[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 the community.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: I'm Eli Arnold. I'm a former army pilot, and I've worked as a police officer in downtown Portland for the last seven years. I'm here today because I'm running for city council, and I want to see some change in the city. So I'm headed out with Alex to see what's going on downtown.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Welcome back to the ride along. I'm Alex Stone, your host. Our guest today is Eli Arnold. Eli, introduce yourself to the folks.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm Eli Arnold, and I'm a city council candidate in district four for Portland.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Perfect. So you live in the city of Portland?
[00:01:15] Speaker B: I do.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: And you're here to do the ride along today.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: I am.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Great. Since you're running for office, why don't you give a little background about who you are and why you're running for office?
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Yeah. So, big picture background.
I got to Portland in 2001, had my first kid, got married, and couldn't really afford to live in the city, and so I had to leave for a while and do something else. Spent a bunch of time in the army.
I've got four kids, and I dragged my family all around the country, and I had to go all around the world. And I really saw how that dislocation from community, from family, from extended support networks, is just bad for people. And also seeing sectarian violence and other things. Place like Afghanistan, I had a lot of time to think about what social breakdown does to, you know, I got back to the United States, and I felt like I was starting to see some of those same things that caused me some concern. And so I decided I was going to get out of the army, stop moving my family, invest in a place, never move again, build those networks, have long term friends, and really just embrace community for my sake, for my family's sake, and then hopefully benefits everybody all around. So we got back to Portland, and I was looking for something to do what has meaning.
I'm not a salesman. Where do I find something meaningful that's enjoyable, it's impactful, that connects to this idea. And so I decided I would become a police officer. And so for the last about seven years now, I've worked in downtown Portland as a police officer.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: What are the three favorite things about the job for you?
[00:03:07] Speaker B: So I like to say there's no job, really, that has autonomy, agency, and, I don't know, authority.
You're like a trusted agent. So so many jobs are do this thing and do it like that. And this is really like, everybody's having all kinds of different human experiences out in the city. Good things are happening, bad things are happening. We don't know what's going to happen. So we've given you some training. We've vetted you as a human being.
I like to describe it as, like a community dad at large, because a lot of what you deal with isn't even criminal, necessarily.
So, like, with kids, it's like, hey, maybe it is criminal, and it's like, why can't you keep your hands to yourself?
Or, hey, you got hurt.
What can we do to take care of it in this moment? Or you get an elderly person who has dementia who can't find their way home. So it's not just that you're dealing with criminal stuff, but you're this trusted community representative. Go out there, find where somebody needs to do something, and see if you can figure it. I just, I don't know where else you find that.
[00:04:23] Speaker A: And so you've been doing that in law enforcement in Portland for the last seven years?
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: And eventually you had the idea, I want to be a politician.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: How did that know? I think police are much more connected to the political life of a city than people realize. Because you are the end user of policy. Often, or at least you're always at those points where policy breaks down.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: For sure.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: If the criminal justice system isn't working or if traffic setup isn't working, or if your rules on camping aren't working.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: Whatever it is, even livability, graffiti, trash. Trash is littering.
There's some type of element of law there.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: When it breaks down and somebody is frustrated, they call 911, and you have to go down there and look a person in the face. And so you find out what's bothering the people, like what's not being addressed in the community. And obviously, Portland's been through a lot of interesting and tumultuous times in the last four or five years. And so I spent a lot of time looking people in the face who were struggling, both homeless people and business owners and everybody. And so at some point, I felt like the stories that I was hearing from politicians about what the problems were and how to solve them did not match the reality that I was seeing on the ground and that somebody ought to go tell an accurate story, because you can't cure a disease without, like, a diagnosis. And I wasn't even hearing a diagnosis that seemed accurate. So I started thinking, well, if nobody else is going to say the stuff, maybe I should do it. And I think this new form of government, this new process, kind of creates a unique moment, the shift in public opinion. Like, the public now realizes that saying nice things and throwing money at these problems isn't solving them. And so I think the public is just ready to hear, like, how do we just take some action? We just want to see some kind of progress here. And so I think they're ready to hear it. And I feel like I'm willing to tell it. And I convinced my wife to allow me to. And so, yeah, a few months ago, I just decided, you know, might as well.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: So I think that's very encouraging to hear. And I do think that I agree there's a disconnect between the policies that people have put in place and the goals that they're attempting to achieve. Right. A better city. And so what exactly are you going to focus on? And I want to push back a little bit, respectfully, I was a former police officer. Right. And people always tell me, well, cops can't solve all the problems. Right? So we know that as police officers, we know police officers cannot solve all the problems. But what specifically are the problems and what are the solutions that you're going to bring?
[00:07:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: So one of the reasons why I'm doing this, and one of the reasons I was frustrated as a police officer was that we would go deal with the situation in the moment, but we were failing to create conditions which would allow us to be successful in the long run. So, yeah, absolutely. Police aren't the long term solution.
The other police officers I know need somebody to create those conditions so their work has long term impact.
I think the number one issue in the city, and I think the public agrees based on polling I've seen right now, the issue that touches every other issue is homelessness. So having people anonymously camping out on the street, moving around kind of unpredictably, is terrible for them and for the community. And this touches on crime, it touches on drug issues, on business struggles, our public spending. Just so many things all touch this one issue, the ambulance shortage. And this small group of people has such tremendous needs because they're experiencing such high levels of dysfunction stress that they can really strain all of these systems. And so I think anything that we do that stabilizes this population, gets us gains fast. So I talked to an AMR crew recently downtown, one of the ambulance crews, just to confirm my suspicions. I'm like, what do you think? The percentages of ambulance transports downtown that are homeless people, and they said about 80%. So this tiny group, 2000 unsheltered homeless people in this area, 80% of the ambulance transports. So it's a lot of work to increase our ambulance capacity, which we need to make sure the staffing and everything's right there. Of course, everybody's paying attention to that right now, but if we can do anything that just reduces this group's need for this ambulance service, we free up capacity. Same with policing. I would say 50% of police calls are homeless related in the city. In this tiny, it's a fraction of a percent of the population. And so I really think removing anonymity, knowing where they are, finishing out built for zero. So we know why are you an unmedicated schizophrenic? Do you have a bad meth addiction? Like, knowing what it is you need and where you're going to be, allows us to provide continuity of care. So we have all these nonprofits, all these things we're spending money on, but they're not going out and reaching that person out in the street. And even if they could today, how would they know where to find them tomorrow? So I think whether it's shelters or designated camping spots, the county has been working on housing.
The city's done some task sites, some of these bigger managed camps. We need a first step, a quickly deployed first step, where we say, okay, you can be here, not in the sidewalk, not in the business alcove, and we're going to start tracking you, and we'll figure out how to render some assistance here. And I think if we can just do that, we can start making mean.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: In the past several years in Portland and other cities, there's been a level of upheaval, right.
Specifically because of the actions, the illegal actions of really bad actors within law enforcement. I mean, I don't want to throw any names out there, but I think you know what we're talking about.
[00:10:53] Speaker C: Sure.
[00:10:54] Speaker A: As these bad actors engage in illegal behaviors that can lead to death or false arrest, false imprisonment.
[00:11:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:04] Speaker A: This is going to continue to erode the trust between the communities that it sounds like you want to build.
So what is your plan? What does it look like? How do we engage communities that have been disaffected disproportionately and rebuild that trust?
[00:11:19] Speaker B: Well, first, let me say one of the reasons why I got into policing was actually Ferguson. So that's really what brought policing to my attention as a career field, because all of a sudden we started seeing all these stories from around the country, right? Cell phone videos started becoming a thing. And my brother had been a police officer. Oh, still is, for a long time, and it had never been a field that much interested me. And we started having arguments about these videos that were coming out. And, yeah, I think that is what made me think, like, oh, this is a really important thing to do. Right.
So that piqued my curiosity and ultimately is what led me to doing it. So I'm very concerned that it is done properly.
Obviously, police officers need to be held to an extremely high standard.
And if you're not helping people, if you're harming people, you got to get rid of you. Having been a military officer, I have no problem with punishing people for doing what they shouldn't be doing.
So it's really important that we get it right now. As for communities who have had strained relationships with police, policing is like a hyper local thing. I think one of the tough parts in our conversation is that people get their news nationally now. And so I know for me and a lot of police officers, I know we see a video, like a bad police video, and the first thing we say is, where was this? Where did this happen?
[00:12:54] Speaker A: That's what we do.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Arkansas.
One of the struggles is that our media is national, but policing, it's local populations. It is city code, state law, local case law. Like, everybody's operating under different rules.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Even Hollywood kind of pushes this image. You'll watch a show and they'll be like, this cop from Memphis goes and becomes a cop in Atlanta, and they just say, oh, he.
Like, it's a national police force. We don't have a nationalized police force. I mean, we had the FBI, but they're not really police. They're investigators. Right? And so in New Zealand or in Australia, you have a nationalized police force. But here you're right, it's a very local issue. It's not really a nationalized issue, but it's always viewed in that national lens.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: And it'd probably be a lot easier for us to address a lot of people's concerns about policing this country. If it was a federal policing system.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: It would be a lot easier.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's not how the US is set up.
So my focus is local because that's what we have some say over. And so I think we all have the same goal, the same thing. We want. We want safe communities, safe streets, and then on top of that, we want to be treated justly.
And there's a lot that goes into that. Making sure you have the right people, making sure you got the right training and the right culture is just crucial. And I think trust is tough. It's vague. Most people have very little interaction with police. And so it's really important that over a long period of time, you sort of build those relationships. And people walk away from encounters feeling like this person cares about me, they care what's happening here. And I think part of that is making sure we have the capacity. Right. So people get good service. When they do call 911.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just like a restaurant. If you go into a restaurant and someone has, they're responsible for 20 tables because someone called in, you're not going to get very good service. Right. And the same is true. You have to have a certain level of per capita pleasing in order to have that good customer service element.
[00:15:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:17] Speaker B: And I think, you know, kind of the reaction to Ferguson and Floyd and these things was like, well, we should have less policing.
Know, maybe like black neighborhoods or places like this. But I think what we've seen recently is that's not what polls say people want there. They want safe communities. They just want to be treated well.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: They want better policing.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And they want plenty of it. And when you look at who the victims of gun violence have been in Portland, and people in these communities are disproportionately suffering from the negative outcomes of crime.
So it's a very important thing that we get. Right. I think there's probably some room for innovation in how we handle the customer service aspect of it. It needs that capacity as part of it.
But, yeah, we need to make sure that it's good customer service that people are getting, because normal people walk away from this one encounter, and it's what sits with them for the next ten years.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
One of the ways I describe it is people who live in more rural areas, they're less likely to see law enforcement every day.
So I patrolled in a very rural area.
I was in the Cascade Mountains. There were Elkhurd. Right. Multiple Elkhurd out there. And so people would see me and be like, wow, we haven't seen police in weeks.
And so for them, not seeing law enforcement in an area that's generally safe makes them feel free.
And then an urban area, because there's a higher concentration of law enforcement in urban areas, just because people live closer together, you're more likely to see today we'll see law enforcement five, six, seven times a day. So whether it's true or not, it could be the same per capita, right? The region I patrolled was the same per capita as we have here in Portland. But people in Portland will feel over policed for the simple reason that they see police constantly, all day long. And so how can you combat that?
[00:17:25] Speaker B: I think really to take care of the fundamental problems, right, like our spike in homicides and all the rest, you got to be present and do the work, and people are going to see a lot. I think if we get those things under control, the violent crime. Yeah, people will feel safer.
If we get some of the mental illness like crisis we see walking around on the street downtown, people will feel safer. And I think the only way through is to actually get a handle on some of these issues.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: It also give you more time to talk to people and just have conversations versus sitting on a crime scene.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: One thing I always try to do personally, because this police public communications actually always was very interesting to me. I used to joke around with a friend of mine about writing an article called policing as a performance art.
Because the simple way you stand when you're at a scene, you got all those cars going by looking at you. Everybody always is trying to write a story in their head on very limited information when they see police interacting with somebody. And so I personally always try, if somebody calls 911 to report that they're seeing something happen, often they're not still there, they're passing through or whatever. I always try to make sure I call all those people back, hey, you were concerned. I went, here's what I saw. Here's what happened. So that people get, they can fill in those gaps, they can finish that story. They know something occurred. And I think that's really important to leaving people feeling fulfilled or like they were listened to and something was responded to. So, yeah, communication is huge.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: I'm also curious about measure 110.
So for the folks who are out there who don't know, measure 110 was passed as a ballot measure, so it was voted in on a regular general election cycle. And essentially it decriminalized possession, levels of narcotics, schedule one, schedule two narcotics that the federal government consider illegal. And this led to a large increase of drugs, drug use, and with that, a lot of overdoses. And so we've been living in, I call it measure 110 world. We've been living in measure 110 world for many years now. And it seems as if the streets have gotten less safe.
They're currently repealing measure 110. This is going to make each individual county and city have the ability to prosecute the possession of these narcotics again, and they're going to be unclassified misdemeanors. So could be very high level, could be very low level. What does this look like? And when you're in the city commission, what are you going to push for? City of Portland? Now again, I have to preface this. The city of Portland is one of the only major cities that doesn't have its own court system or city jail. They were all abandoned in the late eighty s. And so we only had the district court, we only had that county court and those district court. The DA, the DA here runs all violations, misdemeanors and felonies. But what would your position be with this new movement?
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Yeah, so fentanyl has pretty much been my full time job for the last year, and it has been a very interesting thing to see up close. And there's some confusion, some difficulty in teasing out data because fentanyl sort of arrived in force as measure 110 happened. But ultimately my position, the way I think about drugs, is that I really don't care much if they're legal or not legal. The only thing I care about is society's ability to intervene when a person can't take care of themselves, and society's ability to intervene when somebody's use is starting to harm everybody around them. So I think what's really upset people is the public use. That's really been the serious issue that got us here to repeal and measure 110 had good intentions, treating it as a health problem first and foremost. Great. Like I said, I want to intervene when people can't. That's what I would want. That's what I want for my kids.
The difficulty is that, of course, we created a situation where there were no tools.
I mean, not only did the state do a terrible job of rolling out this increased treatment availability, there is no increased treatment availability.
So that's completely missing. And then on the other end, we just opened up public use and removed our ability to intervene to stop people from smoking meth in front of the daycare. And I have repeatedly had to tell people to quit smoking meth in front of the daycare. Stop smoking fentanyl here, and they'll tell.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: You it's still a felony. By the way, 1000ft within the school is technically still a felony.
This hasn't been communicated effectively to users.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: Yeah, they're just not worried about it. And so we ended up with these giant groups of people on the sidewalk using.
And then we saw big volume dealers come in and start selling to them. So my hope for sort of repeal now is that at least we will have better levers to keep people from smoking on the max, to keep them from doing it on the sidewalk, keep them from ruining public spaces people want to use. Nobody wants to push a stroller through a group of people smoking fentanyl. And so I hope it's not going to do everything people hope it's going to do, but it's going to probably discourage people from being so brazen.
[00:23:16] Speaker D: And.
[00:23:16] Speaker B: Then it's going to make it easier for police to intervene. You take somebody into custody for possession who you think is dealing, and you can kind of step up from there. It gives you the opportunity to find out what's actually going on.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: Yeah. That unclassified misdemeanor. So if you arrest somebody. Right. And you find on them packets or drugs broken down in different increments, obviously they're selling, they're dealing. This isn't a personal use issue, especially if they're not even high. Right. So this person doesn't need detox. This person's a drug dealer working for a criminal organization. And that's a whole different route than if you have someone who has personal use passed out on the side of the road, who you've had a narcan three times this week, and you know them very well. They have mental health issues. That person really needs detox.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:10] Speaker B: And like I said, I just want the good outcomes. Like, if we can get a person into treatment and take care of the drug problem, fantastic. That's the goal. But hopefully, we will have a greater ability to reach those outcomes. We still have to build all the treatment capacity.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: Yeah, it's not there.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: I used to use Hooper detox. I used to drive an hour in. Just use Hooper. And it's gone. Those detox centers aren't there. They aren't there anymore. And there's plenty of bills put forward now to utilize jails and current jail beds and to reform them into treatment facilities.
[00:24:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: I think Clackamas county just started a program recently like that. I know there's a couple of wings, I think, at Inverness that are open.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: We have a wing opened in our jail here in the county.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
It's a great opportunity to intervene when you have a captive audience and start that.
[00:25:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: I mean, ultimately, this is all about taking care of people. And if we want to take care of these people, watching somebody with a terrible drug addiction, like die slowly on the street is an awful thing. And I have watched it over and over and over again, and it's always awesome when somebody comes to you and they say, hey, I got clean and I live in an apartment now, and I have a job, and my whole life's turned around. So we've been given a couple of.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: Tools.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: With the repeal, and hopefully we can build out the rest of that structure so we can actually use it to make some progress on the issue.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: What's happening in Portland and other major cities I call an urban refugee cris, because a lot of times they're not even from this area of America. They're just here. And having been in the military, we can handle a refugee crisis. We know how to build shelter, make food, even give classes and ids to shelter refugee communities. We've done this all across the world. Right?
[00:26:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: And so it would make sense that you would go that route. I did not know that stepping in here, but that's kind of what I foresee is on the ground level services that can direct people towards real solutions. And if you're not on the ground, I mean, imagine going into a foreign country and you have no boots on the ground, and we're going to go hit the road here in a little bit. Not right now. But you'll see that if you talk to people, when's the last time you were contacted? They're like, never. No one's ever reached out to me on the street. And we kind of hear, we joke, but we call it the field of dreams model from the movie back, like in the 80s, Kevin Costner. If you build it, they will come. And so people think that if you just build an office in an office building somewhere that handles homelessness, that everyone that is homeless is just going to know where that place is and find it somehow. And the reality is the people that need the help on the street are the ones that are on the street right now.
And kind of, I'm going to chase the rabbit. But in most cases, the people that are contacting those people every day is law enforcement.
[00:27:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Right. So in the 1970s, there was this strategic case called O'Connor v. Donaldson, and it essentially closed. It was responsible for closing down all of the state institutions. Right. It made it impossible or very hard to hold people against their will for mental health reasons. And this led to a high increase of individuals living on the street with mental health issues. And unbeknownst to us, the law enforcement community, when that happened, the mantle of mental health worker transferred from these state institutions directly onto law enforcement. No one told us this.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you can see the actual population move largely to prison. It's still these people, but they just got out on the street, and then they ended up in prison.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Exactly. So what can we do for law enforcement? How can we empower law enforcement who are really that first? I mean, should law enforcement be social workers? Right.
Should they be out there with a criminal mandate, just fighting crime? Should there be another way? Should we get emts and firefighters to go out and patrol and get them out of the fire station? What kind of solutions can we bring when it comes to offering direct services to the homeless community?
[00:28:42] Speaker B: Well, I think first we're going to be really hamstrung if we don't fix the geographic predictability issue.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: What does that look like?
[00:28:50] Speaker B: I mean, I think that looks like the designated spots, whether that's a tent or a registered campsite or something. If you don't have continuity of care, you got to contact fentanyl addicts a lot of times before you finally convince them to go get that treatment or before you're successful. It's not just a one off.
[00:29:09] Speaker A: Yeah. In our statistics, we've discovered that when we ask people, how many times this week did you want to shelter in a seven day period? There were only two times, on average where they would have been willing to go to detox or sheltering, but that time was only for an hour or two, and so you have to really catch them. So that continuity of care is a huge issue.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I think all the different agencies have a part to play.
Once we create that stability, police are obviously going to be involved in police matters in those areas. And right now, they're sort of the immediate, like, what's going on here?
[00:29:48] Speaker C: How do we triage?
[00:29:49] Speaker A: They're triaging. That's what they're doing.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: And there really isn't anybody else that's 24/7 lots of people mobile and can find history on a person. So they'll still have a triage role. I think the other groups, fire, PSR, project, respond, there's a bunch of other groups that are going to have a hand in it, and then all these nonprofits, and, yeah, we're going to need to move them to the customer, because I would have a hard time navigating the current shelter services system, and I'm not struggling with an addiction or schizophrenia or any of those other things. Somebody on the street can't do it. So we need to streamline this whole system. We need to deliver the service to that person. If we're going to make progress on this and I think we have a moral obligation to make some progress on this. I know if one of my kids was out here, if I ended up out here like somebody please intervene. There's nothing kind about just letting them lay in the rain out on the sidewalk.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: So you're likely to get elected. I think we should all vote for Eli Arnold. Me personally, but what does that look like for your career?
[00:30:55] Speaker B: I'll have to resign.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: You'll have to resign from law enforcement.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: So you'll be a full time politician at the city.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Know I'm a. I consider myself a generalist. There's an old Highland quote about human beings should be a generalist like specializations for insects.
I did military intelligence, I was a helicopter pilot. I've done the police thing. I think someday when I'm older I'd like to be a high school science teacher. But in the short run I think this experience I've had on the ground in the city with crime, with homelessness, with drugs puts me in a kind of a unique position which I really wasn't kind of expecting to be here but I ended up staring all this in the face and yeah, I think now I've got a unique perspective. We're going to have a twelve person council. Somebody ought to know something about our first response systems, especially when people's primary concerns right now are largely tied to crime and homelessness and mental health.
The number of hours I feel like I've spent training on these issues I've never seen anybody, any city councilor, any governor in a homeless camp.
These are our big issues. I haven't seen one person in a suit down talking to these people and it's different when you see it up close like you were able to think about it with nuance once you have.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: First hand experience and you know their name.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: These aren't programs for people like you and I. These are people. These are people that we want to help, that are suffering. They have open wounds or they're suffering from a mental illness that's causing them to bang their head against the cement. And we experience this trauma and it's even traumatic for us. Right. In law enforcement. And so I'm hopeful that you'll transition. I do want to touch on one more topic. I think we have time before we hit the street. So let's talk about level of policing. Right. Policing really is. We'll kind of break that down. But essentially law enforcement has a mandate from the constitution comes from the executive powers portion. So it goes directly from the president all the way down to the individual deputy police officer agent in the field. And it does make them kind of an independent arbiter of the law. Right. No one can force you to act. You're kind of that independent agent like you talked about in Portland. We are critically understaffed according to the FBI. The FBI has standards, per capita standards. So if you look at cities like Milwaukee and Boston, they have almost two to three times more law enforcement officers on the street patrolling. Is this going to be something that you think you're going to be working on or what are your thoughts around that?
[00:33:51] Speaker B: Yeah, so we're currently about 1.2 police officers per thousand people in the city.
In 2002, we were at 1.8.
We've historically been kind of a low violence city.
And so this long slide down in the numbers of police per capita, we kind of got away with it for a long time. Recently, with the uptick in sort of violence and demand, we're showing the gaps in our skeleton crew. So I think for Portland, like a 1.8 police officers per thousand would make a lot more sense, would give us a spare capacity.
Right now. If you call 911, and I have called 911 in the city personally, you're probably not going to get the service that you deserve because the system simply does not have the ability to provide it. I mean, I hope you do. I hope it's not overloaded at that moment you call. But I've called and been like, man, this time of night for this issue, it's going to be a while. And that's really unfortunate. That's not what we want. So we want to make sure that the person who's calling trust that somebody's going to come to them quickly in their emergency. We want to know that the police officer who goes has enough time to conduct all of the proper follow up to really give this person what they deserve and gather all that stuff we need.
And then, of course, we need that trust on the back end that things are going to be prosecuted or handled appropriately so that victims are looked after. And yeah, I absolutely support increasing the number of police officers per capita in the city. And I think that policing, and policing well, is crucial. It's one of those basic core services that we rely on. And I can tell you as like a police officer that when you look at that board and you see 30 backed up 911 calls and you look over and there's not one police officer available to go, that's terrible. You know, there's people terrified, hurt, whatever. And they need somebody now. And seeing there's nobody to go is awful.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: What about detractors that would say law enforcement? Increasing law enforcement just puts more guns on the street?
[00:36:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
I mean, I think there's a lot of silly people or people who are a little detached from the reality.
Every country in the world believes that you need police.
Every european country, for example. We often look at northern Europe as an example of a very healthy society. They all have more police than we do here in Portland. Per know some by.
[00:36:36] Speaker A: Wait, wait. You're saying that european countries, specifically northern Europe, have higher per capita rates of law enforcement officers per general population?
[00:36:46] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:36:46] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:36:47] Speaker A: I did not know.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: No country in Europe is below Portland in terms of number per capita. The only one that comes anywhere close is Finland, and Finland's still above us. And they have very low rates of sort of dysfunction and violence. They're very low. I think after that, the lowest is like 1.8 or 1.9. So 50% more?
[00:37:10] Speaker A: Yes.
It makes you realize every country in the world has law enforcement, whether they're authoritarian or completely democratic or communist, regardless of their governing system, there's law enforcement there.
[00:37:26] Speaker C: Right.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: Because at the end of the day, people are going to do things that are harmful to other people, and that has to be stopped. Stop those people from doing that.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: I've had people, of course, tell me, quit my job. My answer is, somebody's going to call and want to report child abuse tomorrow. And I feel like we have a responsibility as a community to send somebody there and find out what's going on. So I don't think not policing isn't an option, so we should do it well.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: And what does that look like, doing it well?
[00:37:57] Speaker B: I think it looks like picking really good people, having really high standards, having great training, and culture is very important in policing. And so having a culture that is really in tune with the community is very concerned about good outcomes.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: So not a zero sum culture. I know a lot of times what happens, and I'm just speaking for me as a former police officer. I lived in my community, and so every decision I made affected me and how I lived in my community. I ended up turning my own police chief in, which was very bad for me in my community. Right. But a lot of times when you have law enforcement officers that live really far outside of the place where they patrol, and I say this with as much respect as possible, it can sometimes become a zero sum game where they're like, hey, I'm going to work today. But all I care about is that I get home and do you think it's possible to have a city like Portland, where I would say, on average, Portland has less respect for law enforcement than other major cities like Houston, where I'm from? Do you think that there can be a cultural exchange between law enforcement and the natural culture of Portland that's mutually.
[00:39:29] Speaker B: Beneficial and think we're.
[00:39:33] Speaker A: I think we're there, but we're starting.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: To move more direction. You know, I think people have realized, oh, we need law enforcement. We need this to be done well, and we're not at ods with each other. We want the same things. We want a safe community where people can live and go about their lives without being harmed or hassled.
Yeah, I think we're there. One interesting thing about the living inside the city. So I live inside the city.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: Yeah, you do. You're running for office.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: I like living in the city. I always, before becoming a police officer, was like, yeah, they should all live in the city. I got to say, I think my perspective has changed a little bit since. And I don't think people realize the way, especially in, like, a dense urban environment. Like, the landscape gains this sort of emotional layer. So, like, I can't go past a single intersection downtown without seeing some terrible event that has happened there. We talk a lot about PTSD and things like that, and I think for a lot of police officers, it's just very hard to let your kids go play at a park where you know about terrible things that have happened at that park. And so that ability to disconnect.
If I had to go back to Afghanistan every day at the end of the shift, it would be weird. And so I know some people don't like, specifically don't like to live in the city they live in, and I think it makes more sense to me now. I'm sticking with inside the city.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: I never thought about that, and as a former chaplain, I think I should have thought about that, and I really respect that viewpoint, and I think that's extremely valid.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: Well, thank you.
[00:41:07] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: So good on you for bringing that them.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: I give them some grace that I didn't in the past.
[00:41:13] Speaker A: Yeah, that's good.
Well, why don't you tell the folks where they can find you online? I know that you're running for office. Give them all your socials.
[00:41:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: So I'm running for Portland city council district four, which is Selwood, Eastmoreland, and everything west of the Willamete river. Eliforportland.com with the f o. R is the website and you can find, I think Instagram has really been my primary thing. So I put out a lot of maybe like 1 minute, just short kind of policy position, how I look at thing videos, usually a couple of times a week. So you can get a whole backlog of what do I think about everything from police accountability systems to permitting and taxes and all of that. So check those out. And then of course I'm doing the small donor election program. So donations, 1st $20 worth of donations from people who live in the city of Portland are matched nine to one. And that's really in the early part of this.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: That's really the game.
[00:42:11] Speaker B: Yeah. So yeah, please check it out and I'll be out there talking to as many people as I can.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, thanks for coming on today. This isn't just a podcast where we sit in the studio and ponder about things. We're going to actually hit the road. We're going to meet up with America's security guard, Michael Moss, and we're going to patrol. We're going to go on patrol with someone in Portland police and we're going to see if we can help anybody today.
[00:42:35] Speaker B: We'll catch you on the street.
[00:42:37] Speaker A: Okay, so we're already in the car, Eli. We're hitting the streets. We met up with Bach. We have a kind of an emergency call. It's at a property a couple blocks away.
[00:42:49] Speaker C: The property manager called and just said, hey, there's a gentleman on the property who's been in a tent discarding narcotics paraphernalia around. So we want to go out and say hi and see if we can offer some resources and yeah, get that environment in a safer spot.
[00:43:05] Speaker A: What we do is we go there with the purpose of building a relationship and trying to find out who that person is, what do they need, and how we can help them possibly be somewhere that's better for them. Some people claim that the individual property, if the entitlements read that that sidewalk is legally theirs, right, that they should be able to move the tent. We don't forcibly remove tents because it creates a bad situation and it's not a good way to build relationships within the community. We need relationships where we can all work together.
As law enforcement, you're doing a lot of social work as well. What are your thoughts?
[00:43:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you're right. When you get something like this, the first step is figuring out who this person is and what's the story here? One of the interesting things is always obviously what do they tell you? But for law enforcement. It's nice to be able to see the history. So you can tell, like, this person just arrived. Maybe this person was fine till six weeks ago, and all of a sudden, something's going on where they're experiencing just repeated interactions or issues. And so, yeah, your first step is always just initiating a conversation, kind of getting a sense of who this is.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: Okay, well, we just arrived. We kind of parked about a block away. We didn't want to appear too aggressive, so we're just going to approach on foot, be really calm.
[00:44:24] Speaker C: Right.
[00:44:24] Speaker A: You ready?
[00:44:24] Speaker C: Good to go.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: You got supplies?
[00:44:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: Do we have cigarettes? Yeah, cigarettes is what matters. No laws or violations. We don't break any laws on the filming of the ridewarm podcast.
Please close the gate behind you. Well, I'll do that. This is our client, actually.
[00:44:50] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:44:53] Speaker A: I didn't see that.
[00:44:54] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:44:55] Speaker C: Knock, knock. Hey, anybody home?
Hello?
Anybody in there?
Yeah, there's a bunch of needles. Needle caps.
There's a ton of it.
[00:45:09] Speaker B: Starting to see a few more needles lately.
[00:45:11] Speaker A: Yeah, there were for a while in the past two months. Yeah.
[00:45:14] Speaker C: Hey, anybody in here? I don't think he's asleep. Cool. Well, nobody here left a couple of waters.
[00:45:22] Speaker A: We got the bounce. So no one's here right now. You can't build a relationship if no one's here. So we're going to leave the area, come back in a little bit, and try to save their home. So I'm going to make contact with the property owner.
[00:45:34] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: I'm Alex.
[00:45:37] Speaker C: Hi.
[00:45:37] Speaker A: Ashley.
This is America's security guard. This is our friend Eli. He's actually running for city commissioner. He's hanging out today. Well, if you had a photo of the guy, did any of you get a photo?
[00:45:51] Speaker C: Did Destiny reach out to you?
[00:45:53] Speaker A: Destiny? Yeah, Robinson.
[00:45:54] Speaker C: That was the picture I took on Friday.
[00:45:56] Speaker A: Other than that, can you ask destiny for the photo from Friday?
[00:45:59] Speaker C: I have it.
[00:46:02] Speaker A: Have you seen him using drugs?
[00:46:04] Speaker C: Yeah, we just came back from lunch, and he was shooting up here.
[00:46:08] Speaker A: Put your number in there.
So he's actually putting a needle in his arm?
Yeah. It's so weird.
[00:46:17] Speaker B: It'd be interesting to know if that's powdered fentanyl is shooting up or if he's.
[00:46:20] Speaker A: Or meth, because he's not in the tent. Did he shoot meth?
Was he really active, or was he kind of on the super active guy?
[00:46:28] Speaker B: Yeah, he was just walking around about ten.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: Yeah, that would make sense. That would make sense because if you shoot up heroin or fentanyl an hour ago, you would think that he'd still be in the tent.
We love you all. Keep up the good work.
We're going to dip out, but we'll be back later today. Sounds good. Awesome. So we just reached out to the client, met with them about the drug use going on outside. They gave us a general description and a photo of the subject. We're going to come back when he's here.
From their description, sound like he's on meth, which means he's probably out trying to get food and do his hustle thing for today. So we'll be back in a bit.
All right, well, good client contact. Unfortunately, the individual in the tent wasn't here. So rather than coming back and spending our time on this kind of call, I'm going to call the nonprofit. I'll reach out to Terrence and have them come into contact, and hopefully they can get him into a better living situation.
[00:47:26] Speaker C: Hang on. Everett. I have a non responsive.
Go to Everett, please. Old town.
[00:47:34] Speaker A: We are getting an active call, and we're not going to violate any crimes or traffic laws.
[00:47:40] Speaker C: It's going to be trailhead.
[00:47:42] Speaker A: Trailhead?
[00:47:43] Speaker C: Yeah, it sounds like it's an overdose.
[00:47:45] Speaker B: Deloa is loving one another, is that right?
[00:47:47] Speaker A: That's correct, yeah.
[00:47:48] Speaker B: And I think I've heard a little bit about them. But you have, like, a nonprofit side connected to.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So we make a lot of tent contacts and for PPB and for the DA's office, they were like, why are these guys contacting all tents? The security company? And we really wanted to make sure that everyone understood we were doing it for the benefit of the tent occupants, not just our clients. So we decided to go ahead and stand up a full nonprofit. And that nonprofit, all they do is actively work towards getting people that live on the street into detox housing or in a better living situation with a faith group, families or friends. We transport people across states, but we actually verify who's going to be there, who's going to pick them up, and that they're not drug users.
[00:48:33] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:48:33] Speaker A: So we transition around 120 to 150 people a month that live on the street into these types of detox or self train. That's what Spencer does, right, Spencer, Terrence and Tiffany.
[00:48:45] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:48:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I see them out there a lot.
[00:48:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[00:48:48] Speaker B: So, Bob, is this guy already Narcan?
[00:48:50] Speaker C: I don't know that, but I assume so. Goldson's got some on him all the time. If he hasn't, I'd be surprised.
[00:48:56] Speaker A: You want to.
[00:48:56] Speaker C: What side of the trailhead are you on, man? I don't know. Moving around.
There we go.
Do we have medical coming in? Yeah, they're coming. That ambulance is probably us upside down.
There we go.
Come on, buddy. Come on, buddy.
Come on.
Come on.
[00:49:35] Speaker D: Come on, man. Mama wants you.
[00:49:36] Speaker C: There we go.
[00:49:38] Speaker D: We can cut that off of him.
[00:49:39] Speaker C: We sure could, but. Come on, buddy.
Come on.
[00:49:44] Speaker A: We got some.
[00:49:45] Speaker C: I got a whole bunch.
No, we don't need more. Okay, back to the nostril. That's facing you now. Yeah, I got you, dude.
Kidding me?
[00:50:06] Speaker B: Negative on the influence drainage.
[00:50:11] Speaker C: Turn down so he doesn't.
[00:50:16] Speaker A: Take that head off.
[00:50:17] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:18] Speaker A: Is there a wound?
[00:50:20] Speaker C: No, he's just bleeding out his nose. Okay, spill his nosebleed. Watch my back. Watch the scene. Scene, please. Watch my back. This way.
Take a deep breath, budy.
[00:50:33] Speaker B: Somebody's overdosing.
[00:50:37] Speaker C: Dude, you got to be kidding me.
Breathing.
Let me get in there for just. Yeah.
[00:50:46] Speaker A: Good work.
[00:50:50] Speaker C: Something really hurts. Come on. There you go. There we go. No, that hurts. Hey, there we go. There we go.
There we go. Welcome back to the land.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: Just let that come out.
[00:51:01] Speaker C: Yeah. Let me get you to lean over just a little bit further. You might be about to puke.
Straighten this leg out for you. There you go. There we go. Welcome back. Take a breath.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: This week.
[00:51:15] Speaker C: Can you not throw that away?
I appreciate you cleaning up. We need to count. I think it's five of them, right?
Hello.
[00:51:22] Speaker B: You get Narcan?
[00:51:23] Speaker C: No. He got Cloxido. What?
He got Cloxido. He got eight milligram. One. Yeah. There we go. He got five doses of it, so it's 40 milligrams.
[00:51:33] Speaker A: Shut the front door.
[00:51:34] Speaker D: He got plenty, everybody.
[00:51:38] Speaker C: Well, look, we're seeing 30 and 40 when I ask around.
[00:51:41] Speaker A: You guys, right?
[00:51:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:51:46] Speaker A: Anybody know his name?
[00:51:48] Speaker C: No, I don't.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: So good. Samaritan?
[00:51:51] Speaker C: No.
[00:51:51] Speaker A: Oven professional.
[00:51:52] Speaker B: Shorty?
[00:52:00] Speaker C: No idea.
[00:52:04] Speaker A: I smelled the odor of alcohol, too. I don't know if you caught that.
[00:52:12] Speaker C: What's your name? Thanks.
Careful, careful, careful, careful, buddy.
All right. My name is Michael.
[00:52:22] Speaker B: With the change, hopefully full change. Paramedic, EMT requirements.
[00:52:30] Speaker A: That'd be awesome. That'd be amazing.
[00:52:35] Speaker B: Program this month.
[00:52:39] Speaker A: To get into this.
What's wrong with you?
[00:52:44] Speaker C: You overdosed, and they gave you a lot of Narcan.
All right, burner a little bit higher.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: There we go.
[00:52:56] Speaker C: Good luck, budy. Hope you feel better soon.
Straighten your feet out, bud. There we go.
[00:53:14] Speaker B: How many lifetime narcan applications do you think I got now?
[00:53:18] Speaker C: I don't know.
[00:53:20] Speaker A: We have a life saving award. He's not wearing one, but it's a red cross.
Almost everyone in our company has one.
[00:53:31] Speaker B: I don't know what you've seen, but it seems to me like our overdoses have slowed down a little bit down here compared to, like, six months ago or when the big crowd.
[00:53:40] Speaker C: Okay, fair. Okay. Compared to.
[00:53:42] Speaker B: Not compared to five years ago. A little improvement in the last.
[00:53:45] Speaker C: A little improvement. Yeah. We were seeing it daily or five, six times a week, we would be getting involved in one, and now I would say we're two to four times a week. So I would probably agree with you. But summertime is coming.
[00:54:04] Speaker A: Very true.
[00:54:05] Speaker C: Yeah. What that essentially means, right, for us, is that the practicality of somebody intervening on an overdose goes up when you get people into housing who are not getting treatment for narcotics, then they overdose in their rooms, being there's nobody there to help them and observe them. Right. But you overdose on the street, there's five, six, and there was people walking by offering Narcan. Great.
[00:54:28] Speaker A: Well, I think Golson bounced.
[00:54:29] Speaker C: Yeah. I need to get Narcan. Yeah. I need to go by the office. Okay. Let's go. Yeah. I only got so.
Went through a lot.
[00:54:38] Speaker A: That's good.
[00:54:40] Speaker C: I think I've got three doses left.
[00:54:43] Speaker A: Let's go do a knock and talk at society, see if they're good.
[00:54:47] Speaker C: Right.
[00:54:48] Speaker A: All this whole block, all that. Every building here, except that is my client.
[00:54:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:54:54] Speaker A: And so we're always here trying to help people do what we can.
[00:54:58] Speaker C: Hi, everybody.
[00:55:01] Speaker B: This is where I started seeing echelon.
[00:55:04] Speaker A: What up?
[00:55:08] Speaker C: Good.
[00:55:08] Speaker A: Yourself?
All right, man. Good to hear, bro.
[00:55:11] Speaker C: Hello.
[00:55:13] Speaker B: Was that a homicide with a couple of your guys who were the first on scene?
Right over here, six weeks ago.
[00:55:20] Speaker A: Did they pass away?
[00:55:21] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:55:22] Speaker B: Not in the moment, though.
[00:55:23] Speaker A: They got to the hospital.
Really?
[00:55:29] Speaker C: Where is he?
[00:55:31] Speaker A: He's staying here.
We'll just make sure that he understands that he's trespassed and ask him if he could.
So there's been a gentleman with a skateboard who's been coming up and threatening the guests as they come out. Apparently, he was a guest at this location. Essentially, he left, but he's been coming back periodically throughout the day, threatening, making gestures, flipping people off inside. We're going to do a couple of blocks. Do, like, a concentric patrol around the neighborhood, see if we can see them, try to have a really low key conversation, offer them a cigarette, let them know, hey, man, that's not cool. You are trespassed. Right. And then go back to NATO, pick up more Narcan, and then we should be good to go. So we're here at the echelon office downtown, downtown Portland, and it's a location that we own, and it's more of a team's room vibe.
We had to stop over and get some more Narcan. That's a box in right now.
[00:56:29] Speaker C: Ready? Yeah.
[00:56:30] Speaker A: So what do you got in your hand?
[00:56:31] Speaker C: This is Narcan. Actually, it's not Narcan. It's naloxone.
[00:56:34] Speaker A: What's the difference?
[00:56:35] Speaker C: Narcan is four milligrams, Clox goes eight.
[00:56:38] Speaker A: So why are we using such high doses?
[00:56:41] Speaker C: Because four is not working.
[00:56:43] Speaker A: Four doesn't work.
[00:56:45] Speaker C: You have to do multiple administrations of four to get to an effective dose. So the harder the narcotic, the more that's in the system, the more the medicine that you need to counteract that to get the person to start breathing again. We stopped using the fours a while ago, but I distribute plenty of it all around. Like, we give it out to tents, we give it out to community partners.
[00:57:06] Speaker A: We give it to clean and safe.
[00:57:08] Speaker C: Yeah, we give it all over the place.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: The nonprofit actually gets it. It's all free to us. And then the nonprofit distributes it to different partners. It's not like city team, different security companies.
[00:57:18] Speaker C: The whole point of this stuff is that it save lives. It's not going to do any good sitting in here in a locker unless we get rid of it.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: That's right.
Did you get the vanilla flavor?
[00:57:27] Speaker C: I think this one's not.
[00:57:28] Speaker A: All right, so people come here, our security officers can go and grab different gear before they hit the roads. They have little bags they can carry stuff in, but close to people, this is the most important product right here. Cartons of cigarettes.
We always hand out cigarettes all day long. We go through literally ten cartons a week of cigarettes just in the downtown corridor. We're good? Talking good.
[00:57:55] Speaker C: Hey.
[00:57:55] Speaker A: Okay, we're doing the ride along. Eli Arnold's in the back. We got America's security guard in the back. Eli's in the front. And we've just been discussing, kind of off camera, how fentanyl is poisoning the streets. It's literally destroying the city from within.
What are your thoughts about that, Eli?
[00:58:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it really has been my full time job. And so what I've been working on is removing the dealers, especially the high volume dealers, and you can see it done a lot of surveillance. When you see one of those people arrive and start dealing to the crowds, you give it a little bit of time, and you'll start hearing over the radio. Overdose two blocks that way, overdose two blocks that way. And you can just see that direct link between the supply and the overdoses. And one of the things people often talk about, the drug war.
[00:58:45] Speaker A: Right.
[00:58:46] Speaker B: And I think it's important to note that there's, like, a fundamental difference between something like marijuana that we used to treat as a very serious thing, and fentanyl. And if you're dealing with fentanyl, you.
[00:58:55] Speaker A: Are killing people 100%.
[00:58:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:58:57] Speaker B: And so narcans, I mean, it's an amazing drug. I've seen it bring people back that I was certain were dead, and clearly, you guys have done it a lot.
[00:59:08] Speaker C: Hang a left again, please. Oh, yeah.
[00:59:09] Speaker A: Every day we have a life saving award. I mentioned it's a red cross. We put on our echelon badges or logos, and everyone has them now. So now it's just a regular. It is the logo now, because everyone's given out Narcan so many times.
[00:59:26] Speaker B: One of the guys who walked up in the middle of that overdose said, he's Narcan, that same guy a couple of times before. And, I mean, that's really what I think. So, key to compulsory treatment, people talk about, like, oh, it's not as effective as voluntary.
[00:59:38] Speaker C: We're looking for Golson, who said, he's right here somewhere.
[00:59:40] Speaker A: He's right here. Okay, I got him.
[00:59:42] Speaker B: But when you're to that point where random people are like, I've also Narcan, this person, you don't have long left.
[00:59:47] Speaker A: Yeah, well, we got a guy right here doing kind of the fentanyl.
[00:59:54] Speaker B: Yeah, the hangover nod thing.
[01:00:01] Speaker A: So people that use, you'll see them, they'll be standing straight up and balancing. Eventually, they hunch over, and that hunched over position.
Fentanyl is a depressant. And then when they hunch over, they're compromising their lungs. They're putting their lungs in a compromised position. So their natural levels of oxygen, which we want, really, in the 90s, are going to become slowly diminished.
[01:00:24] Speaker B: Well, then, even with the. You give them Narcan and you revive them. But, yeah, if they were blue or whatever, how long did their brain go without oxygen? Brain damage each time.
[01:00:37] Speaker A: Are we good, Bach?
[01:00:38] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:00:39] Speaker A: All right, so we had this call for our client right here, gentlemen, with a skateboard, threatening, no actual physical threats.
[01:00:49] Speaker B: Somebody who's clearly not in their right state of mind right now.
[01:00:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:00:52] Speaker A: And so these are the types of things, like, we don't need law enforcement to do these things, to tell people, hey, man, that's our property. Can't you be nice to the people working there? And then that way, you, law enforcement can actually go out and do your job and not have to worry about calls that are really more property based, where crimes really haven't occurred. You heard me. I had a conversation with the ladies. I established no crimes have really occurred.
[01:01:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:01:16] Speaker A: He actually hasn't made a physical threat. He actually hasn't hit anybody. He hasn't threatened to hit anybody. Right. He's just not being a nice person, not being a good neighbor. And so we're going to be able to have a conversation with him and hopefully stop crimes from happening where you don't get called to the future. Less call volume for you. Everyone's happy, right?
[01:01:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:01:37] Speaker B: Just knowing that people are paying attention, too.
[01:01:39] Speaker C: Yeah. Someone's watching.
[01:01:40] Speaker B: You can really shut some stuff down.
[01:01:43] Speaker A: You do some cigarettes.
[01:01:45] Speaker B: I don't.
Who smokes anymore, right?
[01:01:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:01:50] Speaker A: What is this, Europe?
[01:01:53] Speaker D: Is it shorts guy?
[01:01:59] Speaker C: Motherfucker. Hey.
[01:02:02] Speaker A: Probably be y'all doing all right?
[01:02:03] Speaker C: Probably be better to calm down, please. Howdy. I know you. Can we put a cap on that?
I'm Michael, man.
What's your name, brother? Michael.
Andreas.
Okay, check me out.
[01:02:21] Speaker D: Before you do anything with this.
[01:02:23] Speaker C: Maybe it'd be better if we just separated from this guy.
[01:02:28] Speaker B: Look at me.
[01:02:29] Speaker C: He's a dumb ass. Look at me. Look at me. He's going to kick my ass.
[01:02:32] Speaker B: What's up, man?
[01:02:33] Speaker C: This drunk is bothering me, and I had to. I'm not going to hit him. I want to clear up one other thing, though, with you, okay?
[01:02:38] Speaker B: You remember me? We talked outside Blanche house.
[01:02:40] Speaker C: This is what's going on.
[01:02:41] Speaker B: I'm sitting here having good old time.
[01:02:44] Speaker D: And then he's drinking. And I said, I don't know you.
[01:02:46] Speaker B: And everybody just looks at me like.
[01:02:49] Speaker C: Do you see this picture?
This picture is you.
Sounds like. Let me explain something to you, budy, okay? I'm not your enemy. Sounds like you're having some trouble over at the hotel.
Sounds like you're kind of maybe creating a ruckus, okay? So I want to let you know something here, okay? I'm going to trespass you from that property.
So if you come back to that property, you'll be subject to arrest for criminal trespass. I don't have a problem with you, but I just need you to kind of knock that off. Is that cool?
[01:03:22] Speaker D: The second thing I do is say the fuck less. And you know what? Okay, I'm not making this up, because I know it's a weapon.
Second time, second strike, say the fuck less. Okay?
And then third strike. No, it's like whatever I want, depending on how you come at me. See how he came at me. He came at me slowly and I backed up.
[01:03:47] Speaker C: I appreciate that. I don't like conflict, man.
[01:03:49] Speaker D: I always keep my defense in the middle.
[01:03:53] Speaker C: And you know what?
[01:03:53] Speaker D: You know, I say I'm in real Portland now because I'm a liberal bitch from border.
[01:03:58] Speaker A: It is. Bro. When's the last time you've been in treatment?
[01:04:04] Speaker C: Do you want a cigarette?
[01:04:07] Speaker D: I don't want you to take that.
[01:04:08] Speaker C: No, I might have one for you.
[01:04:10] Speaker D: Do the same thing you do. You know why? Because I have money. And you know what I did last night?
I went out because there was a shooting.
[01:04:16] Speaker C: You need a light?
[01:04:18] Speaker D: I need to keep that.
[01:04:19] Speaker C: You're right. I don't even know you. But it doesn't mean I can't be your friend. But at the same time, I just need you to stay away from that hotel, okay? Is that cool? Because you and I can be cool. That's no problem. But the people who are working there, they're kind of troubled by the whole behavior thing.
[01:04:34] Speaker D: I know exactly what I did, okay? And I know how many red flags I have there. And you know what?
The reason that I did what I did is because I don't care. Right? I don't fucking care. It's just a place to me. But I really fucking liked it there. And you know what? If you have a lounge, bro, I'm going to lounge, all right? And it's like, if you have me in your establishment, at least warn me when you kick me to the streets with a bag that's heavier than my own, what I'm dealing with. But no, that motherfucker was like, get out.
And to be fair, Portland, because I got an ego.
[01:05:13] Speaker A: I get you hold within the curvature of the brain, or figure it out on my own.
[01:05:17] Speaker D: Someone just told me the truth.
Dealers. I don't fuck with drug dealers. Just tell me drug dealers, because I know.
[01:05:26] Speaker A: How's it going?
[01:05:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:05:31] Speaker D: Obviously. Fucking woman, bro. That's why I'm wearing man bun. Because I'm trying to get closer to her.
But here's the thing. You know about cool cat. Big dog, good cop, bad cop, doesn't.
[01:05:45] Speaker C: Everybody.
[01:05:48] Speaker D: My terms, right? So it's like, I'm always a cool cat unless you give me a reason to be a big dog, okay? And then when I'm a big dog, I don't fight like this. Because a cool cat's in there, right? And so then you become big dog, I become cool cat. You see? And it's like, that's how I fight. Okay? He was big dog. I was cool cat.
He was like, coming out with bullshit. I was big dog cool cat constantly at you with bullshit. Fucking Portland is just like an entity unto itself.
[01:06:20] Speaker C: Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough.
[01:06:21] Speaker D: I didn't know that until eight days until today.
[01:06:23] Speaker C: Well, have you said what you needed to say?
[01:06:30] Speaker D: I'll stay here for a couple more days. Oh, wait, I got to split it anyway. You know what? Because eight days, one day I had a vacation planned, all right? I'm still going to do it because I'm a man, all right? I got money. I got cash at home. He's recording me, though, because I'm on camera, ho. But it's like, that's just me. Wrong. Fuck. Put me on the Internet, bro.
It's because everybody's on the Internet. So am I, all right? I'm just like fucking Andreas. I'm the guy. You know who the guy is. You know why I don't fuck with gangs, bro? Because gangs do this. And it's like, that's just obviously just reputation. But you know who my gang is.
[01:07:10] Speaker C: You want a cigarette, my man?
Oh, I got a lighter.
[01:07:16] Speaker D: Long time no see, bro. How's your day, Ben? You walked all the way over here from the fucking Pete's, bro.
Oh, well, that's where he was, bro. That's why you fucking was doing your weird shit. I'm kidding, bro. You were cool like girl, bro.
[01:07:30] Speaker C: Right?
[01:07:30] Speaker D: Okay, so hotel.
[01:07:32] Speaker C: Exactly.
[01:07:32] Speaker D: All right? Hotel interior. This is where I made my scene on the curb, all right?
This is where I fucking did the dirt. You know what I'm saying? I know what I did when I spit that alcohol on the ground.
[01:07:45] Speaker C: Hey. Yeah, got you.
[01:07:50] Speaker A: I'm proud of you, bro.
[01:07:51] Speaker C: Stay out of that hotel. Okay, good. And know that if you come back to that hospital, that hotel, you're likely going to be arrested. Don't do that. Okay, buddy? I prefer that everything be cool.
Got it.
[01:08:05] Speaker D: Check me out. What if I'm on the street, am I going to get arrested?
[01:08:07] Speaker C: No. Okay?
[01:08:08] Speaker D: They told me I belong on the streets. If I make a scene on the street, am I going to be arrested?
[01:08:13] Speaker C: Don't be disorderly conduct.
[01:08:15] Speaker D: Okay, so what classifies under that?
[01:08:17] Speaker C: You got your phone, you can look it up. In Oregon, there's a whole bunch of behaviors that constitute. That can't block doorways, can't create a ruckus in the street, because it's like.
[01:08:27] Speaker D: Dude, just fucking truth and honesty.
[01:08:35] Speaker A: My name is Alex Chillin, bro.
[01:08:41] Speaker C: Andreas. Cool. Yeah, I told him about being trespassed from the society hotel. Nice. He said he's new in town. And it will probably scoot after a bit.
[01:08:51] Speaker D: I was on that block, too, bro. We were spitting naps next to each.
[01:08:54] Speaker A: Other, and it was like, I don't live here. I live in Idaho. I just got here this morning.
[01:09:02] Speaker D: I went on a whole fucking trip. And you know what? Don't fuck with gangs, bro.
You already know that.
[01:09:08] Speaker A: But it's like, I don't fuck with gangs. And I don't gang bang, either.
[01:09:13] Speaker B: There you go.
[01:09:14] Speaker A: And I don't do any of that.
[01:09:15] Speaker D: You know what?
You know what I thought? Because it's like these guys are just doing their thing. And you know what? Nobody understands me sometimes. And that's why I'm here in frustration. Because in my hometown in fucking Boulder, bro, it's just like, I do this. No, dude, I do not do this in Boulder.
[01:09:33] Speaker A: When's the last time you had a psych eval?
[01:09:35] Speaker D: I don't even know what that is, so, never. But maybe, depending on your definition of.
[01:09:40] Speaker A: Psych eval, like, when's the last time you went and saw a doctor? A brain doctor, like, at the hospital?
[01:09:45] Speaker D: I look in the mirror.
[01:09:46] Speaker A: Well, there you go.
[01:09:47] Speaker D: You see here? I just want to say I'm on.
[01:09:51] Speaker A: A cool cat because I know itself be true, right?
[01:09:53] Speaker D: I'm a cool cat, bro. It's like I'm safe.
[01:09:56] Speaker C: Hello.
[01:09:57] Speaker D: You know why I'm safe?
I'm safe, dude. And it's like that big dog hides inside. Okay? And that's what my thing is.
[01:10:07] Speaker A: Are you going to start more fights today?
[01:10:09] Speaker D: No. But you know what?
My intuition. As long as I have a little bit of ganja, I'm ahead of a dispo. I'm going to get some indica because that's what I did last night on St. Patty's. That's why I wouldn't.
[01:10:23] Speaker A: So you don't fuck with the sativa, right? Don't fuck with it, bro. It'll take you to elevation if you can't handle.
[01:10:29] Speaker C: Man.
[01:10:31] Speaker D: I was ripping a hybrid, okay? So it was making me good, but it was fucking with my mind. And it's still like, I had to hang out because I don't feel safe with gangs. And so you know what? I'm going to take that secondary high from someone that is selling snacks to fucking people who need it. And you know what?
[01:10:50] Speaker B: I need snacks.
[01:10:51] Speaker C: Cool. We're going to appreciate you. We're going to head out. Steer clear of that hotel, okay? Don't go back.
[01:10:56] Speaker D: Right here. I need to finish this. But it says say less.
[01:10:58] Speaker C: Got it. All right. Then you understand.
[01:11:00] Speaker D: All right.
[01:11:00] Speaker C: On the street. No, thank you.
[01:11:01] Speaker D: But you know what I mean? I'm going to be walking up and down. I walk.
[01:11:05] Speaker A: Have you been to the park lately?
[01:11:07] Speaker D: Yes.
[01:11:07] Speaker A: It's packed.
[01:11:08] Speaker D: I know.
[01:11:09] Speaker A: With cherry blossom. Beautiful.
[01:11:11] Speaker D: I already said I would go today, and now I'm in a chill mood because I hurt my foot last night, and it's finally back alive because my blood's flowing. And you know what? Maybe me and pony girl.
All right, you could do the thing, bro.
[01:11:25] Speaker A: That's like 50 to 100.
[01:11:28] Speaker D: Me and pony girl, you know what? Me and her, we chill. Okay? Pony girl is there tonight.
[01:11:34] Speaker A: Andreas. Nice to meet you, brother.
[01:11:36] Speaker D: We have a bar, and we have.
[01:11:38] Speaker C: Have a good day, man.
[01:11:39] Speaker D: Hey, bro.
[01:11:46] Speaker C: Got you.
[01:11:48] Speaker A: I think that's mental health, bro.
[01:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah, well, plus a tremendous amount of liquor.
[01:11:53] Speaker C: No, that guy's sober. Hi, guys.
[01:11:55] Speaker A: How y'all doing? Good. Y'all know that. That white dude right there with the skateboard?
No. He's been going around threatening people.
All right?
We're not the police. We're just a security company. But holler at us if he goes crazy. We don't want him to get his face smashed in.
[01:12:18] Speaker C: All right, have a good day.
[01:12:24] Speaker A: So I stopped to talk to them because I don't like them, and I wanted to look at his face really good.
[01:12:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:12:31] Speaker A: Because I've never seen those dudes in old out before.
[01:12:33] Speaker C: Oh, I have.
[01:12:34] Speaker A: Are they dominican?
[01:12:38] Speaker C: I need to know where I've seen him. They look like the guy with the.
Yeah, no, I've seen him.
[01:12:45] Speaker A: I've never seen him.
[01:12:45] Speaker C: Where have I seen him? But the hard part is, this thing's got cobwebs in it, man. I'm getting older.
[01:12:49] Speaker A: I'm interested in what they're doing.
[01:12:51] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:12:54] Speaker A: Because, I mean, they're post up on a corner.
He's checking us walking away. He just peeked in and checked us walking away. So they're selling dope or something. Or guns or something.
[01:13:05] Speaker C: They're doing something.
[01:13:06] Speaker A: I like that. Anytime someone is on a corner, you know, because they want situational awareness.
[01:13:13] Speaker C: Let me go chat with society real quick, and then I'll come back.
[01:13:18] Speaker A: When we took the initial overdose call, which went well, emts came and took care of it.
There was a situation where someone was menacing, making threats at a local business. That's a client. We're able to contact him two blocks away. We had a serious conversation with him. We were kind of running interference with the other group that was popping off at the mouth. That allowed balk to contact the suspect. And you basically trespassed him. Why don't you give us a sit rep from that point forward when you make contact?
[01:13:51] Speaker C: You mean with the contact back here? Yeah, I basically just approached him. It looked like they were having an altercation. You guys took the guy who looked like the primary aggressor in that moment, just talked to him, got him to open up a little bit, share a little bit of his story, and told him that he was trespassed and not welcome back on the property. Hopefully he gets it. Hopefully he doesn't return.
Awesome.
[01:14:09] Speaker A: Now, I want to check on that female. That's the native female that was with the group over here. She's now passed out over there. I want to make sure that she's not overdosing, and then we'll jump in and wrap.
[01:14:20] Speaker C: Hey, my man. Did you get down to the mexican consulate?
Do you need a hand getting down there?
Remember we talked the other day, right?
Yeah, we talked the other day, remember, about getting you help down to the mexican consulate. Do you need help getting down there still?
[01:14:35] Speaker D: I mean, I know what you said.
[01:14:36] Speaker C: But I need to call. You need a call? Yeah. You want me to get you a hot pass so you can take the bus for free?
Yeah.
[01:14:44] Speaker A: So he has no documents. He's here with no documents.
[01:14:47] Speaker C: Yeah, hot pass. Get you a bus ride. Okay. All right. He wants to go to the next. Yeah, you bet.
Hi, there. Sorry, I'm doing all kinds of things wrong.
Sweetheart, are you doing okay?
[01:15:10] Speaker A: You look very schnazzy.
[01:15:11] Speaker C: You want a cigarette?
[01:15:13] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:15:13] Speaker C: Okay. Can I have you? Hop up, honey. Yeah. Okay. I'm Michael.
We've talked before.
Here, I'll give you a couple of. Why don't you get shoes on, sweetie? Do you need anything?
[01:15:25] Speaker A: Yeah, apparently the design.
[01:15:26] Speaker C: Do you want to hot pass?
[01:15:27] Speaker A: Architectural design.
Right? See how they're going down like this? It actually brings bad energy in the chinese culture. So they're going to replace it with different art installations.
[01:15:37] Speaker C: Yeah, there's always a park you could go hang out in.
[01:15:41] Speaker D: Yeah.
[01:15:44] Speaker C: You bet. Good luck. Okay, honey.
[01:15:48] Speaker A: Cool. All right, so easy, easy. No overdose. That makes life a lot better for everybody. So the multiple layers of clothing, I think, is a little bit of trade craft, where if you commit a crime or you do something illegal, you can take off one, throw the other one on, take off the other, put around your waist, tuck it in your jeans, and so you can always have a different uniform or different clothing on. So your description is more fluid. Yeah, that's what I think is going on with that book. I don't think that they're so high they realize they're wearing too many clothes.
[01:16:23] Speaker C: I just don't know how they do it with the heat. That's what I'm getting. Yeah, well, I don't know how you're doing it with that on.
[01:16:30] Speaker B: It's actually pretty thin.
[01:16:31] Speaker C: Yeah. But even that would be too much for me.
[01:16:33] Speaker B: It's coming off as soon as it's finished.
[01:16:35] Speaker C: I think I'm the best, but I'm probably double your body weight.
[01:16:37] Speaker B: I doubt it.
[01:16:38] Speaker C: What do you weigh?
[01:16:39] Speaker B: 225?
[01:16:40] Speaker C: Yeah, probably double.
[01:16:41] Speaker B: All right.
[01:16:42] Speaker C: Yeah. It's unfortunate, but it sucks.
[01:16:45] Speaker A: It's been a long day, right? We took a lot of different calls.
At the end of the day, I think we saved a life. We probably stopped a fight. Assault that could have ended in assault in progress. So we took one call away from PPP, hopefully today so that they could be more effective as a police officer on the outside looking into security. You never did this work before. What are your thoughts?
[01:17:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we're all dealing with the same issues. These are the same streets in this dense area. And so, especially with the strain that's on the system, it really is important that we all kind of work together. We bring all the resources to the table to try to head stuff off and not overwhelm any part of it. And so it's been good to see it from you guys'perspective.
[01:17:34] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate you coming on the ride along today. Tell the folks exactly where they can find you and tell them about this primary race coming up in May.
[01:17:41] Speaker B: Yeah, so you can find
[email protected]. With an f o r. And really, if you go on there, see what I have to say about other issues, not just the stuff we talked about today. And the name of the game right now is just finding Portland donors to kick in $5. That kind of is what legitimizes your campaign, basically, in this phase of the election.
[01:18:00] Speaker A: So if you live in the city of Portland, we want you to donate $5 to Eli for Portland, matched nine to one also.
[01:18:06] Speaker B: So your $5 turns into 50.
[01:18:08] Speaker A: Exactly. It's like the casino, but you always win with Eli.
[01:18:11] Speaker B: Yeah, but beyond that, since my goal here really is sort of like, how do we move forward as a city? May 21 is Multnoma county primary. It's very important we get all of the pieces working together to be successful here. So I want you to take a look at that district attorney race. And I'm going to be voting for Nathan Vasquez. I think that's an important piece of turning this thing around. Please take a look at the Maloma county commissioners. We got Jesse Burke over here. We got Vadim. We got Vince Jones Dixon. There's people to take a look at who haven't been part of this dysfunctional council who have some good ideas. I think about turning it around. So make sure you get involved in that and help get these races settled quick.
[01:18:50] Speaker A: So thanks for checking out the ride along. Be informed. Eli Arnold. We'll catch you next time.
[01:18:56] Speaker C: Thank you.
