8:00

they don't call it that anymore. Is

8:04

it for communists? Yeah, it's for beating

8:06

the ship out of communists, well, leftists

8:08

in general, anarchists too, you know, they

8:10

don't like the wobblies. So the

8:13

Red Squads started to ramp up as a unit during

8:15

the Roaring twenties, which, as a decade of increasing

8:17

wealth and equality and ballooning fortunes for the rich,

8:19

was also a decade when a lot of people were like, communism

8:22

seems like maybe something we could try. Um.

8:25

And you know, Portland's always had a left wing

8:28

radical tradition. More than a dozen of its citizens

8:30

went off to fight fascism in the Spanish Civil

8:32

War and the labor movement had a strong home here,

8:34

and that was really the crux of it. Leftists kept

8:36

organizing workers into unions, and business owners

8:39

wanted those people identified and punished before

8:41

they could mess up people's profit margins. So

8:43

while some of the Red Squad was funded by the

8:45

city, most of its money came

8:47

from business owners in Portland who wanted

8:49

to know which of their employees were considering joining

8:52

a union so that they could fire them. I'm

8:54

obsessed at this Do any of those businesses still

8:56

exist? I need to know. That is

8:58

a great question and should be

9:00

looked into. I do not have that research in

9:02

front of me, but I I it wouldn't be

9:05

hard to do. I don't think people were reporting on

9:07

the Oregonian reported on in the thirties. Yeah,

9:11

well they have a mixed story

9:14

in this episode two. Um

9:17

so Yeah, the

9:20

nineteen thirties Portland kind of sounds a lot like Portland

9:22

today. For example, in nineteen thirty four,

9:24

there mayde a celebration. Demonstrators hung

9:27

a red Revolutionary flag over city Hall,

9:29

and a malfunctioning poll mechanism stopped

9:31

the city from taking it down. The Portland Communist

9:33

Party held a parade against hunger, fascism, and

9:36

war, and for the first time in Portland's

9:38

history, the protesters had a functional p A

9:40

system. Demonstrators were called to meet at

9:42

three pm to march to the Plaza Park for

9:44

unemployment insurance, social security, free

9:47

milk for children, and a release of class war prisoners.

9:49

And that really scared rich people in the town and the

9:51

cops. The Red Squad started sending an officers

9:54

to infiltrate left wing groups. After this, they

9:56

hired agent provocateurs to suggest acts

9:58

of violence during planning eatings that the police could

10:00

then crack down violently before protests,

10:03

claiming that they had intelligence about violence

10:05

from protesters. Um, yeah,

10:07

it's some good ship. Yeah.

10:09

Where they where they threatened by the unemployment or

10:11

the milk for children? That's what I really need

10:13

to know what they're concerned about here? Equal

10:16

I would say, equal parts, equal parts milk

10:18

for little kids and unemployment shares. Yeah.

10:23

And I'm gonna quote now from a two thousand

10:26

right up for Lewis and Clark College by Michael

10:28

Monk. Quote. Throughout the decade,

10:30

it's undercover agents and provocateurs

10:32

made desperate efforts to suppressive, destabilize

10:35

radical political groups and union organizing,

10:37

including pressuring Lincoln High School students,

10:39

artists, and anti fascist organizers.

10:42

And again he's writing this in two thousands,

10:44

so before Rose City Antifa exists,

10:46

before antifa is like a buzzword, like just kind

10:48

of to note that the Portland

10:50

police is antipathy towards anti fascists

10:53

goes back quite a ways. Um, And there's

10:55

a reason Portland police were sympathetic

10:58

to fascism during the nineteen two when

11:00

the Second KKK arose, it was something of

11:02

a cross between like an MLM scheme and a

11:04

hate group. Oregon was one

11:06

of its centers of recruitment. It was one of the states

11:08

with the most clansmen, and there were a

11:11

number of times where huge numbers of KKK

11:13

guys would would march through the streets of Portland. And

11:15

of course many of the clansmen who marched through Portland

11:17

were also cops. In ninety

11:19

three Portland Telegram article reported

11:22

that the police bureau was quote full

11:24

to the brink with clansmen. The Portland

11:26

Police Bureau actually deputized a hundred clansmen

11:29

handpicked by the local Grand Dragon and

11:31

designated them Portland Police vigilantes.

11:33

They got badges I

11:36

love it so cool

11:38

and good. It

11:42

makes sense, you know, there's all the chance in the street

11:44

of like cops and clan go hand in hand, and it's like

11:46

no, literally they are just like the one hand on

11:48

the other hand on the same human body. Yeah,

11:51

it's not a euphemism. Yeah. Um.

11:54

Now, as you might expect, a police bureau

11:56

that consisted mostly of white supremacists

11:58

and fascist sympathizers did not react

12:01

kindly to the cause of organized labor. On

12:03

July eleven, nineteen, Portland's

12:05

longshoreman went on strike, blocking the Union

12:07

Pacific train line from delivering freight out

12:09

of the port that gives Portland it's name. The

12:11

Portland police loaded up onto a train with a bunch

12:13

of strikebreakers and attempted to drive through the Union

12:16

lines. When longshore been threw rocks

12:18

at them, the police drew shotguns and revolvers

12:20

and fired wildly into the crowd from a moving

12:23

train. Uh. They wounded four and killed

12:25

one, So that's good. Yeah,

12:28

you know, I guess the protests today could be worse

12:32

firing live rounds at us from a moving

12:34

vehicle. They did ramas a couple

12:36

of times with police cars, um, but not

12:39

with a train, right, yeah, it's

12:41

getting We've reformed them.

12:47

Uh. In nineteen thirty six, a German

12:50

naval vessel sailed into Portland's harbor,

12:52

and of course, because it was ninety six, the German

12:54

navy was, you know, a bunch of

12:56

a bunch of Nazis, um and yeah,

12:59

this this vessel or the Swastika flag,

13:01

which marked the very first time that the swastica

13:03

was flown in the city of Portland, but of course

13:06

not the last time. The Evening Herald,

13:08

a Klamath Falls newspaper noted thousands

13:10

of citizens who lined the west Harbor wall

13:12

and city officials gave the end in which was the

13:14

ship and its men, an enthusiastic welcome.

13:17

So thousands of Portland's showed up to cheer

13:19

for the first Nazis to come into town. They got to

13:21

march like the actual Nazi

13:23

sailors, got to march through the streets of Portland.

13:26

It doesn't sound wrong to me. Now.

13:30

Those literal Nazis were of course protected

13:32

by the police, and they were opposed by

13:34

a small number of brave anti fascist demonstrators.

13:37

Eleven of them were arrested quote on a charge

13:40

of parading banners without permits by

13:42

members of the Red Squad. Yeah, that

13:45

is the danger the Nazis are

13:47

here. I mean, honestly, this sounds exactly

13:49

like what would happen to you today. Like it is

13:51

not different, No, it's not at all. Like

13:53

Nazis continue to march in town and the

13:55

police continue to arrest the people who show

13:57

up to oppose them. It's the same, it's

14:00

the same. It's great. These

14:02

Nazis had a boat, which I guess is a change.

14:06

You know. I think we there's like the Trump

14:09

the Trump boat things that we're sinking the

14:11

other boat. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

14:13

that was like yeah, yeah, it's

14:16

not the same, but I feel like it's like a similar energy

14:18

if we could kind of combine those two things

14:20

together. I think the sinking boat

14:22

was one of my favorite things to see on Twitter

14:25

all year. It's just like the singing

14:27

Trump boat, because there were a lot of like Trump

14:30

vessels that sunk, non Trump vessels,

14:32

just China have a good time. Yeah, that

14:34

I don't like as much. Now, Yeah,

14:38

it's all great, So go

14:40

ahead. The anti fascists who

14:42

protested again actual

14:45

Nazis marching through the streets of Portland carried

14:47

banners denouncing Hitler and demanding that the US

14:49

and no athletes to the Berlin Olympics. Nobody

14:52

listened to them. Um, and again eleven of them were arrested.

14:54

The newspaper notes that three

14:57

of them were Read College students. Congratulation

15:00

just read you

15:02

had a strong reaction to that, tuck. Yeah.

15:05

I know a lot of people from Read College,

15:08

and it it just tracks there.

15:10

Um there. What is their slogan?

15:12

Their slogan is like communism, anarchy,

15:16

free love. What is it? It's something like that.

15:18

It's really powerful. Good

15:20

for them. Well, I'm proud of Read College.

15:23

Uh. The newspaper also notes that five

15:26

of them were women, which it

15:28

says something about the times. I guess that that

15:30

was that was a worthwhile statement to make. Um

15:33

yeah, uh. And I think before we move

15:35

on, I want to read the names of the arrested people,

15:38

because I think it's probably good to remember

15:40

that while thousands of Portlands showed up to be

15:42

like yeah, Nazis, eleven people were like fuck

15:44

you guys. Uh, and those people

15:47

ruled uh. John Hammond, Robert

15:49

Lewis, William Wood Esther

15:52

Layton, who was the secretary of the American

15:54

League against the war and fascism, Mary

15:56

Gould of the International Labor Defense

15:58

League, uh Say Nordling, Earl

16:01

Steward, Frank Webber, Mrs Violet

16:03

Olsen, and Mrs Levina Hennett

16:06

and Lillian Foster. So good

16:09

on all of them. All right, did some research

16:11

while you did read that list, because I too am a journalist

16:14

and I just want to read to you. An unofficial

16:16

motto of read is communism, atheism,

16:18

free love, and can be found in the Red College bookstore.

16:21

It was a label that the Red community claim from

16:23

critics during the nineteen twenties. So

16:26

here we are, yeah this period, Good

16:28

on you read. So

16:32

when World War Two started, the Portland Police

16:34

contained a number of officers who are members

16:36

of fascist and Nazi sympathetic organizations.

16:39

They put their heads down and whistled loudly as their

16:41

nation went to war against fascism. It was

16:43

rather ironically this war that would finally

16:45

convince the Portland police that all those labor organizers

16:48

they've beaten and shot over the years might have had

16:50

a point. The cause of this was Police Chief

16:52

Niles, a forward thinking cop who had established

16:54

one of the nation's first police academies in Portland

16:56

and nineteen forty. Prior to this, Portland police

16:59

had been trained on the job, which means they were not

17:01

trained at all. The book Pickets, Pistols

17:03

and Politics, which is a complete history of the Portland

17:05

Police Union, and I can send you a copy

17:07

if you want to. It's it's fun reading notes

17:10

that quote fresh recruits were given a star in

17:12

a whistle and shoved out the door. Good.

17:16

Why why would you need to train anyone

17:20

that's better though than what they're doing now.

17:24

Our cops are highly trained and it has not

17:26

helped. Let's

17:29

go back to the whistle star day whistle.

17:34

I do love a whistle. Yeah, you

17:37

know who else loves whistles? Everybody loves

17:39

whistles. Yeah, what do you do? Yeah?

17:42

And let's hear from our finisher. Are you're

17:44

plug there? I was going to go to ads

17:46

and say that our our sponsors,

17:49

all of whistles sponsored

17:51

by a whistle company. Yeah.

17:53

Well, Big Whistle is actually heavily

17:55

in bed with the police union, so I don't think we're going

17:57

to get any of that money. Fair enough, another

18:01

sponsors foiled. We're

18:09

back. Okay, So we're talking about Harry

18:12

Niles, the police chief, who's again Big

18:14

modernizer you know, also establishes Portland's

18:17

or Oregon's first police science school, forms

18:20

a discipline board for his cops, and he gives

18:22

his cops modern uniforms, which at this point

18:24

they did still have to pay for themselves. But

18:26

Niles had some problems that got in the way

18:29

of him modernizing the Portland Police. One

18:31

of them was the fact that a lot of Portland's cops were

18:33

old as hell. Uh. The pension was bad in

18:35

those days, and so people would hang onto the job

18:37

even though they like really could barely walk anymore,

18:40

um because again it would be that or starve

18:42

on the streets. Old cops

18:44

had never been forced to pass a civil service

18:47

exam, which was required of new recruits, and that was

18:49

also a problem for Harry because again, he wants police

18:51

to be professional. To make his

18:53

dreams of a young, sexy, modern Portland

18:55

police beer or a reality, Niles had to find

18:57

a bunch of extra money and what was at that point

18:59

of very limited budget. So he decided

19:02

to put all of the old cops on what he called

19:04

park patrol, which would force them to

19:06

spend twelve hours shifts on their feet at a

19:08

much lower rate of pay, reducing

19:10

their pay opened up funds for new cops, and basically

19:12

he was kind of hoping that making them walk all day would

19:15

make a lot of them quit or die on the job and free

19:17

up more money. Die on the job.

19:20

Yeah, you kind of get that. He didn't say

19:22

it, but he's giving the old guys a job

19:24

that makes them walk twelve hours a day, you

19:27

know, hand

19:29

disrespectful. On the other hand, they are cops.

19:32

They are gonna kinda

19:34

let this one even out. I'm still

19:36

distracted by you calling it police science.

19:40

Yeah, yeah, like like like your printing

19:42

and ship. Yeah, like like the idea that

19:44

there should be some rigor applied to how

19:46

you determine whether or not a crime was committed

19:49

by someone as opposed to just being like grabbed the nearest

19:51

person who wasn't white and throw them in prison. Now

19:53

was my point is, like maybe

19:56

like do science and stop with

19:58

crimes. Yeah, that was

20:00

the idea cops walking, like you know the

20:03

vandalism that sometimes you'll see that says,

20:06

you know, kill a cop or whatever, but like they

20:08

should like have a subtitle that's like by making

20:10

them walk twelve hours a day in a park,

20:13

Like we're not bad people, we

20:15

just want them to walk more. See what happened.

20:17

We agree with Portland's old police chief

20:20

exactly. Get the look out. Harry

20:22

Niles, the leader of Anti far He

20:26

created, didn't you say? He created like discipline, like

20:28

the first discipline Yeah, the discipline

20:31

board. Yeah yeah, which again

20:33

he was very unpopular with the rank and file

20:35

cops. As a rule, the people the cops

20:37

hate most in Portland police history is

20:39

their police chief. Um. Although

20:42

there's some debate. Well we'll talk about that a little bit later to

20:44

uh so, Yeah, Harry has

20:46

all this plan to make a bunch of old

20:48

cops walk until they die or quit, and the city

20:51

council is like, this is a great idea, and uh

20:53

in September of ninety one they

20:56

basically back legally his plan to

20:58

do park patrol. But they in in December

21:00

of nineteen forty one, Japan attacks Pearl

21:02

Harbor in the US winds up in you know

21:05

a thing like a big like a big kerfuffle,

21:07

I think would be the best way to describe what they

21:09

call world kerfuff Yeah, the big

21:12

the big world kerfuffle. Um.

21:15

Yeah. And this was a problem for officers, even

21:17

officers who hadn't been Nazi sympathizers

21:19

because people went kind of bug funk at the start

21:21

of the war and assumed that Oregon in California

21:23

were going to be invaded by Japan. Um. And

21:26

this wasn't entirely irrational because the Empire

21:28

of Japan did kill several oregon Ians

21:31

with bombs tied to balloons. Um So,

21:34

like, yeah, that's we don't talk about that

21:36

much, but there were some attacks on on

21:38

Oregon. I think it was Oregon and Washington had like

21:40

some minor strikes on their soil,

21:43

like a thing that happened, Yeah, it

21:46

rings a bell. But the balloon part I was just like,

21:48

wait, pardon, that's a thing you can

21:50

do. They tried some they

21:52

tried some wacky stuff. Um. So, a

21:55

more direct problem for the police

21:57

was that number one, they suddenly had

21:59

a whole new tie the patrol duty to do, because again,

22:01

people were afraid of being invaded. And

22:03

number two, there were a whole bunch of young, fit

22:05

cops that got drafted um and

22:08

that meant that they couldn't really afford to get rid of

22:10

all the old ones. So to make up

22:13

for this, Niles put the entire bureau

22:15

on full time service with no days

22:17

off. Portland police were expected to work twelve

22:19

hour shifts, seven days a week. And remember they didn't

22:22

get overtime yet, so this is like

22:26

like again, no sympathy for them, but kind

22:28

of a ship gig. Like you can see why they would

22:30

be unhappy with this. Uh. These this

22:32

state of affairs was originally supposed to last just three

22:34

weeks, but once it became clear that this you know, world

22:36

cerfuffle thing was gonna last more than a month, Niles

22:39

extended the new schedule indefinitely. As

22:41

you might expect, officers were not wild about

22:44

this new state of affairs. Enter John

22:47

Hayes. He was a young, fresh faced

22:49

and popular officer whose previous job had

22:51

been as a pinball machine repairman. Shockingly,

22:54

pinball machine repairman did not get paid

22:56

well. So at age twenty two, John had created

22:58

a labor union for pinball mechanics UH.

23:01

In pursuit of this goal, he'd met members of the Multnoma

23:03

County Central Labor Committee, and they

23:05

helped him learn how to organize a bunch of pinball

23:07

guys into a union that could bargain for better

23:09

wages. I'm so mad that this is going

23:11

to get bad soon, because I'm obsessed with pinball

23:14

union, and I would wear their T shirts all

23:17

yeah, the pinball Union. Unfortunately,

23:20

the pinball Union is irrevocably tainted

23:22

by their relationship to the Portland Police Association.

23:25

It's really tragic. Yeah. So

23:28

nationally, there'd been a couple of attempts at police

23:30

unions by the forties, but none of them had worked

23:32

out. The Boston police had unionized in the

23:34

nineteen teens and then gone on strike for better

23:36

wages, which had resulted in a mass riot

23:39

through the streets of Boston a citizens looted everything

23:41

that could possibly find. President Woodrow

23:43

Wilson had called the police strike a crime

23:45

against civilization and told the American

23:47

Federation of Labor president there is no

23:50

right to strike against the public safety by

23:52

anybody, anywhere, any time. Every

23:54

single striking Boston officer was fired

23:56

and the union died a painful death, and

23:58

the AFL revoked all police union

24:00

charters after this point. So cops had tried

24:03

to unionize and it had gone very

24:05

badly for them, and there were not police unions

24:07

when the John Hayes is like, what if

24:09

I unionize the Portland police. So they're

24:12

not the first, but they are the first that will

24:14

succeed at unionizing. Um.

24:17

So obviously this was a dangerous thing

24:19

to try to do, and a lot of people felt that the police

24:21

should not be able to organize under any circumstances.

24:23

Those people would, of course, proved to be right. Officer

24:26

Hayes reached out to ask me the American

24:28

Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees,

24:30

which is the largest trade union for public employees

24:33

in the company, and he was like, you know that thing

24:35

that ended really badly last time, what if

24:37

we do that again? That's

24:40

good stuff. It's just so interesting to me

24:43

because I have a friend who organized,

24:45

you know, helped organize the union. Asks me in

24:47

Portland, and there's there's literally like a no cop

24:49

asked me movement right to get the

24:52

And I had no idea. And I don't know if they

24:54

knew either that this actually happened,

24:56

like in Portland itself, you know, so I

24:59

did know this until it was actually Alan

25:01

Kessler, who's a local lawyer that like informed

25:04

us of this book. And I did not know the

25:06

Portland I just thought they were another cop union,

25:08

but they are like the cop union. Yeah,

25:11

so that's good. Explain

25:14

something, yeah, so asked

25:17

me agreed to back the Portland Police as long as they

25:19

included a clause in their charter that they could

25:21

never strike under any circumstances. And

25:23

Hayes said, of course, of course will never strike.

25:25

We would never strike, that will never happen. We I

25:27

promised the Portland Police will never go on strike.

25:30

And then you know asked me, was like, okay, and

25:33

they made a deal. And to make a long boring story

25:35

short, Hayes gradually succeeded in signing

25:37

most of his fellow cops up for the union. Under the

25:39

chiefs nos Uh. The Portland Police Association

25:41

went public in April of nineteen forty two, and

25:44

the initial reaction was less than positive. The

25:46

Oregonian on April sixteenth wrote an

25:48

editorial about what a bad idea it would

25:51

be to allow cops to unionize. The editorial

25:53

writer noted that if police unionized, no matter

25:55

what, those cops would always be suspected

25:57

of quote greater loyalty to union

26:00

than to official duty. I

26:02

always want to congratulate the Oregonian editorial

26:05

board for getting something right at some point

26:07

in its long storied history. It

26:09

doesn't last long, don't worry. This

26:12

was the one time I'm

26:14

sure they fired that guy immediately.

26:17

Um so, Yeah, public

26:19

suspicion was not enough to stop the Portland

26:21

Police Association from getting off the ground. On

26:23

an April ninety two, the

26:25

p p A held its first official meeting

26:28

and voted for its first president. Now

26:30

Hayes, as the founder of the union, had acted

26:32

as interim president during this early period,

26:35

but his fellow officers felt that he was too young and

26:37

inexperienced to represent them at the negotiating

26:39

table. Instead, they picked

26:42

a literal Nazi. They're

26:46

like, let's do ageism and fascism

26:48

all in one. Sure did the Nazis

26:51

have a union? Because if

26:54

not, I guess it could have been

26:56

worse. They had the National Socialist

26:58

German Workers Party. But yeah, uh uh

27:02

so yeah. Otto Miners was the first

27:04

president of the p p A, and he's

27:06

described this way in the p p a's Weird

27:08

Biography of Itself, which is very

27:10

positive quote. He was an outspoken

27:13

man, some would say loudmouth, whose accent

27:15

revealed his German upbringing. Earlier,

27:17

he had been an active member of the German American

27:20

Booned, though for self preservation in a nation

27:22

at war with Germany. He later played down

27:24

his interest in the land of his ancestors. Now

27:27

that's that's fund

27:29

to me, because they say that like, well,

27:31

he was a German Man who remembered the Boond because

27:34

he was interested in his German ancestry. That's

27:36

not what the German American Boond was. The

27:39

German American Boond was a literal

27:41

Nazi organization in the United States

27:43

that was funded by the Nazi Party

27:45

in Germany. The Boond waved swatsticka

27:48

banners at mass rallies. They gave

27:50

the fascist salute and moss to giant

27:52

portraits of Hitler. Their initial funding,

27:54

again came from the Nazi government. Fritz

27:57

Koon, the leader of the Boond, summed up the group's

27:59

ideology in a speech he gave at Madison Square

28:01

Garden in nineteen thirty nine. If

28:03

you ask what we are actively fighting for under

28:05

our charter. First, a socially just white,

28:08

gentile ruled United States. Second,

28:10

gentile controlled labor unions free from

28:13

Jewish Moscow directed dominance.

28:15

So this

28:18

is meeting faces that you doesn't work for podcasting.

28:20

And I'm just like the

28:24

first president of the Portland Police Association,

28:27

a literal Nazi. It's

28:30

good stuff. Boond rallies featured banners

28:32

with catchy slogans like stop Jewish Domination

28:34

of Christian Americans and wake up America,

28:37

smash Jewish communist. Oh my god,

28:40

God, it's good

28:42

stuff. It's not subtle, no,

28:45

no, and you

28:47

have to love that. The Portland Police Association's

28:50

biography of itself just says like he was

28:52

interested in his German heritage. No,

28:57

dude was a Nazi. The

29:00

branding of that is just yeah,

29:03

it's great, good stuff.

29:06

It's rude to Germany because it conflates

29:08

the two. It's like, if you have German heritage, it just means

29:10

you love like to be a Nazi.

29:12

You know. It's like, we can separate those two things. We

29:15

can separate them. Yeah,

29:17

the p PA can't. I can I enjoy

29:19

the aspects of German heritage that are, for example,

29:22

creative sausages. Yeah later

29:26

osen fine, Yeah, no one has any issues

29:28

with that part now. Um,

29:31

yeah, so it would be fair to call miners and Nazi.

29:33

Now. There were some German Americans who joined

29:35

the boond not really knowing what it was, but those folks

29:37

tended to leave pretty quickly once they saw the swastika

29:39

banners and heard all the talk about the Jews. Miners

29:43

remained in the boond until it was forcibly disbanded

29:45

after the outbreak of US involvement in World War

29:47

Two, which would you know, suggest he was pretty

29:49

fucking committed. And now he was the first

29:52

president of the Portland Police Association. Good

29:55

stuff, good guy. So

29:57

the p p as first big victory came

30:00

that October when it succeeded in getting

30:02

its officers time and a half pay for working on

30:04

Halloween. It also got officers overtime

30:06

pay for working security at ball games, which

30:08

they'd previously done on a volunteer basis.

30:11

I'm not sure if this was the first time police anywhere

30:13

in the nation got overtime pay. It might have

30:15

been, but it was the first time that a police

30:17

union succeeded in getting a blanket overtime

30:20

agreement out of a city in the United States.

30:22

This is like the start of police overtime. Um.

30:25

Thanks, yeah, and now it is like

30:28

bankrupting the city of Portland. Yeah,

30:31

it's so good. So President

30:33

Miners the Nazi learned in nineteen forty

30:36

three that some of his officers were still working at ball

30:38

games for free as actual volunteers

30:40

out of I don't know, some sense of civic responsibility

30:43

or something, and discussed ball

30:46

games are nice. He was disgusted by

30:48

this. He told the union that these men were playing

30:51

into the hands of the opposition, and

30:53

I have to credit him for not saying the Jews

30:55

there. Um.

31:00

He actually read the badge numbers of these

31:02

men allowed to the union, so that like people

31:04

would know who were the I guess that

31:07

the traders within their midst um,

31:09

which they could really mad at us when we read their

31:11

badge numbers. But that's a great

31:13

point. Nobody's allowed to bad numbers anymore.

31:16

Yeah, uh yeah. It was kind of

31:18

a dip move from the president of the union, but

31:20

you know, in fairness to him, ninety three

31:23

was kind of a rough year for Nazis, so maybe Miners

31:25

was just in a mood. Now,

31:29

at this time, the police were not the only

31:31

force providing law and order type services to

31:33

the city of Portland. There was also the Veterans

31:36

Guard and Patrol. Now, this was

31:38

a group of World War One vets who had formed

31:40

to defend their homeland while younger men fought

31:42

fascism abroad. These

31:45

guys worked for free, protecting their neighborhoods

31:47

and guarding their community with skills honed in deadly

31:49

battle. Now, some people might consider this

31:51

kind of a win win because it didn't cost anyone

31:53

anything, and these guys clearly knew what they were doing. I'm

31:55

sure they were as racist as everyone else back

31:57

then, but I haven't heard

32:00

anything that would suggest they were worse than the police,

32:02

and they were probably broadly speaking more

32:04

competent. Uh. Yeah. But

32:06

Miners hated this because again, the veterans

32:08

guard were not getting paid, and he was all

32:10

about getting more money for cops as

32:12

pickets, pistols and politics notes. In

32:15

the view of the police union, the veteran guard and

32:17

patrol simply made it more difficult for professional

32:19

police to get their demands met by the city.

32:22

After all, many police services were being performed

32:24

for free by these patriotic veterans. We

32:27

gotta shut that shut down now.

32:31

The police union succeeded in pushing down

32:33

any attempt to form like a civic safety

32:35

patrol not made up of a tiny cadra of unaccountable

32:38

men paid increasingly vast sums of money to do

32:40

violence. That task accomplished in five

32:43

Miners set himself to the job of fighting

32:45

another scourge to civic order Hollywood.

32:48

See the end of World War Two was the start

32:51

of a gangster revolution in Hollywood films.

32:53

The gangster air of the twenties and thirties was distant

32:55

enough that people could make good movies about it now, and

32:58

police around the country were horrified to see their

33:00

mortal enemies turned into heroes on the silver

33:02

screen. Now, at this point, unionization

33:05

was still very rare for police officers.

33:07

It was not just Portland's, but they were

33:09

one of the few. So the cause of opposing

33:11

gangster movies on behalf of law men everywhere

33:14

fell upon the Portland Police Association.

33:16

The Portland Police publicized the release of a resolution

33:19

stating that the United States and foreign nations

33:21

were quote to be flooded with a series

33:24

of gangster motion pictures. Now,

33:26

the PPA was concerned with the influence

33:28

of such pictures on the impressionable alliscent

33:30

mind, and argued that Hollywood producers

33:33

and again got a credit miners for not just saying

33:35

Jews there were responsible for any

33:38

harms that this caused. Such films

33:40

can be motivated only by greed and can feel

33:42

no concern for the welfare of our country or its

33:44

youth. Wait, I'm obsessed with

33:46

them being like this is motivated by greed, when like they

33:48

are the ones that are like everyone has to get

33:51

paid all the time, no volunteering

33:53

at the baseball game. Yeah, it

33:56

is funny that he accuses them of being greedy.

33:59

Ye. Now, I

34:01

don't want to lean too much on the Nazi stuff,

34:03

but it is telling that one of the things

34:05

this literal Nazi president of the p p

34:07

A makes one of his first priorities

34:10

is to attack Hollywood producers. Um

34:13

a little bit of a tell, little bit of

34:15

a tell. Uh Yeah. Anyway,

34:17

the resolution concluded by proposing an

34:19

investigation of Hollywood producers

34:21

by the House un American Activities

34:24

Committee, which absolutely did happen

34:26

and culminated in the second Red Square. Now

34:29

a lot went into that. I'm not going to give the pp

34:31

A credit for all of it, but they were a force

34:33

in sparking the second red scare. You know

34:36

that's cool. Okay, let's scare

34:38

the first said square. I'm like the red

34:40

square, the red Okay, cool. Now

34:42

that's just like a communist who wears a suit. Well,

34:48

anyway, good job for doing the red scare.

34:51

Yeah, thanks guys, thanks for starting the

34:54

ball ball rolling on ruining the

34:56

lives of people in Hollywood who happened

34:58

to think that socialism might be a ideam

35:02

ahead of the curve Trailblazers.

35:06

That's where the basketball team gets its name, Yeah

35:08

Yeah, from the p PA's hatred of

35:10

people having opinions. Now, in

35:12

Portland Police Association terms, most

35:14

of the late nineteen forties and nineteen fifties were

35:17

a set of labor rights improvements. Police won

35:19

a forty hour work week, they want expanded

35:21

sick days, and they want better and more comfortable uniforms

35:23

that they didn't have to pay for. This is

35:25

mostly stuff that, if you assume police should

35:28

exist, is not really that problematic,

35:30

pretty basic, like workers rights.

35:32

The p p A pooled its bargaining power with the

35:34

firefighters union to get a proper pension system

35:37

set up, and actually the firefighters

35:39

were critical in allowing the PPA to survive

35:41

because in the early days, again there

35:43

was a lot of resistance and they weren't recognized

35:46

for years by the city of Portland itself.

35:48

It was the firefighters who first gave them legitimacy

35:51

by saying like, hey, will we will

35:53

bargain with you, and that way they'll have to deal

35:55

with you, because they have to deal with firefighters. The

35:58

p PA's biography says something about this

36:00

that I think is very telling a quote. The thinking

36:02

was that the firefighters had a better chance of winning

36:04

the voters favor. They were, after all, the

36:07

good guys in the public's view, the ones who

36:09

saved people instead of bossing them around. It's

36:13

fun that cops recognize that, Yes,

36:17

we do like firefighters better than you because

36:19

their only job is to save people. Yeah, they're

36:21

help They're actually helping people. Their

36:24

job is undebatably necessary,

36:27

whereas you are cops. So

36:31

there was initially consensus among union

36:33

leadership that the pp A should not donate to directly

36:36

or back directly political candidates,

36:38

that it would be wrong for them to get political.

36:41

Getting involved in partisan politics would be unseemly

36:43

for a group of men and women who are supposed to be civil servants

36:46

protecting all citizens. Uh. This would

36:48

last until the seventies, but we'll talk about that story

36:50

a little bit later. For right now, we need to turn away from

36:52

pickets, pistols, and politics, which has been the source

36:54

for everything but the stuff about the Red Squad

36:57

and the boond and turned to a slightly

36:59

better source because shockingly, for

37:01

a book written at the behest of a police union, Pickets,

37:04

Pistols, and Politics, says almost nothing about race

37:06

with relations in Portland or police behavior towards

37:08

black Portlanders. Um. It does

37:11

occasionally mentioned that, like civil

37:13

rights groups had problems with Portland police, but

37:15

it will make statements like black activists

37:18

believe that police showed a racial bias. And that's kind

37:20

of the most that you'll get out of out of the book.

37:22

Uh So, for this next bit of the episode, I'm going

37:24

to turn to a dissertation written by Catherine

37:27

Nelson at Portland State University.

37:29

Its title is on the Murder of Ricky

37:31

Johnson, the Portland Police Bureau, Deadly Force,

37:34

and the Struggle for civil rights in Oregon. And

37:36

it's a really good read um like

37:38

a very I would I would recommend it above

37:41

the union's propaganda book, um,

37:43

although they both have some interesting stuff in them. So

37:46

legally, Oregon didn't have segregation

37:49

in the nineteen forties or fifties or sixties,

37:51

right, like we were not one of the if

37:53

you like google like maps of states

37:55

that had segregation, Oregan's right there with California

37:58

as like, uh, discriminatetion for race

38:00

or color forbidden by law. State. But

38:03

that that's not really true. Um, that's

38:05

just like there wasn't legal segregation.

38:07

It did absolutely happen. As historian

38:10

Elizabeth McLagan notes, black people

38:12

in Portland were regularly refused admission to restaurants,

38:14

theaters, and hotels. Medical care was difficult

38:16

to obtain. Unions barred blacks from membership,

38:19

employment practices confined them to certain jobs,

38:21

and integrated housing was resisted. According

38:24

to a long time black resident, Oregon was a

38:26

clan state, a hell whole. It's

38:28

not it was not a not nice

38:31

I think is a good way to sum that up. Henry

38:34

Stevenson was a black World War Two veteran who

38:36

moved to Portland in nineteen sixty. Here's how

38:38

he described his experience. Living

38:40

in Portland at that time was almost like living in Alabama.

38:43

Black folks had at rough the system, especially

38:45

the police had a whole lot of feat on black people's

38:47

necks. It was nothing for a cop to just shoot a

38:49

brother. When this did happen, there was no consequences.

38:52

The cops weren't afraid of being reprimanded in

38:54

any way. Well,

38:56

I hasn't changed, no, not

38:59

really. The Portland police

39:01

did have a disciplinary board, but officer reprimands

39:04

were complaint driven, and the Portland Police

39:06

didn't listen to complaints if they weren't made by white

39:08

people. The traditionally black neighborhood

39:10

of Albina received way more policing than

39:13

any other neighborhood in the city. And again that hasn't

39:15

really changed. Um, I'm

39:17

here right now, I can tell you it has not changed.

39:21

Yeah. Uh, this

39:25

is a bad time to go into an ad break. You're

39:28

going to choose now, this is what you're choosing.

39:32

You know, I'm not even gonna

39:37

capitalism. We've

39:45

returned. So yeah, Portland

39:48

police, Uh, pretty bad

39:50

on on race relations

39:53

and and such. Lee Anderson, a black Portlander,

39:55

commented in that we are

39:57

surrounded by a prejudice that you do not find

40:00

in our neighboring states. Forty five years later,

40:02

in nineteen sixty seven, a young black

40:04

man commented to a local newspaper, where

40:06

else but Albaiana do cops hang around streets

40:08

and parks all day like plantation overseers,

40:12

Which is pretty strong statement,

40:14

yep. In her dissertation

40:17

for PSU, Katherine Nelson sites sociologist

40:19

Robert Staples, who studied the Portland Police

40:22

Bureau and noted that throughout its history it had acted

40:24

as a quote colonial force

40:26

that acted as agents to enforce

40:28

the status quo and protect the property

40:30

of the colonizers who live outside black

40:33

communities. Hell yeah, yeah,

40:35

yep, not hell yeah. That it's good. It's just like

40:37

a well phrased state. Hell

40:41

yeah for the accuracy for

40:44

you know, colonialism yea yeah, not hell

40:46

yet a colonialism um. The

40:49

bureau quote the bureau focused

40:51

their f and this is from Kathleen's paper. The bureau

40:53

focus their efforts on protecting property largely

40:55

owned by whites within the black community and serving

40:58

the white community while providing few benefits

41:00

and little protection to Portland's black community. The

41:02

PPB rarely protected the rights of Portland's

41:05

black citizens, yet they routinely tolerated vigilante

41:07

um union protection, organized crime, and

41:09

police brutality within the bureau. Now,

41:12

this is another thing that the p p AS book tends

41:15

to leave out. It does note a few occasions

41:17

in which the police looked the other way while unions

41:19

they were outlied with committed crimes, but it does not

41:21

go into detail about how extensive this relationship

41:24

was. So we're going to go into detail about some of

41:26

that stuff. Um. Yeah,

41:29

it's it's it's it's bad

41:33

stuff. Yeah.

41:36

Um, But first we're going to go into detail

41:38

about something else. Um. In

41:41

ve a black man named Irvin Jones

41:43

was shot through the window of his house by a Portland police

41:46

officer who assumed the victim was someone he had

41:48

a warrant. For the fact that he suspected

41:50

someone might have a warrant out and then immediately opened

41:52

fire should tell you something about the bureau's use of force

41:54

procedures during this time. A

41:56

coroner's inquest was held and the jury decided

41:59

that officers involved were not guilty and no

42:01

one was charged. Um. Again, we're

42:03

going to talk about this happening a lot. Uh.

42:07

This is kind of at least the first case of this I

42:09

was able to find. Now, throughout the nineteen

42:11

forties, Portland's black community increased from two

42:14

thousand to more than twenty two people. Um.

42:16

And this again happened right around the

42:18

same time the nineteen forties that the PPB

42:21

created the us is first successful police

42:23

union. So as Portland's black population increased,

42:25

Portland's police force got more protections

42:28

and became basically immune to being

42:31

criticized by or at least two being punished

42:33

by the city government. UM. During

42:36

the nineteen fifties, UH, African Americans

42:38

in Portland achieved a number of civil rights victories,

42:40

including the Public Accommodation Act of nineteen

42:42

fifty three, which illegalized public discrimination.

42:45

UH. And at the same time, the PPB further

42:48

their reputation as you know, UM

42:50

police force that was willing to turn a blind idle organized

42:53

crime. By the nineteen sixties, the p p B had

42:55

implemented a tough on crime mentality

42:57

UH and this meant that they were mainly targeting Portland's

43:00

black neighborhoods as areas of quote

43:02

miscreant behavior. By adopting a

43:04

tough on crime stance, the PPB saw a rise

43:06

in police related shootings, and for those living in Portland's

43:08

black community, it seemed as if young men were getting

43:10

shot more often than you know, basically

43:13

any other group of people. UH and the statistics

43:15

kind of bear this out now. At around

43:18

the same time, enterprising Portland police officers

43:20

developed what was called the payoff system, which

43:22

is what it sounds like. Racketeers would run

43:24

out licensed bars, brothels, and casinos

43:27

that all bribed officers for the right to exist.

43:29

Since any complaints about in potential

43:31

disciplinary actions had to go through the p p A, no

43:34

officers were punished for taking bribes to allow

43:36

crime. The local government was fine with this

43:38

as long as all the illegal activity was kept

43:40

confined to North Portland's a k a. Albina.

43:43

So you see what's happening here. The Portland police

43:45

are allowing criminals and gangs

43:48

and whatnot, often organized by the Teamsters,

43:50

which is a union that supported them, and they supported the

43:52

Teamsters running criminal rackets as long

43:54

as those criminal enterprises were run in Albina

43:57

um. And at the same time

44:00

they were increasing their patrols of Albinia

44:02

and justifying it by saying, this is where all the crime

44:04

happens. Yeah,

44:07

it's um pretty

44:10

dark when you look at it like that. Don't

44:15

worry. They put salt and straws in Albina now, so

44:17

it's all gentrified, thank

44:21

god. So up until ninety

44:23

six, the PPB had only hired two black

44:25

officers in its entire history. This situation

44:28

had improved by the nineteen sixties, but not by

44:30

much. About one percent of the forces seven

44:33

twenty officers were black. When people started

44:35

to notice that this was maybe a problem. The police

44:37

personnel director asked Captain Bill Taylor

44:40

if he could be listed as Native American. Taylor

44:42

had a small fraction of Indigenous ancestry,

44:44

although he did not quite identify as Indigenous.

44:47

Still, the PPB made the change to his identity

44:50

in the paperwork and started bragging at Portland had

44:52

hired its first Native American police captain. Yes,

44:57

this is literally like textbook

45:00

attending is um like, it's like just like

45:03

just exactly what every Indigenous person

45:05

is talking about. What they're talking about pretendians is nause

45:09

It's great. So

45:11

the whole situation did eventually get bad enough

45:13

that the Federal Bureau of Investigation looked

45:15

into the p p B, and the publicized nature

45:18

of this whole case gave Portland a reputation

45:20

as a city of vice and sin. The

45:22

men of the p p A generally viewed their police

45:24

chief and appointee as the enemy of their ability

45:26

to milk as much money out of the job as possible.

45:29

Charles Pray was the chief from nineteen nineteen

45:31

fifty one, and he had a mandate to clamp

45:33

down on the outrageous corruption in the bureau. Unfortunately,

45:36

he had no influence over the p p A because

45:39

the chief is not a member of the union, and the

45:41

p p A was kind of the nexus of police

45:43

corruption. Pray complained that everybody

45:45

at the police station seemed to know where gambling

45:48

was conducted, but that no one would talk to him.

45:50

It turns out that even cops are too smart to talk to

45:52

cops. That's so interesting,

45:56

just that dynamic of the police chief

45:58

being like, what if we weren't, oh

46:00

bad, and then everyone's at the union holl being like, We're

46:02

gonna go gambling and we will tell you where it

46:04

is. Yeah, what

46:07

if we weren't actual criminals while arresting

46:09

people? And the

46:11

union was not cool with that. In nineteen

46:14

fifty four, Perennial Bastards Pods side

46:17

character the FBI carried out a massive

46:19

wire tapping operation on Portland's gambling

46:21

dens, brothels, and illegal bars, many of which

46:23

were operated by teamsters allied with the p p

46:25

A. Their investigation revealed that by nineteen

46:28

fifty four, both the mayor and the police chief,

46:30

Jim Purcel, were actively protecting criminal

46:32

enterprises. Purcell was indicted for incompetence

46:35

in criminal behavior. A grand jury was convened,

46:37

and from August nineteen fifty six to September

46:39

of nineteen fifty seven, more than a hundred and fifteen

46:41

indictments were issued against Portland police officers.

46:46

Uh, that's good stuff.

46:50

Wait for what for? You

46:52

know, operating illegal gambling dens and brothels.

46:55

There was a hundred and fifteen of those doing

46:57

Wow, Okay, at least a hundred and fifteen

46:59

officers that were implicated in that sort of behavior.

47:01

How many officers did they have last time I heard there were

47:04

seven? It's like a couple hundred. Like

47:06

it was such a high percentage wild

47:10

well in the way that the text

47:13

makes it seem. Basically everyone was

47:15

on the take to one extent or another. These were

47:17

just the ones that the FBI. Like, the FBI

47:20

was not going to indict the entire

47:22

police bureau. They had to pick the most

47:24

egregious examples. And this is the last

47:26

time the FBI will be the good guys in this story,

47:28

because it turns out they were fine.

47:31

We'll get to that. By the nineteen sixties,

47:33

Portland's black population had decreased to

47:35

just fifteen thousand. Remember, they hit their height

47:37

at about twenty two thousand people in the nineteen

47:40

forties. Right, So all of this, both

47:43

the police like directly

47:45

encouraging crime in the black neighborhood

47:48

and also the police massively increasing

47:50

patrols in Albina um led

47:53

to about a seven thousand person decrease

47:55

in the black population of Portland's, might

47:58

of whom lived in Albino, which was about two and a

48:00

half square miles at that point in time. In

48:03

nineteen sixty eight, Kenneth Gervais released

48:05

a study on the Portland Police Bureau. He interviewed

48:07

a number of Portland police officers during this time

48:10

and found that they believed political radicals,

48:12

professional criminals, negroes, and civil

48:15

rights groups all ought to be subjected

48:17

to intense police surveillance. Um

48:20

interesting the groups that he classifies

48:23

as basically the same. Um Yeah.

48:26

The Red Squad morphed into the Intelligence

48:28

Unit, which mostly spied on black activists

48:31

like the city's nascent Black Panthers chapter and

48:33

I'm gonna quote from Katherine Nelson here. The

48:35

intelligence units spied on black activists

48:37

and used the gathered information to spread rumors

48:39

that were meant to spark opposition from the community.

48:42

Police often used a relevant information to support

48:44

their charges, and many of the targets were previous

48:46

victims of police brutality. Police perpetuated

48:49

a false image of what black activists

48:51

and citizens were advocating for by painting them

48:53

as anti government, radicals or communists.

48:55

The greater community often aided in this surveillance

48:57

work and would report seemingly innocent behavior

49:00

is potentially malicious activist work. It's

49:04

all different now. In

49:12

the summer of nineteen sixty seven, a group of young

49:14

black Portlanders through rocks and bottles at nearby

49:16

police officers. This eventually turned into a riot

49:19

known as the Irving Park Riot, where fires were

49:21

set, windows broken, and a local stereo

49:23

store looted. Not one specific instance

49:25

initiated the Irving Park Riot. Instead, black

49:28

citizens felt frustrated with unsolicited

49:30

police presence in Albina. The Irving

49:32

Park Riot took place during the long hot

49:34

summer, which witnessed urban rebellions in African

49:36

American neighborhoods in Boston, Chicago, and

49:39

Portland at the same time that a white middle

49:41

class hippie movement enjoyed what they termed the Summer

49:43

of Love. Often, these riots had no instigating

49:45

factor, which left police and city officials puzzled.

49:48

In Milwaukee's black community, heavy police

49:50

surveillance of a school program caused the youth

49:52

to riot. Milwaukee Police Chief John Paulson

49:55

claimed that a hardcore group

49:58

of young hoodlums was to blame. Again,

50:00

very different, and we're talking about the Milwaukee that's

50:03

a suburb of Portland, Wisconsin.

50:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the

50:08

Bureau used the Irving Park. The

50:10

Portland Police Bereau, not the federal one, used the Irving

50:12

Park riot as an excuse to intensify surveillance

50:14

in Albina. This time they were aided by the

50:17

FBI, who hated illegal gambling and prostitution

50:19

but loved them some disrupting

50:21

a civil rights movement. Now, we

50:25

talked about comteal Pro FBI director

50:28

Hoover standing order to infiltrate, discredit, and

50:30

disrupt left wing civil rights and civil rights

50:32

organizations. The FBI sent co intal

50:34

Pro agents to Portland, and they encouraged the

50:36

PPB to engage in factory One

50:39

sabotage effort involved FBI agents

50:41

suddenly threatening local doctors to stop

50:43

them from volunteering their time at the Portland Black

50:45

Panthers Free Health critic It's

50:50

just that kind of ship where I'm like how

50:52

do you do that? And you're like, I am the good guy

50:54

in this scenario, preventing healthcare.

50:58

This is gonna be so popular are in

51:00

the future. Go home to your wife.

51:02

Would she do today? Threaten some doctors? Feeling

51:05

great they were going to help some poor children.

51:08

Not anymore, they're not not

51:12

after the Bureau got on the case. Just

51:16

imagining Joe Friday threatening a doctor,

51:19

it's so

51:22

um yeah. The FBI

51:25

co Inteal pro Unit also got the PPB to lie

51:27

about Black nationalists who were police informants,

51:29

like pretending people. They actually would set up

51:31

meetings with people who were police informants and

51:34

Black nationalist leaders so that they

51:36

could then discredit them within the community as

51:38

police informants. At one point,

51:40

they even put out fake information about anti

51:42

Semitism from Portland's Black nationalists

51:45

to lower their support from the Jewish community,

51:47

who was otherwise very supportive of their causes.

51:49

Um good stuff. While

51:52

the FBI was forced to disband their co intal

51:54

proteins after nineteen one, the PPB

51:56

continued to carry out similar programs in order

51:59

to harm black liberal Asian organizations. One

52:01

example of this would be the work of Detective Brown,

52:04

a leading member of the PPBS Red Squad.

52:06

Brown also happened to be the American Legion's

52:08

top Red hunter, and he successfully

52:10

badgered the school board into denying civil

52:12

rights groups the use of high school auditorians.

52:16

I mean again, like the phrases

52:18

civil rights. Anyone who's like this is

52:21

objectively bad rights? No,

52:24

absolutely not. It's fun you

52:26

say that, Tuck, because in the nineteen

52:28

sixties, another study into the Portland Police

52:30

Bureau noted that six percent of its officers

52:33

felt that the civil rights movement was moving much

52:35

too fast. Can't

52:39

have too many rights? What will we do? We

52:41

will have anything to police because people will

52:43

be allowed to do things. But who will we shoot

52:46

a police? Don't

52:49

worry, they figure it out. The

52:51

study concluded that quote the feeling that

52:53

the public does not respect the police officer

52:55

or holds him in contempt will most certainly affect

52:58

the officer's attitude and behave towards

53:00

the citizen. Officers, the report

53:02

noted, wanted to emphasize to black people

53:04

that complacent behavior was incredibly

53:07

important if they wanted to remain safe. Oh

53:09

my god, I

53:12

hate this. Uh, they

53:14

didn't have masks back then, Like, they don't have much

53:16

of a mask now, but they didn't have any at all

53:18

back then. Right, Oh my god.

53:22

I just think about and you're talking about cointelpro

53:24

and like spreading rumors about each other, and like it's

53:26

so nice that they don't have to do that now because we just have Twitter,

53:28

you know, like they're like, oh, we can just chill, like

53:30

they will just just do it to each other. Yeah,

53:34

they're very very fun people

53:37

in general. Yeah.

53:40

So throughout the nineteen sixties,

53:42

the pp A grew in influence, not just in Portland

53:45

but nationwide. They helped found a National

53:47

Police Union, which provided some unity to all

53:49

the different unions that had been spawned by the success

53:51

of the p p A. In nineteen sixty nine,

53:54

the p p A had voted, along with thirty other delegates,

53:56

that police strikes would remain banned under

53:58

the National Union Charter. When Jualette,

54:00

Illinois officers had gone on strike in nineteen

54:03

sixty seven, aft ME had provoked their charter

54:05

and the p PA had condemned them. But in

54:07

late nineteen sixty nine, contract negotiations

54:10

between the p PA and the City of Portland broke down.

54:12

In nineteen sixty eight, the Portland City Council

54:14

finally declared the city a public employer and bargaining

54:17

agent and had voted to allow collective

54:19

bargaining for city employees. The p p

54:21

A UH was officially declared a chartered

54:23

Police Union UM, and again this was

54:26

like its first official recognition from the

54:28

city. Now. The president at the time was

54:30

a guy named David Callison UM, and

54:32

he wound up becoming the first p p A president

54:34

to sign a Portland Police contract.

54:37

The p PA sat down to negotiate in the spring

54:39

of nineteen sixty eight. The city wanted to establish

54:42

a set of ground rules that all seven of the unions

54:44

recognized by the city would have to abide by.

54:46

The p p A complained about this because they didn't

54:49

think that the rules that bound everyone else should

54:51

apply to them. Now. They did have some justification

54:54

for this UH, mainly the fact that they had

54:56

a no strike clause and other unions were allowed

54:58

to strike, So if they're not allowed a strike, why

55:00

should they have to abide by the same conditions

55:02

as every other union UM Now.

55:05

In the first round of negotiations, the other six

55:07

employee groups, including the firefighters union,

55:09

agreed to new contracts and signed with the city.

55:12

The Portland Police did not, though this was considered

55:14

odd since traditionally Portland's firefighters

55:17

and its police officers had drawn the same base

55:19

pay. Since the firefighters union had

55:21

backed the police union and establishing it in the

55:23

first place, there was a sense that both groups

55:25

ought to stand together, but the Portland

55:28

police felt they deserved more money than firefighters,

55:30

so they left the firefighters behind and demanded

55:32

more money. The city refused this, and negotiations

55:35

ground on for months and well into nineteen

55:37

sixty nine. I'm gonna quote again from pickets,

55:40

pistols and politics. Callison

55:43

decided to try to break the impass in a more

55:45

subtle fashion. He started waging psychological

55:48

warfare, and this way Callison managed to scare

55:50

away at least one member of the city's negotiating

55:52

team. Callison ran the man's name

55:54

through police uh like like databases

55:57

and stuff and found his criminal record. He called

55:59

a friend who worked at the Oregonian and asked him to

56:01

check the newspaper's library, and the friends

56:04

sent along a few clippings of articles about the man

56:06

in question, news of promotion, social activities,

56:08

and other innocent doings. The guy was apparently

56:10

purest snow, but Callison went ahead and put the information

56:13

in a file folder. He neatly printed the

56:15

man's name on the tab. At the beginning of the

56:17

next negotiating session, he put the file in

56:19

a prominent place as he spread out his papers. The

56:21

folder caught the man's eyes sometime during the session.

56:23

He couldnot stop glancing nervously, they added, as

56:26

it sat conspicuously within Callison's reach.

56:28

Finally, he could not stand it any longer. What

56:31

is this, he demanded, Oh, Callison said,

56:33

smiling, This is my file on you. Callison

56:35

kept smiling at him, while thinking craftily

56:37

to himself that surely one of the joys of being a police

56:40

officer was that he could make people feel guilty even

56:42

when they were not. The man excused himself

56:44

and never returned to the negotiations. The

56:48

joys of policing he

56:50

could make innocent people feel guilty. That's

56:53

why I go to work every day personally, is

56:55

to make innocent people feel bad. I

56:58

love that that story and all some first illegally

57:01

using the police record system to try to dig

57:03

up dirt on somebody, and then when he couldn't find dirt

57:05

on the person, he just lies and pretends

57:07

that he hasn't in order it does seem like sort

57:10

of a useful tactic just for

57:12

us all to know, like, oh, if you can't do

57:14

the work, you just make a file and you label

57:16

it in the work and you put it on the

57:18

table. So I'll try

57:21

it. We could talk about how Alex Jones

57:23

does his show. It is basically the safe strip.

57:28

So despite the psychological warfare,

57:30

the city wouldn't budge. It became clear to the union

57:32

that a strike was their only option. The p PA charter

57:35

expressly banned strikes. They'd condemned the other

57:37

departments for considering strikes like so

57:39

basically previous to this, the p p A had told

57:41

other departments that you have to have no strike clauses

57:44

in your union contracts uh. And they

57:46

helped to form a national police union, and they

57:48

forbade members of that union from striking. But

57:51

now they needed to strike in order

57:53

to get more money, so they strong armed

57:55

asked ME into releasing the p PA from its

57:57

no strike clause, which was removed first from

57:59

their contract and then from the International

58:01

Brotherhood of Police Officers constitutions. Subsequently,

58:04

the p p A has always been the bellweather of US

58:06

police unions, and when they succeeded the rest of

58:08

the nation's cops copied them. Uh so

58:11

when they decided striking was cool, suddenly police

58:13

unions across the country were able to strike again

58:16

and strike the Portland police did, marching around

58:18

city Hall with signs that said crime

58:20

pays, police work doesn't, No pay,

58:23

No pigs and other rib ticklers. Yeah,

58:25

they called themselves pigs there.

58:30

Yeah, yeah, it's yeah,

58:34

it's great. Through their crooked arrangements to look

58:36

the other way at criminal enterprises run by teamsters

58:38

and longshoremen. Over the years, they were able to get both

58:40

unions to abide by the picket lines and refused

58:43

to cross them. The police then started picketing

58:45

the docks, which effectively locked down all

58:48

trade within the city of Portland. This

58:50

cratered the local economy and the city

58:53

government was forced to come to the table and give the

58:55

p p A the rays they thought it's that

58:57

they deserved. Not only did the Portland Police

59:00

come the highest paid civil servants in the city, they

59:02

gained retroactive pay hikes for the previous

59:04

seventeen months that they'd worked without a contract.

59:06

The whole process had taken nearly two years

59:08

of negotiation, but as the p PA's

59:10

own Biography states the result was a contract

59:13

that would serve as the model for police groups around

59:15

the country. I

59:18

don't have any like cute comments. I'm just like so mad.

59:21

It's a period, right, Like they're

59:24

even fucking over other cops because for years

59:27

they would like throw other cops under the bus

59:29

when they tried to strike. But as soon as Portland's cops want

59:31

more money, like striking is good now, it's

59:33

amazing. It's so craven.

59:36

And they held the city hostage.

59:38

They threatened to destroy the city's economy, which

59:41

is like seems sort of like what criminals

59:44

would do, you know, just like blackmail a whole

59:46

city for money. We're

59:49

good. It does seem illegal, but

59:52

I'm not a law nowhere guy, not

59:55

a law doer or nowhere. You have

59:57

basic common sense. Yeah,

1:00:00

it seems I don't know, super unethical

1:00:02

what the Portland police did, but they're

1:00:05

the police. Who's who's

1:00:07

gonna arrest them. They're

1:00:09

on strike, you know, Like, yeah, the

1:00:12

FBI is not going to funk with them. Now. They needed to

1:00:14

help screw with the black panthers, right, gotta

1:00:18

like interrupt those free breakfast programs like

1:00:20

it can have doctors helping people know,

1:00:23

Look, we'd love to stop the police from holding the

1:00:25

city hostage, but we've got a lot of doctors to threaten.

1:00:31

Uh talk. That is the end

1:00:33

of part one. Do you have any plug doubles that you'd

1:00:35

like to plug? Oh? Gosh, yeah.

1:00:38

So I make a podcast called Gender Reveals

1:00:40

about trans people, and while

1:00:43

we're making the show, we also raise money

1:00:45

to support trans people, specifically

1:00:48

trans people of color. And we're recording this on

1:00:50

Trans Day of Remembrance, So even though

1:00:52

you're not listening to it, then you can retroactively

1:00:55

commemorate Trans Day of Remembrance by donating

1:00:57

to the Gender Reveal Patreon at patreo

1:01:00

dot com slash gender. And then we take that money

1:01:02

and give it to black and indigenous

1:01:04

trans people and trans people of color. So, you

1:01:07

know, almost as fun as funding cops for like

1:01:09

hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, you can

1:01:12

give trans people like ten dollars, which

1:01:15

yeah, might might probably will not

1:01:17

be used to tear gas you. Um, I

1:01:20

feel confident in making that statement. What

1:01:22

was that? What was that link? Again? That is patreon

1:01:25

dot com slash gender. I

1:01:27

got that handle. Apparently no one's ever done gender

1:01:29

before, so Patreon dot com slash

1:01:31

gender. That's great, Patreon

1:01:34

dot com slash gender, give

1:01:36

give some bucks if you've got some bucks.

1:01:39

And that is I think the note that we're

1:01:41

going to end episode one on when we come back,

1:01:44

we'll talk had

1:01:46

some real, some real bleak ship to be

1:01:48

honest. Great. I cannot wait to try

1:01:50

to make that fun. Yeah. I

1:01:53

actually completely forgot to plug the

1:01:55

new podcast about Portland's and the Portland

1:01:58

Police that this two part of episode

1:02:00

was made in part to promote because

1:02:02

I'm a hacking of fraud. So check out

1:02:05

Uprising a Guide from Portland

1:02:07

on all of the podcast places, all

1:02:09

the places you know where the pods and they're

1:02:11

casted, all the all the different spots.

1:02:13

There's two episodes. It's called Uprising

1:02:15

a Guide from Portland. There's a colon after

1:02:18

the word uprising. Maybe not our best

1:02:20

call title wise anyway. Uh

1:02:23

yea