Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: I'm Alex Stone, former military service member and law enforcement officer, now CEO of Echelon Protected Services, one of the fastest growing private security firms on the west coast. And this is ride along, where our guests and I witness firsthand the issues affecting our community.
I believe our proven method of enacting meaningful change through compassion and understanding is the best way to make our streets a safer place and truly achieve security through community.
[00:00:44] Speaker B: I'm Alan Claussen. I'm editor and publisher of the Northwest examiner newspaper. We're here today for a ride along with Pacific echelon security services in Portland, Oregon.
[00:01:25] Speaker C: The editing, for editing purposes, they can sync up the audio and the video later. All right, well, let's just walk and talk. So a lot of the work we do is with the house's population, which is probably one of the reasons you're here today. You probably want to ask a lot of questions.
[00:01:44] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:01:44] Speaker C: And I thought this would be a good place to start because this kind of tells my story. Where I came from, I used to be in law enforcement. I don't know if you've read the news articles.
[00:01:54] Speaker D: I believe it was some little place in the coast range.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:01:59] Speaker D: Forgetting the town.
[00:02:00] Speaker C: But I signed a non disclosure, so I'm not allowed to talk about it.
[00:02:03] Speaker D: Yeah. Okay. I've read about that.
[00:02:05] Speaker C: It's in the Oregonian, and CNN picked it up. Fox News and New York Daily News.
I was a whistleblower.
[00:02:13] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:13] Speaker C: And during that same time, I actually went through a divorce as well. And I ended up houseless myself. I was homeless.
And for two years, I slept in my vehicle in this parking lot.
[00:02:27] Speaker D: In this parking lot.
[00:02:28] Speaker C: That's why we're here.
[00:02:29] Speaker D: Yeah, you said yon. Okay, now I get the connection.
[00:02:31] Speaker C: So I was going to show you. Sometimes I would park here where that van is.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:36] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:02:36] Speaker C: And the reason I chose McDonald's is 24 hours a day.
[00:02:39] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:02:40] Speaker C: So I felt safe here.
[00:02:41] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: And they have great Internet.
[00:02:44] Speaker D: I wouldn't have known.
[00:02:45] Speaker C: Yeah. The Internet is actually amazing here. And I was working security, didn't really know what I was going to do in life, and so I ended up here, homeless.
What years would that would have been? 17 and 18.
[00:03:02] Speaker D: 2017 and 18.
[00:03:03] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:03] Speaker D: Okay. Not long ago.
[00:03:05] Speaker C: No, not long ago. And I survived two winters here with no heat in that vehicle, as you can imagine.
[00:03:12] Speaker D: In the same vehicle?
[00:03:13] Speaker C: No, different vehicle.
[00:03:14] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:03:14] Speaker C: No.
That vehicle is worth about $150,000.
[00:03:18] Speaker D: Yeah. You could have sold that and got yourself a place.
[00:03:20] Speaker C: Yeah. No, when my brother passed away, my brother was in the steel teams, and he died on active duty. And there was a van that was given to me out of his trust, out of his estate. Right. And so I lived in that van, which is not here today.
[00:03:36] Speaker D: It's a different van.
[00:03:37] Speaker C: And when I was here, I was doing security work, and I was starting my company. I really didn't know what I was going to do. I went back to Lewis and Clark, got a master's degree in teaching, realized I didn't really want to do teaching. I kind of liked security work. As a police officer, I would moonlight and take on security jobs through the fraternal order of police. I was on the board of the Fop for Oregon. We would get jobs, and I would take jobs every now and then. So I decided to start a security company.
And the first contract I had was the yards at Union Station.
[00:04:11] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:04:12] Speaker C: And I would work at the yards, but I would sleep here, and there's a bathroom. I'll show you the bathroom later. But I would go in the bathroom.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: And that's where I would shower every.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: Day, was in that bathroom.
[00:04:22] Speaker D: Okay, so you were doing security work there, and perhaps some other security worker would say, what are you doing here?
[00:04:29] Speaker C: Correct? Yes, exactly.
[00:04:32] Speaker D: You have to have some professional courtesy, maybe.
[00:04:35] Speaker C: And when I was here, all these cars that are parked here now, these used to be people that did long haul trucking for the place next door.
[00:04:44] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:04:45] Speaker C: And that pretty much ceased to exist. This is all pretty much houseless, folks like that rv right there. And it's consistently changed over the past, since 2017 to five, six years.
[00:04:56] Speaker D: Yeah. I've learned that there's a camper or van on a curb where there aren't homes, for instance. There's probably homeless people.
[00:05:04] Speaker C: Almost always it's some type of or illicit activity.
A lot of prostitution, a lot of drug dealing will take place in an rv.
Right. And it's not a mobile vehicle. So as a law enforcement person, the mobile vehicle exception to search that vehicle doesn't exist because it wasn't moving when you saw it.
And so a lot of people even in shelters, because they could get conjugal visits in a shelter. So there's no sex allowed in shelters, so they have to use tents or rvs. Okay. So you see a lot of that.
It's just pretty common practice.
[00:05:44] Speaker D: Yeah, I guess, if you think these things through.
It makes sense, though, if you're normal person, you don't go through those processes to figure out how do their lives fit together.
[00:05:57] Speaker C: Yeah. One of the reasons I think I chose McDonald's was when I was a kid. I was also homeless.
[00:06:03] Speaker D: Yeah, you told me about that. In fact, though, I think when I did the story with you, I said you were homeless after coming here in 2009. So I had the wrong era.
[00:06:15] Speaker C: Correct? Yes.
That's fine.
Everything in life is about trajectories. Try to get as close as you can to the truth, and so that's fine.
[00:06:25] Speaker D: Yeah.
Sometimes you're right. You don't ask the questions at the time because you don't know later you might need the detail.
But I remember when I make a mistake.
[00:06:40] Speaker C: Yeah, I bet.
[00:06:42] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:06:42] Speaker C: Mistakes always hurt. Even though we're walking around right now. You're here to interview me, right?
[00:06:48] Speaker D: I mean, it's part of the big process. I want to know what goes on in our neighborhood and the people and companies, organizations that are players that make things happen or important to the community.
[00:07:02] Speaker C: Okay?
[00:07:02] Speaker D: So that's my interest in you and your work. And I do it in pieces. Not everything I do is. I mean, I'm not taking notes here today, but building relationships, building sources, is really the key to doing good, reliable news.
[00:07:22] Speaker C: Do you want to go look and talk to some folks? Do you want to ask me questions here? We can roll out and meet up with some of the echelon people and the loving one. Other people.
[00:07:30] Speaker D: Yeah, let's do that.
[00:07:30] Speaker C: All right. Let's go do.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: That's is.
[00:07:59] Speaker C: We'll jump in here behind the dispatch.
So this. When we took this property over, major chronic issue.
There's a guy who lives across the street. I mean, he was stabbed right here in the back in the middle of the day. Stabbed right here. And so constantly fighting, drug dealing, guns, shootouts. There's a shootout in this store right here.
And then, of course, that little area right there that's perfect for our seating.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: And loitering. That always a chronic issue.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: And we finally had to build those relationships and get it in the mind of people.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Hey.
[00:08:40] Speaker C: Okay.
It's dark in here, so we'll grab a case of water.
[00:08:47] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:08:54] Speaker C: I'm just saying. Hi. It's good to see you, Shay.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: So this is our dispatch area.
[00:08:59] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:09:00] Speaker C: So it's usually really quiet in here because they need to be able to.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Concentrate and focus when they're running dispatch.
And then we have a kitchener break room.
[00:09:08] Speaker C: This flag is in honor of my brother. He died in 2017, and the parks department decommissioned a flag that used to fly over the USS Arizona memorial. And so this is the flag.
[00:09:23] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:09:24] Speaker C: He was stationed out of Hawaii at the time.
[00:09:26] Speaker D: Yeah.
Biggest one I've seen.
[00:09:31] Speaker C: Yeah, it's pretty big.
When we bought this unit, I looked at this wall and I said, I.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: Finally have a place to put this dang thing.
[00:09:43] Speaker C: Not much really going on here. Like I said, we tend to be in the field. We tend to do most of our.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: Reporting in the field.
[00:09:50] Speaker C: We want people to be in the field, engaging, because community engagement is what leads to transformation. And this is more of a dispatch office. Good times.
So officer shows up to work, he has to grab a radio and he grabs a tote. Right. The radio is how we all communicate to each other. So we're going to walk back to the yards.
[00:10:12] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:10:16] Speaker C: So most properties have like emergency codes for law enforcement or fire to get in and out. And they typically have like a ten.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Code or twelve code, which are codes.
[00:10:28] Speaker C: That are used by law enforcement.
And so that's what I just did. I didn't need the key.
So this was my Shower. This is the room that I showered in for two years when I was homeless, living out of my van.
[00:10:47] Speaker D: Okay. Showered from the sink.
[00:10:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: Shower from the sink.
[00:10:51] Speaker C: Very humbling.
[00:10:53] Speaker D: Yeah, very humbling.
[00:10:56] Speaker C: All right.
[00:10:59] Speaker D: I've been in some public restrooms where people were bathing or whatever.
Yeah. It's a grim situation.
[00:11:09] Speaker C: Yeah, it is.
Most people that are homeless, they have no sense of worth, no sense of agency. Right. And so that's part of the reason why we chose to.
That's part of the reason why we chose.
You're good, bro.
So this is actually a PPB cop break room.
[00:11:37] Speaker D: Oh, okay.
[00:11:38] Speaker C: They break in here. We use it sometimes as well. You can see all the Portland patrol, but it's very rare. They're so busy going call, to call, to call to call. Five years ago, you would see a cop in here a lot, writing reports, meeting with new recruits. But you just don't see them in here anymore. I think it's because they're just so busy, they don't even have time to be in here. So it's kind of sad. It used to help out a little bit with having law enforcement on site.
[00:12:09] Speaker D: Sure.
[00:12:10] Speaker C: And then this is our comms room.
[00:12:14] Speaker D: Right.
[00:12:15] Speaker C: So officers come and they grab a tote.
These are our totes. So every officer carries a tote. These are probably the totes that need to be refilled.
[00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:28] Speaker C: Hygiene kits, toothbrushes, deodorant, all kinds of clothes. And Officer Burr, who I think she doesn't work today, she comes in and she fills these up twice a week.
Some water, ready made meals. That looks better than MRe.
So oranges, socks, obviously. Socks is really important. During the cold weather, it's getting warmer, so a lot more cooling towels, a.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Lot more water that we can give out.
[00:13:08] Speaker C: And then we got a radio.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:13:16] Speaker C: All right.
Now we have a radio.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: We can take calls.
[00:13:24] Speaker E: He got on me from my neighbors that my baby daddy paid my inheritance money. Remember I told you my story?
[00:13:30] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:13:31] Speaker E: Remember I told you I'm not really human?
[00:13:33] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:13:34] Speaker E: Like an earth angel.
[00:13:35] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:13:35] Speaker E: Remember I told you I got spiritual and physical protection?
[00:13:38] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:13:38] Speaker E: They got this motherfucker going in my house when I'm at work.
I'm getting the fuck out of here. If I had to fucking shoot somebody's head off. When was that the fuck I'm about to do? You tell them I fucking be on my shit right now, I will shoot them, I promise. I try to knock on my door so I won't have to fucking shoot nobody. Bro, I didn't molest and kill my kids. Their father did. Now they paying everybody my money, so I won't find love or job money. Nothing.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:14:11] Speaker E: They kill me with all witchcraft and shit.
[00:14:14] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:14:15] Speaker E: Tell them to bring it on.
[00:14:16] Speaker C: I will.
[00:14:16] Speaker E: I've been trained for lifetimes for this shit right here, this spiritual warfare.
[00:14:21] Speaker C: I got you.
[00:14:22] Speaker E: I've been trained for lifetime.
[00:14:24] Speaker C: Yeah, I got you.
[00:14:27] Speaker E: Time to go my shit now.
[00:14:32] Speaker C: 701 cruise, can you hear me?
[00:14:34] Speaker E: Yes. This could be on the news. Y'all will be back. This should be on the news. I've already seen it. I'm very clairvoyant and a Claire audience. I hear demons, I see spirits. I hear you see shit before even fucking. Is this on the news, bro?
It's going to be on the news.
[00:14:55] Speaker C: So I'm going to go tell these apartments.
[00:14:56] Speaker E: It's going to be on the fucking news.
[00:14:58] Speaker C: I'm going to go see if they actually had.
[00:14:59] Speaker E: Because I'm going to make it happen, bro. I got my own movement.
[00:15:03] Speaker C: What's up, man?
[00:15:03] Speaker E: You might not, but they right here with me. Come on, big Mike.
[00:15:09] Speaker D: What was that word you used? She's in.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Meth psychosis.
[00:15:16] Speaker C: So when you have a break from reality. But the break isn't a mental health problem. It's not common. She doesn't have a mental illness. I've known her for three years. Her daughter used to live here, and her daughter was sexually abused by her husband. We had to move her three times. Because the husband kept finding out where she was.
[00:15:31] Speaker D: Yes.
[00:15:32] Speaker C: I think he got locked back up, but I've never seen her like that, ever. So that I'm concerned. And she's lost about 40 pounds of weight.
[00:15:40] Speaker D: Wow.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:15:46] Speaker C: She just.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: It's very considerate of it.
[00:16:26] Speaker C: Gosh, she needs her head.
[00:16:28] Speaker D: But she just went down. I guess she must have tripped.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: I think so. I don't know what, but I really think that lady should have probably seen an ambulance. I think she hit her head.
[00:16:51] Speaker D: She went down fast and hard.
[00:16:53] Speaker C: She did.
[00:16:54] Speaker D: And your head accelerates when you do that.
[00:17:03] Speaker C: Submit one. So, like I was saying, in the car, observing report doesn't work. Right.
And pretending to be law enforcement doesn't work either, because even though security and law enforcement have similar goals, they're actually completely diametrically opposed to each other. Right. Law enforcement is over here trying to get people in jail that do need to act, duty to arrest. Right. And on the right side, you have security that is really trying to protect people, protect people's rights, protect people's property.
So it's more like the civil rights organization versus law enforcement. Right.
So Reed and I said, hey, how can we maximize the dynamic that currently exists in the private security market? How can we make that the best possible scenario? And we decided to go with basically overseas operations model where you work with nonprofits and you maximize community engagement, so much so that criminal elements do not want to even be in the area.
Right. And so you overemphasize community engagement. Everything that we do is about community engagement.
Right. Saying hi to the businesses, always being out in public, helping out with nonprofits. Like, that's why we do the Blanche house.
We want people to see us there, and we want to know everyone's name. Well, if they're giving out three meals a day, free meals, that's where everyone's going.
Right. Having conversations during that mealtime. We're going to find out who the drug dealers are. We're going to find out who's been hitting who, who's been trying to take over this block and get all the information, getting that human intelligence. So we're going to hook up with Spencer and Terrence here.
[00:18:57] Speaker D: Okay.
You're describing things that somebody must have thought of before you. Right. Did you read or how did you put this together?
[00:19:08] Speaker C: I worked overseas in, know, northern Somalia, these areas, Eritrea. And I saw there's so much criminal activity. But when the UN backed up with Security and international bodies would go in to do community engagement, so irrigation projects, these things, the criminal element would stay out of that region.
And so it's just the perfect model. You come in, you bring the nonprofits, and you make all the other private industry people help engage that model. And when you're out here doing that work, you're more eyes. You're witnesses. You put a bunch of witnesses among criminals. Those criminals are afraid to commit crimes because you have built in witnesses. Right? It's like the civil rights movement. How did civil rights change America? By being on the street, by owning space outside and say, we're going to control the space. We're going to violate these unjust laws in your space to prove to you that at any moment we have the numbers to bring about transformation. And when you do that, when they show the pictures of the dogs and the fire hoses, it's such evil, and it's apparent, it's in your face, it's palpable.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: It's on tv.
[00:20:27] Speaker C: You see evil for what it is, and it makes the people that want to commit that evil afraid to do it again. Because there's witnesses, there's people that can see what's going on. So when we're out here engaging the community, MS 13, 18th streeters, rolling 60, they're afraid to come and engage in activity because we're out here owning the streets. It's like a civil rights protest. Right, but we're protesting against crime.
[00:20:55] Speaker D: You mentioned the names of gangs that are in Portland. Yes, right. They're right here.
I've heard you mention those names, but I don't know them. Normal people don't know those names. Yeah.
[00:21:08] Speaker C: Ten years ago, there were no nationally.
[00:21:10] Speaker A: Affiliated street gangs in Oregon.
[00:21:14] Speaker D: How many years ago?
[00:21:15] Speaker C: Just ten years ago. Just a decade ago. That means that these local clicks, these local gangs were not paying national dues to gangs outside of Oregon. Okay, so you have gypsy jokers, which is like the biker gang they control. They have like, gangs underneath them, right? Prison gangs, street gangs that run drugs for them. But you didn't have a national organization. So, like, if someone says, hey, I'm a blood or I'm a crit, that chapter wasn't paying dues to a chapter down in LA to claim that. And they weren't receiving drugs and authority and monies to grow that organization here.
[00:21:53] Speaker D: Okay?
[00:21:54] Speaker C: They were just claiming to be crips.
[00:21:55] Speaker D: But now I see.
[00:21:56] Speaker C: Now you go to St. John's.
Every five to ten blocks in St. John's, you see a giant 18, because the 18th streeters from California moved up here and acclaimed that entire territory. That is their territory.
[00:22:09] Speaker D: Okay? That's a level hierarchy here.
[00:22:12] Speaker C: Complete hierarchy. I tell this to people all the time. Portland used to be a village, and it's graduated to become a major city. And part of that becoming a major city is you have true criminal elements. Armenians, Romani, Russians, Chinese, Triads, Gulf cartels, Sinaloa cartel. You have real criminal elements that are involved, that have come here to make money, and they've invested a lot of money and time here, and they're going to make their return, and they're not going to leave till they get that money.
[00:22:45] Speaker D: Yeah. I've thought of even people who fly a sign at the freeway that's part of an operation, because that space is rented in some way. If you or I wanted to claim it, there'd be someone coming along to enforce it and say, no, you're not entitled. So that says, this is an organization that has different levels, and there's apparently enough money being made that way to pay others to give you your franchise, if you will. Yeah.
[00:23:15] Speaker C: To get franchise out. Exactly.
We've seen u hauls, u Haul trucks drive through old town and open up the back at like, four or five in the morning. Go and grab a tent. They grab a trap tent, they throw it on the curb, and they grab a guy from the back, and they say, you're going to be in this tent. Here's your dope. Sell the dope.
[00:23:36] Speaker D: Yeah.
And we go around trying to clean up a few tents, but not as many as they're putting out.
[00:23:46] Speaker C: Correct? Yeah. And it's not even about cleaning up the tents. It's about giving people hope, a sense of self agency, a sense of self worth. It's about going to someone to say, hey, when you were in second grade and you were in class and your homeroom teacher asked you to come up and tell the class what you wanted to be, when you grow up, did you really think that you would write down, I want to be homeless? On the streets of Portland, in the heart of every person is a dream.
To be somewhere better than they are, and the dreams here are drowning. You can ask anyone here, when's the last time you talked to a caseworker? When's the last time someone came by your tent to see how you were doing? And they'll say, no one's ever come by. Two months. That's the average time. They'll say, two months, alan, these people have no self worth.
[00:24:34] Speaker D: But two months was the length of.
[00:24:36] Speaker C: What the last time they spoke to a case manager or anyone came by the tent.
[00:24:41] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:24:41] Speaker C: When someone's in their absolute worst point in life, that is when you have to meet them. When they're in crisis, they don't have enough self agency.
To even think that they can pack their own bags and go find a place, it doesn't exist within them. You have to plant that seed. You have to build the dream in them. Every day you got to come by four or five times and keep watering that dream and feeding that dream. And eventually they're going to say, hey, you know what? I'm ready for that shelter. I'm ready to go home. I'm ready to talk to my mom. I'm ready to go up the streets. I'm ready to stop engaging in sex work. I'm ready to stop doing growth. It takes building that relationship over time and planting that seed and building that hope, giving them hope, giving them a sense of self worth. When you go buy a tent, you're telling someone, hey, I stopped by where you live to tell you, hey, how are you doing today?
And that makes them feel good. It gives them worth it. Says someone cared enough about me to come check in on me. I didn't have to walk 2 miles or 2 hours and wait in some line to have some person tell me they're going to take a lunch. They don't have time for me to.
[00:25:50] Speaker D: Check in and know their name and remember their name.
[00:25:52] Speaker C: Yeah, that's what matters. Nothing else works.
Let's go talk to these guys.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:03] Speaker C: Hey, guys.
Ken. See, I love you, bro. How you doing? Good, how you doing?
[00:26:14] Speaker D: Good, man.
[00:26:14] Speaker F: Good. Hey, Spencer.
[00:26:16] Speaker D: Spencer. Alan Klaus.
[00:26:17] Speaker C: Nice to meet you, brother.
[00:26:18] Speaker D: Nice to meet you.
[00:26:18] Speaker C: Pleasure. Terrence and Alan.
[00:26:19] Speaker D: Terrence. Yeah. Spencer, I've run a photograph of you doing the paper.
[00:26:24] Speaker C: Oh, really?
[00:26:24] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:26:25] Speaker C: This is the editor in chief of the northwest examiner.
[00:26:27] Speaker F: Oh, okay.
[00:26:28] Speaker C: So they have no idea. We try to make ride alongs as we don't tell anyone what we're doing. We just kind of ride along and show.
[00:26:33] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:26:34] Speaker G: Yeah.
[00:26:34] Speaker F: Is that what you guys are doing?
[00:26:35] Speaker C: Right?
Tell us what's going on. Well, they're getting ready to post this.
[00:26:42] Speaker F: Area, so we're just helping people with. He wants to relocate. He doesn't want to go into a shelter.
[00:26:46] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:26:46] Speaker F: He wants to relocate, so we're going to help him. He's going to put stuff in the back of the truck and I'm going to help him go where he needs, where he wants to go.
[00:26:52] Speaker C: If he did want to get into a shelter, what beds are available right now?
[00:26:56] Speaker F: Right now? What time is it? Let me see.
1230. Probably none right now, to be honest with you.
[00:27:04] Speaker C: None. And why are there no beds available, Spencer?
[00:27:06] Speaker F: Because the city doesn't have. They're only allotted about 200 beds. The county has most of the beds. And so I work with the fire department to try to get as many people as we can inside. Unfortunately, we're limited. And so if I call at 930 in the morning, there might be one or two, but if you call after 1230 or 01:00 they're usually all full. And so the goal is to eventually work with the county because the county has way more beds in the city.
[00:27:34] Speaker D: But you can't take people to the county shelters now.
[00:27:37] Speaker F: No, the county reserves all those for their own workers. And so we have to go over the parameters with the city. Yeah, so we are actually trying to work. We're trying to work with the new VHRC to try to get a couple of beds with them as well. And then eventually, hopefully, we can try to work with the county to try to get like 20 or 30 beds.
[00:28:00] Speaker D: VhRC, the behavioral health resources. Yes, I know. Yeah.
[00:28:04] Speaker F: So we're volunteering with them to try to help them as well. And so inmates that they have available. So it's almost like a Robin hom Peter to pay ball.
And the goal is, as well as a nonprofit, our goal is to put ourselves out of business. That's our goal. If we put ourselves out of business, that means everything.
And so if we had the resources and the beds, I could get 15 to 20 a day inside, easy, depending on the day. When it's really hot, people want to go inside. When it's really cold, people want to go inside. Days like today, people don't mind being outside because it's not too hot, it's not too cold. But our goal every day is we're out here on the streets and we go, I might contact somebody 30 times. And they're good. I learn them. I learn their name, what they need. We contact them. They're like family, right? That 31st time we contact them, they'd be like, Spence, I can't do this anymore, man. I got to get off the streets.
[00:29:07] Speaker G: Boom, let's go.
[00:29:09] Speaker D: But there is a number you can call now and say, right now, do you have a bed or do you not? And you can get an answer.
[00:29:15] Speaker G: Correct.
[00:29:15] Speaker D: Okay. What I had heard that there wasn't even that centralized information system, but they can do that. Yeah.
[00:29:23] Speaker F: So working with the fire department, the Silva brothers. You know the Silva brothers? No, they work for the fire department. When people get posted, the Silver brothers come out and try to get people into shelters. They come out beforehand. Right. So I call them and go, hey, I have a person that wants to get inside. What can we do? They'll either tell me, hey, we have a bed, we don't have a bed.
And so then we kind of put them on a little waiting list so they'll be on our listing day. But it's frustrating because if somebody says, hey, I want to get into rehab, we can do that. That's available for us.
[00:29:57] Speaker D: Right.
[00:29:57] Speaker F: We can get them into Hooper detox, or we can get them into a mental health facility.
But the beds, if somebody just wants to get us right now.
[00:30:10] Speaker D: And I didn't know the fire bureau was so directly involved.
[00:30:14] Speaker F: Yeah. The Silver brothers are amazing. They're amazing. They're out here every day, like, we are trying to help people, and we have a partnership with them, and we've been working with them to get people inside.
[00:30:25] Speaker D: Okay.
That's good to hear. Yeah. I was part of the volunteer effort the last summer to get the 405 area cleaned up of tents, and then after that, they put up the fencing that ODOT took down.
[00:30:44] Speaker F: Right.
[00:30:44] Speaker D: But even that was only a small part of this 405 quarter.
[00:30:49] Speaker F: The important part is the people. Right?
[00:30:51] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:30:51] Speaker F: The tents don't look the best, but at the end of the day, we want to get people inside.
[00:30:56] Speaker D: How about bivy Lakes Hope center? Do you take people there?
[00:30:59] Speaker F: We do. It's very rare because of their threshold is so high.
[00:31:08] Speaker D: I thought you could go there as you were, and they check you out for a few days.
[00:31:13] Speaker F: No, you have to be clean for over 24 hours before you can go there.
[00:31:17] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:31:17] Speaker F: And then they also test when you're there to make sure you're staying clean.
[00:31:21] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:31:22] Speaker F: Bobby lakes is phenomenal. I love Bobby Lakes. The problem is that most people out here aren't. They're not clean.
I think it's starting to make a difference.
When I say we, I mean the community.
I think Nate Takara with the fire department, the Silva brothers, working with the city on this stuff is making a difference. And so I'm just happy to be a part of it. And slowly try to keep grinding.
[00:31:53] Speaker D: And you work for love one another.
[00:31:54] Speaker F: I work for loving one another. Correct.
[00:31:56] Speaker D: Good. Great. Nice. Same air?
[00:31:59] Speaker G: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:32:00] Speaker C: 47.
Powerful stuff, right?
[00:32:08] Speaker D: Yeah.
I didn't ask his background, but Spencer.
[00:32:15] Speaker C: Was in law enforcement for years, and then he was a mental health therapist at Emmanuel.
Great background for stuff like, you know, you know how to be safe, but you also know how to help people.
How's it going?
[00:32:37] Speaker D: Yeah, this is an area been by an awful. I mean, almost daily over the years.
What is the effect when new?
What is the effect when they put new apartment buildings here. Does that civilize the area a little bit?
[00:32:56] Speaker C: Those aren't terms I would use.
The process of gentrification is a real thing, but, no, I don't think it really makes a difference in this is this property is owned by ODOT, so this is the mismanagement of government that's caused this problem.
And I know that there's going to be a lot of people who hate me for saying that, but what's going on in Portland is an urban refugee, Cris, and we're willing to spend all this money to go to war, to fight people who did nothing against us, to fight illegal wars in Iraq, but we're not willing to spend money to help people that are literally refugees in our own country.
This is private property. I mean, public property.
And the security company isn't here. This isn't our contract.
Echelon doesn't come here. This is not all nonprofit work.
If we're lucky today, there's two people working here today. We're lucky today. If we can convince four to six people to get into a shelter, that's a great day for us.
[00:34:18] Speaker D: What about the city's new big shelter programs that are supposed to be staff, social workers and all? Is that a system that can help?
[00:34:28] Speaker C: I think it is, yes. I'm an advocate for larger shelters that are strategically placed in quadrants in the city. I think they have proposed three, but I would do four. Northwest, northeast, southwest, southeast. So that way, all the city quadrants are covered, and you're not taking the refugees of one area and portioning them into another geographic location. We're not just giving people free rides to the east side. Right. Or having cops drop off homeless people in Vancouver, Washington, which I get reports all the time that they're always seeing city officials from Portland bringing homeless people over and dropping them off in downtown Vancouver. I get reports like this. I get reports all the time about this.
[00:35:14] Speaker D: Well, I know that's why Vancouver didn't want to participate in the max over the bridge that export homeless.
[00:35:23] Speaker C: Yeah. And so you got to take care of your neighborhood problems. So you got to have a large center that are geographically located in these four quadrants so that you're not sending people that far away. The resources are close, and then you have to have a larger shelter system. But a decentralized shelter system is what's needed long term. So to transition someone that you capture in a larger shelter with wraparound services, let's say you have medical there, you have a pharmacy there, everything you need, ged, you can go to school, everything. Imagine it all like a real refugee center that we would have for Afghans coming here. A real refugee center, professional and nice. And then once they have acclimated to that lifestyle and they're willing and wanting to transition, then you transition them into a tiny home, you transition them into a house, apartment, you work on housing while you're there. I think that you got to do that because people here, you're not going to get them directly, but it sounds.
[00:36:33] Speaker G: Like an individual that dealt with just shortly ago.
[00:36:40] Speaker C: That was our call. That was our caller, the lady.
[00:36:44] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:36:49] Speaker C: If something pops off, we'll go handle that.
So, yeah, I mean, hey, would you mind talking to us for a second? We're just doing a documentary.
It's called Opsec Media Group. We're working with nonprofits to show the work that we're doing in downtown.
[00:37:07] Speaker G: Great.
[00:37:08] Speaker C: I'd like to see some of it. Well, this is it right beginning. This is Alan Claussen. He's the editor in chief of the Northwest examiner. So I was homeless as a child for about a year, a year and a half with my mom, lived in also Bill. And then as an adult I lived out of my vehicle at the McDonald's on Eon Avenue for about two years.
[00:37:28] Speaker G: No, I know where that is up there on 30th.
[00:37:32] Speaker C: So for between 2016 17 to 2019, I lived there in my car because their Internet is amazing.
[00:37:39] Speaker G: Yeah, it's within 25ft of building. It's really good. And then it skips off and bounces off everything. And then Xfinity worked really hard to eliminate all the free wifi downtown by taking out the little bells that were on here so that everyone could have wifi when they were buzzing through rush hour traffic. Went into downtown to all the concrete structures when Howers and Mason built all.
[00:38:04] Speaker C: The bridges over here.
[00:38:07] Speaker G: I'm from one of the oldest families here in Portland.
[00:38:09] Speaker C: Oh, that's awesome.
[00:38:10] Speaker G: I became homeless by choice to help others.
[00:38:14] Speaker C: That's wonderful.
[00:38:15] Speaker G: I got hit by a semi on lk's birthday 2018. Able up to use Bokane, Washington and hit some bad weather.
Well, they had 3ft of snow in the driveway.
We turned around, came back, ran out of fuel twice. Nobody wants to help anybody. It was right after the big fire about Molo.
[00:38:40] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:38:41] Speaker G: I got hit by a semi on my way home of Rooster Rock State Park. Mallmarker, 23 sports had a delivery driver taking 80,000 pounds of gluten free oats from Ontario, Canada, to Fred Meyer and Safeway Bakery. She hit me at 70 when she and took my 95 tahoe and sent it. Yeah, well, I'll send it westbound.
[00:39:07] Speaker C: So you must have had a lot of surgeries. No.
[00:39:09] Speaker G: Walked away without a strap.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness.
[00:39:12] Speaker C: It's a miracle. That's what I call.
[00:39:13] Speaker G: I got pictures of it, posted a picture of it on Facebook right away. Did four interviews with television cruisers the next morning.
A voice like yours, you could be doing our job.
[00:39:24] Speaker C: Yeah, it's true.
[00:39:27] Speaker G: And I said, oh, yeah, thanks.
I couldn't get back in a vehicle and drive for a while. PTSD was just fucked. And where I was living after my divorce, I couldn't stand abusive family. The guy got his fifth DUI and beat up his girlfriend and went to jail and lost their house.
I came downtown to hang out with some friends and saw that there was a little need for someone that could fix stuff, that could provide help and made me feel better. I've got two types of cancer. Was given a short time to live. I believe that there was no one has an expiration date. So live each day like it's your last. Enjoy it. Help others. Pass on your knowledge and help somebody.
[00:40:21] Speaker D: You get any treatment for your cancer?
[00:40:24] Speaker G: I don't want it.
[00:40:27] Speaker C: I got Colonox on the top.
[00:40:29] Speaker G: Everything I eat coming in, terrible coming out, and I was 375 pounds. But down here in the park, I got right by. Had a successful life. All of a sudden, a couple of bad things turned into a snowball effect, and then it became an avalanche.
[00:40:48] Speaker C: What's your plan today? Tonight? What's your plan?
[00:40:51] Speaker G: My mom right now, my bike home that somebody borrowed and then stripped over here.
[00:41:01] Speaker C: Are you planning on keeping your tent here tonight?
[00:41:05] Speaker G: I have a tent on 17th, and.
[00:41:08] Speaker C: I think it's like, how many people are here that are here but are living in Portland? And how many are travelers?
[00:41:16] Speaker G: 80% are people come from Seattle, Texas, and Arizona. Why is that illegal to be homeless in those states? Well, I appreciate you talking to my knee down there. Yeah, I mean, I try to help as much as possible, and I know everybody down here.
Not a bad thing.
[00:41:40] Speaker C: We got to roll.
[00:41:41] Speaker F: Are you trying to get inside then? Are you trying to get inside?
[00:41:45] Speaker G: Four years ago, it was 1400.
[00:41:50] Speaker F: So I'm asking you, are you trying to get inside?
[00:41:52] Speaker G: I wouldn't mind.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:41:54] Speaker F: Well, when we're done here, cut.
[00:41:55] Speaker C: Talk. But I gotta pray.
[00:41:56] Speaker G: I got to get my radio.
I love to go back out to.
[00:41:59] Speaker F: My parents talking to us. Terrence, when got the supply?
[00:42:02] Speaker G: My name is Patrick. I've been homeless down here in Portland since 2018. I had a bike stolen when rapid response cleared our area. And I found it today in pieces, but I found it.
Homeless shouldn't steal from the homeless, and it is tough enough out here, and it's going to get tougher.
Help others. That's the best thing you can do. Help others.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: Hey, Alex Stone here. Welcome to the ride along. We have a very special guest today. His name's Alan Claussen. I've known Alan as an associate, kind of, not really a friend, but someone in the media here in Portland, Oregon. He's kind of a famous guy. Alan was the founder of Northwest Examiner. Northwest examiner is a very popular periodical newspaper here in the Portland area, and he is currently still the editor in chief, and he's actually here to interview me. So I'm the subject of the interview today. Alan, do you want to introduce yourself? Say hi.
[00:43:11] Speaker B: Thanks, Alex.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: I've been in the northwest Portland neighborhood since the early 1980s and 1986, I started the examiner and trying to live and understand this neighborhood and put that into journalism, into articles that would look deeply at what's going on. And the longer I do this, the more deeply I am interested in looking what makes things click, what makes them break down, and that's what's put me in touch with Alex and his work for.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: That's amazing. You know, so many people don't really dedicate their entire life to one.
You know, Alan's kind of done that. He's dedicated his life to the discovery of truth here in the Portland area. And I know that a lot of people that I respect consider you a very important person. And so rather than just keep asking you questions, I'm going to hand it.
[00:44:14] Speaker C: Over to you, since you're the real.
[00:44:15] Speaker A: Journalist here and I'm going to ask you, ask me some questions.
[00:44:19] Speaker B: Well, I guess that's fair enough. After you've been reporting for a long time and writing editorials on it, I get used to making my own statements pretty much. But learning usually begins with a question as opposed to posing your own assumptions to it.
[00:44:41] Speaker A: Very true.
[00:44:41] Speaker B: So I'm fascinated how you have looked at a problem that has confounded people in cities across America, but maybe none more than in Portland, a place with great quality of life that has been slipping through our fingers through the problems of crime, homelessness, disorder, and just community breakdown. And in a short time, you've come with an analysis and a program that's been different than the status quo.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: Yeah, it has been. And I really attribute that to my background in nonprofit work. And we kind of discussed this during the ride along today, my background, even though I have been in law enforcement and I have served in the army, my background is really nonprofit work. I've been doing that since I was 19 years old.
The strongest mentor that I've had in my life, Jim Harrington, was in that world, and I really respected what he was doing. And I kind of dove in headfirst. And so when I was transitioning out of the military in law enforcement and starting the security company, it was a deep dive. I dove down deep, and I stayed down long. And I quickly realized there had to be a real solution to this. And the solution had to involve community.
It had to involve the role community plays in keeping itself safe. So not just law enforcement and not just one particular segment of society playing that role, but there has to be a way to engage a larger portion of community, including property owners, management companies, small businesses, journalists, even. And how do we get to a level of engagement that makes criminal elements unsafe, making them feel as if this is not a good business opportunity? There's too many eyes on the streets. There's too many people watching me. I would be better served, and the money I'm going to invest in this venture would be better served if I just take that money somewhere else. And so that's kind of what we went with.
[00:47:04] Speaker B: It's all about community. But community alone wasn't able to solve this problem.
Portland has had many active neighborhood associations, perhaps none more active than the Pearl District neighborhood association. And yet their extraordinary volunteer efforts finally reach their limits. There's also a place for a professional organization, or else you wouldn't be here, I suppose.
[00:47:33] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true.
Engagement alone is not the key. It's strategic engagement.
And thankfully, and I feel very honored, there's been a lot of important people, both in city government, county government, and in the corporate structures that have secretly and publicly came alongside me and said, what you're doing is the right thing. It's going to take us a while to catch up to you, but we want you to keep doing it. We believe in you. We know that this is the right thing. And those dollars have been able to come in, and we've been able to expand our program. And I think that the areas that we're in are safer. I think that ultimately, it is going to take a more robust and more strategic plan, both on the part of government and also private parties like corporations.
But, yeah, I think that community engagement, when you're strategic and you're doing things and you're doing them for the purpose of creating space that is uninviting to criminal elements. You win every time. You win every time.
In the World War II, we just called this nation building. And I think that there's a sense that in America, we stop nation building within our own nation.
We've given up on urban centers. We've given up on the homeless. That kind of JFK era of volunteerism has deteriorated. It's eroded. And I think that people, for whatever reason, there's been a cultural shift away from strategic community engagement, and there's been a lack of desire to want to work together to solve problems.
[00:49:27] Speaker B: The Portland situation, as I've seen it in past decades, concerning crime, lack of safety, has been, are you pro police or anti police?
[00:49:41] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: That was the breakdown. And we had a city commissioner who made the point that we need fewer police, defund the police, because, as she said, police don't make you safe. The community makes you safe. And yet that approach, at least under her leadership, went nowhere. But still, this question, pro or anti police, never seemed satisfying to me. Either you're a cheerleader for the police, and you forgive their offenses, excesses, or you're anti police and you maybe turn over or you trust that people on the fringes of society will follow the rules and make you safe, if only no one would harass them. And neither of those choices seem good.
[00:50:36] Speaker A: I think critically, at the very heart of what you're talking about is that there's been a sense of rapid polarization.
Yes, there's rapid polarization, and I think that that's just one segment of it.
I think that segment, the pro police or anti police, again, that's just a symptom of this larger polarization, where people no longer feel connected to each other in the sense that we're one community. People are subdivided, balkanized into subgroups and subcultures, and we no longer see each other as neighbors.
You no longer see your whole community as your neighborhood. You're seeing your smaller areas, your smaller subgroups. And this, I think, is part of the symptom or the systemic problem that is leading to the lack of desire to engage. There just seems to be a sense of disengagement at such a endemic level.
I don't think every city is going through this, but especially Portland. Portland is definitely going through this.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: When good citizens cannot own, be part of their community, feel safe in it, and find businesses and services all around them, but feel fearful they step back and the retreat. I think, as you've said before, when you abandon the public spaces, nothing good happens.
[00:52:10] Speaker A: That's right. It's like civil rights movement. If you want to own the space, you have to be in the space. You have to have a dream and a vision for that space, and you have to own it. People have to own that space. If you don't, criminals will come in and own that space.
[00:52:25] Speaker B: The answer in liberal Portland often has been that the answer to everything is more tolerance that we must put up with. Okay, that looks a little shady, dirty, whatever, but we need to put up with it until our whole community seems unacceptable, too dangerous or whatever. And some problems cannot be solved by simply tolerating everything.
[00:52:57] Speaker A: Yeah, and I talk about this a lot with a lot of my friends. It just seems like that this sense of tolerance is almost an extreme form of libertarianism. It's an anything goes type of idea, and no one can truly believe that that's going to be good for the general public or the general welfare. This type of anything goes policy.
At some point, we have to have a street where there's no feces.
Right? I mean, that should be a goal.
If I was in public sanitation, one of my goals would be, let's have a street with no needles and no urine and no feces. This would be a good goal for public sanitation. Right. But this idea of tolerance, it's this hyper libertarianism, I think that it's destroying our culture. It really is. And it makes no sense to me because I don't think that people in their own policies, in their own life, I don't think that people are treating themselves this way. I see that they're very responsible people. In Portland, there's people that have limits and boundaries on themselves, very responsible people, very nice people. But when it comes to other, this, you just have to give so much freedoms, and it makes no sense to me. Where is that coming from?
Where is that coming from, Alan?
[00:54:32] Speaker B: Well, it's certainly an extreme form of, and liberals, as the social psychologist Jonathan Height said, operate on like two main value systems, and it has to do with justice.
No, I'm sorry.
It would be equality and fairness. Those are the concepts.
And the conservatives recognize those things, but they balance them with, I think, four other values. They'll probably forget them. But it has to do with loyalty, authority, sanctity, which is something like religious, but basically the concept that some things are just inexplicably offensive, like theses on the sidewalk. You can't define it, but you know it's wrong when you see it, at any rate, a wider breadth of values. But if the only prism that you can look at activities through is it equal for everyone?
Is their fairness?
You can't deal with breakdowns in the system.
And I thought that was useful to see why maybe we often can't talk about the same things or why discussions get so limited.
I'm also wondering, have we reached a point where we cannot have livable, safe communities without private security?
Is that our future? Or how do you see this role in Portland or in Oregon?
[00:56:26] Speaker A: That's a great question. That's a really good.
Think that. So the way I look at safety is that safety has across, it spans many sectors. You have fire, right? You have EMT corrections, you have 911 centers, like BoEC, like bureaus of Emergency services and communications, these things. And then you have law enforcement. And so the interesting thing about law enforcement is that law enforcement is really the only one of those, including corrections, that derives its authority from the constitution, right, from the executive powers portion of the constitution. And it exists essentially, law enforcement exists essentially to violate people's rights in such a way that's ethical, legal, and moral right in order to conduct investigations. So when I was in law enforcement, if I had to conduct a traffic stop, I'm violating that fifth Amendment because I believe they broke a law. We have to investigate that. Let's say I smell alcohol emitting from the vehicle.
Smells like an alcoholic beverage. That might end up into a search. The search might end up into a series of questions, part of that investigation, which could then lead to a detention. The detention could end up into an arrest, and then you actually finally detain them in jail.
You're kind of like, based on probable cause and investigation, you're going up this ladder of escalation where people's rights are being more and more violated legally because you want to keep the public safe. You don't want this person to drive home and kill teenagers in a vehicle because they're intoxicated. Right. And so what we have here in Oregon is a unique situation in that all that authority, all the authority from that constitution, from the executive powers only goes to the government. So it's not like other states where they grant private companies the right of policing, like Disneyland. They say, hey, Disneyland should have their own police department. Well, that's crazy. Why would we give Disneyland a police department? That makes no sense. Right. Well, in Oregon, they don't do that. But in order to guarantee that private policing doesn't happen in the future, we have to have a robust private security program. Because private security, whether people believe it or not, is actually on the other side of the pendulum of law enforcement. People who are, I would say, ill informed or misguided.
They assume that private security and law enforcement are identical, and they call it private policing. But private policing, again, is really when you're giving the right of what a government has to a private institution.
Right. And then you're granting them authority in the public space to do something about it.
A private company, like a corporation, having the right to arrest someone. Why would a corporation need a right to arrest you, Alan? Corporations should not be arresting people. Right. The government. That's the government's job. Right. And so in order to make sure that there isn't a rise of the private police system, we have to have a robust private security. Robust private security, unlike law enforcement, is not an agent of the government.
It is an agent of the free citizen, that liberal citizen who has freedom and their own personhood and own rights because they're a human. And so private security exists to protect human rights.
[00:59:58] Speaker B: I appreciate that. It comes to another question. It exists for those who can hire private security.
[01:00:05] Speaker A: Correct.
[01:00:06] Speaker B: And so we do have parts of Portland that will never. The Pearl District is one of the most prosperous and the first one to step forward with such a bold effort to underwrite private security.
But what about the stricken areas of the city that also can't put two dimes together to pay for private security?
[01:00:29] Speaker A: I'm so glad you asked this question, Alan. The majority of the private security that we offer actually goes to these types of communities, because the people who own the housing for income restricted housing or government assisted housing. Right. The people who own that are usually almost always private companies or public private partnerships. Right. So in Portland, you have home forward, which is kind of like public housing, but not just home forward, but there are other companies where people, if you have a section eight voucher, you can go and get into another property that's income restricted, and you get funds that help you afford that housing to make it affordable housing. And so those apartment units, those spaces, is actually where I started this model.
I started this model primarily in a multifamily residential apartment complex located in the central district. And it was the highest call volume multifamily residential property for the Portland police. They were having dozens of calls, and one of the first weeks I worked there, someone actually got stabbed with a katana sword in the lobby of this apartment complex. And we were talking about this on the ride along. And so that apartment complex, 70% of the people that live there are poor people. They're income restricted people receiving funds from the state in order to gain access to this affordable housing. And so what did I do when I went there? We cleaned that place up. We stopped the people pimping in the hallways. We stopped the drug dealing. And so private security can work and can serve the poor because there's a symbiotic relationship between the landowner, who doesn't really want to own a slum.
They don't want to own a slum because slums don't make as much money as, well run properties, because a slum won't have, like, a 97, 98% rate of occupancy, whereas a slum. A slum will have maybe 85% occupancy. If you have a murder in a unit, that unit is not going to be occupied for months, so you're losing all that income. So a safe and livable neighborhood is actually the best thing. And so when I can go to these wealthier landowners and say, hey, I can clean up this property, and this property will actually make you money if you join in this neighborhood security plan and you let us help you make this property better for everybody. And they all love it because it really does work for everybody. It really does.
[01:03:14] Speaker B: Have you worked with other Portland bureaus and departments? I've heard it said that almost all city departments. Their work is made more complicated, difficult because of our chronic problems of homeless, camping crimes, and drugs.
It's not just private security or the police. It's other city departments.
[01:03:39] Speaker A: It is.
I'm not a specialist when it comes to the structures of the Portland government. And it's changing. Next year, I think we're going to have, like, 24 commissioners instead of 612. Yeah, something crazy.
I know that they all get bureaus, and those bureaus are managed, and they're not managed by people who've actually been in that profession.
They're managed by people that were elected.
I don't really understand the system of governance, and I will say this. I've lived in other cities. I'm from Texas, and the system of governance in Portland is unique. It's a unique form of governance. I will say there is no executive. The mayor essentially is just an extra vote. And they run a board. They run a bureau like everybody else.
I think they're part of the decision making process of where those bureaus are assigned. But there's no guarantee that those bureaus are going to stay in any one person's hand. They switch very often every two years, I think they're switching hands.
[01:04:46] Speaker B: They can. The mayor calls the shot on that, but he can change bureau assignments rapidly or let them go for a full four years it's been a problem. But whatever it has been, it's on its way out because this new charter reform proposal is coming, which the council member, they will be city council members. They will not be many mayors. We'll have centralized administration.
[01:05:14] Speaker A: So, yeah, I guess currently it's still balkanized where they have their own little fiefdoms. They control these bureaus. And you can have two people on city council that don't like each other or the city commission running their bureaus. And because of personality conflicts, even though they're all struggling with one issue, there could be no communication.
[01:05:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
One bureau that has a minor role in a broader program can pull the plug and says, okay, none of you can play because I won't give this exactly essential element to it. But anyway, not just the police bureau. I understand. The fire bureau.
[01:05:51] Speaker A: Yeah, fire bureau is great. Yeah, the fire bureau.
The fire bureau has done a fantastic job. They're critically understaffed, equally to law enforcement, and there's not a lot they can do about it. Their budget has historically gone down with the rate of increase of the budget. The rate of increase actually has been much lower for the fire budget. And so whereas law enforcement or the police bureau, they have all this money to have all these new police officers on board, the fire department is actually losing spots. And they're the ones that I think are taking the brunt of the force when it comes to having to deal with the chronic issues of houselessness, the campfires, the building fires, because of campfires, the deaths, the overdoses, the medical calls, the mental illness calls the, hey, someone's in meth psychosis who we know we saw earlier today. Person has been completely normal most of the time. And today this person was obviously in some type of drug induced psychosis. And so they're taking all these calls because law enforcement doesn't have time. Law enforcement because they're critically understaffed. They're just going call to call to call to call. And the fire department's performed extremely well. They're doing the best they can, but they can't go out there and actually just patrol. They have to sit and wait because they need to take a bunch of resources to one place. It's not just a police officer who's really taking their authority. One police officer, and you have the authority to manage a scene. But for a critical incident, for someone that'sick one sick person could require five or six people, two or three to work on them, maybe have a critical wound. Then you got to have someone drive the ambulance and so they need four or five people at each call whereas law enforcement needs like one or two sometimes. And so it's very difficult. They've done a great job. I recently met with someone in the fire bureau, I'm not going to mention their name and we spoke for about 3 hours and they're doing an amazing job.
I don't want to get too down. I feel uncomfortable talking about the bureaus and their assignments because again, I'm not a specialist in the government and I don't know what roles they can play.
[01:08:15] Speaker B: But seem the stage that you're at now with echelon and the northwards conservancy is like putting out the fires. The most serious problems have to be addressed so we can begin to make community space free for.
[01:08:36] Speaker A: Right now.
[01:08:37] Speaker B: I would expect in time maybe a couple of three years that there's going to be a transition. The worst safety problems, the worst domination of public space that's going to be cleared up. So do you work your way out of his job or what further steps can you see that you could play towards keeping Portland safe and livable?
[01:09:01] Speaker A: That's an excellent question. I guess that's why you're the journalist.
So it is possible I work myself out of a job that is a common dynamic in the security industry. When you do such a great job and people feel safe and secure, they no longer think they need security. I actually don't think that's the case for Portland, unfortunately. I don't think that's the case.
People that I spoke to in the police bureau and other agencies, they believe, as do I, that this is a generational crime wave. That what we're experiencing here in Portland is something that was going to happen. Right. Just like in the 90s we had a generational crime wave. Crime, like everything, is cyclical, right. And in Oregon when you add on all of the unique characteristics of Oregon based on new legislation and new laws, measure 110, the decriminalization of narcotics, right. When you decriminalize narcotics, you don't have a lot of canines, police canines making those pretext stops, those drug stops, because a canine can't determine if it's a little bit of meth or a pound of meth in that vehicle. And so you have issues with or because of this, Oregon has become a haven for drugs and for criminal organizations to move drugs to other states and other locations. Right. Because they're less likely to get stopped. The lack of critical infrastructure and resources essentially did away with the traffic enforcement team for more than a year. With the police bureau. So I drive home on the five at the end of the day, and there are people in the Hov lane every day that are just one person. And I haven't seen a police officer, I've not seen a traffic stop on the five in three years.
And I'm on the five, interstate five, we call it the five here. And I'm on the five every day. And so traffic stops aren't happening. Right. And criminals know traffic stops aren't happening because they're smart, they're intelligent, and they have billions of dollars invested in their industry. Billions.
I think my role is here. It's going to be a long term role. And I think that private security at the end of the day is almost a hardening measure on the first tier, where you're protecting properties. Right. And then individuals, and then the second tier, with that community engagement, you're holding public space safe by making so many eyeballs available at any moment in that space that criminals know well, if I go down there and do x, y, and z, someone's going to see me, someone's going to see my car, someone's going to see my license plate.
That community engagement kind of keeps out that network. And so as long as I think I'm doing what I'm doing, and we keep doing a good job, I imagine that we'll be fine for the next three to five years.
[01:12:08] Speaker B: Okay. Once you've fixed all the public spaces so people are free and happy to be having events, and the dangerous people have vanished. Portland still isn't going to be fixed until our businesses can open and work. And maybe that's beyond your realm, but how might you be able to influence or look at this picture, how do we get retail and restaurants back like they were thriving again?
[01:12:41] Speaker A: So that's a great question. So I own commercial property, and I've owned commercial property before. And I believe that commercial investment comes from emotional investment. I think that people that are into people with a lot of money that invest into areas, they want to see community engagement, and they want to see that community emotionally invested in that geographic location. And so there's a company called Kimco, not a client.
They're the first vertically integrated real estate investment trust that was publicly traded chemco properties. And they invest in suburban space because there was such an investment in suburbs. Why was there an investment in that outer ring of real estate? Because of the 1990s. What happened in the 1990s? A generational crime wave.
Generational crime wave led to flight towards the suburbs, which then that emotional investment in that outer ring of suburban real estate, then led to commercial investment, right? And so that's how it's always going to flow. So as long as if we can take over the public space, we can get people to reengage in the urban areas, then people who have the money will see this community engagement and they'll say it's time to invest again, because they know the market always goes back up, right? And they know that other people are watching and waiting. And as soon as it gets better, everyone's going to want to invest at the same time. And this is why we have bubbles in real estate, right? Because emotional investment, crime waves, criminal waves. Covid, Covid. Taking away our third space, which is people are divesting emotionally from space. All of these play a factor, right, for real estate investors. And I do believe that once this crime wave does start to slow down, in the next three to five years, you'll see a radical investment into Portland, and you'll then have another boom period where it'll be great. I think it'll be like it was like 1015 years ago.
[01:14:57] Speaker B: You've mentioned that you haven't always been treated kindly by the news media.
And sometimes that is because you pose a threat to somebody, some sector, whatever.
What do you see? Do you see your program, your efforts, as threatening some elements of the status quo?
Or can you imagine?
[01:15:28] Speaker A: Let's all imagine like SpongeBob.
Yeah, we can use our imaginations. So I do believe that change is hard.
I've experienced deep and traumatic change in my own life. In a span of three years, I lost four family members that I was very close with, my uncle, my brother, my father, and my grandfather.
And that change changed me. And I decided not to become more bitter. I try to live through that and let that kind of wash over me and make me a better person. And, yeah, the rise of the public safety sector. Not only physical security, but just artificial intelligence security, cyber security. Right.
All levels of security. I mean, it is a growing industry, and it's going to continue to be a growing industry because it's so heavily integrated into innovation and technology.
And a lot of people are not ready for know Portland. Unlike a lot of cities, Portland has a statute that disallows the use of facial recognition.
Right. They do not allow facial recognition to be used. And there's great arguments for that, by the way, and I'm not pro or anti, but there are instances where if people's faces might have been uploaded to systems, then mass shootings might not happen. Right. And so we have to struggle with how do we use private security not only to save one person, but to better society as a whole? Right. And again, I want to reiterate, private security should operate like a civil rights organization.
We're talking about private security, and we're not talking about the power of the government to oppress and to enslave.
Right. Private security is the entity that's going to protect the individual person's rights to freedom of speech. Right.
There was an incident where one of my property owners, they have a planned parenthood in their building, and there were girls going there to have that procedure performed, and there were people there that wanted to stop them that day. And it wasn't the police that made sure that those women had access to reproductive rights. It was private security. Right? And so private security is about protecting the individual's liberties and rights. It's about protecting your right to be able to freely move about the country. Your fifth amendment right. Well, if you're too scared to leave your house and get in your car and drive down the street to get your medication because there's criminals that stand outside the Safeway, your rights are being violated.
And really they're being violated by the ineptitude of the government structures that are disallowing you to express your rights.
[01:18:35] Speaker B: Is this kind of thinking moving or influencing people in law enforcement?
Are you reaching, or is this message reaching people who say, yeah, there's another way to look at our job? It's not just a matter of getting arrest. We like this manner of treating citizens as human beings and helping.
[01:18:58] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:18:59] Speaker A: In fact, in law enforcement, law enforcement is a very unique industry. It typically travels from the east coast to the west coast. And so in New York City, after 911, they immediately started an office of liaison to private security, because even though private security are not the first responders, they're most always the first reporters.
They're the ones that are almost always present when the crime is about to occur. They're typically the person getting interviewed by law enforcement for that suspect information. And so as first reporters, they're part of the critical infrastructure of the safety of every city across America and people.
I'm not from here, and so I try not to judge other sectors in other states, but there is a sense that the west coast has always kind of been a little bit lagging when it comes to understanding the importance of integrating critical infrastructures into public safety that will then provide a better product for public safety and litability for all. And part of that is that there's no liaison in the DA's office, there isn't a specific person that's a liaison. Now, my company alone has identified multiple murder suspects in the past, what, 1516 months? But there's no direct liaison.
If private security witnesses a major crime and the police are too busy. If I have to get on four one one or get on non emergency and wait 47 minutes, most security guards can't do that. They can't do that because they're earning, not earning a very high wage. Well, they're earning a high wage for me. But in other companies, they're barely living, getting a livable wage. And so if they have to wait on 911 and still yet no one comes, this is a problem. And so building these infrastructures, I think that there are people in government that are realizing, hey, we need a more systemic, more structured strategic plan in place because it's catching Portland off guard. Portland is lacking and everyone out there in the country who have not been here. Portland is lacking critical infrastructure and especially human resources. In the public safety sectors, it is almost crippling Portland. According to FBI statistics, per capita about the Portland Oregon is only the force strength of Portland Oregon is only about 35%. They're two thirds under the FBI recommended per capita patrol rate for a major city.
Two thirds. They have one third the staff they actually should have. So cities like Houston and Memphis and Washington DC and Miami, these cities are actually staffed at the correct levels. And Portland is two thirds below that level per capita.
[01:22:17] Speaker B: I've heard too much about this, comparing the number of police officers to population. And if you're below that, know then you have too few. And you can use that as an argument for the taxpayers to dig deeper. It seems like it's really about the assignment and the problem that is, can you respond to serious emergencies in a reasonable amount of time? Can you address, I'm talking about policing here. And Portlanders are fed up, not because of the number of patrol officers per se, but when they call for help, they can't get anyone to respond. And that's how they measure whether we're getting enough policing.
[01:22:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And no one is saying that we need.
Let me be clear.
I believe in community transformation. I believe community transformation comes from personal transformation. I believe that police are a critical structure in order for us to have a viable society to live in that's strong and safe.
But at the end of the day, it is not the structure.
Right. It's a structure that takes people that cannot be reformed and puts them in a place far, far away so they can't hurt anybody.
That's all law enforcement can really do. And that's not very redemptive, it's not very reformative, it's not the greatest of answers. But at the end of the day, law enforcement has to exist. And so if we don't have more numbers, we can't get that response.
Now that's not to say that we need patrol officers out patrolling consistently all the time, making stops like the Juliana era of stop and frisk. Right. We want to protect people's individual rights and liberties, right. But we do need that level of law enforcement for response.
Mean, we have to have that. But right now we don't have that. The last time I checked, the average response time to a critical incident was 14 minutes in Portland and the national average is seven and a half. And so we do need more law enforcement. I think that as a community we need to get together and decide what that's going to look like. I think that we need to decide do we want people actively patrolling or do we want them like law enforcement just ready to go, like fire and rescue ready to go. And they are just taking calls. And so I think that there is a good balance there because I definitely don't want to be over policed.
[01:24:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Over the years, even since my early days in Portland, there was grief over the decline about the loss of the beat police officer and, oh, we want beat cops. We want the same cop. And we want them walking that community, the citizens, the neighborhoods. They've always loved that. And we've only gotten a little sprinkling of it here and there to let us know that it might be possible.
But I'm wondering, you have a background in law enforcement. Might it be possible that we wouldn't need to have so many responses to calls where you drive across the county or whatever the case, if there were officers on the ground who actually knew what was going on and might have prevented some problems.
[01:25:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
With Prevention comes the concern that someone's rights will be violated in an unethical, immoral way. And so law enforcement, I tell people this all the time, and this is a very well stated statement, it is the easiest job to get. I mean, it is the hardest job to get and the easiest job to lose.
[01:26:14] Speaker B: Hardest job to lose.
Easiest job to lose because you'd get fired.
[01:26:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, only about 20% of law enforcement make it to retirement.
[01:26:24] Speaker B: There are other reasons we know so well the cases in Portland where serious matters of abuse, where discipline was brought down and it's overturned and the officer has to be brought back no matter what they've done.
[01:26:39] Speaker A: Correct.
[01:26:40] Speaker B: I get the impression that it would be very hard to get fired and permanently removed.
[01:26:46] Speaker A: Oh, I'm not saying that people are necessarily fired. I think that people, good people, bad people. Right. They just leave.
[01:26:54] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:26:54] Speaker C: Okay.
[01:26:54] Speaker A: I mean, they just get burnt out. I would say that the police unions do make it very hard. And I was a teamster, and I was on the board of the fraternal order police here in Oregon. And we try to save people's jobs as a union. That's what we do in any union, that you want to try to save someone's jobs, but not every police officer is going to make the right decision.
And when you're making life or death decisions, that mistake can turn really bad. And that's the concern when people always say, well, I can't tell you, I go to so many community meetings, and there's always a segment of that meeting that says, we just need more law enforcement. We just need more cops. That's all we need.
[01:27:45] Speaker B: They don't know any other options.
[01:27:46] Speaker A: They don't know any other options because there's hyper polarization of the populace that they can't see that third way. They see option one, they're stuck in that false dichotomy. Right?
[01:27:59] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:27:59] Speaker B: When I was younger, they would say, you don't like cops. If you have a break in, call a hippie. And it was funny. It wasn't so funny for hippies, but the idea.
[01:28:11] Speaker A: I have a feeling that you were a hippie.
[01:28:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess I still have a beard. Don't have that much hair anymore. But, yeah.
The idea that there were no other options. You either take policing as it is, or there was no other way to find know the false choice. And anymore, modern american cities have shown that we need more options.
[01:28:43] Speaker A: You need more options. And I could talk about this forever. And we're probably going to have to wrap up. We can bring Alan back. But what I've always advocated is multidisciplinary teams, MDTs, law enforcement. They had the 1972 O'Connor v. Donaldson decision dropped on them. We're no longer going to have state institutions. It's now the job of law enforcement to manage mental health crises in America. We don't have health care for the poorest of the poor, health care that allows access to actual mental health.
You look at a lot of these recent school shootings, and a lot of the people these kids engaged in this activity had no mental health history. Contacted by law enforcement multiple times, but yet no referrals to mental health.
And there's been a desert of mental health for two generations, since the 70s, since this ruling. And we have to reverse that. We have to reverse that.
That's critical infrastructure.
Can law enforcement do it? Yeah, but we're going to have to hire different types of law enforcement to do that. We're going to have to hire people that want to be physicians assistants and police officers. We're going to have to hire nurses that want to be physicians assistants and police officers. We're going to have to hire officers that have an MSW masters of social work. We're going to have to rethink law enforcement and go multidisciplinary teams. When I talked about hiring a lot more police officers, we hire a lot more police officers, not so they can go out and patrol, but so that they can be freed up to do things other than just enforcement. Those community programs, handing out a bicycle helmet. Right. These community programs, the cities that had these great robust community programs, when you see these police officers playing basketball with kids and doing mentorship programs, that's because they have enough police officers to patrol so they can afford to do all those community engagement activities. But when you're constantly running at a critical infrastructure, a low infrastructure, that community engagement will never happen from law enforcement. They can't afford to, not when you have a duty to act and to stop someone from being murdered. You don't have time to take off to hand out bicycle know, and that's the problem, folks.
That's the problem here with Alan Claussen, Northwest Examiner, a pillar of the community, a man of principal, a man that cares. And thank you for coming in today.
[01:31:15] Speaker D: Thank you.
[01:31:15] Speaker A: I appreciate it.
[01:31:16] Speaker B: It's been great. Yeah.
