Item 2A: Approval of Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Regarding racial profiling and racism in Eugene, Ms. Jackson stated that Eugene was "the whitest town" she had ever been in and the people needed to take a hard look inward. She did not think anyone could point an accusatory finger at the police without looking in the mirror first. Susan Miller, homeless, said she was 55-years-old and had raised three children. She related that she had been harassed for being homeless. She recounted several incidents in which she had felt harassed. She asserted that she contributed to her community and that her daughter volunteered. She said Eugene citizens were all people and needed love and respect. She averred that the police should not step outside "the box of the law." She stressed that she was not against the law or the police, she was against hate. Charles Biggs, 540 Antelope Way, thanked the City for investigating the EPD. He said he had reviewed the report up to page 55 and had made four pages of notes. He thought the report was "sugar-coated," as it called the problems that had prompted the investigation "incidents" and "mishaps." He asserted that the report missed the point. He asked what kind of community would allow something so horrendous to go unaddressed for so long. He noted that Terry Orsby had filed a sexual harassment suit in 1996. He recognized that an ethics program was part of the EPD training, but thought there was a culture within the Police Department that fostered "protectionist" behaviors. Patricia Hadley, 2611 Edison Street, said there was no option to "wait and see" at this point. She stated that the role of the police and the role of good citizens had become adversarial. She agreed with the Police Union that an external review board was in order. She thought the community should define what it considered dangerous to public safety and there was no "one size fits all." Ms. Hadley commented that the police issued tickets to homeless people for sitting on the grass and asked if this made citizens feel safer. She averred that a homeless person who returned to a patch of grass that he or she had been evicted from would receive a second ticket and ultimately be subject to arrest. She recounted that she had recently met a homeless man in a wheelchair who had 30 tickets, some for sitting in the wrong place and some for sitting in the wrong place again. She asked how it served our society for this man to be ticketed and ultimately incarcerated. Ms. Hadley believed racial profiling in Eugene was real. Referring to the recently publicized incident in which Cortez Johnson was stopped, she asserted that if he felt racial bias then there was racial bias. She noted that she had been accused in the past of seeing gender bias where there was none, but it felt like gender bias and ultimately her feelings proved to be true. Ms. Hadley thought the third recommendation should be the top priority of the council, that of determining what the community's expectations of the police department and development of policies that matched those expectations and fully implementing community policing. She remarked that there were already active neighborhood groups. She pointed out that nearly every day she witnessed people being ticketed for speeding on Roosevelt Boulevard while two drug houses in her immediate neighborhood went unaddressed. She felt no one cared about that. In closing, Ms. Hadley said she wished to know the name of her "beat cop." She opined that if New York City could do it, Eugene could do it, too. Majeska Seese-Green, PO Box 1214, speaking on behalf of the Whiteaker Community Council, conveyed the community council's recommendation to form an independent external police review process. She was pleased to see that it was the fourth recommendation in the report. She expressed the MINUTES--Eugene City Council April 25, 2005 Page 3 Regular Session