The impact George Floyd’s murder has had on Oregon 5 years later

Next month marks the five-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. Across the state and country, protests soon followed as videos and the news spread of his death, sparking wider conversation around race, police violence and more in our daily lives.

But what has and hasn’t changed since then? To answer these questions and more we’ll hear from Portland City Councilor Candace Avalos, representing District 1, Luke Richter, president of the Central Oregon Peacekeepers, and Mic Crenshaw, an activist, educator and hip-hop artist. We’ll also hear from Aaron Schmautz, the president of the Portland Police Association and the Oregon Coalition of Police and Sheriffs.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Next month marks the five-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. Across the state and across the country, protests soon followed as news and video spread of his death, sparking wider conversations about race, police violence and the role of the state in establishing public safety. It was a cataclysmic time, with 100 nights of protests in Portland on top of the global pandemic.

But five years later, what has come from those days and those nights? What changes remain? We’re gonna get four perspectives on that right now. Candace Avalos is a former chair of the Portland Police oversight group, the Citizen Review Committee. She now represents District 1 on the Portland City Council. Luke Richter is the president of the activist group Central Oregon Peacekeepers. Aaron Schmautz is president of the Portland Police Association – that’s a union of rank and file PPB officers. He’s also the president of the Oregon Coalition of Police and Sheriffs. And Mic Crenshaw is a longtime Portland hip-hop artist, activist and educator.

Welcome to Think Out Loud, all four of you.

Luke Richter: Thank you.

Mic Crenshaw: Thank you.

Miller: Mic, I want to start with you. What’s been on your mind as we approach the anniversary, not just of George Floyd’s murder but of the massive protests that followed?

Crenshaw: You know, there’s a cyclical thing happening where in 2020 we had the protests in the street, and it felt like a moment of huge, large-scale change, because the protests happened in the context of the pandemic. So there were so many people out. But since then, police murders are higher than they’ve been in the past 20 years. And the pandemic was declared over and a lot of us are working harder than we were before. The cost of living has gone up quite a bit, but our wages haven’t. And Trump is back in office. There’s this sense that a fascism that a lot of us anticipated is actually now fully present.

So there’s a lot to think about. It’s quite overwhelming. I think that, to me, what’s been on my mind is the intersections between what’s happening locally and what’s happening globally and trying to figure out how to be ready for what’s already here and what’s coming.

Miller: Aaron Schmautz, I should have said you’re also a sergeant with the Portland Police Bureau in addition to your union president role. What’s been on your mind as we approach these anniversaries?

Aaron Schmautz: Well, I mean, clearly there has been a lot of change over the last handful of years in Portland. Crime skyrocketed, we saw a significant increase in violence on our streets and an economy that is crumbling in our city. So it’s been interesting trying to figure out the role that law enforcement plays in all of those different issues, and how we best build a relationship and serve with the people that we are interacting with on the street every day.

Miller: What do you remember about hearing about George Floyd’s murder?

Schmautz: Well, I was running our Youth Services Division when that occurred. Initially the first conversation we had was, how is this gonna impact school safety? Is there gonna be any conversation? Do we need to sit down with any young people to kind of work through this? And then the transition from a police bureau that was functioning in the same way it had for a long time to fences going up around every police station in Portland was instantaneous.

It’s important to remember that the first moment in that kind of movement of 180 days straight of activity in Portland, was a group march down into Downtown Portland, broke into our jail and lit it on fire. And then simultaneously, a police station was burned down in Minneapolis and also one was lit on fire in Seattle. So the posture of what people were concerned about just completely transformed. Everyone in the police bureau was pulled out of their assignment they were in and brought into a completely different role they weren’t familiar with.

So it was the biggest moment in the … I mean, I’m 43 years old. My dad got hired as a police officer when I was 4 months old. It was the biggest transformational moment in the history of our city as it relates to law enforcement and the relationship with the community.

Miller: I’m curious what you have still taken from that? What, as you say, the most transformational … the way you’re describing it seems like the confrontational aspect of that remains for you. I’m curious what you most remember from that time that has stayed with you?

Schmautz: Honestly, it was such a complicated … I mean, to the point the previous person mentioned, that …

Miller: Mic Crenshaw.

Schmautz: Mic Crenshaw, sorry, there’s four people. There was a lot going on. You had COVID, you had people locked in, you had a lot of tension with the federal government in Portland at the time, and that really exacerbated itself when we then saw activity from the federal government in Portland.

But to me, the biggest takeaway will always be the first day the fences went up, because in my opinion, in my experience being a police officer, obviously there’s a lot of tension and complicated reality with the community. But the only way to resolve that is by spending time together, getting to know each other’s concerns and working our best to bridge those concerns. Fences don’t accomplish that. So for me, it was the most visible declaration of separation between police and the community we serve, and it was pretty heartbreaking.

Miller: Candace Avalos, what’s been on your mind broadly as we approach this anniversary?

Candace Avalos: Yeah, I am sitting here reflecting a little bit on what Mic had said. I just really agree with that framing. I think overall, I do feel that conditions have unfortunately gotten worse for the average Portlander, average American, as it relates to economic conditions and just larger how we have shifted our politics. I think there’s a lot of good things that have come out of 2020, especially as it relates to just whose voices were prioritized and listened to, and us continuing to make space for those kinds of voices that have traditionally been left behind.

And as somebody who was running for city council in 2020, I lost my primary election and five days later was when George Floyd was murdered. And up until that point, I was the only one really talking about police accountability issues and really the relationship that those have to all the other issues that we’re talking about in the city. So that was such a moment of shifting that I think has just really reshaped Portland, especially as we are in a second Trump presidency, because I think that moment was also very shaped in general by the first Trump presidency, too.

Miller: Candace, the Washington Post did a tally a number of years ago saying that 13 unarmed Black men and one unarmed Black woman were killed by police nationwide in 2019. And George Floyd’s death a year later, it was not the first one captured on cell phone video. Why do you think the response to George Floyd’s murder was so much bigger than any protests in recent memory?

Avalos: I really do think you have to consider the conditions of the pandemic as being a big driver of that. We were all locked at home, very afraid, unsure about what this would mean for a changing world and how it was affecting us economically, politically, socially. So I just feel that that really fueled this angst that we already had and that was kind of like the last straw, it felt like.

When you really think back, this was also just the very early beginnings of COVID, too. So it’s been interesting to see how this conversation has evolved alongside COVID and the response to the pandemic. And then, being on the other side of it, kind of where we’re coming up. So yeah, that’s kind of what I think really influenced it. And I also think it was a moment of solidarity that the world just needed, especially given the surrounding conditions we were experiencing at that time.

Miller: Luke, I should reintroduce you. Luke Richter is the president of the Central Oregon Peacekeepers. You’re the only one of the four of you who is not in the Portland area. What were protests like in Central Oregon after George Floyd’s murder?

Richter: I would say that that was probably the largest number of protests, as far as headcount, that Central Oregon had seen and probably since Occupy Wall Street and some of those other things that happened in the earlier 2010s. The only other ones that I can think of that are comparable are the ones that have happened more recently with Trump coming into office, people protesting the tariffs and all of those things. But yeah, it was definitely a very polarizing moment in Central Oregon for a lot of people.

Miller: What has been on your mind as we approach these anniversaries?

Richter: Like everybody else has said, nothing is necessarily changed. When I looked at the police budget for Bend PD, I believe the year after or maybe two years after, the budget had increased, and they had gotten five more $5,000 or $6,000 drones. As of recently, the sheriff of Deschutes County is most likely gonna end up being removed because he’s been placed on the Brady List and he’s lied a bunch of times in testimony, in court, so he can’t be trusted.

So there’s no change at all. Like Mic said, the numbers for police murders of individuals has gone up, so we’re in a worse position than we were, considering the current administration.

Miller: Candace, I want to turn to some specific policies. You’ve been pushing for police oversight and police reforms for a number of years now. I mentioned you were on, you were the chair of the Citizen Review Committee. What changes have you seen in police policy in that time?

Avalos: Well, I think the biggest shift has been the passing of Measure 26-217, which was the real police accountability measure that a bunch of us worked on in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. We felt that it was an opportunity to have a genuine conversation about what police oversight looks like – what are the levers that we have to hold police accountable and hold our leaders accountable, too? So I feel that that was a big shift in larger police accountability policy.

But five years later, we’re about to start selecting people for the Police Accountability Commission. And don’t get me wrong, we needed time to implement, we needed time to socialize this new culture, of course just the basic code changes that needed to happen. So I think this next moment is gonna be really interesting to me to see really truly the aftermath of all of that work and all of that conflict. To me, this new Accountability Commission is kind of the product of that and a test … a test for how we’re going to change our relationship from community to police, change the way that we have accountability policies of the city. So I’m very curious to see how that will manifest, but I do believe that that was an important positive change. And yet …

Miller: If I may just interrupt you one second. For years now, the systems of citizen police oversight have been, for a lot of us, a kind of confusing alphabet soup. So can you just remind us, in simple terms, what’s actually going to be changing in terms of police oversight in the coming months or years?

Avalos: For me, one of the biggest changes, as somebody who was on a police accountability commission that was responsible for misconduct cases, being able to have a different standard of proof in deciding whether misconduct occurred makes a huge difference. Because, in my experience, what tended to happen was the way that a case would get to the Citizen Review Committee’s table was if it was appealed, essentially, after another determination was unsatisfactory to the appellant.

From there, we had a very low standard, which was like a reasonable person standard but that’s very wonky, let me just say. It is about making decisions on those cases based on a reasonable person, who often was a police officer making the first decision. So it just really meant that we had to be really differential to police officers when it came to deciding those cases. That really tied our hands and being able to understand the nuance and complexity of these cases.

Let me be clear, in my opinion, a lot of the cases have been like interpersonal things that I really hope we can create different systems for, that don’t have this kind of negative misconduct kind of feeling to it. Of course we need that kind of system, but we also need to create a complementary system that encourages more dialogue, relationship building and still accountability. So I think that is a huge change. And then also, we’ve expanded its powers. We have expanded the kinds of people that can be on this commission, the amount of dollars that it has, therefore making sure that the work is funded. So it’s a big change, especially in how we’re making these determinations and how citizens have influence in those determinations.

Miller: Aaron, I’m curious what you’ve been thinking as you’ve been hearing Candace Avalos talk about the oversight changes coming in? And I should note that it’s striking that you and she did use some similar words there among some of the, I think, apparent disagreements. You both talked about dialogue, you both talked about the importance of relationship building.

Schmautz: Sure. I mean, I think the thing that’s really interesting – well, two things – as it relates to relationships … I have spent just a lot of time in the last handful of years meeting with people, interacting with people. It’s my job. And District 1, where Councilor Avalos is representing now, is where I did a majority of my patrol work. And that district, by polling, by all measures, is asking for more support from law enforcement. So it’s the most diverse, the most resource-needing area of our town. So it is interesting that through all of this, the one thing that has been true is people, they want constitutional policing, they want accountable policing, but they want policing. They want a relationship with law enforcement. I think that that has been an interesting kind of continuing reality in that area of our city.

Also, as it relates to accountability, I just think it’s really important to remember that the standard of evidence, the standard that we use to measure accountability, is from the Supreme Court’s Graham v. Connor. It’s what would a reasonable officer do based on the totality of the circumstances of an event? So what becomes very difficult is, as we navigate accountability, is defining it. And very often when you’re talking about something involving a police officer, there’s two things that must be kind of unpacked. The first is just simply what are the facts, what happened? And this is always very difficult, because very often, policing issues are national, but cases are hyperlocal. So getting the facts, getting all the information, it’s hard to do, as we talk about more national issues.

Miller: Is it a little bit easier with more and more cameras, including body cameras? Are there fewer questions about what physically happened?

Schmautz: Yeah, so body cameras are really important. What remains is the fact that what has to be unpacked is, what did the officer perceive and why did they do what they did as a result of that perception? Cameras are a fisheye lens, cameras are technology. They’re a witness that must be deposed. They’re available. I think they’re critical because they do, to Candace’s point … I’m really sorry, Candace, I just am a first name person. Councilor Avalos.

Miller: In your defense, I’ve been calling all of you by your first names.

You were talking about accountability, and I derailed you perhaps by asking about cameras.

Schmautz: Yeah, so what’s really important is we make sure that the cameras are that witness, that we can find out the evidence there. But to Candace’s point, that’s what I was going to say, many of our complaints are conduct complaints, are how did the person behave, and the cameras show that really quite well. Sometimes it doesn’t show evidence as it relates to the perception of the officer, but it certainly will show how a person was acting, how the police responded to that and how the police were acting. So those things, I think it really does get rid of about 99% of the disagreement around just the physical and overall interaction between police and our community.

Miller: Mic Crenshaw, I wanna go back to you. We’ve been talking about policing sort of specifically, but I feel like the broader questions are ones that are before policing. It’s, at its most basic, what do we want our society to look like and what role should the state, city, a county, a U.S. state, the federal government, what role should all those levels of government play in fostering or establishing public safety?

Huge questions, but to keep it sort of a little bit straightforward first – Mic, what’s your vision for what you want society to look like, to feel like?

Crenshaw: People are going to have to, we are going to have to find ways to protect ourselves, to defend our communities and each other that are unprecedented. Maybe there are models of this that exist at different times in history or that exist currently that we’re not really familiar with. For instance, let’s take the story of … what is it? Lincoln Heights, I think, Ohio, where the Klan and neo-Nazis marched recently, and were threatening people with guns and so forth. They had police protection, they were escorted away from the scene by police. But the community came out. Not only did they come out and force them to leave with the police escort, but then in the following days, they organized themselves into committees and patrols of armed people who were going to defend their community, in case there was any further activity from racial terrorists or so forth.

I think that, in a hyper-localized way, to the degree that it’s possible, systems for mutual aid and community defense are gonna have to be developed. I think one thing that’s gonna be helpful is that people are gonna be able to see beyond some of their ideological constraints that might cause them to be polarized into these red or blue camps for the simple necessity of survival. That’s what I’m hoping to see. I’m hoping that the ways that we protect each other and ourselves starts to become something that we become more accountable for, as individuals and communities, because I think what’s clear is that we can’t rely on the federal government. And in some cases, we can’t rely on the local government to protect us.

One of the things that I’m concerned about is the perceived need for more automation and technology in policing. I’m concerned about the implicit and explicit biases that are expressed in policing, through excessive force, police brutality and police murder, [which] will continue in a way that creates a demand for more objective perspective coming from police that will be met through technology. And people will believe that, well, if we have a robot or a computer and more surveillance, then the biases of the police officers won’t impact the interaction as much. And I’m afraid that, because if it’s hard to hold a human cop accountable for their behavior, it’s gonna be really difficult to hold a robotic cop accountable for their behavior.

Miller: Luke Richter, what about you? What’s your ideal vision for how society should function, how public safety should be established?

Richter: Yeah, I definitely agree with what Mic was saying. Recently, in Madras, we had a young man get killed by, I believe, the sheriff’s department, named AJ Warner. The investigation is still ongoing, as far as I know. No information has been released to the public. And what I think needs to be realized is there’s a lot more of us than there are of them in the elected seats, and in the police departments and the sheriff’s departments.

If all of us are willing to collectively agree that things need to change, because all of us do know that things need to change, we just disagree on how they need to change … but if we take an instance like that, and all put pressure on these processes and all these people that are a part of these processes, then we’ll end up getting somewhere. We’ll get answers, we’ll start seeing more policies that come about that actually help individuals, like universal healthcare, and helping people actually get homes that don’t have credit and getting people off the streets into better situations. It’s just a matter of figuring out how we can all find the common ground to turn the system and turn the system into one that’s actually gonna work for the people, like we were promised in elementary school.

Miller: Candace, I mean, one of the themes running through what both Mic and Luke have said is a level of mistrust of the state, of law enforcement at local level or the federal government that is high enough that, if I’m hearing them correctly, it’s, well, we have to defend ourselves, we have to take matters into our own hands. You are now a part of local government. I’m curious what you hear in what they’re saying and how you respond?

Avalos: I think the biggest conversation that is ongoing from 2020 is just the general concept of what public safety even is. And therefore, what are the tools that we need to respond to public safety issues? So from my position now as a city councilor, I have the opportunity to look at our systems and look at what the community needs, and decide, what are the right tools? And I think what Mic and Luke are describing are a very understandable feeling of skepticism and doubt on whether the institution of policing will ever fully meet their needs. And I think that is a lot of people in the community.

Yet, people do have a general need for safety. When you call 911, you want somebody to answer. But who that somebody is makes a big difference, especially when you consider the variety of kinds of things that people on our streets need. We have such increased economic pressures that have devastated families and many of them are living on the streets. We have an increased opioid epidemic that is also hurting people and needing a different response.

So I think, to me, I want to answer to those, to what I’m hearing from Mic and Luke, with a policy solution that introduces new tools, so that we’re not using police for everything. And frankly, what I’ve heard from police in general is that they also don’t want that, right? They have felt that they have been used as a general tool that’s not helpful to them either. So that’s my perspective in trying to reshape what public safety looks like from this position now.

Miller: I’m also curious, Candace, to get your response to what Aaron mentioned earlier about hearing from people in your district where he used to patrol. He says one of the common themes has been asking for more resources for police, more policing, more visible policing. What’s your response?

Avalos: Yeah, I mean, I definitely spent a lot of time in my district discussing this and talking to folks on the doors. And I think it goes back to what I just said. I think people want emergency services. They want first responders to answer the calls. I wouldn’t say that I heard universally that that meant for people an increase in police. In fact, I heard a lot more often, an increase in PSR, an increase in CHAT, because those are the kinds of things that we especially deal with in East Portland. We have a lot of folks suffering on our streets, and those tools have been proven to help address these kinds of lower acuity issues that have freed up more expensive resources like police and fire to do the things that only they can do.

So I do agree that there is a larger sentiment in my district that they don’t feel as safe as other parts of the city, but I don’t agree that the overwhelming response was more police. That was not my experience talking to folks. I think the nuanced answers that I got from folks were they just want more tools in the toolbox to respond to their needs.

Miller: And just to give folks who aren’t familiar with those acronyms the heads up … the PSR, that’s Portland Street Response, and CHAT is Community Health Assess and Treat.

Aaron, to go back to you, has policing changed since April, since May of 2020?

Schmautz: So I think the role of law enforcement, you kind of mentioned this, it has become something that is really important – and Councilor Avalos mentioned this as well. Portland has less police officers than any city our size in the country. Again, to the point that Councilor Avalos made, our ability to provide the outcomes to the work that we really are needed to do, is impacted by our staffing reality.

I do think that we have addiction issues, mental health issues, houselessness issues, a lot of issues that people call … And again, when the police interface with the community it’s very, very often because we’re called more now than ever. We used to do far more self-initiated work; we do almost none now. We’re just responding call to call to call. So when we are somewhere, it’s because someone has asked for help and they don’t know who to call, other than to call 911 and you have this triage.

So I do think that we are at this really, really important moment in in the history of public safety in which we do need to start weaving together our responses, having peers available for people who are suffering from addiction, having mental health specialists in cars and around police officers to ensure that if that’s the issue, we can resolve it. At the end of the day, the government has a moral responsibility to provide outcomes for people, to keep them safe, to keep them healthy, to get them where they need to go. And it also has a moral responsibility to make sure that its employees are safe. If we’re going to send out peers and mental health specialists that they are also safe.

So it’s very complicated, but I think it really just comes down to us all, again, identifying the values that we have as a community, pushing out those resources and ensuring that we, to fidelity, are providing the resources that we’re promising.

Miller: I want to give you a chance to respond to what we heard from Mic earlier when I asked him about his vision of an ideal society or how to achieve public safety. And what was really striking in his answer was that police and law enforcement were not a part of what he saw as a solution, and said, in a lot of ways, it was more the public banding together to defend themselves as a kind of response to either violent groups or law enforcement itself. What was going through your mind when you heard that?

Schmautz: I mean, look, the government … There has not ever in our society, in the history of our world, been a time where you didn’t have to have people who were held accountable to the people to keep people safe. I think the best example I can provide right now is you look at the immigrant community in Oregon, people are very afraid to call the police because there’s a lot of fear about what’s going on as it relates to just all the things nationally.

Miller: And the Trump administration’s efforts to do massive deportations.

Schmautz: Sure. So the real concern that we hear from people in the immigrant community is there is a lot of fear externally, but then also you have people who are victims of human trafficking, sex trafficking, labor trafficking, people who are victims of domestic violence or other things. It is demonstrative that we need to make sure that people, regardless of their status, of where they’re at in life, that they have access to care, that they have access to be safe.

So again, it’s very, very difficult for a community to police itself when the values are different, when you don’t know who wants what or whatever else. That’s the role of the government is to ensure that we have agreed upon values. That’s why we have laws and rules. Laws and rules are just things that we’ve all agreed to, that we’re going to hold ourselves to that standard, but there has to be a way to ensure that when that is violated, that there is accountability for that.

The bottom line for me is we have a lot of people who are asking for help, they’re asking law enforcement for help. We need to make sure that we’re hearing what that means, that we are working with the community to make sure that we show up in a way that they understand and that they’re comfortable with, but also that when people engage in conduct that harms people in our community, that we’re holding them accountable.

Miller: I want to go around the table quickly, starting Luke with you. If we talk again in five years, what’s one concrete thing that you’d like to be able to say is better than it was in 2025?

Richter: I would like to say that in five years we see more models like the CAHOOTS program in Eugene – that recently lost a bunch of federal funding – are popping up, and that we’re starting to move towards less police response and more community response towards a lot of the issues that have been described. But yeah, unfortunately, with the current administration, I don’t think we’re gonna get there, but ideally that’s what we should be trending towards.

Miller: Mic Crenshaw.

Crenshaw: Thank you, Dave. I’d love to see less poverty, less addiction, less violence. I don’t expect to see it though.

Miller: Aaron Schmautz.

Schmautz: I think, five years from now, if we have stood up all of our public safety model to ensure that we’re an integrated, well-run service that ensures for better outcomes for all Portlanders, we’re moving in the right direction.

Miller: And Candace Avalos.

Avalos: I think that our public safety-first responder system needs to be vastly diversified and it needs to be politically protected to be able to do that.

Miller: Candace Avalos, Luke Richter, Mic Crenshaw and Aaron Schmautz, thanks very much.

All: Thank you.

Miller: Candace Avalos is a Portland City Councilor representing District 1. Luke Richter is the president of the Central Oregon Peacekeepers. Mic Crenshaw is a hip-hop artist, activist and educator. And Aaron Schmautz is the president of both the Portland Police Association and ORCOPS.

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