Dr. Joy Degruy Leary, PH. D mentions the 1985 Dont Choke Em, Smoke Em Portland Oregon incident discussing the theory of post slavery syndrome Dr. Degruy begins her presentation with if you are African American the information she is about to share will resonates in your heart for that reason I am posting an article titled Dont Choke Em, Smoke Em by Philip Dawdy Four years after the opossum incident exposed the tense fault line running between Portlands black community and its mostly white police force, the death of Lloyd Stevenson at the hands of white police officers shook Portland to its core. Stevenson was black, 31 years old, and known throughout the community as a good Samaritan. He worked at Fred Meyer as a security guard. On April 20, he dropped by a 7-Eleven in Northeast Portland to play video games just as white store clerks were confronting another black man they suspected of shoplifting. The shoplifting suspect dashed for the doors. The clerks, with Stevensons help, grabbed him in the parking lot. A crowd gathered to watch the confrontation while Stevenson tried to contain the melee. Then Greg Cavic, a Shell gas-station attendant bearing a spooky resemblance to Kato Kaelin, walked over and started arguing with Stevenson. By the time police arrived, Cavic and Stevensons dispute had grown heated enough that Officer Bruce Pantley stepped between them. To this day, exactly what happened next remains a mystery. But the upshot was that Officer Gary Barbour put Stevenson in a sleeper hold for 15 seconds, and Stevensons heart stopped beating. None of the officers administered CPR, and Stevenson was pronounced dead on arrival at a nearby emergency room. That Barbour and Pantley overreacted was clear. So, too, was their violation of police rules that called for officers to apply CPR following use of the sleeper hold. But the incident posed larger questions: Would the officers have reacted the same way if Stevenson had been white? When District Attorney Michael Schrunk called a highly unusual public inquest, many questioned whether the panel would be anything more than a whitewash. Against this backdrop of tragedy, two officers spat in the face of a city trying to grapple with these questions. On the very day Stevenson was buried, officers Richard Montee and Paul Wickersham sold as many as 30 T-shirts in the East Precinct parking lot, depicting a smoking gun and emblazoned with the slogan Dont Choke Em, Smoke Em. The black community was outraged. The opossum incident could almost be dismissed as a prank, says former City Commissioner Charles Jordan. Now youre talking about something that was unbelievable. Mayor Bud Clark fired officers Montee and Wickersham, but they were later reinstated by a federal arbitrator. The six-member inquest found the cause of death to be criminally negligent homicide, but a grand jury cleared officers Barbour and Pantley of criminal charges. Pantley eventually left the force, but Barbour is still a police officer assigned to Northeast Precinct. youtu.be/9H2TplihLsQ
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 05:43:14 +0000
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