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Stop targeting Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Immigrant communities
Our criminal legal and policing system were created to uphold white supremacy, and racial bias continues to drive these systems. Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Immigrant communities are disproportionately affected at every step in the system. They are more likely to be stopped by police, detained pretrial, charged with more serious crimes, and sentenced more harshly. A Black person in Oregon is 6 times more likely to be in jail or prison than a white person, and an Indigenous person is 2.5 times more likely to be in jail or prison than a white person. Oregon is the only state that allows people to be convicted of a crime by a non-unanimous jury. Antisemitic and anti-immigrant public sentiments led to non-unanimous juries being added to the Oregon state constitution in the 1930s. This addition takes power from minority jury members, so they cannot stop prejudiced verdicts.
Immigrant communities experience unique threats when in contact with the criminal legal system, including deportation and family separation. Even documented residents may lose their status and face deportation after a conviction, sometimes through proceedings they cannot understand.
We want a district attorney who will:
- Always immediately drop cases deemed to be based in racial profiling.
- Always decline to prosecute charges brought by the Gun Violence Reduction Team, formerly named the Gang Enforcement Taskforce, which carries out traffic stops that target Black Portlanders.
- On their first day in office, apologize for the history of racialized injustice in our current systems.
- On their first day in office, publicly support changing the Oregon constitution to eliminate non-unanimous juries and push the Oregon District Attorneys Association to continue supporting this change.
- On their first day in office, support Portland’s Immigrant communities through actively instructing trial attorneys to not share information with deportation authorities about individuals who are present in the courts or held in jail.
- On their first day in office, publicly declare that Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are not allowed to arrest individuals on Oregon courthouse property.
- On the first day of office, implement an office-wide policy requiring prosecutors to consider immigration consequences in charging, plea, and sentencing decisions.
- Within the first 100 days in office, maintain and publish an up-to-date interactive data dashboard showing the number and type of charges and outcomes under DA jurisdiction, including data detailed by race.
- Within the first 100 days in office, publish all historical data showing racial disparities and use this data to inform equitable policies.
- Within the first 100 days in office, create a detailed plan outlining how the police department and police unions will achieve at least a 50% consistent reduction in arrests brought against aggressively policed communities of color.
- Within the first 100 days in office, ensure all legal services are provided in people’s preferred languages in all interactions with the system.
- Within the first 100 days in office, expand pre-plea diversion programs that allow individuals to obtain dismissals of their charges without entering a guilty plea.