Henry Kirim had ducked out of his Southeast Portland apartment to search his car for a missing bank card when a strange man rushed into his ground-floor unit, closed the door and locked it. (1/13)
Kirim’s 12-year-old son remained inside. (2/13)
Kirim fumbled for his house key, thankful he had it on the same ring as his car key, and raced to open his apartment door.
“I was so scared,” he said. (3/13)
The next 10 minutes unfolded in a blur. The stranger grabbed a kitchen knife. Kirim’s petrified son managed to dart out of the apartment. Kirim followed and started yelling for neighbors to help. Several residents gave chase and cornered him nearby. (4/13)
It took police more than 90 minutes to arrive. Just before an officer finally appeared, the suspect ran off. More than a half-dozen calls had come into 911 over the course of the bizarre ordeal. But that apparently didn’t speed the response. (5/13)
The wait confounded and angered Kirim and his neighbors. They wondered what it would take for police to respond if not an armed man placing a child in jeopardy. (6/13)
“Every neighbor here was expecting the police to come. We called about a million times, and the police would not show up,” Kirim said. (7/13)
(8/13)
Police conceded the delay was unacceptable. They repeated what they’ve said to address previous criticism for holding back or recent slow response times: Their ranks are strapped by record retirements, covering months of social justice protests and other constraints. (9/13)
Portland has rerouted $15 million from the police bureau to other city programs and initiatives in 2020. The cuts include disbanding police units that work in schools, investigate gun violence and patrol the regional public transit system. (10/13)
The amount fell short of the $50 million in cuts pushed for by some activists. More details: trib.al/YneIVzR (11/13)
The first emergency call, presumably from a neighbor, came in at 12:41 p.m.: Intruder in the house. Has a knife. Boy still inside. (12/13)
“They said police would be here,” Kirim said. “And no police came.”
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After Aron Christensen was found dead on a remote trail in Washington’s Cascade Mountains – next to his dead 4-month-old puppy – his grieving family say they were given confusing, conflicting information by law enforcement. (1/10)
One detective said it was probably a heart attack, claiming that the Portland musician had a “widow-maker’s heart” despite the fact a forensic autopsy had not been completed. (2/10)
Another detective theorized that Aron – who was hiking the Walupt Lake Trail alone with his dog during a camping trip with friends – could have died from marijuana they found among his belongings. “What if it was laced?” (3/10)
While examining The Oregonian’s history of racism, we found several editorials that supported the World War II incarceration of people of Japanese descent and news coverage that denigrated those targeted. (1/11)
In 1942, Ted Nakashima, a second-generation Japanese American, penned a searing view from inside the Puyallup Fairgrounds near Tacoma. (2/11)
It was one of the prison camps that collectively housed 120,000 people of Japanese descent during World War II. The majority of those imprisoned were U.S. citizens. (3/11)
Oregon was the last state in the country to allow a jury to convict someone of a felony other than murder by an 11-1 or 10-2 vote. 1/7
For decades, just two states – Oregon and Louisiana – allowed split jury convictions. The Oregonian helped lead the charge to give the state its discriminatory system. 2/7
A 1933 nonunanimous decision in a murder case led the paper to blame southern and eastern European immigrants for an “increasingly unwieldy and unsatisfactory” jury system. 3/7
“Reporter @robwdavis began his deep examination of the newspaper’s history more than a year ago. 1/6
@tbottomly@robwdavis He and editor @_Brad_Schmidt spent months reviewing the archives, assessing the evidence and talking to historians and Oregonians whose communities were affected by the coverage. 2/6
I thought we would find the newspaper had missed stories, ignored major cultural movements, been behind the times. And, yes, we found sins of omission, to be sure.
But the gravest mistakes were sins of commission. 3/6
On the first day Henry Pittock printed The Morning Oregonian as a daily in 1861, the owner and publisher said he aimed for his newspaper to be “useful and acceptable to our people.” 1/5
Through what it covered and what it ignored, in landmark editorials and harmful stereotypes, the newspaper left no doubt in the decades that followed who Pittock’s “people” were: white men. 2/5
Prompted by the 2020 murder of George Floyd and the nationwide protests that followed, we started to examine the newspaper’s racist legacy, reviewing what it said and omitted in news coverage and editorials throughout its history. 3/5
The southern Oregon dad who ended a Christmas Eve call with President Joe Biden by declaring “Let’s go Brandon” told Steve Bannon, former adviser to President Donald Trump, this week that he believes the verifiably false claim that “the election was 100 percent stolen.” 1/5
Despite telling @Oregonian on Saturday that he was not a “Trumper,” and the comment was in jest, Jared Schmeck said Monday he’s “proud” of taunting Biden during a live Christmas event for children. 2/5
Schmeck made the new remarks on Bannon’s show, War Room, where he wore a “Make America Great Again” hat and struck a defiant tone.
Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury in Nov. after he defied a subpoena for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. 3/5