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 street.
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.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: My name is Jesse Burke and I am a small business owner in Portland, Oregon's old Town neighborhood. And I am running for Multnoma County Commissioner for district two. I'm here today to spend some time with my friends Alex and Bach and roam the streets and see who we can help in the neighborhood that we all spend so much time in.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Welcome back to the ride along. I'm Alex Stone, your host. Today's guest, a very good friend, Jesse Burke. Jesse, introduce yourself to the folks.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: My name is Jesse Burke and I am a small business owner in Portland in the old town neighborhood.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Now, Jesse's more than that. We'll get into that during the interview. Jesse, tell us a little bit about your background because you're not originally from Portland, right?
[00:01:48] Speaker B: I'm not. I'm originally from Washington, DC. I actually don't even know if I have told you this story, but it's my spiel that I give now. So when I was six, my father was paralyzed and four years later, my sister was born with a severe birth defect and my parents were just drowning in debt. And so they moved into my aunt's basement and my mother started cleaning houses for a living.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: I did not know that.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: I know.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Jesse and I have known each other for years.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I like to withhold important personal.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Stories only until we're live in front of those.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: And so my parents told us that we had to become good at something if we wanted to get out. And they put us in different sports. My brother was like a superstar athlete. So whatever he did, he would do well. His was soccer. He did very well. And mine was fencing. I was less athletic, but I think very strategic.
And when I was about twelve years old, I won my first competition. And they said, what do you want to do with this? And this is in 1992, just for reference, I said, I want to go to the 96 Olympics. And they said, okay, well, you can't do that here, so you have to move to New York to do it. And I moved to upstate New York by myself when I was twelve to an academy, sort of. It wasn't quite as popular as it is now. So it was the National Women's training center, but it was like a club. And I lived with a family there for a few years.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: I know this is very popular in tennis.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Yeah, this happens in tennis.
And I think fencing is becoming more popular, so maybe it's getting more formalized. But I just lived with a family for a little while that was not my family and traveled all over the world for fencing. And I was on the national team from, like, 1994 until 2004, and I did three Olympic trials. I was on the world championship teams. I was an alternate at the 96 Olympics.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Good job.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: I didn't make it, but they took me to Atlanta to train with them. I did eventually go to Penn State on a fencing scholarship, which is where I met my husband, Jonathan. I decided to study teaching because I wanted to try and help as many kids sort of learn the system because my parents could never figure it out. I moved to Portland because Jonathan wanted to go west. He'd never been west of the Mississippi river. So we went to Portland, and I started teaching at an after school program at Roosevelt High School in north Portland, working with high risk kids. I became the education coordinator at the Native American Youth and Family center.
All of it. I was like, oh, my. Like, there's so much red tape to help these kids. So I thought maybe it was a policy change needed. So I went to get my master's in public administration, and ultimately I did an internship at Prosper Portland and a temp job at an investment banking firm. And I noticed at Prosper Portland, which is a government agency, that I thought everyone would go to be there for the greater good.
And it just didn't seem like everyone. And I was probably naivety, but I thought everyone would have really pure intentions. And I felt like everyone was actually just, like, a stepping stone to the next job. And then the investment banking firm, the guys were nuts. They're, like, at work at 04:00 a.m. They're drinking peptobismal all day. And I was like, why do you guys do this? And they were like, for money and power.
And I told my husband, I was like, I don't agree with that motive, but at least I could tell the truth. And I said, I think I need to go private sector because I can tell the truth and just help people. Because I want to help people. So I wrote a business plan for my first business, which was Posey's bakery and cafe in Kenton.
And I opened a bakery because 20 years later, my parents were still living in my aunt's basement, and they still couldn't figure it out. And my mom had gone back to pastry school, and I said, I will open a bakery, and you can work there, but you have to move here. So that's how I got into business.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Amazing.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:03] Speaker A: That's a very diverse background.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Typical business owner.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: Yeah, very true. I'm a business owner, and I can't believe I'm here either.
Started nonprofit, public military, law enforcement. Now private sector. So you're in the private sector when you moved to Portland, I'm assuming you just fell in love with Portland, right? I know I did when I moved.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, when did you move here?
[00:06:27] Speaker A: 2010.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: I moved here in 2003.
I think that it hadn't quite reached its being the darling of the New York Times yet, so it felt very much like there was no traffic when I moved here.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Kind of like an overgrown village.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So it felt like a town. Like, there actually weren't even international flights when I moved here. And I had been traveling abroad, like, every other weekend, so I was feeling.
Yeah, I was like, oh, my gosh, where haven't we moved? But it grew into itself, and it became much more accessible.
Like, if you wanted to start a business, it felt like you could access anyone you needed to. So I think once I started engaging more with the city and with the community, it was lovely. Yeah.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Do you still have that same feeling now?
[00:07:26] Speaker B: I feel like I am entering a war zone every day.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: When did that change for you?
When did you feel that inside that change?
[00:07:39] Speaker B: I actually think it started a bit before the pandemic. It just got really bad during the pandemic because my first business was in a little neighborhood, and it was, like, four blocks from my house. And this was in the city.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: More of a suburban area.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Still inside the city, but in a true neighborhood.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. And then I remember we've always had. Old town has always been a bit seedy. And I remember my husband left me once. We had just bought the building, which had been abandoned since World War II, and he left me there by myself at night to change the locks. So I'm like, wow, you must really either trust my ability.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: You were offenser.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
Trust my ability to defend myself, or. You think it's safe? I'm not sure.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Did you have a sword with you?
Is it called a sword?
[00:08:37] Speaker B: It is, sort of. There are three weapons.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Do you carry one with you?
[00:08:42] Speaker B: Coincidentally, I just talked to some school children about fencing, so I had it in my car. Good. But not usually for educational purposes. Right.
So I will say, like, starting business in Old Town, I think, was when.
[00:08:57] Speaker A: And Old Town is a historical area. It used to be japanese town.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Well, Japantown, but it became Chinatown. It's the original downtown. So all the buildings are historic. That is where Portland's downtown started.
And this was a port town. And so there were all sailors coming in.
And it's a long backstory, but essentially all the buildings that are here were almost all hotels run by gangsters to trick the sailors, because it was hard to get sailors to go back onto the ships. So crimps would make a deal with the captain. I'll get them in debt and sell them back to you.
[00:09:37] Speaker A: So an old Shanghai town.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:09:39] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Yes. That's what it is to be Shanghai. But our building was the Siemens friend society, so it was like the YMCA. So it doesn't have quite as many ghosts in it.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: So interesting. And so you purchased this building, you're in private business, and you choose probably the hardest area in.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: You know, Kenton had been that way too, and I was sure know my mom's side of the family is chinese. It's Chinatown. I was like, it's bigger, but same problems as Kenton had. So surely I can figure it out. I think the thing that I didn't take into account was that when social services own the land and there's such a density of it, it's hard to ever balance out. Like, if you think of neighborhoods or cities as ecosystems, you need a mix of things.
I've been in business down there for ten years.
Like eight years ago, I testified to city council that we needed a better mix. We needed more office workers. We needed more residents that had disposable income.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: In Old Town?
[00:11:00] Speaker B: In old Town specifically.
[00:11:01] Speaker C: Right.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Which is like 68 blocks, but 50% of the land is owned by social service agencies. I made a map for everyone. I know the map just in case anyone needs it. So anyway, I think that that was something that I didn't account for.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: And this type of.
I would call it zoning or districting. Right. When you're forcing all of social services into a specific area, it seems as if historically, those were put in minority neighborhoods.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: Yes. So as this transition. So it was the original downtown, and they actually had. Chinatown was a little further south, where Pine street market is now. There's actually a plaque there, and Japantown is where Olton is. And then as they wanted to move downtown south, they kicked the chinese community out and forced Japantown and Chinatown to be together.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: And then they interred the japanese, which.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: It'S actually even worse. So at the time, the japanese community owned a lot of land there. Our building was even owned by a japanese family. And then they had the chinese exclusion act. So the chinese community couldn't.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: The first immigration law in America, right.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: Then the japanese community was interned, and they lifted the Chinese Exclusion act the next month, just sort of furthering the rift between the chinese and japanese community. So the chinese community bought a lot of the land that was owned by the japanese community, but also is the only place anyone was allowed to live.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: So you're coming into this area, you want to revitalize it. Obviously, you still have the desire in your heart to help the downtrodden. That's your background. You're coming in, you see a vision for a neighborhood, and you realize part of the vision for the neighborhood is we actually have to bring in more business to revitalize the area. And you go and testify about that. It's eight years later.
How's that going?
[00:13:06] Speaker B: Well, I'm not sure if anyone heard, but there was a pandemic, and that's, I think, where it got sidetracked worse than I could have imagined, actually, this was in the midst of. So we're out of business because during the pandemic, we lost 98% of our sales. So we closed because it was cheaper than staffing people for no customers. There aren't a lot of residents in old town. It was offices, social service agencies, and a lot of subsidized housing, which what that usually means is people don't feel like they have a right to speak up for their neighborhood because they're not emotionally invested or that they don't. Because of their socioeconomic circumstances, they don't feel they have permission.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: So they like that agency because they don't have that tie. Having paid for something and feeling that ownership, sort of.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: I think that there's something about struggle with your socioeconomic status and not believing that you're worthy of having a voice is part of it, too. So we have no one saying anything. It's essentially, this neighborhood is a free for all. And it's when you let me know that organized crime was coming, and because you guys are on the street all the time and filled me in with what you were hearing, I am actually, who informed the police that this was happening.
They didn't believe me for a long time. And then one day it just switched that, like, oh, yes, obviously. And I actually wrote an op ed about it.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:14:53] Speaker B: And the newspaper was really concerned. They said, can you have the police verify this? Because we've never heard this. And they gladly obliged and had their public information officer verify organized crime.
So I think that was a real tipping point.
And just to sort of the chaos that began to ensue, we created a hostile work environment for any sort of enforcement.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: The city, the city allowed to occur.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: The city government, the citizens. I literally stood outside of Deadstock coffee with the owner of Deadstock Coffee, who is a middle aged black man who's been working in old town for longer than I have. And we were speaking to two police officers, one black, one white, and a white customer walked out of his business and said, real nice fucking place to have a meeting, you pigs. And just totally unsolicited. And the parent in me, I was like, get back here. Why did you say that? You don't know these people? What did they do to you? But I see that no one checks each other. Everyone is afraid of calling people on their stuff.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: And that's really one of the central tenets that you're trying to bring to the light is that there might be a cultural shift that we think is possible, can occur where people can say things and not feel to be.
I think there's a false sense of fear, right?
[00:16:24] Speaker B: I think there's a fear of conflict. And so we create, what is the term? False harmony. Right? There's a book called the five dysfunctions of a team that I send that digital copy to all of our elected officials. I said, you guys have all five of these. Let me know if you'd like me to do a training. I'm happy to help.
I did not get any phone calls about that, but that the five dysfunctions. And it's essentially how do you, in a professional environment, create a healthy team, which very much mirrors a sports team, right? So the dysfunctions are a lack of trust, a fear of conflict, a lack of commitment, which is whatever we decide in this room when we leave. We're all selling it like it was our idea, because if you don't, you cut the legs out from under it. The fourth is a lack of accountability, and the fifth is inattention to results.
So I think that as much as our city and county, and just as a community, citizens need to take more ownership that. Abed, I wrote, I was saying we are fighting a literal turf war, and we need citizens to show up and fight with us and speak up, because if we don't, we'll never reclaim this space as like, a place where order exists. Right? And you can't have anything without some semblance of order.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: And do you feel that there is a groundswell? Is there something occurring in the private sector that is leading to this level of engagement? Do you see that happening?
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Well, I think that when we all started to find that our regular systems weren't going to work, those became businesses. Right. Private security outreach.
There are government agencies and nonprofits that are supposed to do it. And when they're not delivering, then people privatize it. I mean, you'll remember we hired your company, and then there was, like, beef with law enforcement. And I was like, all right, we're all going to talk about this. And we all had a big meeting with all private security companies and police. And I was like, hey, I'm everyone's customer here right now. Why are you fighting? And at that point, this is what, 2020? That someone with Portland police said, well, if they would stay in their lane, if private security would stay in their lane. And I said, well, you can't cover your own lane. That's why they exist right now. So the day you can cover all your lanes, we'll stop calling them. But here's the hierarchy of responses. Right. We don't want to bother you unless it's really critical.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: And I'd like to say something about that.
Coming from prior law enforcement, there has always been a sense that law enforcement is a union controlled industry.
And I was a part of the union. I was part of two different unions, and we want to protect those jobs. Right. And there is a sense of animosity between law enforcement and security because they feel like we're coming in and doing their job, and you never really want that. So it's almost as if security can be viewed as a scab. Right. But we're really not. So our model is different, and you know that. So even though security and law enforcement has the same, they have shared goals. We achieve those goals in a different way. Law enforcement uses the power of the government in order to achieve those goals.
Typically, it's like a feedback loop that says people have broken crimes, we're going to go find those people, reform them, or put them somewhere else to keep a group safe. That's the job of the criminal justice system in the security industry. We can't do any of that. This is part of the problem is a lot of people in law enforcement thought we wanted to do that, and I've had to go and explain our model. We are a civil rights action group. We're a civil rights protection group. When people hire security, they're hiring us to protect their church from attacks, to protect their synagogue from attacks to protect an event or a politician or a news person or like a CNN reporter, somebody like this. We're constantly protecting the individual and group rights that people have from the constitution. As a security company, you really thrive and do best when you stay there. And I think that if we can continue to have these conversations with law enforcement, they'll begin to see us in a different way. Hey, they're not want to be cops. They're here to make sure that the most historically black church in Portland isn't attacked by a white supremacist group on Sundays.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: I mean, I think a simpler way to explain it is one is trying to prevent it, the other can only come if something's already happened. Right. And I think that it's, in my mind, foolish to think, oh, you're scabs, right?
We need, like, 1300 police officers. Oh, yeah, we have 800.
You're guaranteed to have a government job. If you want to be a police officer, you've got a carve out in the budget. Right? So I don't understand how that would be compared apples to apples in any way. It's not lightning, the load of police.
And I think that's part of why I thought the conflict was like, this isn't helpful. We're all wanting the same thing. We all want order from chaos. You cannot do anything without, like, that's the social contract we all agreed to. We're all paying into this thing for predictability, and we're not getting it. So is it because you're shortstopped? If it's because you're short staffed, then we have to fill some gaps with some other ways of handling things until you think you can do this or more of society is going to participate. But until then, this is the new normal.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: You went on a campaign to get the community engaged, right?
[00:22:50] Speaker B: In a process like the 90 day plan thing.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And how did that go? And where are we now? Why are you running for office?
Well, I have a feeling we're running for office because some of those goals didn't get achieved along the way.
[00:23:05] Speaker B: Well, so we had our first.
My first low point was the organized crime discussion. I'll tell you how I got to the 90 day plan. The second low point was, I think, in 2021, my phone started ringing off the hook, and it was residents and businesses calling me at 11:00 p.m. And they were like, hey, there were like 300 rounds that were just shot. And I was like, why are you calling me right now? You should be calling the police. And they were like, we don't know who's going to come. And I was like, this is too much pressure. I am a citizen, a mother of three children. I am just supposed to be running my business. I don't have a military. I don't have a police force. I don't even have a gun. I don't know what I'm supposed to do in that situation. And the next day, I got the audio from my rooftop deck cameras. And it's super upsetting because it was a machine gun.
Sat is jarring.
And I think it just sort of added this layer of just, like, how traumatic this experience is becoming, like, coming to work every day. And they started having these weekly calls with the mayor's office. And that call was like, right after. So I get on Zoom, and I.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Didn'T do those for a while.
[00:24:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't know my mic was on. And I let out this big sigh, and they all kind of teased me. They were like, that's a pretty big sigh.
[00:24:57] Speaker D: Jesse, are you okay?
[00:24:58] Speaker B: And I'm not super emotional, but I burst into tears. And I was like, I'm not. Is anyone here? There was a machine gun shootout last night, and no one called the police. They all called me. And I was like, that is too much pressure. And they were like, oh, that didn't show up on the police blotter. And I'm like, I know, because no one called the police. The police were just here. So they drove up. But anyway, so what came from that was a request to write a recovery plan for Old Town. And I was like, okay, the 90 day plan. The 90 day plan. I was like, you might regret it, but I'll write it. And once I wrote it in one of our first meetings, because they were like, oh, we think we could pull this off. And they were like, okay, everyone on this call, which is like a hodgepodge of people, it's no one official. Like, anyone can join these calls. They're like, I want you all to take this plan back to your groups and make sure they're okay with it. And I said, no. You asked old town to write this. We are the official representatives of Old Town. This is the plan. And they were like, okay, next call, we might be a little delayed getting started. And I said, I think this is like my famous line for Portland police. I said on the call, I'm the only person on this call not getting paid. Tell me why I don't go across the street right now, light my building on fire, take the insurance money, and go literally anywhere else.
[00:26:20] Speaker A: That would never really happen.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: No, I wouldn't, really. But I got some calls from different agencies after, and they're like, that was so. They're like, okay, Jesse, we'll get started.
And so once they said they would get started, I was like, I better make sure they really do this. So I scheduled a series of press conferences to announce to the world that the city of Portland committed to this, and we did get a lot done. I think that people. I joke that I'm pretty sure the mayor has it just pinned in his office, and even though the 90 days are passed, he's, like, working his way through the list, because things keep coming up to get through the list. But with all of these, I really saw the city contorting itself to try and help cover things that are not their jurisdiction. Right. So if the city is responsible for the health of the infrastructure, roads, lampposts, permits, water, and first responders, the county is responsible for the health of its citizens.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: And I just want to add something. So around this time, there were probably 450 to 500 tents in old town. 68 blocks. Okay, 68 blocks with around 500 tents. Ten to 50% of Portland's entire homeless population was living on the street and tents in old Town or outside my door.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Because there's a lot of people who watch this and who might have come to Old Town, they might be living in somewhere else. So I want them to understand just how drastic this. And so on top of all that, there's a literally gang shootout with automatic fire, and then this leads into a 90 day plan. And where does that go? And why are you running for office?
[00:28:09] Speaker B: So ultimately, one of the things I asked for was an outreach team, because I was like, why is no one doing outreach? And they created an outreach team, and they started transporting people to shelters or just being in people's business, and we decreased the tent count to about 70.
I think that just in this list, there were things that I was asking for that would be county or city, and the city would try and invent programs so that they could meet the need, even though it was the county's responsibility. And the county would consistently ice me out, and they ice everybody out, or they would say that we were lying. Like, there was an interview where I did a press conference talking about Blanche House not having a contract signed yet. I had just talked to the executive director that morning. I don't have a contract yet. And the money's going to expire in 30 days.
And then the chair responds, well, she's lying. We have a contract. And I was like, schedule the next press conference. I'll tell you when it's signed. That type of behavior. And I was like, you're public servants. You don't have the luxury of treating the public like this. You are not paying attention to results, and everyone else is.
[00:29:32] Speaker A: We're living in the result.
[00:29:34] Speaker B: That's right. Well, and I tell people it's why I don't let elected officials in the building. They want to meet with me all the time. And I said, well, you're going to sit outside because I don't think you're a celebrity. I think you're a public servant, and I want you to see how it's going. And consistently, they are scared to death. And I met with a couple. One, there was a naked woman, like, dancing this close to them the whole time. And I was like, so how can I tangibly help you? Help me with this? And they didn't quite have an answer. Others, one, who works at the state level, in a lot of the addiction work that we're struggling with, there was a fight the last ten minutes. First I was asked, did you set this up? And I was like, no. How would I do that? Hire a bunch of drug dealers and addicts? Yeah.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Can you sell extra drugs on my block?
[00:30:22] Speaker B: Right. I'll tell you a funny story about that in a second. There was a fight the last ten minutes, and people were high. And they said, is that fentanyl? And I said, do you not know the effects of the different drugs? When they're fighty and strong, that's meth. When they looked at that's fentanyl, and they wrote their notes down, and I was like, okay, no one's in this situation.
[00:30:45] Speaker A: And the county has $300 million, right?
[00:30:49] Speaker B: Well, they have.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Isn't that right?
[00:30:50] Speaker B: Their total budget for everything is $3.8 billion.
[00:30:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: Specifically for just homelessness in multination county. That's maybe the 300,000,085% of which is in this city of Portland.
They have $300 million every year. We get it every year with 5000 people.
[00:31:09] Speaker B: Yeah. It's not a finite resource. It's a bond measure that we get every year. So the commissioner in my district recently stepped down to run for Congress, and one of the existing commissioners, Sharon Myron, reached out and asked me to run. And I think my feeling was, I'm already volunteering to the plan.
[00:31:31] Speaker D: I did.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: They took it to central east side. They're like, teach central east side how to do it. They took it to St. John's. They're like, teach St. John's how to do it. They needed more lighting during the entertainment detail closure to decrease shootings, and they wouldn't give the money to the police. So I said, fine, give it to me. I'll buy the light towers. So I bought the light towers. I managed $2 million of capital projects for the city over the last two years as a neighborhood association. That's crazy.
Not paid, right? Unpaid. So I'm like, at this point, you're.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: A free project manager. If anyone needs a free project manager.
[00:32:08] Speaker B: Out there, call me. My number is just kidding.
So anyway, I just felt like what my concern is, I don't think anyone has enough executive experience. Right? Like what? Small business owner cannot deliver a product to their customer on time and use up all the money? Or not use any money. Like, the budget swings are amazing.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: So let's fast forward and say you get elected. What are the top three things that you're going to try to achieve your first year?
[00:32:40] Speaker B: Yeah, my first one is we need a central database of available shelter beds.
[00:32:46] Speaker A: Why don't we have one now?
[00:32:47] Speaker B: Great question.
I don't know the answer, but I've told them it's hotel software.
[00:32:53] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: I can help you access anything.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: Travago Expedia. We do it all the time. I travel all the time. You travel.
They can book the number down. You can book a bed down to the actual minute. As conferences book, those numbers will go up. They'll increase.
[00:33:11] Speaker B: Well, what's interesting is amazing. So if you use hotel software and it feeds into a central API, like a booking.com, but you make your own, right? It's obviously not booking or you're looking for shelters. It would be a separate app. But actually, nowhere in the country has this, so you could sell it to other places. And someone has already received a grant for this and part of it. I know you know the answer to this, but I'll ask your average reviewer. Do you know how hard it is to get someone into shelter? You call three one one, they email you a list of all the shelters. Imagine you're not yourself. You have to imagine that you're struggling and you need shelter. Right now, no one plans on being homeless, so shelter is an emergency. Then you have to call every single shelter. And someone from the joint office said, well, why is that a problem? And I said, remember how revolutionary the Internet was? Because then we didn't have to use the phone.
That's why. Imagine you just flew to Detroit. You didn't get a hotel room Wi Fi in the whole city and cell service goes down and you need a hotel and you have to call every single hotel. That's what you're asking really vulnerable people to do.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: People that have been high for five days.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Right. But then that's not even the end of it. Let's say you do find a place, but most of them are reservation only. So there's a two to three week waiting list. No one plans on being homeless. You don't make reservations for a shelter bed.
Then once you do, you get registered at a central location that may not be where you are right now, and they give you a bus ticket to get there.
That is too many steps for your average vulnerable citizen. And I've done it. My husband has done it. We have had.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: We do it every day.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: 1020 times.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: And it's too hard. My husband always used to say, you have to make it easy for people to make the best decision. And it's too hard right now. It's like, make it easy to find. Make it easy to reserve and then get a taxi to pick them up.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: Yeah, taxis.
[00:35:09] Speaker B: I don't understand why this is complicated. It's not like, you know, in old town we have a taxi service that we pay for. Right. It's okay. I don't mind that groups in old town use it.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: We actually took that model and made all the other neighborhood associations get their own account.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: Well, the county started using our code.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Oh, that's good.
[00:35:26] Speaker B: I didn't know that. And that is the day I lost my mind where I was like, you.
[00:35:30] Speaker A: Have and they're charging.
See, folks, folks, Jesse Burke is running for county commission in multination county.
This is out of control now. They're putting the burden. They have $300 million a year, and they're putting the burden on neighborhoods, on.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: Their neighborhoods, on citizens. Okay. I have to tell you the last two. The last two are that we need to drastically increase the number of walk in shelters. You saw during the cold weather, everyone found walk in shelters. Right. But we're not, never going to be successful if it's always low or no barrier. And it's not that you don't want to meet people where they're at. You'll never get anyone to work there. Right. So people don't always know low and no barriers. You can still be using. You can have weapons, you can have pets.
I had a night audit that worked for me. I'm totally giving myself away here. But I had a night audit that was assaulted three times at his nonprofit job before he left.
[00:36:24] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:36:24] Speaker B: And it's like, you have to bear in mind all of the players involved. So we need to drastically increase that model, but increase the standards and expectations. And the last one is we have to get sobering centers. Everything I'm doing is like, what can I do immediately? Because we cannot normalize this. You cannot normalize that being chased down the street by someone with a machete that's high on meth is normal. Like, my 16 year old was almost assaulted by someone high on meth until an adult stepped in between them. And you cannot normalize people being passed out on the sidewalk from fentanyl because they're the ones getting sexually assaulted or trafficked. And so it's not jail, it's taking them to sober up, just like the cheers van that used to be here when the drug of choice was alcohol is we need to modify the system to at least create some predictability in our community, because right now, like I said, you feel like you're entering an unpredictable war zone. And we'll never get to a place of stability if we can. If we can't at least have that as a baseline. What is Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Like, safety is the bottom one.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: It is. Safety does come first. If people aren't safe, they'll never transition to the higher level.
[00:37:46] Speaker B: Right?
[00:37:46] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: So you're running for office. Let the people know exactly where they can find you online.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: Yes.
I'm running for Multnoma county commissioner for district two, which is north and northeast Portland. So that's the only district that can vote for me. Those boundaries are north of I 84, south of the Columbia River, St. John's to northeast 140 eigth.
My website is jesseburke.com, spelled jessieburke.com, and social media is Jesse for Nopo.
North Portland.
[00:38:24] Speaker A: People know north Portland.
Jesse, thank you for coming on today. Everyone knows this is a ride along.
We talk about stuff in studio, but then we actually go out and get things done on the street because that's what we need to do. We need more engagement. So we're going to go hit the street right now. We're going to catch up with Michael Bach, our favorite security guard, America's security guard. That's what I like to call him. And we're going to go meet up with Bach on the street and we're going to go see if we can make a difference today.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Great.
[00:38:51] Speaker C: You ready?
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: All right.
[00:38:52] Speaker C: Let's hit it.
[00:38:55] Speaker D: Yeah. Who else do you think will?
[00:38:57] Speaker C: I don't know.
I don't know. Eric Zimmerman. I've known Eric for a long time. I knew him when I was on the board of the FOP.
[00:39:05] Speaker D: He ran against Sharon, too.
[00:39:07] Speaker C: He's been a great guy.
So Bach should be around here somewhere.
[00:39:13] Speaker E: Bach.
[00:39:18] Speaker C: Okay. This is America security guard.
[00:39:21] Speaker D: That's what I was going to say.
[00:39:23] Speaker C: America security guard right here.
[00:39:28] Speaker D: I hope that they're on right now.
[00:39:29] Speaker C: Good to see you, brother. You ready to.
Let's jump in.
How you doing, Jesse?
[00:39:39] Speaker D: I'm great.
[00:39:40] Speaker E: Good to have you.
[00:39:41] Speaker D: Thank you.
[00:39:42] Speaker C: So we're here riding along. We're on patrol. Right. We like to patrol in different types of vehicles. We're in the sprinter ran today, and we're going to be heading to the pit. So tell us your history with the pit that you have with this area.
[00:39:56] Speaker D: So the pit is located underneath of the steel bridge. And we, in 2021, on those mayor's office calls, the NWEA Northwest Education association, which is right next to the pit, got on the call and said they were having issues with their windows being shot out from the pit.
[00:40:18] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:40:19] Speaker D: And we had just discovered old plans, like architectural drawings of a skate park in our folder, in our files for the old town community association. And the question posed was, does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with gunshots coming from the pit? And I said, well, what if we build the Silver skate park, which was slated? The idea started 25 years ago with Howard Weiner, who owns Cal skate. And they got some initial funding for proof of concept and design, but that's as far as it ever went.
So we kept pushing and pushing for this. I mean, I think I might have even put it in the 90 day plan.
And with a coalition of skate advocates and our organization, the old Town Community association, our willingness to project, manage it ourselves, and this unique thing that someone shared with me, actually from Prosper Portland, because the question was, where would the money come from? It's about a $15 million project.
I don't know if you know what system development charges are. No, but when you develop a property.
[00:41:45] Speaker C: Sounds horrible, though.
[00:41:47] Speaker D: When you develop a property in a neighborhood in Portland, you have to pay, called an SDC, or system development charges. And they're like tens of thousands of dollars.
[00:41:57] Speaker C: Is that for infrastructure?
[00:41:59] Speaker D: It goes into the pot of money for water Bureau, Parks bureau, all of the bureaus. And the way the parks SEcs work is that they can only be used to build new parks in the district. It was collected.
[00:42:19] Speaker C: So that money is channeled to Old Town.
[00:42:22] Speaker D: Right. Except we never really knew that that worked that way until someone from Cross reportland told us, and so we started advocating for it in that way, and Commissioner Dan Ryan approved it and directed the money to build $15 million to build Steelberg skate park.
[00:42:41] Speaker C: When is that money going to be released?
[00:42:43] Speaker D: It has been released. The project will be presumably managed by the parks department.
[00:42:50] Speaker C: Great. A lot of traffic going on here.
What's going on?
[00:42:55] Speaker D: Maybe something at the pit.
[00:42:58] Speaker C: Yeah. Interesting.
All right, we're here at the pit. Let's go ahead and jump out, do a little walkabout, and you can tell us exactly what's going on down here, because you're the queen of old town, right?
[00:43:13] Speaker E: Dude, the medical examiner is out here.
[00:43:16] Speaker C: Yeah. So we're coming down to the pit here. Obviously, we got some emergency lights going on, a couple of parked vehicles. The medical examiner is here, so likely an overdose. Could be something different, but likely an overdose.
[00:43:32] Speaker E: I don't think it's an overdose.
[00:43:33] Speaker C: With this much attention, I would imagine that you're correct. I'd imagine it's overdose.
[00:43:37] Speaker E: Gets next to no attention. This is probably violence.
[00:43:39] Speaker C: Yeah. Our people who have watched have seen us here before. There were over almost about 100 tents here. At one point, we were able to clear it, and as you can tell, the fencing has come down, and we have tents that are beginning to populate. Pop up underneath the overpass.
[00:44:00] Speaker D: Here's.
[00:44:11] Speaker C: We're back here in the pit. Right. And, gosh, it was clear for maybe two or three months. We got a lot of people moving back in.
Do you feel like this is a project that you can accomplish if you get elected?
[00:44:25] Speaker D: Well, I'm not sure if it becomes a county project. I think that. Will we have adequate shelter? Will we have adequate access to shelter and outreach?
[00:44:38] Speaker C: Do you think the county can put resources into getting these people into shelters rather than living in tents here in this area?
[00:44:45] Speaker D: Yes. I think that what we need to do is require, if we're going to fund nonprofits to do outreach and take it out of the county, we have to have measurable deliverables.
Right now, we don'tie. Anything to measurable outcomes. So then what are we doing?
[00:45:05] Speaker C: I mean, we're here today, as we drove over here, we were kind of talking about the gunfire that you can even see the broken windows that were never replaced here in that building.
[00:45:15] Speaker D: That's a separate building.
[00:45:16] Speaker C: Separate building. Yeah, that's my client, this building, and I believe also this building has experienced gunfire before. And now we have a major crime scene going on. We have the coroner's office. We have multiple detectives, vehicles with a police force of half of what it should be. We have a major criminal investigation going on in the very park where we want to skate park.
[00:45:36] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:45:37] Speaker C: I mean, do you feel confident that the city and county can do what is necessary to make this safe for kids to come and skate?
[00:45:44] Speaker D: From what I've learned, skaters self manage. They are protective of their skate parks and their places that they're allowed to skate. I didn't know, but in the. Before it was made illegal to skateboard in Portland.
[00:45:59] Speaker E: Wow. I didn't know it.
[00:46:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:46:00] Speaker D: So this is, like, a big shift. When Howard Weiner was starting this, he was like, no, you don't understand these kids. They should have a space. He was a skater for years, and it was illegal. And so to give people to utilize these spaces that are being utilized for other things and making them usable by more people, I do think can.
We're making it. And the design is actually really interesting. It's not just for skaters. It's allowing people to have spectator areas so that other community members can participate in it. So I do think that this is a really innovative way to use sort of unusable space.
[00:46:39] Speaker E: Well, this is really just one spot in the Portland metro area. Yes, it is close to home for all of us, but it is an area that is frequently encamped and frequently cleared. But again, this is the kind of thing that's going on all over the place. And the biggest problem that I see happening is the lack of shelter space with which to transition people, shall we say, up and out and in a place where they're not only in a more stable but safe environment. So what's the next step for people who are in this environment when there aren't? Because I can't snap my fingers and have a shelter.
How do we get more shelter space? How do we get more coordination and community involvement in order to get people out here who are hurting desperately, albeit from whatever, either a crippling addiction or just the economic pressure of being out here. How do we get them the help they need?
[00:47:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:47:29] Speaker D: I think that we actually could have enough space for our current population if we did things like, you know, all the warming shelters.
[00:47:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:40] Speaker D: So those were all churches and schools that weren't being used, opening up their doors. We have kind of a weird rule right now with the county where they won't let money go towards religious based nonprofits, but they're ready to help, and we're obviously not at capacity. I mean, we're at capacity for what is not religiously affiliated, but I'm not sure that's the best way to draw the line. So if we could get all of these places that have served as warming shelters and they've reached out, they're like, we're ready. Let us help. I mean, even Blanche House. Blanche House gets no funding from anywhere because they're religiously affiliated. This is more like an all hands on deck situation. The governor said we need to build 36 units of housing a year. It is not possible for the nonprofit sector to build 36,000 units of housing. If you want 36,000 units, you need nonprofit and private sector building.
[00:48:40] Speaker C: Working together.
[00:48:41] Speaker E: Working together.
[00:48:41] Speaker D: Working together. Building public private partnership. One of the things I talked about was I talked to someone who was responsible for finding locations for shelter. And I said, have you ever considered acquisition? I said, I just looked on LoopNet today, which is a commercial real estate site, which doesn't even list all of them. I said, there are 3000 units available in all of the empty buildings. Like, they're empty buildings right now. You could buy them and 3000 units would cost, I think it was something like $20 million, equivalent to $200,000 or something. A unit we're currently building at $500.
[00:49:18] Speaker C: Yeah, it's way under.
[00:49:20] Speaker D: And they said, acquisition is nowhere in our plan. And I was like, well, you should. That would be a good idea. It's cheaper, it's already ready, and private sector is ready. We've talked about it and they're like, we'll build it. If I had a guaranteed buyer, I could build affordable housing all day long.
[00:49:39] Speaker C: And so these are things that can change by a simple vote. Majority vote at the county commission level, I believe.
[00:49:47] Speaker D: So. Part of the issue is so there are the board rules and how you write the budget, but executive powers of the chair, if you google executive powers, won't. Noma county, which is a link, it goes to a blank page.
[00:50:00] Speaker C: Interesting.
[00:50:01] Speaker E: Wow.
[00:50:03] Speaker D: It's a little amateurish.
[00:50:06] Speaker C: So I'm interested in making contact with some folks.
[00:50:09] Speaker E: Me too.
[00:50:09] Speaker C: I want to walk down here and see if they need any help. You all feel comfortable doing that?
[00:50:12] Speaker E: I'm good.
[00:50:13] Speaker C: There's usually six. They pull six times usually.
[00:50:15] Speaker D: Oh, we just got money to do. Quiet zone. That's going to end.
[00:50:20] Speaker C: Oh, that really?
[00:50:21] Speaker D: Yeah. So we got money to put up the gate.
[00:50:33] Speaker C: Just wait up here and we'll get it. We'll get permission. Okay.
[00:50:36] Speaker E: All right, good. You doing okay down here? Yeah, we're down here just talking to people. We're kind of filming a podcast. Are you cool with just saying hello?
Luis. Luis. Michael.
[00:50:50] Speaker C: Awesome. Alex. Alex, what's up, bro.
[00:50:52] Speaker D: I'm Jesse.
[00:50:53] Speaker C: This is Jesse.
[00:50:53] Speaker D: Yeah, it's okay.
[00:50:54] Speaker E: That's all right.
Yeah.
[00:50:57] Speaker C: So where are you from? Mexico. Mexico? Awesome, bro. So you're from Mexico originally. You're living in America. You ended up under this bridge in downtown Portland. Right.
This is Jesse Burke. Jesse's running for county commission. I think she's going to win. Right?
[00:51:14] Speaker B: We'll see.
[00:51:15] Speaker C: We want to implement programs that can help you get into housing. What do you need and how can we help you? Well, I lost all my documents. You lost all your documents? Yeah.
[00:51:28] Speaker E: Just, like, some money to get my documents back. We can sponsor you to get a driver's license on the Mexican.
I don't know about that. Oregon DMB is what I was talking about.
[00:51:40] Speaker D: I think anyone can get a license. You don't need to be documented to get a license.
[00:51:44] Speaker E: Yeah, I'm talking about for free, though, because Loa can sponsor him to get.
[00:51:48] Speaker D: All those taken care of. But he doesn't have the documents to get the license.
[00:51:52] Speaker E: Yeah, you don't have the documents.
[00:51:53] Speaker D: You know where the mexican consulate is? But he needs help getting, like, your passport and your work visa or something.
[00:52:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:03] Speaker C: Okay.
When's the last time you've been to the consulate?
[00:52:09] Speaker D: The mexican.
[00:52:10] Speaker C: Mexican consulate?
[00:52:12] Speaker E: Four years ago.
[00:52:13] Speaker C: Four years ago?
[00:52:14] Speaker E: About seven or eight years ago.
[00:52:16] Speaker C: Okay, so you've been living here for seven or eight years. You need to get to the consulate because you need your documents. How did you lose them? How did you lose your documents? The fire. Oh, my gosh. I'm sorry.
[00:52:26] Speaker E: It's terrible.
[00:52:27] Speaker C: Horrible. Yeah. So you're in Portland now. Other than your documents, we know that you need documents, but if you could get into housing or if you could get into some type of transition living, would you do that?
I don't know.
[00:52:44] Speaker E: I don't have a place.
[00:52:46] Speaker C: No place?
[00:52:46] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:52:47] Speaker C: Actually, I leave my document somewhere to live, to recover myself.
When's the last time someone's contacted you and offered to get you into a shelter?
Last week, I guess. Last week. Was it here or here? And what were they offering you?
And you said no, obviously, because you're still here. Why did you say no?
[00:53:14] Speaker E: Well, it's too many people around. All of them are homeless and kind of uncomfortable.
[00:53:23] Speaker C: Yeah, it is. Yeah. It can be crowded. It can be crowded. Okay.
[00:53:26] Speaker D: And it feels unsafe.
[00:53:31] Speaker C: Okay. So we're going to call someone from Loa to come contact you. Piece of cake. Yeah. And they're going to offer you to get you a ride to the consulate.
Once you get to the consulate, do you know what you need in order to get your documents?
Is there any items or things that you need once you get there? How do you get your paperwork?
[00:53:53] Speaker D: I have to call, ask for a birth certificate.
[00:53:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:58] Speaker E: And then they give you an interview.
[00:54:04] Speaker D: I've done it for people that were born here but didn't have a birth certificate, that you can order it online here. I don't know in Mexico how easy it is, but they'll mail it to you and you actually don't have to have your driver's license necessarily. And then usually is it like Social Security card? And I don't know what it is, but to get whatever other documents are necessary. Did you get a work visa? No.
Do you work right now?
[00:54:32] Speaker B: No.
Yeah.
[00:54:37] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:54:38] Speaker E: We can make a phone call.
[00:54:39] Speaker C: We'll make a phone call.
[00:54:41] Speaker E: Buddy of mine, it'll be Spencer or Terrence.
[00:54:43] Speaker C: Really, really big guy.
[00:54:45] Speaker E: Yeah. Come by, say hello, and then see if we can't help you, get you squared away.
Where's this? Up around the corner over here. Oh, over here?
[00:54:54] Speaker C: Okay. Luis. Yep. Pleasure to meet you.
[00:54:56] Speaker E: Good to meet you, budy.
[00:54:56] Speaker C: Nice to meet you. Yeah, good luck.
[00:54:57] Speaker D: Nice to meet you.
[00:54:59] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:55:00] Speaker C: Is this your tent as well? Here and there. Are they home? Do you know if they're home?
No. Okay.
So, you know, this is the situation we find ourselves in, where everyone's situation is unique. That's why we always talked about, we can have programs and have programs, but each situation is unique. It has to be tailored to that person totally. Obviously, this guy needs to be documented or he's going to stay homeless.
[00:55:36] Speaker D: Well, from what I understand, loss of documents, even stolen documents, is like one of the main reasons.
[00:55:42] Speaker C: It's the main request. Usually when we contact someone, it's three things.
I need food, I need an id, I need documents. Right. Or they want a ride somewhere else. But yeah, documents is always one without three. One of the ideas that we both entertained, and it was with an individual that was currently working for the city government.
And we were asked in a meeting, actually it was at your business, and they asked, or this individual asked, what do we need to do? And I said, you need mobilized sprinter vans. And those sprinter vans have to do three things. Number one, they have to be able to give people ids. You got to have the power of the state to actually print and make an id for the person at the van. Right. So you need to be able to verify who they are and to do that, number two, you have to be able to provide them assistance with food, water, clothing, these types of things. And the third thing is you need to be able to coordinate in order to get them into a shelter or housing or transition them back to a care situation with family or friends or a faith group. Three f's. Right. And you can do that with radio cab or a taxi service.
So that is, I think one of the ways we solve the problem is rather than forcing people to come out here and then having to figure out how he can get an appointment at the mexican consulate downtown, why not just have mobilized vans that come out and meet people where they are, document who they are, verify them in a system. If they ever lose their id, that person can see that van, they can get their thumbprint and face, and they can print them a new id right then and there. So if we had mobilized id services, it could be a lower level id, even a TPI card, something like this. It could be a government id.
[00:57:33] Speaker D: If your fingerprints giving you the verification of your identity to allow you to get your birth certificate, to get your.
[00:57:43] Speaker C: Social Security, you should be able to do that. Yeah.
[00:57:46] Speaker D: That's interesting.
[00:57:50] Speaker E: Yeah.
Rep is that it's 445 on a Friday.
[00:57:54] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:57:55] Speaker E: So really best bet for him Monday is Monday morning at the lower resource center where he can hook up with Spencer. I got his permission, texted Spencer a picture of him, explained the situation. So we'll coordinate getting him over there, likely Monday morning, radio cab or some other.
[00:58:12] Speaker B: Yeah, cool.
[00:58:14] Speaker C: Easy to do this. And we operate on $25,000 a month budget.
We get 150 people into shelter a month. We have three employees.
We can do more of this. We just need the right programs in place.
[00:58:29] Speaker D: Well, I think even the shelter operation, someone from the county just texted me that they have a 26% success rate. And I said, does that mean 26% of people that enter shelter successfully transition to housing?
[00:58:42] Speaker E: He said, yes, 26%.
[00:58:44] Speaker D: It used to be 80.
[00:58:47] Speaker E: That has to do probably with cleanliness, with violence, with.
[00:58:51] Speaker D: It's the operation.
[00:58:53] Speaker C: And because we don't have housing readily available, people are sometimes on a housing waitlist for six months to a year.
[00:59:01] Speaker D: To me, that is low hanging fruit. I know section eight isn't perfect, but we can make our own section eight vouchers all day.
[00:59:07] Speaker B: Right?
[00:59:07] Speaker D: So if we've got housing dollars.
[00:59:13] Speaker B: If.
[00:59:13] Speaker D: We have housing dollars, why would we not be able to use it to get vouchers for empty apartments? We have tons of empty apartments everywhere. No one can afford it anyway. It just feels like a lack of creative thinking.
[00:59:31] Speaker E: I've said this before. Love is the devotion to the well being of others without regard to the cost or the other person's response. So I'm either running into a burning building to save them, or I'm giving resources, or I'm disciplining my child because I want better behavior out of them. My devotion to their well being is worth the cost because they benefit from it. And when I look around here, by that definition, we could use a little bit of love reaching out to your fellow man.
[01:00:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:00:04] Speaker C: So we just looked on the phone and it appears that a death did occur. A murder, some type of stabbing. Stabbing, I believe, which would make sense. This is why there is a mobile incident command vehicle, a coroner and detectives vehicles all on site here.
I don't want to say it's serendipitous, but in a way it is that we just happen to be talking specifically about this side and how for me, the reason I brought it up, this side is indicative of kind of a microcosm of all of old town. If we can transform this area right here from the Tom McCall water park to the railroad tracks and this, what will be a skate park, if we can transform that tiny little area, we can transform all of old town in the city if we can do it right here. And we're talking about doing that. And then we show up today and there's a murder.
[01:01:01] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:01:01] Speaker C: And so what's going on? What's going on in your mind with all that?
[01:01:07] Speaker D: I was thinking about what you were telling me earlier about sort of the escalation. Right? Like, you have to start with petty crime, and then if no one does anything about that, then people start doing this. And it makes me think a lot about, we had this movement and elected a different district attorney who committed to, I mean, it's like all over their social media, committed to not prosecuting minor crimes.
And by the numbers, misdemeanors, which I think people think, like, misdemeanor, not serious, felony serious, that we prosecuted 2000 misdemeanors last year, and that's not that many. Right? And I was like, does everyone feel better? We feel safer than before.
[01:02:00] Speaker C: To be clear, the city of Portland does not have its own court or its own jail. So the county, the district court or the county of Multnoma's district court handles all violations. So all tickets, so if you get pulled over, you get a ticket. All misdemeanors and also all felonies. So in most situations, the district court is almost always just doing felonies. Right. And so the court system is already going to be overloaded and we have, what, 30 or 40 less das than we did just a decade ago. Right. And so in a city with half a million people in a county, how many aren't in the county? Maybe 700,000.
[01:02:42] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, I don't know what Gresham's population is, but Portland, 650,000, I.
[01:02:46] Speaker C: Would imagine there were tens of thousands of misdemeanors that occurred last year, and we only prosecuted 2000.
[01:02:52] Speaker D: I mean, the reference point I give people is at our peak. In the last ten years, we prosecuted 10,000, or we issued 10,000 cases. Sorry, 20,000.
This is before this time.
[01:03:06] Speaker C: 20,000 criminal citations for misdemeanor in the last ten years.
[01:03:09] Speaker B: Right.
[01:03:11] Speaker D: Last year we did less than six.
[01:03:14] Speaker B: Less than 6000.
[01:03:15] Speaker D: We did like 5500.
[01:03:18] Speaker E: So a quarter.
[01:03:19] Speaker B: Right.
[01:03:19] Speaker D: And it's like, is it safer?
[01:03:22] Speaker E: I probably witnessed a quarter of those myself. I mean, really, this is insane.
[01:03:27] Speaker D: Well, even the courts, like, I can't remember if it was the community court or step court. They used to see thousands of cases.
They did 200, they did a 95% drop in those. And this is like, directed by the leader of the justice system. Right.
But my point is, we're so focused on in Portland, like, the root of how someone becomes a criminal. Like, how do we fix those root problems? And I'm like, great, we can worry about that. But we also, where the rubber meets the road, have to care about the victims of these crimes also. So perhaps in a think tank, we worry about the root of the route. But where the rubber meets the road, we have to be knowing the escalation of crime. Right.
[01:04:18] Speaker B: It starts with small stuff.
[01:04:20] Speaker D: Even when I told you earlier, studies show you just need 5% of the population to not follow the rules for there to be chaos because there's just not enough law enforcement for that. I would guess we're at at least 5% not following the rules. We've got the people living outside and then people that are just generally like, forget it.
[01:04:37] Speaker C: Well, 1% of our population is homeless.
[01:04:41] Speaker B: Right.
[01:04:42] Speaker C: So that alone. Right. There is a contingency of people who either can't, because of addiction or mental health issues, can't follow the rules, or are not following the rules for some other reason. Right.
And that's 20% there. 5%.
[01:04:58] Speaker B: Right.
[01:04:59] Speaker D: So it's like this thing that when people talk to, this is in a different race, but they talk it to district attorney candidates. Like, what's your vision? I'm like, I hope your vision is predictability. We should be able to leave our buildings and predict both our environment, our built environment and how people interface. But also, if something does unexpectedly happen, the justice system and cycle is predictable. They will be arrested, they will be held, they will show up to court, they will be held accountable for their crimes. Right now, we have none of those four things that we can count on. So what do we do?
That's. That is what makes people feel zero confidence. People are scared. Then you have Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We are not covering safety. Safety requires some form of predictability, and we have created a completely unpredictable environment because we did not care about everything. We know about the things that layer on top of each other to create chaos.
[01:06:11] Speaker C: With predictability comes emotional investment. And I've said this before, but as humans, we have to invest in emotional space. Space becomes a motive for us. We get sense of ownership. All these things are very emotional. And if there is no predictability, people will no longer invest emotionally in space, and then financial investment will follow that lack of investment, and then you have an urban death spiral.
[01:06:44] Speaker D: Well, predictability is even helpful for people breaking the law.
I can't remember what the theory is called, but I think it's like the criminal justice theory or something, that the way you mitigate crime is the certainty of getting caught, the swiftness of the consequences, and the severity of the consequences. There is no certainty of getting caught currently, we're not even going to get to the consequences part. There's no certainty that you're going to get caught.
[01:07:13] Speaker C: Yeah. You have 2025 minutes response times.
[01:07:15] Speaker D: But if you had certainty, you probably wouldn't do it. If you were certain that someone's going to be like, hey, you can't live out here. Do you need some help? Where do you want to go? You wouldn't live out here because you knew someone was going to bother you. So the lack of predictability has created this chaos. So how do we create order? How do we create.
[01:07:41] Speaker C: I don't know. You're running for office. You tell me, right?
[01:07:44] Speaker D: Yeah, exactly.
[01:07:45] Speaker C: That's going to be your job.
[01:07:46] Speaker D: I tell people all the time, it's a team sport to save a city or a county or a state.
So I do think we need different people in these different roles that you can't have. I'm always surprised at people fighting with each other, and people know it. I interviewed with some of the employees of Multinoma county, and they were like, the leadership needs to stop fighting. And I told them, I've said to the county and the city, elected officials are the parents of a city or a county or a state, and how you treat each other is how you tell the populace they can treat each other.
[01:08:21] Speaker B: It's parenting.
[01:08:23] Speaker D: And I don't want to sound condescending.
[01:08:25] Speaker B: It's just.
[01:08:26] Speaker D: That's leadership is exactly like parenting.
[01:08:29] Speaker C: As a parent, I agree.
[01:08:30] Speaker D: As a parent, I've got to tell kids, too.
[01:08:32] Speaker E: And if I'm not showing all of them love to help them live better lives, man, I mean, I'm effectively being a bad father. I'm not showing them love.
[01:08:41] Speaker C: You got to provide for them. You got to be a mentor. You got to be a friend.
[01:08:45] Speaker E: Help them grow.
[01:08:46] Speaker C: You got to play all those roles.
[01:08:47] Speaker D: As a parent and to have boundaries and to have standards. What you expect of them, what you don't expect of them, that right now, it's just a free fall. And that's why it looks like this. And it's all for fear of judgment. I tell people, judgment is discernment. I can discern that this isn't okay. And if someone, like, normalizing addiction drives me crazy, I was like, if someone was an alcoholic, you wouldn't be like, awesome, keep going. You'd be like, how can I help you? Is it better for me to not drink around you? What would be the most supportive? What we do now is like, awesome, keep going.
[01:09:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:09:27] Speaker D: And if you overdose, we'll come bring you back to life, and then you're going to go do it again, rather than being like, no, now you have to go into treatment.
[01:09:36] Speaker E: What's best for their well being.
[01:09:37] Speaker B: Right?
[01:09:38] Speaker E: Yeah.
[01:09:38] Speaker D: And it's behaving in a manner that is. You cannot make good decisions when you're in this mind.
[01:09:44] Speaker E: Well, that's common. Everybody thinks that. Everybody knows that. And it just says, now it's going to take some people who are strong enough to be able to stand up and say, look, I love you enough to help you into an environment that will ultimately produce growth and change in your life for the better.
[01:09:59] Speaker C: We need street level interventions.
[01:10:00] Speaker E: Absolutely.
[01:10:01] Speaker C: And that's what we do every day. We do interventions.
[01:10:04] Speaker D: But I think that you're right. This idea of, like, people fear judgment because they're selfish.
[01:10:09] Speaker B: Right.
[01:10:10] Speaker D: They're, like, thinking about themselves and how.
[01:10:12] Speaker B: They look to everyone else.
[01:10:13] Speaker D: And I tell everyone, I don't need a job. I have a job.
Someone needs to do it. Someone needs to say it. Someone needs to be the parent. That is like, no, I do care about. I lost a brother in law to an overdose.
[01:10:28] Speaker E: Wow.
[01:10:28] Speaker D: I don't want people dying outside. I want everyone to have what they need. And the fact that this is how we take care of people is mind boggling to me.
[01:10:40] Speaker C: Let's see if we can offer some cigarettes and get a couple.
[01:10:42] Speaker E: Yeah, no doubt. I want to go say hi.
[01:10:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:10:48] Speaker E: Hey, sweetheart, you want a cigarette?
You want a cigarette?
How are you doing, honey?
[01:10:55] Speaker C: You got to carry some, Michael, if you're going to do outreach. Yeah, you got to offer cigarettes.
[01:10:59] Speaker E: You want. Okay.
[01:11:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:11:01] Speaker E: Do you need any help with anything?
Okay. It looks like you got some money taped to your wrist. Don't lose that.
[01:11:08] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:11:12] Speaker E: Are you doing okay? Do you need some help getting into a shelter, pedestrian, or do you have a safe place to stay?
You do? Okay. I'm Michael. What was your name? Selena. Wonderful to meet you. Well, if you need additional resources, you know where to get to. The lower resource under. It's on first and cooch. Okay. And you know, Blanche House is right here. Okay, honey. Okay, Selena. Good to meet you. Okay.
[01:11:35] Speaker D: Thank you.
[01:11:36] Speaker E: You bet.
[01:11:39] Speaker C: Jesse Burke, you came on the ride along today. We sat in studio, we talked about all the problems with Portland. We talked about this hopeful plan for the city, specifically this area, microcosm of not only old town, but of Portland itself. We come down here to talk about this plan, and we encounter a murder. We encounter a stabbing.
Possible multiple victims.
What's going to happen if you don't get elected? I mean, should anyone stay in know? I feel the same way Bach does.
We need you to win. The city needs you.
[01:12:16] Speaker D: Well, in the spirit of positivity, which is literally the name of my pack, it's Jesse Burke's positivity pack.
It's what I tell my kids. Who knows what's going to happen, but we just have to do the next right thing. So I don't know.
We all have a lot at stake. Someone told me recently there's a New York Times article that said cities are saved by people with too much to lose. And I think we all have a lot to lose, which is why we're all fighting so hard.
[01:12:47] Speaker C: Jesse Burke, too much to lose.
County commissioner.
[01:12:55] Speaker E: Well, the chips are down for all of us. I mean, we got a lot riding on this. This is our livelihood. This is not only that, but it's the life of the community.
[01:13:02] Speaker C: Yeah. I'd like to end this ride along episode with the story about your daughter and how she testified.
[01:13:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:13:10] Speaker D: So my 16 year old daughter was asked to testify by Trimet, our public transit authority, because they were trying to add. We're modifying measure 110, but they weren't sure if it would pass. So they wanted to have a trimet bill that would make it illegal to use illicit drugs on transit or at transit stops, which I was like, you can't even have open containers. Why would you be allowed to have illicit drugs? But whatever. And my 16 year old had been nearly assaulted by someone high on meth until a teacher stepped between them. And then another ride, someone had started openly smoking meth on the train.
So she was asked to testify to committee. And she said, I took the day off school to come down and tell you this. And she shared about the meth. She shared about the fentanyl. And at the end she said, we're children and we expect the adults in.
[01:14:05] Speaker B: Charge to protect us.
[01:14:07] Speaker D: And if you can't do that, why are you in charge? And the room was silent and they felt terrible.
We had a lot of testimony, but they only spoke to her and they said, thank you for taking the day off of school.
[01:14:21] Speaker B: I'm so sorry.
[01:14:23] Speaker D: And it passed 50 out of committee.
[01:14:25] Speaker C: Well, we are ready for the adult you, Jesse Burke, to be in charge of Multinama county. And we're not only supporting you, we're going to go out and I'm going to campaign for you.
[01:14:36] Speaker D: Thank you.
[01:14:36] Speaker C: And so I think we're wrapped for today.
I don't think we're going to be able to get a pio or anyone to talk to us from the scene. But it's been a good day. Unfortunately, this is still Portland. We're still working on it. We're fixing it, and you're going to be that solution.
[01:14:54] Speaker E: We're excited for you, Jesse.
[01:14:55] Speaker D: Thank you.
[01:14:55] Speaker E: Excited for everything.
[01:14:57] Speaker D: Well, hopefully we have a good team in there. We have a good slate of candidates.
[01:15:04] Speaker C: It does.
[01:15:05] Speaker E: Yeah, it does look great.
[01:15:05] Speaker D: It does look great, especially in areas where there's not too much traffic. They don't get that dirty.
[01:15:12] Speaker C: This was your project, right? Right back here.
[01:15:14] Speaker D: One. So that was part of our Arpa grant. And we would get.
We're still doing it.
[01:15:20] Speaker C: We're in process because we need it to be livable. So that's a part of keeping things clean.
[01:15:24] Speaker D: Right. So the tree wells, they're going to have gates. Pays for accordion gates for small businesses and glass reinforcement.
[01:15:33] Speaker C: Really?
[01:15:33] Speaker D: Those bricks can't break all those windows.
[01:15:37] Speaker C: It's greater.
