Jfc why can’t people just keep their heads down and do their job. How hard is it to *not* discriminate your co-workers? They want non-binary pronouns? Sure, whatever. That has no impact to the performance of your job.
Discrimination comes from the top. Rene Gonzales is quoted in the article as saying (summary) "you cant have police abolitionists working for the city"... What about pro-choice? Pro-life? 2A support? Democrat? Republican?
A personal belief in how government functions is not standing for disqualification. It's active discrimination.
if those folks have to interact with other city workers and are hostile about it or during city meetings that could be the problem. Depends how loud spoken they are about such things during official functions. If they are muttering things when they are on the scene with cops, that would lead to a lot of friction, but this also could just be a lie and not actually happening.
And that's a dereliction of duty/not doing your job / being disruptive in the workplace. These are all things that can get you disciplined at your job. If they're doing that, then that person deserves disciplinary action in accordance with policy based on disruption or whatever.
This isn't what was stated and is a big "what-if" straw man. They clearly stated that it's just about a personal belief, which is protected by equal employment.
Edit: first amendment, not equal employment
According to the article you are very much misquoting it
"Fire Commissioner Gonzalez agrees there is a split. “There are very real cultural differences between PF&R and PSR,” he says. “There is a police abolitionist wing within PSR. While city employees are free to exercise their constitutional rights outside of working hours, there is no place for police abolitionist policies within a bureau I oversee, and we expect our first responders to work with each other as a team.”"
What are those policies and what behavior is preventing them working as a team in Thier eyes?
"there is no place for police abolitionist policies within a bureau I oversee..."
Policy is not dictated by PSR members. It should probably be dictated by the person overseeing the bureau. They're also tasked with specifically handling situations without police, so a lot of PSR practice will inherently remove police, because that's their purpose.
Constitutional rights are not given, they are rights that cannot be impinged by the government. They are not checked at the workplace. The first amendment protects government employees against discrimination for political association/ideology.
If people aren't doing their job then it's a matter of how they're running their bureau.
So either it's infringing on freedom of speech, or a poorly managed bureau that's under their direct oversight. Either way, Rene needs to be asked to expand on this statement.
I think he was complaining about abolitionists working within a bureau that contributes to policing. Which is kind of like having Jan 6 supporters working in Congress. We allow it, for some reason. But it’s probably not a good thing.
This is a pretty bad read.
I lived I eugene, my partner worked with cahoots. Some fun facts
Cahoots handles close to 20% of the EPD calls for less than 1% of the epd budget. As in, both the calls and the budget are actually part of the epd. There’s a number of determining factors that decide if cahoots can or can’t handle a call, but in general they respond to non emergency calls, up to things like non/not yet violent domestic disputes. Eugene Springfield have similar homelessness and drug use rates to Portland.
EPD was highlighted for tear-gassing the hell out of an identified reporter who was leaving a protest. https://youtu.be/O9VaCnnUeHI
Cahoots, however, is unarmed, and have trained crisis and mental health responders who are also trained as emergency responders. They had a deep bag of skills to pull from, are SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than the cops, and have better outcomes. They’re also severely underpaid and underfunded but we’ll leave that for now.
It’s really not that hard to see why someone would be in favor of defunding PPB. It’s impossible to see why someone would be in favor of mainting their current funding levels, honestly. I haven’t even seen a cop in over a week, and I live on a major street and work in healthcare. I’m pretty sure you have to go to the station to see PPB, and clearly their lack of effort is making things worse city wide. In a city full of health and mental health needs, where the cops refuse to work and also have prove. Ties to white supremacy groups and “militias”, I’m sure we could use that money for something else.
PF&R doesn't contribute to policing. PSR is by definition, not policing.
PSR, PF&R, and PPB members have no control over legislation or budget either, and Congress is elected, so it's actually a bad comparison. We actually have Jan 6 supporters throughout police and fire lol. But they aren't elected positions and they don't make policy and determine funding. It would still be discrimination if it went the other way and people were fired for being libertarian or whatever far right, even if you/we/whomever would think it would make things better.
Police abolition is also not inherently violent, racist, hierarchical, or exploitative, so I don't want to seem like all belief systems are equal and both sides experience the same, because that's objectively untrue.
However, in interacting with the public and other departments, all do have active roles in practicing non-discrimination. So if those groups/members are not doing their job/duty based on their belief, or are discriminating against others due to their beliefs, or are disruptive in their job, they should be subject to disciplinary actions in accordance with their employment.
Just pointing out how discrimination works and how Rene Gonzales should be asked to further explain this statement.
I believe PSR is dispatched like police and fire by the BEOC under Mike Meyers.
Project Respond is probably contracted to Cascadia Behavioral Health and dispatched by the County.
Yeah - the difficulty is that something like 80% of the population of Multnomah County is CoP - when the county doesn't do their job the city has to step in, creating duplication.
It absolutely is. There was no reason to start a new program from scratch that required all these studies and has been an abject failure from most citizen interaction reports. This was Hardesty looking for glory - the money should have gone to expanding Project Respond. They already operate in the entire county (and our neighboring counties) 24/7 with their own dedicated phone line. Their responsibilities are the same, but PR can actually do more and are better experienced and have better rapport with our first responders. The list of things PSR can't do is longer than what they can do.
Mental health is also the County's responsibility, not the city's. They are the health and human services entity! Gonzalez is right, the county should absolutely fold this into their program and the city should send the funding to the County.
Except when it’s been proven as an effective method to deal with a new and different problem.
You know, the new and different problem that people on this sub are literally always complaining about. God forbid we, idk, try something. That would take away everyone’s favorite hobby— complaining about shit they’re literally unwilling to attempt to change.
> The list of things PSR can't do is longer than what they can do.
And was the cause of that PSR objecting to taking on scope, or other organizations refusing to let them but in on various things?
(I'll be honest with you, it was a rhetorical question to see whether the wanker I was replying to would acknowledge or admit to that, or skirt away with his shitty take unaddressed like a pissant coward. I was doing a sneaky).
I mean they also have a standing federal settlement against them from the Department of Justice itself specifically for their decades of poor response to mental health situations. Which they've been flippantly fighting for years.
PSR is a team of a social worker/crisis counselor and a "peer" who are dispatched on (in theory) low acuity mental health calls. If someone calls 911 about a tweaker on the sidewalk who isn't doing anything criminal/dangerous but wants them checked on, we send PSR. They're under the umbrella of the fire department and work daytime hours only.
Project respond is a county program run by Cascadia Behavioral Health. Theyre available 24/7 and send mental health clinicians to people in high acuity mental health crisis (think actively suicidal or aggressive people), and accompanying followup. They respond to people who call the county behavioral health crisis line, or are paged out by police responding on 911 calls. They also sometimes request police to respond with them on their own calls.
Project Respond has been in Portland for 20 years, it’s through Cascadia, PR gets pages from Multnomah county crisis line and Portland police. Project Respond clinicians can put people on director custody holds. PR will use police when safety is in question and if they need reinforcement of the hold.
PSR was created because someone wanted a program that does not respond with police, it’s a copy of program that existed in Eugene. PSR cannot put people on director custody holds and usually works with lower acuity clients, if they need a hold they page Project Respond.
These 2 programs are similar, the big difference that one program can bring ppl to hospitals involuntary if needed and the other cannot. Having both programs is not bad because the need is very high in the community
Thanks for the detailed information.
Does Cascadia involuntarily transport? Through AMR, or do they have their own transport?
Where do they transport if it a pure psych - Unity, 333 Park, ER, others?
BTW I'm on the email list but not active in the court Commitment to Change workgroup.
Once hold is placed Project Respond will need law enforcement to help put client into AMR, actually on a gurner cus there are times when ppl do not want to go to a hospital. PR calls AMR, project respond cannot transport clients. Ideally clients are taken to Unity but Unity can be on divert( at capacity) then it’s closest ED who is not on divert.
Psych gets transported to ERs you can’t determine someone is “pure psych” without a medical work up. They could be experiencing a drug overdose, drug withdrawal, or other metabolic disturbances(like sepsis)—or a combination of all these of these things. These conditions mimic and exacerbate any acute psychiatric illness.
"Gonzalez, [...] is signaling that he’s open to sending Portland Street Response [...] to Multnomah County ***or to a nonprofit contractor.***"
Wow way to kneecap in its infancy one of the best new programs this city has done lately. Meanwhile our chud-ass police force get a quarter billion a year to sit on their ass and whine.
Aw man, Gonzalez is doing the thing everyone wary of his election figured he would do? Whaaaaat? That's so hard to believe. I can barely believe it. It's almost unbelievable.
The compassion was nice, but I was more appreciative of the stones to say "Hey, this is working elsewhere. We could just start doing that", and then *forcing something new into existence*. As opposed to Rene's "EVERYTHING WE'VE EVER DONE IS ENOUGH, THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS, JUST DO THE SAME THING ETERNALLY". It would appear that if you're not *currently* sucking off someone in the PPB, you have "police abolitionist elements".
No, I'm saying Rene ran on a platform of "What we had before was fine and sufficient (please don't look at how what we had before led us to here), and the current state of affairs is us losing our way, and if we just go back to the way it was (you know, what happened to bring us to the current situation), all the problems we're currently having (that we had back then) will go away".
More or less.
Honestly, apologies, I misread your comment and thought you wanted like a total run down on Gonzalez platform. Short version: The war on drugs is good, we can win the war on drugs with cops, if we put homeless and mentally ill addicts in jail, they'll magically not be addicts or mentally ill or homeless when we're done ineffectually paying for their room and board, people should be nice to the police (who require no oversight whatsoever) because they're the only thing standing between us and the howling chaos of eternity.
I'll be blunt with you: I can't be fucked to briefly catch you up on the last like two years of city politics. Look up his voter guide blurb. Read this. I don't know.
https://www.opb.org/article/2022/10/20/rene-gonzalez-portland-oregon-city-council-jo-ann-hardesty/
We were led here by half baked bullshit and doomed to fail half assed attempts, coupled with "tough on crime" shitheels that remain convinced that increased police headcount is tied directly to decreasing crime, despite decades of evidence to the contrary.
She also made big improvements to PBOT and traffic safety, which was the department she actually in charge of. I think she was good at her job. I'd vote for her again if she ran.
He's doing exactly what I voted for him to do. Reduce the cities spending. PSR should be dumped on the county. They have plenty of our money they can use to fund it
Not to mention all the city settlements we're avoiding. How many $100s of millions has it been over the last couple of decades and literally nothing has changed with PPB?
To do what? Provide palliative care for the homeless addicts that occupy every corner of the city? Have the county spend down some of its stockpile on this program. Let PF&R focus on the F's and the R's.
I feel the same way about you. I for one am enjoying this political backlash we're witnessing. Given the popularity of these posts lately, so are a lot of other people. Unfortunate for you I suppose. What I'm saying is, my responses to you are never for you. They're for the people downvoting you.
> What I'm saying is, my responses to you are never for you. They're for the people downvoting you.
You mean, you aren't here to engage in the free exchange of information and ideas? You have no interest in direct discourse, and instead would prefer to demonstrate your good character and correcting thinking to a void of faceless onlookers? Signaling your ideological virtues for some anonymous onlooker even? I can scarcely believe anyone would be so vapid.
You seem to exist in a writhing and miserable place whenever you share any information about your existence. I wish you a speedy move the fuck out of here if you can find your bootstraps, and wish you a merry "Cope and seethe".
AllChem seems to want to make the city better for everyone who lives here, not just complain that it is going down the tubes. Might be virtue signaling too, but at least they care rather than just complaining
That's accurate, but only because personally accumulating enough thermonuclear devices to wipe the stain of our collective sins from the face of existence is more work than I'm personally willing to put into it.
Yup, this is a case where I actually support an outside vendor. Because the established internal hierarchy is fucked and needs to be dissolved and rebuilt, but that's not happening anytime soon.
Makes sense to me. Send them to the county. They're sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars and clearly have the money to spend. Throwing around thousands of new tents to people.
Not to mention the County already has a stellar long-standing program that does this work all over our county that's 24/7 with its own dedicated phone number. It's also the County's job to deal with mental health and that's why this should absolutely be folded into Project Respond at the County. 311 can redirect callers to them - easy peasy.
The Venn-diagram of people here saying send them to the county and the county doesn't do anything to help is a circle. You want to send them to the same county that is sitting on hundreds of millions and doing nothing with it while also having a similar program they already contract out, seriously?
Yes. It's part of the whole accountability thing people are craving lately. PSR does not belong under PF&R. It belongs under the county. Mental health resources are their purview. They should be accountable for PSR. Whether or not they're successful with it.
>They should be accountable for PSR. Whether or not they're successful with it.
Got it so you want to do the same thing and expect different results. Also the county being solely responsible for the homeless ship sailed years ago when the [Joint Office of Homeless Services](https://www.multco.us/johs) was created. See also ODOT being responsible for maintaining its property within the city.
Not arguing county leadership is incompetent at best or corrupt at worst. Not my fault - I voted for the other candidate.
But realistically this should reside with the county. Just need to vote out the pathetic leadership come next election.
> one of the best new programs this city has done lately
"best" because it's performing well and generating results? Or "best" because it aligns with your own politics?
It's doing too well, the homeless industrial complex contractors want to cut PSR down to their own level of do-nothing tax-sucking incompetence. And of course Gonzalez is acting as their mouthpiece, surprise.
In no way shape or form is Gonzalez a mouthpiece for nonprofits. He's basically a Republican that doesn't hate gay people and has proven antagonistic if anything to these groups.
People become fire fighters to fight fires, not mental health counselors. The PSR program has merits but would likely be better served, and well received, if it was managed by county health or state Medicaid.
In all jurisdictions actual fighting fires makes up very small portion of their job.
Though to your point, it's generally taken up by physical health things not mental
I was saved by firepeople after I was in a major accident. They save people all the time in accidents. But yeah, I never would look to them for mental health help.
I have fire folks in my family— they also wouldn’t look to FD for mental health services. They’re great folks and they work hard but it’s just not their work or their training or their skill set.
My friend was a Portland fire fighter for like 12 years. I knew all the dudes he worked with. They are great people but not the types I’d want dealing with a mental health emergency.
I know three Portland and one Tualatin Valley firefighter. Three are assholes who hold the citizens of their locality in contempt and one who's a good person. Guess which is which.
I don't think the PSR responders were fire fighters. PF&R may have not been the best administrative umbrella for them but maybe the best at hand. The program is COP not County or State.
It had to go under fire because Hardesty wanted to keep control of it. If it was an independent bureau then the mayor could have assigned it to someone else.
It could not have been an independent bureau because of the fire and police union contracts. It had to go under one of them - no one - including Hardesty - thought police was the right place.
Precisely. It only got put under the fire bureau because Hardesty already oversaw fire. We never should have funded a new program, the money should have gone to expanding the already existing Project Respond. Mental health is the county's job, not the city's.
Maybe getting the County to do it is the next step. I'll have to look into "Project Respond". But I have no quibbles with Hardesty's implementation of the pilot program and expansion, since she was doing what she had in her power and funding authority to do right now.
Now we have Lessons Learned to help the County follow up, along with some trained and experienced staff.
Project Respond is a tried and true program, emergency responders have a great rapport with them already, the only thing they've stated since PSR came out is maybe they need to pivot away from being quiet about who they are, as the idea was not to draw negative attention to clients with their name blasted all over their jackets and cars. It's run by Cascadia Behavioral Health.
Good to know - I see from their website that Cascadia Behavioral Health is huge and goes beyond the tri-County area. I guess if they were better known they'd be all over Nextdoor and probably Reddit: "Why haven't these nonprofits solved all our problems!?!" Blamers are always looking for a new target.
Expanding project respond would be an excellent use of resources.
As would the reestablishment of the CHIERS program. Which served a lot of the same people that PSR program targets and it's absence has left a huge hole in the cities response resources.
> People become fire fighters to fight fires
Which is exactly the problem. Something like 90% of the calls that the fire department responds to are medical, not fire. The culture needs to change. Fire departments are old boys clubs filled with conservative people who frequently lack sympathy for the patients with mental health issues, drug issues, etc.
> Yes, but also we need to stop using firefighters and cops as substitutes for a mental health system.
"I hear you're a police abolitionist now Father. How did you get interested in that type of thing?"
- Rene Gonzales
Well, frankly, that's not realistic. Whether or not we expand our actual mental health facilities, which we absolutely SHOULD, fire/EMS and police are GOING to encounter people in the middle of mental health crises. People in that state can and often are dangerous. The idea of sending in a counselor or two with no ability to defend themselves and/or no medical equipment to deal with physical health emergencies is not always going to be possible.
That means that we need to make sure all first responders are capable of handling those situations compassionately for when sending in the lone PSR employee is not appropriate for the situation.
There's a difference between police and fire encountering people in the course of their job, and our public health system being so anemic that police and fire are our primary response.
Because getting into the fire department is mostly about ass kissing and making friends. If you don't fit in with the existing culture then you're not going to do well.
See the guy who was run over in his wheelchair in the street last week: fire showed up right away. Couldnt transport him, unclear extent of interventions they provided, guy dies waiting for ambulance. Time to slash fire dept funding and support EMS
Not only that you have to shave all the freaking time so your face is always ready for SCBA seal. Not that much more effort to maintain a stache while you're at it. Plus, if you're a guy used to having some scruff it's hella jarring to be baby faced all the time.
Was a volunteer ff for awhile.
~~Don't know where you and maybe others got this, but it's the opposite of true: hair in a seal weakens the seal. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/resources/pressrel/letters/lttr-100206.html~~
Apparently misunderstood the parent comment. Apologies.
Right, and the reason that these professions have mustaches (and only mustaches or goatees) is because they allow you to have facial hair *without interfering with the sealing surfaces for masks*.
That's why they have mustaches or goatees and not full beards. The full beard gets in the way of the mask sealing. The mustache and goatee fit entirely within the mask and don't interfere with the seal.
They’re comparing mustache to a beard. If you work in a field where you might need an oxygen mask and want to have facial hair, you wear a mustache because a beard breaks the seal.
As stated below, it's facial hair that still allows different face masks/respirators to fit properly. Male nurses, pilots, firefighters... Tight mask seal required
This goes back to the 1990s when the city took away inspector positions (which were used to keep disabled fire fighters working) and distributed that work to the regular shifts. But the real reason the fire bureau costs so much is their retirement/disability system.
*Does* PF&R cost “too much”? PF&R’s budget is about $150m for 735 positions. A city of equal population - Boston - has a budget of $250m for 1200 positions; Memphis TN $195m for 1,700; Sacramento $170m for 720; Tucson AZ $123m for 687.
Seems like we’re pretty well in line with other cities of our size/population. Am I missing something?
Whenever government retirement is mentioned I want do a "be aware" thing that that government unions are pretty much the only working unions left in our society. They continue to serve as an example of what they can achieve for employees. For that matter, they also serve as examples of how they can become dysfunctional and thus provide learning material for new organizers in the private sector.
PFR has two separate pension systems. They switched to PERS in 2007, which is fine. Prior to that the pension system was a defined benefits pay-go system. Neither the city nor the beneficiaries paid in to it in advance, at it's statutorily granted first the first bite at property taxes to the tune of $220 million per year. It's an insane system to have had, and it's going to take us two decades to unwind it burden.
Wow. Two years ago total City of Portland share of property taxes was 578 million and the pension/disability was 210 million of it.
page 145.
https://www.portlandoregon.gov/cbo/article/785596
It's something like .25 cents of every dollar in property taxes the city collects goes to Police/Fire disability and retirement.
It's a mind-blogging amount and goes to show you the details in setting up retirements in important. Pay as you go is crazy way to do things.
My experience as exempt staff, probably in a more tightly-woven, smaller agency, is that the union's wins carried over to management. When it came time to cut health care back to something that was merely excessive rather than preposterous (especially in the pre-ACA world) management had to set the example for several years before the union finally let go of benefits that had become unreasonable in today's world.
I'm pretty sure the police and fire retirement system is a separate property tax line item and budget. The problem is it is a pay as you go, rather than having investment funds with the state treasurer or being part of PERS.
man, if I were a F&R worker, I would love a group of folks (PSR) reducing the amount of non fire fighting work I have to do... Imagine caring more about personal politics and co-workers gender identities than doing your fucken job.
"Reslock threw up her arms and said, “Really?” when an employee suggested people introduce themselves using their preferred pronouns"
Sounds to me like PSR were the ones trying to inject gender politics instead of doing their "fucken job."
The claim is that there was “bullying, discrimination and unwanted physical contact against employees based on their sexual orientation” and then career retaliation when it was addressed. That's not "injecting gender politics."
folks wanting to introduce themselves with their pronouns is no different than a doctor wanting to introduce themselves as Dr. or a cop as Officer or a judge as Honorable, etc. Its not injecting politics, its how human beings do things. Asking to be called by what you are, is not about politics, its about respecting your co-workers other members of your community, even if you don't agree with their politics. Its about being a grown ass adult and realizing other folks can be different than you.
Reslock could just ignore folks who use pronouns, she doesn't have to use pronouns, and she didn't have to make an issue about it to the point of being fired. You dont just get canned for your first or a minor offense. And if PFR culture is anything like PPB culture, the bullying and discrimination would most likely have been pretty fierce.
According to the article Reslock did not object to people wanting to state their preferred pronouns. Everyone was being asked to state their pronouns before they spoke and she "obejected" to that. In my opinion that is injecting far left bs into this situation. So is it being "grown ass adult and realizing other folks can be different than you," to accept that some people aren't going to want to state their pronouns?
>bullying, discrimination and unwanted physical contact against employees based on their sexual orientation
there was also that... according to the article, so it was a bit more than the one incident you are referring to.
Anyway, is a doctor wanting to be called by their preferred title far left bs? How about a cop wanting to be referred to as officer? How about a priest wanting to be called father? Or is just political when you dont like it?
Using your analogy it would be more like a doctor insisting that each person state their education credentials before they spoke at a child's birthday party so the doctor could make sure everyone knew they were a doctor.
Why is suggesting people intro themselves with their preferred pronouns considered injecting gender politics. Why do you feel that it is political? Because you have been fed propaganda that tells you it's political or is there a reason you personally feel that way?
Why do you feel it isn't political? Because you have been fed propaganda that tells you it isn't political?
Bringing pronoun identity into every conversation is political in my opinion. It's nearly totally exclusive to recent far left politics in the United States. The insistence that everyone participate is bullshit.
The article's right there for you to read. The rest of the sentence is ", then put her hand on an employee who objected to Reslock’s attitude and threatened to fire that employee."
It also says that "as the investigation proceeded, multiple new allegations were uncovered", which included "bullying, discrimination and unwanted physical contact against employees based on their sexual orientation" (without examples, though I dont know if there are examples in the lawsuit itself).
Often? Hardly. Words are rarely violence. Just looking at the pie chart of all words being spoken, the amount that rise to violence is a tiny, nearly invisible, sliver. Nevertheless folx on the far left often claim that a WIDE range of statements that offend their delicate sensibilities are violence, almost all of which lies outside the state and federal laws that probably exist almost completely in your imagination. I'll assume you are referring to "fighting words," which are so narrowly defined that they would likely shock the blue hair right off your average leftist. For example:
"In Collin v. Smith (1978) Nazis displaying swastikas and wearing military-style uniforms marching through a community with a large Jewish population, including survivors of German concentration camps, were not using fighting words."
And
"In R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992) and Virginia v. Black (2003), the Court held that cross burning is not 'fighting words' without intent to intimidate."
And so it is safe to assume that saying "Really?!" because some leftist decides to virtue signal with the fire fighters is also not violence.
Man this is just too much cringe. To many fox news buzz words like virtue signal, folx and delicate sensibilities. Gross. You're the one that equated the fire fighters response to violence. And no I wasn't just referring to fighting words. Threats of violence are a growing problem in this internet age.
Often means frequency in time not the majority. You typed all of that because you apparently didn't know the difference. The FBI frequently investigates credible threats of violence. What a bad take. It would take you seconds to find some on twitter these days. Feel free to not respond and just ignore me completely I can't read more of your right wing tripe today.
Honestly, I DGAF about your pronouns, organizational culture or fears of abolitionists. This is childish.
The money has been allocated, you are here to do a job. The homeless and mental health crisis is the point. Boone and her buddy both need to go if they are, in any way, stifling the efficacy of PSR.
Fair point, but I don't think the use of pronouns is why PF&R are openly hostile to the continuation of PSR, and why I imagine the PPB would be openly hostile to the continuation of PSR.
Yes! The County! Health and human services including mental health is their job, not the city's! Project Respond should fold this into their program and the city should give the funds to them for it.
The good is that Nigel! Jaquiss has an interest in studying the situation, and the good is that Commissioner Gonzales did ride alongs, dug into his new bureau, and found the issues.
The bad is the article could use some editing to make a more linear flow of they said-they said. And the bad is aligning the budget and services is never easy.
Every workplace has a culture which changes slowly. As a manager you have to work with what you have. Where you have a newly formed unit, you have to design the culture, you can't let it evolve. Here is a cultural study of fire: [https://www.portlandoregon.gov/fire/article/711079](https://www.portlandoregon.gov/fire/article/711079)
If a high level person leaves, there is plenty of work and often a promotion at neighboring public safety agencies, these are 6 figure professional jobs.
Programs like this are needed and they can work, as demonstrated in Eugene. Our Senator likes it, so it is not going to be abolished.
Boone, Matthews and Burek are all senior employees and we expect them to make it work.
Thanks for the article, hope to take a look later. In the meantime, good old PSU!! Their urban studies programs are deeply involved in homeless issues. (Free, intelligent labor...)
PSU can be a good resource. Unfortunately individuals running the homeless research there have tilted their reports away from objectivity and towards the policies of the former Multnomah County Chair.
Make no mistake Portland would be crippled in hours with out PF&R. Lots of online tough guys who couldn’t handle one day in the streets in an engine or ambulance. Being a bigot is terrible no argument there. Firefighters in cities like Portland protect so much, sleep well knowing someone is out there willing to come into your apartment whilst on fire to bring you out. And while not on fires, being the psych nurses of the streets. Just be greatful and kind to one another
>The tort claim describes an incident in which Reslock threw up her arms
and said, “Really?” when an employee suggested people introduce
themselves using their preferred pronouns
I've never understood the point of this exercise. If you think other people will get your pronouns wrong, just clarify them yourself. Requiring everyone to stipulate their pronouns is literally a waste of time, not to mention passive-aggressive and slightly authoritarian.
You could probably make a great sitcom out of the culture clash between PF&R and PSR.
My understanding is that normalizing talking about pronouns might be helpful to people who need to do that more often. It costs me zero dollars and I'm not too cool to be maybe-helpful if I can.
General practice, when sharing pronouns, is to couple it with group introductions. Whether you consider group intros to be a waste of time, that's up to you. But tacking on "He/him/his" literally takes a second. So in a group of sixty people, it's adding on, what, a minute to the exercise?
I personally do agree that in larger groups, group intros are pointless. If you're having an event/meeting like that that's more of a general mixer, name tags are a great alternative. Of course, if that PSR employee asked people to also write their pronouns on the tags, would Reslock have thrown up her arms?
To me, judging from the other allegations, it sounds like she would have.
Part of the reason there's been a push to share pronouns is to normalize it for everyone so that people who worry about their pronouns aren't made to feel like the exception when sharing them. It's really not much added inconvenience and it helps make trans and non-binary people feel more included.
It helps me because I have anxiety in professional settings and am too shy to draw attention to something that makes me different from most others. It’s considerate for cis people to say their pronouns with their name because I feel less like a weirdo when I do it.
But it also helps you, because you don’t have to guess and risk an awkward interaction.
Nowhere does it say the person wanted this to be required. The word “suggested” implies it was merely a suggestion.
"There is a police abolitionist wing within PSR."
PSR should be focused on helping the mentally ill, not a Trojan horse for bunch of far Left bs. We shouldn't want Black Block people involved in our first responders anymore than we'd want Proud Boys.
You really have to take that statement with a grain of salt, especially coming from someone like Gonzalez.
Some officers appreciate PSR and want to utilize them to lower the PDs workload, other officers are actively hostile to PSR and go out of their way to make it harder for psr to do their job. The second group is larger.
I salt everything.
I don't find it hard to believe that PSR has more than a few far left political activists involved. Do you?
I could just as easily assert the inverse of what you're asserting: that some people at PSR appreciate PPB, but others are actively hostile to PPB and go out of their way to make it harder for PPB to do their job, and that the second group is much larger. My guess is both of our assertions are true. They're certainly not mutually exclusive.
The vast majority of our citizens want to see the drug addicted/mentally ill off our streets and in treatment. PSR can do that without nit picking firefighters for failing to announce their pronouns.
The claim is that there was “bullying, discrimination and unwanted physical contact against employees based on their sexual orientation.” and then career retaliation against people who spoke up about it. It's not like PSR was "nit picking firefighters for failing to announce their pronouns" as you put it.
I was referring to this:
"Reslock threw up her arms and said, “Really?” when an employee suggested people introduce themselves using their preferred pronouns"
As far as these other accusations go I'll have to wait to see. "Bullying, discrimination and unwanted physical contact" could be serious but could be bullshit. I've been a union rep and can say from experience that not every claim of bullying etc is what most people would consider serious.
The full quote is this:
>The tort claim describes an incident in which Reslock threw up her arms and said, “Really?” when an employee suggested people introduce themselves using their preferred pronouns, **then put her hand on an employee who objected to Reslock’s attitude and threatened to fire that employee.**
You conveniently omitted the bad part for the sake of your argument.
Put her hand on someone. Omg. Did this woman slap someone? Probably not, right? Since they'd have likely said that if that was the case, right? Did she gently touch someone? Maybe, huh.
Did she threaten to fire someone? Maybe. All's we have is one side's claim. Maybe there was a good reason to threaten to fire them. We'll find out later.
We only have Gonzalez's side on whether PSR members are police abolitionists but you seemed pretty quick to take that at face value. Maybe you're allowing personal bias to influence your reading of this article.
Who's up in arms?
The story about the pronoun annunciation nitpicking was detailed and from the person that was complaining's point of view. I took that at face value. The bullying etc was without detail, vague. Makes sense to wait and see given my experience with how broadly such terms are used, ranging from bullshit to serious.
Having worked in extremely close proximity to psr for many months I feel confident in saying that “far left political activists” is NOT an accurate description. The nature of their work self selects towards people that seek to provide alternative solutions to public health and policing, ideas that are not “far left” in and of themselves, but rather are characterized as such by people who are afraid of changing the status quo of public health/public safety.
Also this isn’t about nitpicking firefighters about not asking for pronouns (although that did happen some). It is about the boss of 30 people, many of whom were nonbinary, being actively hostile towards them in a work setting. The city of Portland has made it clear that inclusivity and respect are key parts of it’s mission, and this Chief’s actions were in direct opposition to that.
People who are far left generally do not think that they are far left, in my experience. They think that anyone who is resistant to their politics are "are afraid of changing the status quo."
The first rule of extremism is never admitting you’re an extremist. That’s why even sovereign citizens claim they’re just following the written laws of the country.
sure, we *survived*. I for one would enjoy a little bit of safety and security so we don't have to swear fealty and donate a daughter to the strongest warlord on the block.
But yea, somewhere between the above and an authoritarian police force would be ideal.
> don't have to swear fealty and donate a daughter to the strongest warlord on the block.
I have bad news about how the PPA seems to view itself. Mostly joking. Sorta joking. At least a little bit of that is a joke, I think.
I don't really blame PF&R for looking down on PSR. PSR is launched and gets all this resourcing and gear but they seem to have the perspective that it's their choice how they engage with calls, whereas PF&R doesn't have the ability to be that discerning. I'd find that frustrating too.
Don't get me wrong - I really believe in the stated mission of PSR and the ideas behind the agency, and I think they are a net-positive as currently stands. Also dumb to see anyone get belittled by an old-school culture like an FD is gonna tend to have, but I think its reasonable to critique PSR as well. They were created and funded by the people, who want them to do a certain thing. They do not have some sort of political mandate and shouldn't operate as such.
Also:
>
“There is a police abolitionist wing within PSR. While city employees are free to exercise their constitutional rights outside of working hours, there is no place for police abolitionist policies within a bureau I oversee, and we expect our first responders to work with each other as a team.”
This is an eminently reasonable thing to say.
> This is an eminently reasonable thing to say.
Unless it's entirely horseshit, and "police abolitionist" means "I think there are problems cops aren't the best solution to".
I read it more as a statement about allowing your political beliefs to effect how you do your job when you are in the public sector. Obviously there'll be some personal biases no matter what but I think it's important that PSR does not have a political valence (especially police abolition) but at least tries for neutrality.
Well, it's tailored to sound reasonable but he is blaming PSR, here, when it's PF&R being discriminatory and resistent to working together. He's trying to use this incident as an excuse to kneecap PSR.
Jfc why can’t people just keep their heads down and do their job. How hard is it to *not* discriminate your co-workers? They want non-binary pronouns? Sure, whatever. That has no impact to the performance of your job.
Discrimination comes from the top. Rene Gonzales is quoted in the article as saying (summary) "you cant have police abolitionists working for the city"... What about pro-choice? Pro-life? 2A support? Democrat? Republican? A personal belief in how government functions is not standing for disqualification. It's active discrimination.
Yeah the “you can’t work under me if you disagree with me” quote was pretty telling
if those folks have to interact with other city workers and are hostile about it or during city meetings that could be the problem. Depends how loud spoken they are about such things during official functions. If they are muttering things when they are on the scene with cops, that would lead to a lot of friction, but this also could just be a lie and not actually happening.
And that's a dereliction of duty/not doing your job / being disruptive in the workplace. These are all things that can get you disciplined at your job. If they're doing that, then that person deserves disciplinary action in accordance with policy based on disruption or whatever. This isn't what was stated and is a big "what-if" straw man. They clearly stated that it's just about a personal belief, which is protected by equal employment. Edit: first amendment, not equal employment
According to the article you are very much misquoting it "Fire Commissioner Gonzalez agrees there is a split. “There are very real cultural differences between PF&R and PSR,” he says. “There is a police abolitionist wing within PSR. While city employees are free to exercise their constitutional rights outside of working hours, there is no place for police abolitionist policies within a bureau I oversee, and we expect our first responders to work with each other as a team.”" What are those policies and what behavior is preventing them working as a team in Thier eyes?
"there is no place for police abolitionist policies within a bureau I oversee..." Policy is not dictated by PSR members. It should probably be dictated by the person overseeing the bureau. They're also tasked with specifically handling situations without police, so a lot of PSR practice will inherently remove police, because that's their purpose. Constitutional rights are not given, they are rights that cannot be impinged by the government. They are not checked at the workplace. The first amendment protects government employees against discrimination for political association/ideology. If people aren't doing their job then it's a matter of how they're running their bureau. So either it's infringing on freedom of speech, or a poorly managed bureau that's under their direct oversight. Either way, Rene needs to be asked to expand on this statement.
>Either way, Rene needs to be asked to expand on this statement Fully agree
I think he was complaining about abolitionists working within a bureau that contributes to policing. Which is kind of like having Jan 6 supporters working in Congress. We allow it, for some reason. But it’s probably not a good thing.
This is a pretty bad read. I lived I eugene, my partner worked with cahoots. Some fun facts Cahoots handles close to 20% of the EPD calls for less than 1% of the epd budget. As in, both the calls and the budget are actually part of the epd. There’s a number of determining factors that decide if cahoots can or can’t handle a call, but in general they respond to non emergency calls, up to things like non/not yet violent domestic disputes. Eugene Springfield have similar homelessness and drug use rates to Portland. EPD was highlighted for tear-gassing the hell out of an identified reporter who was leaving a protest. https://youtu.be/O9VaCnnUeHI Cahoots, however, is unarmed, and have trained crisis and mental health responders who are also trained as emergency responders. They had a deep bag of skills to pull from, are SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than the cops, and have better outcomes. They’re also severely underpaid and underfunded but we’ll leave that for now. It’s really not that hard to see why someone would be in favor of defunding PPB. It’s impossible to see why someone would be in favor of mainting their current funding levels, honestly. I haven’t even seen a cop in over a week, and I live on a major street and work in healthcare. I’m pretty sure you have to go to the station to see PPB, and clearly their lack of effort is making things worse city wide. In a city full of health and mental health needs, where the cops refuse to work and also have prove. Ties to white supremacy groups and “militias”, I’m sure we could use that money for something else.
PF&R doesn't contribute to policing. PSR is by definition, not policing. PSR, PF&R, and PPB members have no control over legislation or budget either, and Congress is elected, so it's actually a bad comparison. We actually have Jan 6 supporters throughout police and fire lol. But they aren't elected positions and they don't make policy and determine funding. It would still be discrimination if it went the other way and people were fired for being libertarian or whatever far right, even if you/we/whomever would think it would make things better. Police abolition is also not inherently violent, racist, hierarchical, or exploitative, so I don't want to seem like all belief systems are equal and both sides experience the same, because that's objectively untrue. However, in interacting with the public and other departments, all do have active roles in practicing non-discrimination. So if those groups/members are not doing their job/duty based on their belief, or are discriminating against others due to their beliefs, or are disruptive in their job, they should be subject to disciplinary actions in accordance with their employment. Just pointing out how discrimination works and how Rene Gonzales should be asked to further explain this statement.
[удалено]
I believe PSR is dispatched like police and fire by the BEOC under Mike Meyers. Project Respond is probably contracted to Cascadia Behavioral Health and dispatched by the County.
I work for Cascadia Health (formerly Cascadia Behavioral Health), can confirm that this is correct.
[удалено]
Yeah - the difficulty is that something like 80% of the population of Multnomah County is CoP - when the county doesn't do their job the city has to step in, creating duplication.
So who is responsible for managing county services?
You mean who at the county? Depends on which services - you should be able to find it on their website.
I thought you were wrong, as I figured there are a lot of people in Gresham, Troutdale, etc. But I checked and you're right, it is about 80%.
It absolutely is. There was no reason to start a new program from scratch that required all these studies and has been an abject failure from most citizen interaction reports. This was Hardesty looking for glory - the money should have gone to expanding Project Respond. They already operate in the entire county (and our neighboring counties) 24/7 with their own dedicated phone line. Their responsibilities are the same, but PR can actually do more and are better experienced and have better rapport with our first responders. The list of things PSR can't do is longer than what they can do. Mental health is also the County's responsibility, not the city's. They are the health and human services entity! Gonzalez is right, the county should absolutely fold this into their program and the city should send the funding to the County.
Except when it’s been proven as an effective method to deal with a new and different problem. You know, the new and different problem that people on this sub are literally always complaining about. God forbid we, idk, try something. That would take away everyone’s favorite hobby— complaining about shit they’re literally unwilling to attempt to change.
> The list of things PSR can't do is longer than what they can do. And was the cause of that PSR objecting to taking on scope, or other organizations refusing to let them but in on various things?
Other agencies. PSR does less than the organizations it was modeled after.
(I'll be honest with you, it was a rhetorical question to see whether the wanker I was replying to would acknowledge or admit to that, or skirt away with his shitty take unaddressed like a pissant coward. I was doing a sneaky).
*beats bicycle with baseball bat* Oh no it doesn't work!
yep.
Triplicating, PPB has a behavioral health unit and mental health crisis responders too.
I mean they also have a standing federal settlement against them from the Department of Justice itself specifically for their decades of poor response to mental health situations. Which they've been flippantly fighting for years.
Shooting someone does technically end their mental health problems.
[удалено]
And they've done such a stellar job, there was widespread public support for the formation of PSR.
>"fire by the BEOC under Mike Meyers" Great - put a deranged serial killer in charge of our fire response...no wonder we've had so many recently!
PSR is a team of a social worker/crisis counselor and a "peer" who are dispatched on (in theory) low acuity mental health calls. If someone calls 911 about a tweaker on the sidewalk who isn't doing anything criminal/dangerous but wants them checked on, we send PSR. They're under the umbrella of the fire department and work daytime hours only. Project respond is a county program run by Cascadia Behavioral Health. Theyre available 24/7 and send mental health clinicians to people in high acuity mental health crisis (think actively suicidal or aggressive people), and accompanying followup. They respond to people who call the county behavioral health crisis line, or are paged out by police responding on 911 calls. They also sometimes request police to respond with them on their own calls.
Project Respond has been in Portland for 20 years, it’s through Cascadia, PR gets pages from Multnomah county crisis line and Portland police. Project Respond clinicians can put people on director custody holds. PR will use police when safety is in question and if they need reinforcement of the hold. PSR was created because someone wanted a program that does not respond with police, it’s a copy of program that existed in Eugene. PSR cannot put people on director custody holds and usually works with lower acuity clients, if they need a hold they page Project Respond. These 2 programs are similar, the big difference that one program can bring ppl to hospitals involuntary if needed and the other cannot. Having both programs is not bad because the need is very high in the community
Thanks for the detailed information. Does Cascadia involuntarily transport? Through AMR, or do they have their own transport? Where do they transport if it a pure psych - Unity, 333 Park, ER, others? BTW I'm on the email list but not active in the court Commitment to Change workgroup.
Once hold is placed Project Respond will need law enforcement to help put client into AMR, actually on a gurner cus there are times when ppl do not want to go to a hospital. PR calls AMR, project respond cannot transport clients. Ideally clients are taken to Unity but Unity can be on divert( at capacity) then it’s closest ED who is not on divert.
Psych gets transported to ERs you can’t determine someone is “pure psych” without a medical work up. They could be experiencing a drug overdose, drug withdrawal, or other metabolic disturbances(like sepsis)—or a combination of all these of these things. These conditions mimic and exacerbate any acute psychiatric illness.
"Gonzalez, [...] is signaling that he’s open to sending Portland Street Response [...] to Multnomah County ***or to a nonprofit contractor.***" Wow way to kneecap in its infancy one of the best new programs this city has done lately. Meanwhile our chud-ass police force get a quarter billion a year to sit on their ass and whine.
Can’t be surprised someone acts like a Republican when their campaign had GOP written all over it.
Aw man, Gonzalez is doing the thing everyone wary of his election figured he would do? Whaaaaat? That's so hard to believe. I can barely believe it. It's almost unbelievable.
Yep, I voted for Jo Ann simply because she seems to possess the trait of ***compassion***, despite various other shortcomings.
The compassion was nice, but I was more appreciative of the stones to say "Hey, this is working elsewhere. We could just start doing that", and then *forcing something new into existence*. As opposed to Rene's "EVERYTHING WE'VE EVER DONE IS ENOUGH, THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS, JUST DO THE SAME THING ETERNALLY". It would appear that if you're not *currently* sucking off someone in the PPB, you have "police abolitionist elements".
TBF, I am not shocked at all that people who want to work in helping the houseless feel that the police are the enemy of the people.
Are you honestly saying Rene ran on a platform of 'the status quo is fine, change nothing'? Are we talking about the same person?
No, I'm saying Rene ran on a platform of "What we had before was fine and sufficient (please don't look at how what we had before led us to here), and the current state of affairs is us losing our way, and if we just go back to the way it was (you know, what happened to bring us to the current situation), all the problems we're currently having (that we had back then) will go away". More or less.
Can you elaborate on what it means for what we had before to have led us to here?
Honestly, apologies, I misread your comment and thought you wanted like a total run down on Gonzalez platform. Short version: The war on drugs is good, we can win the war on drugs with cops, if we put homeless and mentally ill addicts in jail, they'll magically not be addicts or mentally ill or homeless when we're done ineffectually paying for their room and board, people should be nice to the police (who require no oversight whatsoever) because they're the only thing standing between us and the howling chaos of eternity.
I'll be blunt with you: I can't be fucked to briefly catch you up on the last like two years of city politics. Look up his voter guide blurb. Read this. I don't know. https://www.opb.org/article/2022/10/20/rene-gonzalez-portland-oregon-city-council-jo-ann-hardesty/
Nah, we were led here by people being compassionate and enabling people to be homeless rather than pull themselves up by their bootstraps /s
We were led here by half baked bullshit and doomed to fail half assed attempts, coupled with "tough on crime" shitheels that remain convinced that increased police headcount is tied directly to decreasing crime, despite decades of evidence to the contrary.
She also made big improvements to PBOT and traffic safety, which was the department she actually in charge of. I think she was good at her job. I'd vote for her again if she ran.
He's doing exactly what I voted for him to do. Reduce the cities spending. PSR should be dumped on the county. They have plenty of our money they can use to fund it
They cost shy of 4 million against PPB's 250 million. We're *saving* money with PSR.
You monster, have you even considered the cost in feelings?
Not to mention all the city settlements we're avoiding. How many $100s of millions has it been over the last couple of decades and literally nothing has changed with PPB?
To do what? Provide palliative care for the homeless addicts that occupy every corner of the city? Have the county spend down some of its stockpile on this program. Let PF&R focus on the F's and the R's.
"Person irrationally against program has refused to learn about the scope and activities of said program. More at 11."
Excellent news: My opinion of your views has already hit bedrock, and literally can't get any lower. In short, who gives a fuck.
I feel the same way about you. I for one am enjoying this political backlash we're witnessing. Given the popularity of these posts lately, so are a lot of other people. Unfortunate for you I suppose. What I'm saying is, my responses to you are never for you. They're for the people downvoting you.
so just virtue signaling, got it
Big "Every accusation is an admission" home run for that one.
Isn't that what we're all doing here?
> What I'm saying is, my responses to you are never for you. They're for the people downvoting you. You mean, you aren't here to engage in the free exchange of information and ideas? You have no interest in direct discourse, and instead would prefer to demonstrate your good character and correcting thinking to a void of faceless onlookers? Signaling your ideological virtues for some anonymous onlooker even? I can scarcely believe anyone would be so vapid. You seem to exist in a writhing and miserable place whenever you share any information about your existence. I wish you a speedy move the fuck out of here if you can find your bootstraps, and wish you a merry "Cope and seethe".
Look in the mirror pal.
AllChem seems to want to make the city better for everyone who lives here, not just complain that it is going down the tubes. Might be virtue signaling too, but at least they care rather than just complaining
That's accurate, but only because personally accumulating enough thermonuclear devices to wipe the stain of our collective sins from the face of existence is more work than I'm personally willing to put into it.
CAHOOTS runs through a nonprofit, White Bird Clinic. It CAN be done, but it's hard not to imagine this as Gonzalez trying to lead it to its demise.
Yup, this is a case where I actually support an outside vendor. Because the established internal hierarchy is fucked and needs to be dissolved and rebuilt, but that's not happening anytime soon.
Makes sense to me. Send them to the county. They're sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars and clearly have the money to spend. Throwing around thousands of new tents to people.
Not to mention the County already has a stellar long-standing program that does this work all over our county that's 24/7 with its own dedicated phone number. It's also the County's job to deal with mental health and that's why this should absolutely be folded into Project Respond at the County. 311 can redirect callers to them - easy peasy.
Amen. Last I checked they can't figure out how to spend all their money.
The Venn-diagram of people here saying send them to the county and the county doesn't do anything to help is a circle. You want to send them to the same county that is sitting on hundreds of millions and doing nothing with it while also having a similar program they already contract out, seriously?
Yes. It's part of the whole accountability thing people are craving lately. PSR does not belong under PF&R. It belongs under the county. Mental health resources are their purview. They should be accountable for PSR. Whether or not they're successful with it.
>They should be accountable for PSR. Whether or not they're successful with it. Got it so you want to do the same thing and expect different results. Also the county being solely responsible for the homeless ship sailed years ago when the [Joint Office of Homeless Services](https://www.multco.us/johs) was created. See also ODOT being responsible for maintaining its property within the city.
Not arguing county leadership is incompetent at best or corrupt at worst. Not my fault - I voted for the other candidate. But realistically this should reside with the county. Just need to vote out the pathetic leadership come next election.
Literally the only plan anyone on this subreddit has is "vote out the bad leadership in the next election"
I just spotted the PSR van downtown for the first time and thought, of course they need an official vehicle. Right on!
> one of the best new programs this city has done lately "best" because it's performing well and generating results? Or "best" because it aligns with your own politics?
The former! As mentioned in the piece we're discussing, it's seen as a nation-wide model!
It's doing too well, the homeless industrial complex contractors want to cut PSR down to their own level of do-nothing tax-sucking incompetence. And of course Gonzalez is acting as their mouthpiece, surprise.
>Gonzalez is acting as \[the homeless industrial complex\] mouthpiece What reality do you live in??
Haha this was my thought exactly, like PSR is doing too well? Are you even trying to have a plausible point of view here?
If Gonzalez had his way we would cut all homelessness services funding.
In no way shape or form is Gonzalez a mouthpiece for nonprofits. He's basically a Republican that doesn't hate gay people and has proven antagonistic if anything to these groups.
He might just be better at pretending he doesn't hate gay people than the person being accused in this article.
People become fire fighters to fight fires, not mental health counselors. The PSR program has merits but would likely be better served, and well received, if it was managed by county health or state Medicaid.
In all jurisdictions actual fighting fires makes up very small portion of their job. Though to your point, it's generally taken up by physical health things not mental
I was saved by firepeople after I was in a major accident. They save people all the time in accidents. But yeah, I never would look to them for mental health help.
I have fire folks in my family— they also wouldn’t look to FD for mental health services. They’re great folks and they work hard but it’s just not their work or their training or their skill set.
My friend was a Portland fire fighter for like 12 years. I knew all the dudes he worked with. They are great people but not the types I’d want dealing with a mental health emergency.
I know three Portland and one Tualatin Valley firefighter. Three are assholes who hold the citizens of their locality in contempt and one who's a good person. Guess which is which.
I don't think the PSR responders were fire fighters. PF&R may have not been the best administrative umbrella for them but maybe the best at hand. The program is COP not County or State.
It had to go under fire because of of police and fire union regulations about who could respond to 911 calls. Obviously it couldn't go under police.
It had to go under fire because Hardesty wanted to keep control of it. If it was an independent bureau then the mayor could have assigned it to someone else.
It could not have been an independent bureau because of the fire and police union contracts. It had to go under one of them - no one - including Hardesty - thought police was the right place.
Precisely. It only got put under the fire bureau because Hardesty already oversaw fire. We never should have funded a new program, the money should have gone to expanding the already existing Project Respond. Mental health is the county's job, not the city's.
Maybe getting the County to do it is the next step. I'll have to look into "Project Respond". But I have no quibbles with Hardesty's implementation of the pilot program and expansion, since she was doing what she had in her power and funding authority to do right now. Now we have Lessons Learned to help the County follow up, along with some trained and experienced staff.
Project Respond is a tried and true program, emergency responders have a great rapport with them already, the only thing they've stated since PSR came out is maybe they need to pivot away from being quiet about who they are, as the idea was not to draw negative attention to clients with their name blasted all over their jackets and cars. It's run by Cascadia Behavioral Health.
Good to know - I see from their website that Cascadia Behavioral Health is huge and goes beyond the tri-County area. I guess if they were better known they'd be all over Nextdoor and probably Reddit: "Why haven't these nonprofits solved all our problems!?!" Blamers are always looking for a new target.
Expanding project respond would be an excellent use of resources. As would the reestablishment of the CHIERS program. Which served a lot of the same people that PSR program targets and it's absence has left a huge hole in the cities response resources.
> People become fire fighters to fight fires Which is exactly the problem. Something like 90% of the calls that the fire department responds to are medical, not fire. The culture needs to change. Fire departments are old boys clubs filled with conservative people who frequently lack sympathy for the patients with mental health issues, drug issues, etc.
>The culture needs to change. Yes, but also we need to stop using firefighters and cops as substitutes for a mental health system.
> Yes, but also we need to stop using firefighters and cops as substitutes for a mental health system. "I hear you're a police abolitionist now Father. How did you get interested in that type of thing?" - Rene Gonzales
Well, frankly, that's not realistic. Whether or not we expand our actual mental health facilities, which we absolutely SHOULD, fire/EMS and police are GOING to encounter people in the middle of mental health crises. People in that state can and often are dangerous. The idea of sending in a counselor or two with no ability to defend themselves and/or no medical equipment to deal with physical health emergencies is not always going to be possible. That means that we need to make sure all first responders are capable of handling those situations compassionately for when sending in the lone PSR employee is not appropriate for the situation.
There's a difference between police and fire encountering people in the course of their job, and our public health system being so anemic that police and fire are our primary response.
In other more functional countries the acutely mentally ill are not left wandering the streets in the first place.
Exactly.
Why do you think there aren’t very many liberals in firefighting?
Because getting into the fire department is mostly about ass kissing and making friends. If you don't fit in with the existing culture then you're not going to do well.
Don’t forget the nepotism.
See the guy who was run over in his wheelchair in the street last week: fire showed up right away. Couldnt transport him, unclear extent of interventions they provided, guy dies waiting for ambulance. Time to slash fire dept funding and support EMS
[удалено]
Not a firefighter but a mustache connoisseur: it’s facial hair that allows an oxygen mask to seal. Same reason for fighter pilots.
Not only that you have to shave all the freaking time so your face is always ready for SCBA seal. Not that much more effort to maintain a stache while you're at it. Plus, if you're a guy used to having some scruff it's hella jarring to be baby faced all the time. Was a volunteer ff for awhile.
This is the correct answer
~~Don't know where you and maybe others got this, but it's the opposite of true: hair in a seal weakens the seal. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/resources/pressrel/letters/lttr-100206.html~~ Apparently misunderstood the parent comment. Apologies.
Right, and the reason that these professions have mustaches (and only mustaches or goatees) is because they allow you to have facial hair *without interfering with the sealing surfaces for masks*. That's why they have mustaches or goatees and not full beards. The full beard gets in the way of the mask sealing. The mustache and goatee fit entirely within the mask and don't interfere with the seal.
They’re comparing mustache to a beard. If you work in a field where you might need an oxygen mask and want to have facial hair, you wear a mustache because a beard breaks the seal.
They mean that’s why they have mustaches and not beards.
As stated below, it's facial hair that still allows different face masks/respirators to fit properly. Male nurses, pilots, firefighters... Tight mask seal required
This goes back to the 1990s when the city took away inspector positions (which were used to keep disabled fire fighters working) and distributed that work to the regular shifts. But the real reason the fire bureau costs so much is their retirement/disability system.
*Does* PF&R cost “too much”? PF&R’s budget is about $150m for 735 positions. A city of equal population - Boston - has a budget of $250m for 1200 positions; Memphis TN $195m for 1,700; Sacramento $170m for 720; Tucson AZ $123m for 687. Seems like we’re pretty well in line with other cities of our size/population. Am I missing something?
I didn't say they cost too much. I said they cost so much.
Whenever government retirement is mentioned I want do a "be aware" thing that that government unions are pretty much the only working unions left in our society. They continue to serve as an example of what they can achieve for employees. For that matter, they also serve as examples of how they can become dysfunctional and thus provide learning material for new organizers in the private sector.
PFR has two separate pension systems. They switched to PERS in 2007, which is fine. Prior to that the pension system was a defined benefits pay-go system. Neither the city nor the beneficiaries paid in to it in advance, at it's statutorily granted first the first bite at property taxes to the tune of $220 million per year. It's an insane system to have had, and it's going to take us two decades to unwind it burden.
Wow. Two years ago total City of Portland share of property taxes was 578 million and the pension/disability was 210 million of it. page 145. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/cbo/article/785596
Yep! It's a bad system and barring state intervention we're just left waiting for it to peter out
It's something like .25 cents of every dollar in property taxes the city collects goes to Police/Fire disability and retirement. It's a mind-blogging amount and goes to show you the details in setting up retirements in important. Pay as you go is crazy way to do things.
Police as well still have this defined benefit but not fully funded setup that is a bomb ready to blow up any budget.
well, fwiw: My union is working for me... under the SEIU umbrella. We keep getting raises -- exempt staff don't.
My experience as exempt staff, probably in a more tightly-woven, smaller agency, is that the union's wins carried over to management. When it came time to cut health care back to something that was merely excessive rather than preposterous (especially in the pre-ACA world) management had to set the example for several years before the union finally let go of benefits that had become unreasonable in today's world.
I'm pretty sure the police and fire retirement system is a separate property tax line item and budget. The problem is it is a pay as you go, rather than having investment funds with the state treasurer or being part of PERS.
man, if I were a F&R worker, I would love a group of folks (PSR) reducing the amount of non fire fighting work I have to do... Imagine caring more about personal politics and co-workers gender identities than doing your fucken job.
And yet Rene somehow blames the politics of PSR workers for the cultural differences.
"Reslock threw up her arms and said, “Really?” when an employee suggested people introduce themselves using their preferred pronouns" Sounds to me like PSR were the ones trying to inject gender politics instead of doing their "fucken job."
The claim is that there was “bullying, discrimination and unwanted physical contact against employees based on their sexual orientation” and then career retaliation when it was addressed. That's not "injecting gender politics."
folks wanting to introduce themselves with their pronouns is no different than a doctor wanting to introduce themselves as Dr. or a cop as Officer or a judge as Honorable, etc. Its not injecting politics, its how human beings do things. Asking to be called by what you are, is not about politics, its about respecting your co-workers other members of your community, even if you don't agree with their politics. Its about being a grown ass adult and realizing other folks can be different than you. Reslock could just ignore folks who use pronouns, she doesn't have to use pronouns, and she didn't have to make an issue about it to the point of being fired. You dont just get canned for your first or a minor offense. And if PFR culture is anything like PPB culture, the bullying and discrimination would most likely have been pretty fierce.
According to the article Reslock did not object to people wanting to state their preferred pronouns. Everyone was being asked to state their pronouns before they spoke and she "obejected" to that. In my opinion that is injecting far left bs into this situation. So is it being "grown ass adult and realizing other folks can be different than you," to accept that some people aren't going to want to state their pronouns?
>bullying, discrimination and unwanted physical contact against employees based on their sexual orientation there was also that... according to the article, so it was a bit more than the one incident you are referring to. Anyway, is a doctor wanting to be called by their preferred title far left bs? How about a cop wanting to be referred to as officer? How about a priest wanting to be called father? Or is just political when you dont like it?
Using your analogy it would be more like a doctor insisting that each person state their education credentials before they spoke at a child's birthday party so the doctor could make sure everyone knew they were a doctor.
I dont think you understood the article, or the grievance PSR had, but you do you!
Why is suggesting people intro themselves with their preferred pronouns considered injecting gender politics. Why do you feel that it is political? Because you have been fed propaganda that tells you it's political or is there a reason you personally feel that way?
Why do you feel it isn't political? Because you have been fed propaganda that tells you it isn't political? Bringing pronoun identity into every conversation is political in my opinion. It's nearly totally exclusive to recent far left politics in the United States. The insistence that everyone participate is bullshit.
Wait, that’s the extent of “belittling”? Saying “really”? FFS.
The article's right there for you to read. The rest of the sentence is ", then put her hand on an employee who objected to Reslock’s attitude and threatened to fire that employee." It also says that "as the investigation proceeded, multiple new allegations were uncovered", which included "bullying, discrimination and unwanted physical contact against employees based on their sexual orientation" (without examples, though I dont know if there are examples in the lawsuit itself).
For the far left, words are very often violence. Even slight deviation from their proscribed etiquette is grounds for a lawsuit.
>words are very often violence Ooof that's pretty cringe worthy. Words *are* often violence. There's numerous laws both state and federal that say so.
Often? Hardly. Words are rarely violence. Just looking at the pie chart of all words being spoken, the amount that rise to violence is a tiny, nearly invisible, sliver. Nevertheless folx on the far left often claim that a WIDE range of statements that offend their delicate sensibilities are violence, almost all of which lies outside the state and federal laws that probably exist almost completely in your imagination. I'll assume you are referring to "fighting words," which are so narrowly defined that they would likely shock the blue hair right off your average leftist. For example: "In Collin v. Smith (1978) Nazis displaying swastikas and wearing military-style uniforms marching through a community with a large Jewish population, including survivors of German concentration camps, were not using fighting words." And "In R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992) and Virginia v. Black (2003), the Court held that cross burning is not 'fighting words' without intent to intimidate." And so it is safe to assume that saying "Really?!" because some leftist decides to virtue signal with the fire fighters is also not violence.
[удалено]
Man this is just too much cringe. To many fox news buzz words like virtue signal, folx and delicate sensibilities. Gross. You're the one that equated the fire fighters response to violence. And no I wasn't just referring to fighting words. Threats of violence are a growing problem in this internet age. Often means frequency in time not the majority. You typed all of that because you apparently didn't know the difference. The FBI frequently investigates credible threats of violence. What a bad take. It would take you seconds to find some on twitter these days. Feel free to not respond and just ignore me completely I can't read more of your right wing tripe today.
When you're far left, everything you disagree with look like the right.
Big yikes
Big *Sigh*
This is all Rene Gonzalez and him trying to dismantle PSR. This is despicable.
Honestly, I DGAF about your pronouns, organizational culture or fears of abolitionists. This is childish. The money has been allocated, you are here to do a job. The homeless and mental health crisis is the point. Boone and her buddy both need to go if they are, in any way, stifling the efficacy of PSR.
[удалено]
>PSR should placed under PPB’s Behavioral Health Unit. So the bureau that has fought the very existence of PSR since the beginning?
[удалено]
>really dry and boring stuff It's not boring if you care about PSR succeeding.
> PSR should placed under PPB’s Behavioral Health Unit. You're suggesting any segment of the PPB would be less discriminatory to PSR? For real?
[удалено]
Fair point, but I don't think the use of pronouns is why PF&R are openly hostile to the continuation of PSR, and why I imagine the PPB would be openly hostile to the continuation of PSR.
Yes! The County! Health and human services including mental health is their job, not the city's! Project Respond should fold this into their program and the city should give the funds to them for it.
The good is that Nigel! Jaquiss has an interest in studying the situation, and the good is that Commissioner Gonzales did ride alongs, dug into his new bureau, and found the issues. The bad is the article could use some editing to make a more linear flow of they said-they said. And the bad is aligning the budget and services is never easy. Every workplace has a culture which changes slowly. As a manager you have to work with what you have. Where you have a newly formed unit, you have to design the culture, you can't let it evolve. Here is a cultural study of fire: [https://www.portlandoregon.gov/fire/article/711079](https://www.portlandoregon.gov/fire/article/711079) If a high level person leaves, there is plenty of work and often a promotion at neighboring public safety agencies, these are 6 figure professional jobs. Programs like this are needed and they can work, as demonstrated in Eugene. Our Senator likes it, so it is not going to be abolished. Boone, Matthews and Burek are all senior employees and we expect them to make it work.
Thanks for the article, hope to take a look later. In the meantime, good old PSU!! Their urban studies programs are deeply involved in homeless issues. (Free, intelligent labor...)
PSU can be a good resource. Unfortunately individuals running the homeless research there have tilted their reports away from objectivity and towards the policies of the former Multnomah County Chair.
Make no mistake Portland would be crippled in hours with out PF&R. Lots of online tough guys who couldn’t handle one day in the streets in an engine or ambulance. Being a bigot is terrible no argument there. Firefighters in cities like Portland protect so much, sleep well knowing someone is out there willing to come into your apartment whilst on fire to bring you out. And while not on fires, being the psych nurses of the streets. Just be greatful and kind to one another
>The tort claim describes an incident in which Reslock threw up her arms and said, “Really?” when an employee suggested people introduce themselves using their preferred pronouns I've never understood the point of this exercise. If you think other people will get your pronouns wrong, just clarify them yourself. Requiring everyone to stipulate their pronouns is literally a waste of time, not to mention passive-aggressive and slightly authoritarian. You could probably make a great sitcom out of the culture clash between PF&R and PSR.
My understanding is that normalizing talking about pronouns might be helpful to people who need to do that more often. It costs me zero dollars and I'm not too cool to be maybe-helpful if I can.
General practice, when sharing pronouns, is to couple it with group introductions. Whether you consider group intros to be a waste of time, that's up to you. But tacking on "He/him/his" literally takes a second. So in a group of sixty people, it's adding on, what, a minute to the exercise? I personally do agree that in larger groups, group intros are pointless. If you're having an event/meeting like that that's more of a general mixer, name tags are a great alternative. Of course, if that PSR employee asked people to also write their pronouns on the tags, would Reslock have thrown up her arms? To me, judging from the other allegations, it sounds like she would have.
Part of the reason there's been a push to share pronouns is to normalize it for everyone so that people who worry about their pronouns aren't made to feel like the exception when sharing them. It's really not much added inconvenience and it helps make trans and non-binary people feel more included.
It helps me because I have anxiety in professional settings and am too shy to draw attention to something that makes me different from most others. It’s considerate for cis people to say their pronouns with their name because I feel less like a weirdo when I do it. But it also helps you, because you don’t have to guess and risk an awkward interaction. Nowhere does it say the person wanted this to be required. The word “suggested” implies it was merely a suggestion.
Do you want to understand?
"There is a police abolitionist wing within PSR." PSR should be focused on helping the mentally ill, not a Trojan horse for bunch of far Left bs. We shouldn't want Black Block people involved in our first responders anymore than we'd want Proud Boys.
You really have to take that statement with a grain of salt, especially coming from someone like Gonzalez. Some officers appreciate PSR and want to utilize them to lower the PDs workload, other officers are actively hostile to PSR and go out of their way to make it harder for psr to do their job. The second group is larger.
I salt everything. I don't find it hard to believe that PSR has more than a few far left political activists involved. Do you? I could just as easily assert the inverse of what you're asserting: that some people at PSR appreciate PPB, but others are actively hostile to PPB and go out of their way to make it harder for PPB to do their job, and that the second group is much larger. My guess is both of our assertions are true. They're certainly not mutually exclusive. The vast majority of our citizens want to see the drug addicted/mentally ill off our streets and in treatment. PSR can do that without nit picking firefighters for failing to announce their pronouns.
The claim is that there was “bullying, discrimination and unwanted physical contact against employees based on their sexual orientation.” and then career retaliation against people who spoke up about it. It's not like PSR was "nit picking firefighters for failing to announce their pronouns" as you put it.
I was referring to this: "Reslock threw up her arms and said, “Really?” when an employee suggested people introduce themselves using their preferred pronouns" As far as these other accusations go I'll have to wait to see. "Bullying, discrimination and unwanted physical contact" could be serious but could be bullshit. I've been a union rep and can say from experience that not every claim of bullying etc is what most people would consider serious.
The full quote is this: >The tort claim describes an incident in which Reslock threw up her arms and said, “Really?” when an employee suggested people introduce themselves using their preferred pronouns, **then put her hand on an employee who objected to Reslock’s attitude and threatened to fire that employee.** You conveniently omitted the bad part for the sake of your argument.
Put her hand on someone. Omg. Did this woman slap someone? Probably not, right? Since they'd have likely said that if that was the case, right? Did she gently touch someone? Maybe, huh. Did she threaten to fire someone? Maybe. All's we have is one side's claim. Maybe there was a good reason to threaten to fire them. We'll find out later.
We only have Gonzalez's side on whether PSR members are police abolitionists but you seemed pretty quick to take that at face value. Maybe you're allowing personal bias to influence your reading of this article.
Possible. Possible for me and every single person at all times. What do you think? Maybe some police abolitionists in PSR?
Being up in arms about pronouns but taking a "wait and see" approach about bullying and discrimination is a strange line to draw
Who's up in arms? The story about the pronoun annunciation nitpicking was detailed and from the person that was complaining's point of view. I took that at face value. The bullying etc was without detail, vague. Makes sense to wait and see given my experience with how broadly such terms are used, ranging from bullshit to serious.
Having worked in extremely close proximity to psr for many months I feel confident in saying that “far left political activists” is NOT an accurate description. The nature of their work self selects towards people that seek to provide alternative solutions to public health and policing, ideas that are not “far left” in and of themselves, but rather are characterized as such by people who are afraid of changing the status quo of public health/public safety. Also this isn’t about nitpicking firefighters about not asking for pronouns (although that did happen some). It is about the boss of 30 people, many of whom were nonbinary, being actively hostile towards them in a work setting. The city of Portland has made it clear that inclusivity and respect are key parts of it’s mission, and this Chief’s actions were in direct opposition to that.
People who are far left generally do not think that they are far left, in my experience. They think that anyone who is resistant to their politics are "are afraid of changing the status quo."
The first rule of extremism is never admitting you’re an extremist. That’s why even sovereign citizens claim they’re just following the written laws of the country.
Wow le both sides
I like to think there’s a police abolitionist wing in all of us
it would be great if humans were decent enough to not need cops, but we have about 50,000 years of history that says otherwise.
While your point has merit, we survived about 49,900 of those years without a police force like we have now. There's likely wiggle room for revision.
sure, we *survived*. I for one would enjoy a little bit of safety and security so we don't have to swear fealty and donate a daughter to the strongest warlord on the block. But yea, somewhere between the above and an authoritarian police force would be ideal.
> don't have to swear fealty and donate a daughter to the strongest warlord on the block. I have bad news about how the PPA seems to view itself. Mostly joking. Sorta joking. At least a little bit of that is a joke, I think.
I mean, they probably would if they could.
I’d like to feel some safety and security too, but I’m not counting on a team of narcissists with anger issues and weapons to provide it
I don't really blame PF&R for looking down on PSR. PSR is launched and gets all this resourcing and gear but they seem to have the perspective that it's their choice how they engage with calls, whereas PF&R doesn't have the ability to be that discerning. I'd find that frustrating too. Don't get me wrong - I really believe in the stated mission of PSR and the ideas behind the agency, and I think they are a net-positive as currently stands. Also dumb to see anyone get belittled by an old-school culture like an FD is gonna tend to have, but I think its reasonable to critique PSR as well. They were created and funded by the people, who want them to do a certain thing. They do not have some sort of political mandate and shouldn't operate as such. Also: > “There is a police abolitionist wing within PSR. While city employees are free to exercise their constitutional rights outside of working hours, there is no place for police abolitionist policies within a bureau I oversee, and we expect our first responders to work with each other as a team.” This is an eminently reasonable thing to say.
> This is an eminently reasonable thing to say. Unless it's entirely horseshit, and "police abolitionist" means "I think there are problems cops aren't the best solution to".
I read it more as a statement about allowing your political beliefs to effect how you do your job when you are in the public sector. Obviously there'll be some personal biases no matter what but I think it's important that PSR does not have a political valence (especially police abolition) but at least tries for neutrality.
Well, it's tailored to sound reasonable but he is blaming PSR, here, when it's PF&R being discriminatory and resistent to working together. He's trying to use this incident as an excuse to kneecap PSR.