Lisa Freeman’s big idea is, in and of itself, not that big. She wants to establish a community responder safety bureau with leadership on the same level as police and fire. (Currently, Portland’s community responder program—Portland Street Response—has a program manager, not a chief, and was until recently housed within the fire bureau; now it reports to the deputy city administrator under the city’s new Public Safety Service Area.)
But there is a much bigger, much more important idea behind Lisa’s proposal, and to fully understand what it is and why it matters, remember that Portland Street Response, the city’s unarmed, non-police first responder program that assists people experiencing mental and behavioral health crises, began in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, in the midst of the city’s so-called Summer of Rage, when protesters gathered for more than 100 consecutive nights to demand, among other things, that the city defund the police. In response, the city cut $15 million from Portland Police’s budget and re-allocated $4.8 million of that money to start Portland Street Response. Predictably, PSR has been deeply polarizing ever since. To publicly express even mild support for it implies—intended or not—an opposition to police, or least, a preference, a sense of priority or superiority.
The idea behind Lisa’s idea is that we can think about emergency responders in another way. It is not that one type of responder is better than any other, but that each responder is better or best suited to different kinds of calls. It is not Portland Street Response instead of police or fire—it’s PSR in addition to police and fire. We discussed this, plus what the budget would be for a community responder bureau, whether that money should come out of the police budget, and more in the video above. As promised, it’s short and to the point—under three minutes. (If you have more time and want more context, Lisa highly recommends this episode of 99% Invisible which tells the story of the Freedom House paramedics in Pittsburg and explains how just 50 years ago, ambulances, paramedics, and emergency medical services didn’t exist in the way they do now, and how at the time, it was controversial and other departments thought EMS might be a threat to them. Lisa’s point is that things are always changing in public safety and that the next iteration of the change is the establishment of community responder bureaus.)
A reminder that I’m not impartial in this election—my husband and I own a production company and have worked with several candidates running for office this year, including Lisa. (Here’s the video we made for her campaign explaining how matching funds works; I also produced reels for her Instagram account.)
More in this series: Terrence Hayes (D1) on defining, not defunding police (and how Portland Street Response—a “beautiful thing”, he says—is meant to improve outcomes for people experiencing mental health crises, and is not in any way a panacea to police bias in use of force, racism in the criminal justice system etc.) and Jon Walker (D3) on how all the big, great ideas in the world won’t help (and can in fact make things much worse) if they’re not implemented effectively.
As always, thanks for reading! Hopefully, I’ll get one more big idea in this week.
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