Deadly Shooting by Portland State U. Police Rekindles Protests Over Its Newly Armed Officers

Portland State U.

This is exactly what people had feared would happen, Olivia Pace said.

Students at Portland State University rallied and marched on the Oregon campus on Sunday, after a fatal shooting by campus police officers reignited a longstanding movement for disarmament.

Pace, who will be a Portland State senior this fall, helped organize the march. She said students have been speaking against arming officers since 2012, when the Board of Trustees first presented the idea. The board voted in December 2014 in favor of arming the police.

The shooting occurred on Friday, at a bar near the Portland State University campus, CBS News reported. A Navy veteran identified by his family as Jason Washington tried to break up a fight that was escalating on the sidewalk outside. Washington had a permit for concealed carry, and his handgun fell to the ground during the altercation.

Witnesses say they heard the police repeatedly command Washington not to reach for the gun on the ground, and then shoot him six to eight times in the back when he did.

The Portland State University Student Union immediately reacted to news of the shooting, organizing a rally and a march at a popular square on the campus. The group released an official statement condemning the firearm policy.

“We have been, and continue to be, disgusted at the utter disregard for student and community safety which is constantly seen at Portland State, and we are heartbroken that this disregard has now resulted in fatal consequences,” the statement reads.

“We wanted to remind people that students had tried to protect the school from this kind of violence for years,” Pace said. “And the school hadn’t listened.”

The Oregonian reported that students demonstrated in 2014, before and during the December 11 Board of Trustees vote. They also gathered at a campus-safety forum, holding handmade signs reading “Guns Don’t Make Me Feel Safe” and “Money for Education Not Deputization.”

The board’s 9-to-3 vote occurred during students’ final exams, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported, and the Associated Students of Portland State University, the student government, had asked that the vote be delayed. The same group told the broadcasting network that having firearms on the campus defies the goals of an intellectual community, and it raised concerns over racism and prejudice against certain students.

Since the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech, colleges have debated whether campus police officers should be armed to protect students from serious threats. According to the university’s statement, Portland State was the only institution in the United States with more than 15,000 students that had not equipped its officers with firearms by 2015. By voting in favor of arming the officers, the university was following national and state trends.

The Justice Department reported that in 2011-12, about 75 percent of officers at four-year institutions could carry firearms.

Mason Mimi, another member of the student union who helped organize Sunday’s protest, said Portland State had given several reasons for arming officers, including reducing sexual violence and providing additional protection to the campus. But Mimi said the officers had shown a pattern of excessive force, and antagonized victims in a high-profile rape investigation last semester.

“Every reason they’ve given has proven to be hollow, in our eyes,” said Mimi.

Asked to comment on the allegations, the university directed The Chronicle to a web page explaining the 2014 decision.

Rahmat Shoureshi, the university’s president, released a statement to students regarding the shooting. He said that it was the first officer-involved shooting at Portland State, and that the university is cooperating with an investigation by the Portland Police Bureau. The university released a second statement regarding Sunday’s rally.

“The PSU Board of Trustees approved a sworn armed campus police force in December 2014 to address safety concerns and improve university security. Trained police officers were added to the Campus Public Safety Office six months later,” the statement reads. “A task force on campus safety of administrators, faculty, and students made that recommendation after months of study and public and campus input. The University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and Oregon Health & Science University also have armed police officers.”

Pace said the Board of Trustees was not an elected body, and there was “nothing democratic” about the decision. Nearly four years after the vote, many students still believe that their input was not considered and that the addition of an armed police force had hurt the campus.

“Our police officers didn’t have this capacity three years ago,” she said. “We begged them not to do this, and they did it anyway.”

Update (7/3/2018, 6:21 p.m.): This article has been updated with a link to a Portland State web page that explains the decision in 2014 to arm campus police officers.