One major reason our roads are so dangerous is because our system does not keep dangerous people from using them.
The man who was convicted for killing Mitch York while he straddled his bicycle on the St. Johns Bridge in October 2016 was arrested again in January. He then boasted about his driving skills on his Facebook page about being in a high-speed car chase with the Portland Police Bureau.
“So yeah any way, got into a high-speed chase 140mph [sic] with Multnomah county’s finest down division the other morning,” reads a post from Joel Schrantz posted January 23rd, 2024. “They spiked stripped me twice, that’s cheating. It used to be about if they could catch you or not, who was the better driver, not anymore.”
It seems nothing will prevent Schrantz from wantonly dangerous driving: Not the threat of legal consequences; not admonishments from judges; not his Facebook friends (none of whom expressed concern for his post, and six of whom replied with a “Haha” emoji); not even killing an innocent person.
Schrantz was sentenced to 42 months in prison on May 17th, 2017. In the courtroom that day prosecutors explained how he’d been driving without a valid license for 25 years and had not paid the 40 traffic citations that had piled up on his record. Just two years prior, Schrantz was convicted of hit-and-run. During that case a judge warned Schrantz, “He needed to stop driving or he was going to kill someone.”
He didn’t stop driving. Then he killed Mitch York.
Then on January 21st of this year, Schrantz, now 49, was caught yet again driving recklessly around innocent people. The Portland Police Bureau arrested him following the aforementioned car chase and he was slapped with five charges: attempt to elude by vehicle, reckless driving, attempt to elude on foot, escape in the third degree and intent to deliver methamphetamine.
According to court records, Schrantz appeared in front of a judge on April 18th. But due to lack of an attorney his case was dismissed (along with 26 others). The Multnomah County District Attorney’s office has called this lack of public defenders “an urgent threat to public safety.”
Schrantz’s case was dismissed “without prejudice” meaning the judge didn’t rule on the merits of the charges. Technically, this means he could face a court date in the future if/when an attorney can be provided for him. But with hundreds (thousands?) of cases impacted by the lack of public defenders, it’s hard to say when — or if — that would ever happen.
Multnomah County DA’s Office Communications Director Liz Merah told BikePortland they plan to bring this case back to court, “In the near future.” “And we certainly hope that the court will appoint counsel if/when we get to arraignment.”
In the meantime, Schrantz is still out there.
Thanks for reading.
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Clearly, waiting for a driver to commit a crime isn’t working. It is time to adapt Oregon Red Flag weapon laws to include vehicles.
The 2nd amendment allows for access to firearms to all American citizens (I am being a big vague as I don’t want to get into too much of an argument on the nuances of the 2nd amendment) and Oregon has seen fit to allow citizens to report fellow citizens to the police when that access to firearms might cause harm to other people or to the owner themself.
https://www.doj.state.or.us/crime-victims/resources/oregons-red-flag-law/
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/08/30/oregon-red-flag-law-guns/
Since access to vehicles is not brought up at all in the constitution, why can’t there be a similar system in place for drivers of vehicles? It would be pre-emptive, it would allow a dangerous weapon (the vehicle) to be removed from circulation (albeit temporarily) and demonstrate that everyone is fed up with dangerous driving and drivers are being watched.
As far as I could tell, 700 Oregon and non Oregon (I don’t know why it’s split up like this) people died on the roads in 2022 while 670 died from the barrel of a gun. If Oregon has been willing to assign greater care and concern to the use of firearms (which are constitutionally protected to some degree) than to people in vehicles when the vehicular death rate is actually higher, than what does that say about the governments desire to reduce poor driving?
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm
https://oregoninjurydata.shinyapps.io/transport/
Red flag laws for drivers, contact your state rep!
This sounds great and all but you’d have to introduce a ton of other laws at the same time because it’s so easy to get a car. At the very least you’d need background checks to buy a car and severe punishments for anyone that sells a car without doing one including private sellers. Until then taking someone’s car away would only be a minor impediment to them continuing to drive. Similar to suspending someone’s license. I’m sure Joel doesn’t have a valid drivers license.
The article says he hasn’t had a license for 25 years. And that was in 2017.
Background checks for a car sounds great. I didn’t even think about that. I’m a firm believer in the Singapore model of needing a license (not a drivers license, but a COE ((Certificate of Entitlement)) to present to the dealership) to buy a car. Maybe not charge the exorbitant amount for a license, but definitely add in a background check to reflect the seriousness of manipulating a deadly weapon (the vehicle) on a daily basis.
https://www.pilotoasia.com/guide/how-to-own-a-car-in-singapore
Or we could all just continue to complain about who the DA is at the moment and how the police are understaffed and yet no one here wants to become an officer as its too hard to step up and make a difference. Whichever you think will get the best results of keeping cars away from those who shouldn’t be driving them.
Even without background checks I still think this concept could be pretty effective. If the state takes away your car it’s a lot more expensive and time consuming to purchase and operate a replacement car than it is to purchase and operate a replacement gun. I could imagine a version of this with no background checks that makes it really difficult for an egregiously dangerous driver to keep driving when they are repeatedly getting their vehicles confiscated. Maybe they’d eventually wind up riding a bike for transportation out of necessity and they could develop some empathy for those on the road outside of a car.
This is all a very reasonable thing to want. But I don’t understand why we don’t just confiscate vehicles that aren’t registered. He can’t register a vehicle. So all that should happen is a cop (or any automated camera) should be able to check the vehicle is registered. If not – it should be easy to pull them over, take the car. Give them a ride home, I don’t care. If it is registered but to someone else, there should be some means to confiscate cars that someone else uses. It should not be this easy to drive around without being licensed. And this should be solvable without a massive increase in cops and surveillance. This is simply cross checking a plate with the DMV. No invasive anything, nothing special. We don’t even have to solve the public defender problem because nobody goes on trial.
This is not hard to solve, but for some reason we’re reluctant to do it.
”it should be easy to pull them over”….
The article is about a guy who drove 140 and it took a lot of police I assume to pull him over.
How do you pull over and confiscate cars without a lot of police?
I assume they know where he lives. Also he’s not the norm. Also, my comment was about how the vehicle should be confiscated (permanently). There were plenty of opportunities before that point where, with possibly some changes to how things are enforced, he could have been prevented from driving.
As should be obvious, my comment and jakeco969‘s were about things that could be done differently to deal with this case, not describing the current status quo.
I don’t understand either and I agree your suggestion does not seem difficult. Oregon has very restrictive weapons laws which the decision makers pushed through without any concern to law suits or how they would be received. I don’t understand why they can’t pass laws in a similar fashion to enact the realistic plan you mention and others like it. I like your idea, it would be time consuming at first, but straightforward and indefensible. As you say, having ones registration is a “yes it is” or “no it is not” situation that is easily proved. All I can assume is that the decision makers are using traffic deaths as performative theater (again) to do something they think is important other than lessen the danger automobiles present.
Vehicles killed more people in 2022 than guns and I’m guessing more people here were menaced by a car instead of a gun today. Vehicles seem to be the greater danger and so why can’t our so called leaders address the problem they are??
Politics? There’s a lot of people in the Willamette Valley who think guns are out of control (myself included). There are comparatively few who think cars are.
Here’s my take.
1) We have a severely understaffed police force including detectives whose job is to investigate crime
2) We have a mismanaged District Attorney’s office with a a DA who to me appears more interested in supporting lawbreakers than victims. Sure we need more public defenders but the bigger issue seems to be with failed prosecutions. (Of note, DA candidate Vasquez has several ideas for improving the availability of defense attorneys while Schmidt seems to only use this issue as an excuse for his lack of prosecutions)
What to do?
# 1) The police understaffing is problematic as it took years to get to this low level and will take years to fully staff the PPB again. I was just speaking with a new lieutenant in the North Precinct. Currently they have 80 officers and 10 years ago they had 140. Full staffing today would be 150 officers. They are not infrequently so understaffed that they can only respond to Priority 1 and 2 calls (out of 8 levels of call). This happens whenever there is a shooting or another major incident.
#2). Fortunately the DA situation is a much easier and quicker fix. It’s election time! Take a look at which candidate you think will bring us to a better place and VOTE:
Here’s the DA debate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiDusOFXySE
The PPB is incredibly understaffed for a police bureau in a city of our size. We need more if we want to catch dangerous drivers.
Not much the current DA could do with lack of public defenders, he was charged with those offenses by the DA before the dismissal. His previous offenses were from before Schmidt was elected.
That said, whoever is the DA after the election needs to focus on prosecuting reckless driving and related offenses and seek the highest penalties. And judges should be more strict in preventing people from being in diversion programs that do not work for repeat offenders half the time.
This is not an appropriate way to endorse your candidate of choice, Angus. Electing a different DA would not change the dismissal of this case, which stemmed from the lack of public defenders. The current DA would very much like there to be more public defenders, which is a problem across Oregon. Indeed, one might note that your suggestion of adding more police without adding more public defenders could just increase the likelihood of arrestees being released.
Sorry/not sorry to interrupt your lobbying for a candidate with actual facts!
I agree that most likely nothing in this case would have changed with Vasquez vs Schmidt (I’m guessing that’s why Jonathan chose this case an example). However, there are unfortunately many other cases where it would have. Yep, I’m backing Vasquez but the cool thing about a democracy is that the community (not just me) gets to choose. We’ll see shortly if the community agrees with my take (or not). Now go vote! 🙂
As a matter of morality, I don’t vote for Republicans (current or former). So I voted for Schmidt.
Your take on this (that Mr. Maus chooses articles based on elections) is absurd. I’m sure he posted the article because it’s about an unrepentant, under-punished cyclist murderer.
Here’s my take:
Oregon’s chronic shortage of public defenders is caused by the election of business-friendly and “pragmatic” moderates who refuse to adequately fund an essential part of Oregon’s social contract. I can’t in any way imagine “pragmatists” like Vasquez or Gonzalez demonstrating that they are soft on crime by advocating for a large increase in funding for pro-crime bleeding-heart public defenders (who often support decriminalization).
I just heard Vasquez speak four days ago, he was very much concerned about the shortage of public defenders. He seemed like a kind person. He didn’t mention being a “pragmatist,” (so why did you use the quotes?) but he did talk about having the experience and competence to lead a large office of prosecutors.
I don’t see any similarity between Gonzalez and Vasquez, except that both have a Spanish name that ends in “z.”
The similarity is that both will win with 60-70% of the vote.
I’ve got mixed feelings about that, LOL, but the mayor’s race isn’t till the fall.
“Spanish” name. Huh? They’re both of Mexican descent.
“Huh” back to you. Should I say they have Mexican last names? They speak Mexican?
Those are American names.
1) Understaffed public defenders.
2) Mismanaged police force.
3) a broken social contract (community reinforcement of safe streets) by motor vehicle operators…
In is country we seem, always, to have billions (if you add it all up, a trillion) dollars to blow things up, kill and torture people, around the world. Yet here at home we have neither the priority nor the funds to run our country, help people live happy lives, keep order.
It really doesn’t make sense unless one is benefitting from selling all those things that blow up, kill and literally torture people around the world and then “donating” to the decision makers that spend the tax money.
And yet we keep voting for the national war party and continue to get what we vote for.
Those Raytheon/etc mansions in New England don’t just build themselves, after all!
That’s because “both” parties are the national war party. It’s such a joke.
We assumed the role of “world policeman” after WWII mostly because we were the only one left standing, and we didn’t want the Soviets to do it.
It’s not a great job to have, and, as you noted, is quite expensive, but I’d rather it be us than China or Russia, the two obvious alternatives. I’m sure you’d vote for Europe, which was Trump’s solution, but they are not up for the job, nor do they seem to want it.
Which leaves the question: if not us then who?
You are reliably a status quo man. The way you frame pretty much every issue is to narrow the scope to include what we have now, and it’s inverse. A silly caricature and neither inspiring nor helpful in my view.
(1) Do we really need a world policeman? How well have things gone with us taking on that role? Hiding our government’s reliably violent and racist priorities behind the supposed order-keeping role you see.
(2) if we needed an authority I think the UN could be a much better and less heinous actor. Not perfect in its current guise, mostly because we the US keep maligning it or ignore it or refuse to pay our dues.
And the number. wars started by Russia and China are a tiny fraction of the number of wars we the US have started.
“from the end of World War II to 2001, among the 248 armed conflicts that occurred in 153 regions of the world, 201 were initiated by the United States.”
https://english.news.cn/20220902/735703a45cfd458791179d4c0a80e727/c.html
and note that tally stops in 2001(!)
The official Chinese news agency might be biased. You should probably balance that with a Russian government citation, and maybe an Iranian one as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhua_News_Agency
If you think armed conflicts are a good measure of things (I don’t), look at this list. How many of these are our fault?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts
“How many of these are our fault?”
Well if you squint probably a majority of them.
Starting on Oct 7th to understand the decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestine isn’t useful, and the same un-useful approach could be taken to this list of wars in an attempt to suggest the US had nothing to do with it.
Keep squinting. As bad as we might be, we’re better than the alternative.
The UN has no ability to enforce anything, and human history shows that a power vacuum is always filled.
“we’re better than the alternative.”
Your reply is hilariously obtuse. You have no idea if that is true. Of course because you ‘know’ it to be so that is sufficient proof for you.
“The UN has no ability to enforce anything”
We in the US have undermined/pilloried/maligned this institution for generations, withheld funds, ignored its rules. Many countries around the world invest their hopes and funds in the UN, while we choose to undermine it when it suits our imperial impulses. Hardly an open and shut case, much less one we have to give up on.
The US is the largest contributor to the UN by a very large margin. Many countries around the world invest little in the UN and even less on their own defense because they know we sitting in the wings not doing that. Ukraine is a great example, a country with Russia as a neighbor spent less than 3% of GDP on defense until 2020, we spend 3.5% of GDP on defense and have two oceans and two friends as neighbors.
“a power vacuum is always filled.”
your comment suggests this is akin to someone leaving the door open, or a rainstorm; stuff that ‘happens’ without any conscious input.
But the circumstances you call a power vacuum have been deliberately brought about, orchestrated, are maintained. We puff up our chest, strut about the world stage, choose to have a military budget equal the next ten countries, invade countries whose citizens don’t adhere to our view of the world all the time. These are choices. We could have made other choices, still could.
Though with friends like you who always and predictably rain on any ‘things could be different’ party, the chances of success are somewhat diminished.
Malevolent actors will always fill a power vacuum. I hope that is more direct and clear. This has been true throughout human history, and I don’t expect that will change now.
I do not assert there is currently a power vacuum, but that by becoming more isolationist, as the Trump right-wing wants us to do, we would create one.
Maybe the UN would expand to fill the vacuum, but if, as you assert, one single country has the power to undermine the UN to the point of making it ineffective, that demonstrates that it is not up for the job.
I don’t mean to rain on your party. You can always move forward without me. I won’t feel bad.
I’m a little surprised at your description of being isolationist as being a trump right wing viewpoint. I don’t really subscribe to that group’s viewpoint and yet I would rather we didn’t stick our nose into places it doesn’t belong and get a lot of Americans and a lot more locals killed. So far we are pretty isolationist as far as the Uyghurs, Haitians, Kurds, Sudanese, Syrians, etc are concerned.
You mentioned being the world’s policeperson and yet the places we have jumped into (with perhaps the exception of Grenada) post WW2 have not gone well for us or for the country went into. We are not stopping China or Russia from expanding except through proxies and soft power which we could do from the continental United States (CONUS) I like the idea of isolationism, it keeps our fuel and resulting pollution from enabling world wide shipping and would necessitate more of an agricultural lifestyle for more Americans to feed themselves and close neighbors which of course would cut back on semi truck use. Is there a negative to isolationism that you see?
If more Americans were less isolationist, I imagine Ukraine’s Foreign Legion would be packed to the gills with volunteers, and yet it is not.
There are plenty of counterexamples; one might be Afghanistan. I think they were far better off when we were there, holding the Taliban at bay, than before we arrived or after we left. Given how few American soldiers it took to keep a lid on things, it may have been better for us to stay. I’d suggest asking an Afghan woman what she thinks.
Another would be Yugoslavia. While that was an erstwhile NATO mission, it was really an American one. A lot of bad stuff happened there, but it’s not hard to imagine it being worse without our involvement.
A third would be Ukraine. While that story is very much still being written, it’s hard to imagine Ukraine lasting very long without American involvement. We’ve been providing weapons, intelligence, and strategic advice, along with a lot of things that aren’t in the news.
These, along with most other examples you would cite to support your case, are terrifically complicated and messy, and it is often hard (impossible) for an outside player to resolve things cleanly. Even in the cases I cited, a lot of bad things happened, some of which were directly our fault.
Would the people of any of those countries be better off if we had stayed at home? I don’t know. Would we be better off leaving the various parties to play things out on their own? Probably not. Maybe. Who knows? Would you leave the Ukrainians to their fate? Why do you care? Why would you care about genocide in Sudan (now restarting after we helped tamp it down 20 years ago).
I don’t see a lot we can do for some of the populations you cited as us not helping (especially the Uyghurs), but, on the other hand, we did spend a lot of resources helping the Kurds (facing extermination by Saddam Hussein) and the Haitians (facing the violent aftermath of a coup).
But yeah, Trump is a major isolationist, and he’s dragged a lot of Republicans along with him. That doesn’t mean the position is wrong (though I think it is). And I don’t think reducing trade (which is a different thing) would increase our agricultural activity. We’re a big food exporter, so, if anything, we’d produce less. And you’d have to learn to live without avocados and bananas (and inexpensive solar panels).
I’m going to put forward the unpopular opinion that Afghanistan would be just fine right now if we hadn’t destabilized the Soviet occupation of it which gave rise to the Taliban who were a popular uprising against the mujahideen who (with the help of CIA stinger missiles and who knows what else) drove the Soviets out. Playing international Cold War/World Police could very well be argued to be the reason Afghanistan is the unfortunate place it is now and most likely will remain. Since we were there (for no real reason since the Towers were hit by saudi nationals fueled by wahhabi beliefs), American soldiers did make a positive difference, but who did not make a positive difference was neither the state department nor our civilian leadership and so popular support once again shifted to the taliban. I am not sure how being world police is a good thing as American has not done a good job of it and it can easily be argued that whatever good has come about would have come about anyway without us being involved.
I am puzzled on the aid you think we’ve given Haiti recently. We are not sending troops, food or police as far as I know. If I am wrong I’d appreciate a reference.
As far as agriculture goes, regional foods and plants are just fine and will cut down on invasive species causing havoc. Growing insane amounts or rice and wheat is really not good for the planet or its inhabitants. Also, do you know the history of the Dole banana? I do not believe anything would be lost if that strain and the mindset behind it went away.
I still don’t see how isolationism can be tied to a political group or used as an identifier on whether one is right or left. My dad who is a reliable liberal is now horrified at what NAFTA has brought us to as a continent and although still a reliable “Vote Blue person” leans towards isolation himself now.
My reply is a bit disjointed, but forgive me one more comment. If we used less electricity, we wouldn’t need as much cheap or expensive solar panels. Making do with less imports and more homegrown items helps everyone.
Counterfactuals are always tricky, and I do not claim we’ve done a good job (or that a good job is even possible), only that leaving it to others would likely be worse. That’s impossible to prove, of course, but I’ve not heard a different argument for why someone else would be better.
It is impossible to know how the world would have turned out had we left the Soviets alone in Afghanistan. Maybe the USSR would still be around, averting the war in Ukraine. Or not.
I’m happy to use less power (and I have very low energy bills demonstrating my contribution). But we still need plenty of solar panels to get off fossil fuels. I read this morning that Biden signed his tariff bill that will make Chinese imports a fair bit more expensive, so we’ll get to see how that works out.
Again,
isolationist vs world policeman. What is with the crazy dichotomies? What about all the more interesting possibilities in between those poles?
Probably, because we, for the time being, still hold the world’s reserve currency and most trade is denominated in dollars. There is a certain level of responsibility in that status and given our debt load, I don’t think we want to find out what happens if we lose that. Fortunately, there isn’t a compelling alternative currency.
I can’t imagine that has anything to do with our mere existence and our strength being a pretty solid deterrence against any major conflict.
“solid deterrence against any major conflict.”
where did you get deterrence? We are the ones starting these wars, all the time. Assassinating leaders, arming insurgents, toppling democratically elected governments. At this point in our history it is more American than apple pie.
The USA is the epitome of the “big bad” depicted in the hyper-violent jingoistic movies Hollywood constantly vomits onto screens everywhere. The refusal of the average ‘murrican to acknowledge that they live in and implicitly support a brutal, hyper-violent, torture-celebrating, war-criminal, genocidal, and ecocidal community is the epitome of Arendt’s banality of evil.
And in a Kafkaesque footnote to this moral cesspit, a large swathe of “progressives” in this city are absurdly fixated on “Say something nice about Portland”. Sorry “comrades”, but in aggregate I find nothing “nice” about Portland or the USA.
Russia and China don’t start wars because they can’t, that’s the point.
I don’t doubt that what you write here makes sense to you but it makes no sense at all to me. Your worldview and the assumptions that follow from it are utterly foreign to me.
We start wars all the time, because we can? How is that useful? We start wars to deter others from starting wars? As if wars were the natural order of things, a way of communicating that accomplished anything useful. This isn’t a sandbox or volleyball court.
That’s a tasteful header photo he chose.
This is the problem that every law and order fundamentalist misguidedly blames DA Mike Schmidt for. Yet more parts of our society that people whine about when it doesn’t exist but don’t want to pay for it. We certainly don’t have a shortage of lawyers, we just aren’t realistically funding public defenders.
Poor Mike Schmidt.
When you’re the DA, you get the credit and blame for DA adjacent things, right or wrong. If crime goes down, you’re a hero. If it goes up, you get the blame, even if you have nothing to do with it. It’s just how life works. There’s no sense arguing about who’s to blame; it doesn’t matter. The future is written.
Schmidt set the tone for his tenure with his handling of the post riot prosecutions. Those decisions have colored everything that has happened since. If things had gone well, it might not have mattered. But they did not, and now he’s a goner; not even his support for drug recriminalization helped. Repeated accusations of sexual discrimination certainly didn’t.
Vasquez is going to enjoy a resounding victory (with the support of plenty of do-gooder progressives as well as law-and-order fundamentalists), and if things don’t improve, we might get a new DA in 2028.
And so the cycle-of-life continues.
“When you’re the DA, you get the credit and blame for DA adjacent things, right or wrong.”
Especially given the cops lie constantly to push their narrative, and the newspapers and Sinclair owned news stations regurgitate whatever they say. That’s a pretty good size bloc of voters they can manipulate.
LOL. the dumb voters are being manipulated by One Sinclair owned TV station and a newspaper no one reads….
Maybe you should make the case for Schmidt since you seem to be a fan.
He could use your help. I would be interested in what his supporters find so compelling about his time in office.
Is it the murder rate you find attractive, the car thefts, the hit and run driving that is out of control?
There must be something that appeals to his supporters.
I voted for Schmidt because I am not convinced that he’s responsible for the bad stuff you list there. IMO Schmidt has been made a scapegoat for stuff well beyond his control, and the fact that a lot of the folks who oppose Schmidt are folks who don’t align with my values makes me even more suspicious of the narratives they’ve pushed about him. I also know the stuff he’s being blamed for are extremely complex things that have always defied easy solutions and a lot of people I respect feel like Schmidt is the better option in this race. One thing I do believe strongly, is that throwing police and carceral solutions to these problems is 100% the wrong thing to do and I trust Schmidt more to have a better grasp of how to play the right balance in that regard. Those are just some reasons I voted for Schmidt.
Fair Enough but it was Schmidt’s own decision to not prosecute anyone for the vandalism and damage they caused in 2020, no one else.
That decision has colored his entire term in office.
The recent trashing of the PSU Library is kind of a direct result of that decision.
Why does Schmidt get a pass in your mind for this stuff?
I would very much like to throw the police and a carceral solution at the problem of Joel Schrantz. If that’s the wrong solution, I’d like to know what you think should be done about people like him, and what you think Schmidt should do with his case.
Thanks for the reply Watts. I believe Schrantz should not be allowed to drive a car and that he needs to be held by authorities until he can be deemed safe to society. I also know it’s not Schmidt’s fault that his latest charges were dismissed. The court is the one who decides which cases get a public defender, that’s not a DA office decision AFAIK.
I think it’s reasonable for me to not be in favor of letting police run amok and creating a large carceral/police budget with money we need for other stuff, while also believing that we need to enforce laws and we need people and tools to do that when necessary.
Other stuff: public defenders who provide due process for poor people.
I agree. This is a carceral solution, but it is the only one I see.
I also agree that Schmidt is not directly at fault for the dismissal, though he certainly has a role to play in ensuring there are enough defense attorneys to prosecute the people he thinks require it. In that larger picture, he shares blame with the legislature and governor.
That’s a reasonable position, and one which I share. Police should not run amok, and we need enough cops with the right tools to enforce our laws, but we don’t want to overdo it. I’ll bet there is no one on this forum would would disagree with us on that.
In the Schrantz case specifically, you think the reason he was released is that the court felt other cases were a higher priority than this one? Maybe they were right — I don’t know what else they were dealing with.
I think you’re onto something, this guy Schrantz would have likely never ended up in this position if a social worker had just stopped by to have a discussion about his lived experience in an effort to better understand his innate traumas and how those manifest in incredibly antisocial ways. We certainly would not want to incarcerate him for a length of time that would prevent these actions from being perpetrated on society, so maybe tending to an herb garden would allow for his energy to be used more productively and Schmidt is the guy to make sure that happens.
Nice biased reading PS. I said I want Schrantz held by authorities and you interpret that as a social worker and herb gardening.
I believe strongly that we need to have more social supports to create a society where folks like Schrantz are not as common. And I believe if we react too quickly to police/jail solutions, we will never have the money or political will to create that type of social support and the society I want to live in. I also believe that many progressives have lost the plot and think we can blame everything on “the system.” I feel like progressives need to be more willing to blame individuals for their actions and then find solutions that focus on individuals like Schrantz instead of just putting hands up and saying, “yeah but the system is so bad, it’s not Schrantz’s fault.” I’m trying to find a line here between throwing cops at everything and ACAB. The way you react to my comment is IMO a good illustration of why these problems persist because you are more interested in insulting me than fixing stuff.
What I’m not hearing in the conversation is the need for competence and experience. I didn’t vote for Schmidt the first time around either, because the argument that he was not qualified for the job landed with me. Selecting a candidate should be about more than just agreeing with that person on a bunch of political positions. Especially something like DA, ya gotta have the chops for the job, and Schmidt doesn’t seem to.
And about that barrage of attack flyers from the Working Families Party targeting Vasquez … photo of Betsy Johnson, Donald Trump, Giuliani — talk about bottom-of-the-barrel campaign sleaze. That should send up a red flag regarding the anti-Vasquez side. When I got the first bunch, I thought, “boy, these folks are desperate.” An incumbent should be able to run on his record.
Yeah I hear you Lisa. I don’t know enough about things to determine which one of the two is more competent or has requisite experience. I think choosing a candidate can and usually is about a lot of things! And I can’t speak about some anti-Vasquez randos. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. If Vasquez wins, I’ll look forward to all the problems he and his supporters have blamed on Schmidt to quickly dissolve… just like what happened when Gonzalez beat Hardesty.
Not one person has sung the praises of Vasquez that I have seen here and no one has said things will instantly improve.
The public has had it with Schmidt, pure and simple.
The same with Wheeler.
I don’t see why anyone is so invested in the current DA except maybe his family….
As if the Vasquez “side” has never run attack ads. Why doesn’t this supposedly experienced prosecutor simply run on his record instead of trying to smear his opponent?
I just read the Willamette Week article you link to, it’s a few weeks old and already irrelevant.
The Working Families Party of Oregon (not some group of “randos”) has made large contributions to the Schmidt campaign this past couple of weeks and his campaign has now out-raised Vasquez (before that late influx of money Vasquez was far ahead). The WFP money seems to have paid for the barrage of attack ads (four in a week) I received against Vasquez this past week. They are sleazy smears featuring photos of Donald Trump, Betsy Johnson, Rudy Giuliani … give me break.
In their endorsement of Vasquez, Willamette Week made a good point: think of the DA’s office as a large law firm. You don’t choose some junior attorney with, what, six years experience, to head the thing.
WFP has miscalled this, and probably irreparably damaged my opinion of them.
If it’s “sleazy” to point out the fact that Betsy Johnson and Giuliani/Trump allies have given money to Vasquez, how is it not sleazy for Vasquez to blame Schmidt for the public defender shortage, over which the DA has no control? Asking for a friend.
Tell your friend that responsibility flows uphill, and the person on top always gets the credit or blame, even if they have no real control over the situation.*
If [politician] doesn’t get the job done, he takes the hit.
*Having the front-row seat to the crisis that he has, Schmidt probably should have been lobbying for more resources for defenders. If he was doing that, he wasn’t successful.
Wow, that’s a really impressive statement. I really like how you (at least it seems to me) acknowledge the need for personal responsibility to make the city/world a better place and to start putting resources into the future we want to have rather than the future we’re afraid to have. it really flesh’s out some of the things you’ve said in the past in a new way. I really like the balance of optimism and awareness of the current reality you achieve. Kudos!!
Look back at my comments on this topic over the last four years. I was screaming from the rooftops during “defund the police” that if we aren’t willing to spend more we’re very likely to end up with the justice system we deserve not the one we want. That remains an unpopular opinion and now we’re seeing the fruits of the alternative. There are two realities here, one, there are bad people, two, it is expensive to reduce/eliminate their impacts on society. We were going to pay a lot before to take care of these problems and we’re going to pay even more now. Sorry my cynicism got in front of the recommendations I’ve been making for years.
I am going to make the leap that the society you want to live in acknowledges that funding that society depends on people willing to contribute much more than what they receive. They do this because the quality of life is worth it. They give a lot and in exchange there is low crime, clean infrastructure, and private property rights are protected (I think the list really is this short for rich people to want to live somewhere). Current leadership is doing everything in their power to alter this natural cost/benefit analysis and it will be very problematic moving forward.
It seems to me that the subtext of your snark is that poor people who have allegedly committed crimes should just be locked up by some authoritarian jackbooted prosecutor because you are incapable of understanding that the state of Oregon has refused to provide poor people constitutionally protected due process. (The shortage of public defenders and their pathetically low pay is not some sudden new crisis — it’s been a cluster**ck for over a decade.)
Jan 2022: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/legal_aid_indigent_defense/indigent_defense_systems_improvement/publications/or-project/
Hmm, maybe it’s just that you’re incapable of seeing the difference between the model citizen the article is about and poor people who have allegedly committed a crime. Of course it can’t possibly be in the best interest of the public to hold someone like this, it’s so much better that we just release them into the wild to just be on their best behavior.
I agree though, it is utterly inhumane that Oregon attempts to pay recent graduates of law school 2x the median household income to be a public defender and that’s in exchange for the absolutely abhorrent working conditions of 43 hours per week (assuming a month PTO). I can’t imagine the population of innocents they serve has anything to do with it at all.
So it doesn’t matter if the DA is to blame, unless you’re Mike Schmidt, who is definitely to blame because he “set the tone” by refusing to crack down on nonviolent protest? Or was it maybe the People for Portland attack ads or blatant lies by police that “set the tone” by telling the public that Schmidt wouldn’t prosecute crimes?
You got me. I said that Schmidt’s early actions set him up for people thinking he was soft on crime, which is toxic when voters think we have a crime problem, but I also observed that he will take the blame even if it’s not really his fault.
I’m a walking contradiction.
PS I disagree that the riots (which I clearly referenced) were nonviolent protests (as you call them). Why do you think they were?
The majority of protests were peaceful, which didn’t stop police from arresting demonstrators en masse as an intimidation tactic. Schmidt’s policy was to not prosecute “people exercising their rights to free speech and assembly in a non-violent manner”. This is apparently so terrifying to some people that they need to parrot the Fox News framing of all protests as “riots”. I guess that makes it easier to reclassify peaceful demonstrators as as violent criminals and ignore the actual violence committed by police.
The huge majority of protestors were peaceful. The rioters (a much smaller, less diverse group) were not. It was pretty clear to everyone involved who was who, and your attempt to conflate the two groups is not convincing.
I want to be clear that I don’t necessarily think Schmidt made the wrong decision, only that the optics of that decision, made early in his tenure, colored how people saw what was to come.
You should ask Schmidt why he didn’t pursue wrongdoing by the police.
Many people (Willamette Week says nearly 100) were in fact prosecuted with the dubious charge of “rioting” in 2020. Who’s conflating what now?
This is an excellent example of two big threats of why Vision Zero will not (never?) have any success in this country as in other countries. I have to assume he did not have insurance, did not have a license and had borrowed (?) a car or traded for it (?).
Has his recent arrests and activities triggered any conditions of his past jail release? Perhaps there needs to be a digital ankle monitor that does not allow the wearer to travel faster than say 15 mph (bike speed) or perhaps 35 mph (city bus speed) once they are convicted, do their jail time and released (probation period).
Any chance of setting up a “GoFundxx” to pay for a public defender or legal aid just to get this moving. Up until reading this article – I would have thought that the MC prosecution system would triage its legal PD staff to clear the cases of violent threats to our roadside safety.
Thanks for this news: my blood pressure has been getting too low and this is just the thing to top off the old tank.
I wonder if one of the local bicycle lawyers might be willing to take on his case pro-bono so that it could move forward. Perhaps we could take up a collection.
Now perhaps we can hope that the accused, Mr.Schrantz chooses to self represent himself in his trial since the public defender’s office is short handed…
“A public defender represents people who are facing criminal charges in these difficult circumstances. The public defender’s office is meant to ensure that no defendant is denied their right to an attorney, which is provided under the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution. ” https://www.justia.com/criminal/working-with-a-criminal-lawyer/public-defenders/
Too bad the $5,610,000 Oregon ‘kicker’ tax refund for 2024 cannot go to important issues like living (not being run down in the road and releasing the driver)…
Here’s what I don’t get, and I have to assume there’s some reason for this that I simply don’t know, because I’ve heard discussion after discussion about the lack of public defenders and nothing about this: If it’s a federally guaranteed right, why aren’t the feds paying for it? Why is that onus on the states?
Another Oregonian trying to pretend that it’s the Federal government fault that the right-wing and pro-cop democratic party of Oregon’s has utterly failed to provide basic constitutional rights.
…and another internet warrior engaged in useless, self-gratifying/masturbatory posting. Do better, please, or just don’t at all.
It was a serious question. The feds pay for other federal constitutionally guaranteed things (the military, the post office, etc) – why not this one? I don’t disagree Oregon’s government sucks, but that’s entirely beside the question.
State courts are run by the state. If the state wants to try you for something, you are entitled to a lawyer. If you can’t afford your own, the state can either give you one or let you go. The feds have nothing to do with that.
If you are tried in federal court, the feds will pay for your lawyer (if you need one).
Hrrrmm. I don’t know that I like this as an answer, but it strikes me as a plausible answer.
Except impose the requirement to legal representation (and apparently not pay for it, though I suppose that‘s hardly unusual). Unless (and this is well outside my area of expertise, so I speak from true ignorance) the 6th only applies to federal cases, and in actuality we have no right to legal representation at the state level or below unless a given state’s constitution/laws mimic the 6th. That would defy what seems to me the plain reading of the 6th (which specifically says “State”), but I know the Supreme Court over the centuries has made a mockery of “plain reading”.
I suppose a state, if they’re constitutionally mandated to provide representation by the feds and the feds don’t pay for it, could simply opt out of having state courts altogether. Not pragmatic or realistic by any stretch, but I could see that as being at least a technical escape valve for this.
The federal government (“the feds”) didn’t impose the requirement for legal representation, the federal constitution did, and that’s binding on all states as a condition of entering the union.
As unimaginable as this would be, if you have no prosecutees, there is no one you need to provide lawyers to. That’s essentially what we’re doing on a low level by letting people like Schrantz go unprosecuted.
But you’ve definitely identified a key problem with “positive rights” — if I have the right to housing (an example someone mentioned here recently), that means someone else is on the hook to pay for it. Essentially, another person has been conscripted work to give me money. With a lawyer, the state can choose not to prosecute if it can’t afford the bill, but with something like housing, that choice doesn’t exist. There’s a lot more to it, of course, but the right to a lawyer is the only positive right I know of in the constitution.
This is true, and the usual intellectual conservative argument against, say, a right to healthcare (or housing, or…well, any positive right, as you say). But this is not, necessarily:
Conscription is one way to provide a positive right (“slavery” as Jordan Peterson hyperbolically put it once on a discussion about positive rights). Another, perfectly in alignment with American liberal/market values, is simply offering enough money to provide the positive right that people voluntarily choose to do so, until the needs of the positive right have been met. This isn’t terribly different from the “wide societal use of roads justifies taxes paying for it” argument you yourself have used many times. No one is being conscripted to build those roads. We (taxpayers) put up the money sufficient that someone builds them (setting aside the normal financial shenanigannery that obscures “sufficient”).
I am quite confident the US has enough wealth and resources to meet that need for legal representation (and housing and healthcare) – we’d just have to utilize those differently. Less wealth accumulation in northern Virginia, for example.
Your point, if I understand it correctly, is that there is no difference between taxing people to build roads and taxing people to provide a right to housing.
In a sense, I agree, but the difference I see is that once something is deemed a right, we lose control of how many resources we want to dedicate to that purpose, or how those resources are used.
For example, if we had a right to housing, and a court somewhere deemed “humane shelter” to be nothing less than a conventional apartment with 1 bedroom per person, a kitchen, and a private bathroom, then putting people up in a motel might be inadequate, and we’re on the hook for a potentially unlimited expenditure — 1BR apartments for everyone — unlike road infrastructure where we can build less when times are tight.
Look how much money Portland is spending ripping out and rebuilding curb ramps that are only a tiny bit out of compliance.
I’m not certain what I wrote is effectively conveying my point, but that’s the best I can do right now.
Fundamentally, I’m not opposed to positive rights, but I am wary of them.
“Look how much money Portland is spending ripping out and rebuilding curb ramps that are only a tiny bit out of compliance.”
Can I look this up somewhere? It has started to bother me too. I have corresponded with BES and made friends with the contractors, asked them lots of questions, but the actual numbers interest me more.
The same thing could be said for the constitutional right to voting for a US President over 4 years (so far)…but its the states & counties that organize and pay for such services…thus the hodgepodge
More than that — how votes are counted for presidential elections varies significantly from state to state. Maine and Nebraska break out electoral votes by district, whereas other states do so on the basis of a statewide vote count. If the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact goes into effect, participating states would allocate their electoral votes by the vote tallies in other states, even if they disagreed with how residents in that state voted.
It’s a mess, but it makes more sense when you view it through the lens of 50 states sending delegates to a federal system (i.e. a federation of states) rather than one giant direct election.
Some people claim that’s undemocratic; I would argue it’s just a different arrangement of affairs that reflects the history of how we came to be, kind of like 9watts’ argument elsewhere that you can’t understand the Israel/Palestine conflict if you only look at a snapshot in time.
I’m not sure that the post office is constitutionally guaranteed (and I’m no fan of the military) but the USA has a FEDERAL system where states are expected to organize and fund their own judicial systems. I personally would not like to see the federal government take over state judicial systems for both political (pro-balkanization of this sh*thole nation) and pragmatic reasons (pending election of mango mussolini).
This is better, thank you. Have +1 internet point/upvote.
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7. Though to be fair, I suppose that list is what powers Congress gets to do things, not necessarily what things they must do.
And I too would not want the feds taking over anything – just pay for the positive rights they mandate.
Although Texas and Idaho would likely disagree, the entire point of being a state in the “union” is that both states and the federal government have independently committed to follow the constitution.
As for me, I have a fear and loathing relationship with the US constitution: fear that it’s meager human/civil rights are being systematically “re-interpretated” and loathing that a so-called democracy would cling to this patriarchal and imperialist document.
As bad as you think it might be here, I’d suggest visiting some other
non-all inclusive resort spots around the world and get back to us all on what you find.
There are mechanisms for changing it, or, possibly, amending it out of existence if you’d prefer we simply not have one.
Not to put to fine a point on it, but Oregon petitioned the federal government to be declared a US Territory, preparatory to statehood (see the end of this article: https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/petitions-to-congress-1838-1843/). We asked to join the union and abide by its constitution and take up the responsibilities that come with it. Yes the state and federal governments are currently misbehaving, but it is an error to cast it purely as an us-versus-them relationship. That will hardly move us toward useful solutions to these problems.
Here you dropped these: 000
Oregon’s kicker was $5.6 Billion
Thanks…my finger got a cramp when pressing all of those zeros….;-)
I thought you were using the British million.
Since “Schrantz is still out there”…Mr. Schrantz seems to be a chronic “dangerous driver’ based on even older case(s) not on Bike Portland…perhaps St Johns needs to be declared a “Bicyclists Under Threat Zone”…as be sure to not cycle (or walk) near his residence or likely employer (Conco Companies in St Johns) or along the routes he will drive to his likely OR WA construction work sites…potentially to past locations like the Moderna, the Ilani Casino, Port of Vancouver Terminal 1, The Ledges at Columbia Palisades, or any future project needing a lot of concrete…like the IBR project
https://mrkennethcmartin.blogspot.com/2016/11/repeat-offender-who-drove-his-car-into.html
Honestly can’t tell if this is supposed to be a threat. Kinda reads like “bicyclists stay away or we’d hate to see what happens.” Are you holding peoples lives ransom over some concrete?
I am just pointing out the existence of a threatening situation…unless some entity steps in, as I doubt he will – after 3 well known violent driving events – now start riding a bike, taking the bus or walking to work. Perhaps his employer(s) do not let him operate work vehicles or has set up a rideshare for him to any offsite worksites.
I think the debate here is missing something. I don’t know what the right answer is, but I don’t think more enforcement, more resources for prosecution, or pro bono lawyers will keep people like this off the streets. He’s been ticketed. He’s been arrested. He’s served jail time. According to his 2017 case, he hasn’t had a valid license since 1992. From his own post, there are police trying to stop him, deploying spike strips, and engaging in chases. None of this is a deterrent to this kind of person, and he’s not the only one out there.
Seems to be a problem baked into our legal system that penalties aren’t strong enough to actually make a difference. Even if a judge could sentence him to the full extent of the law tomorrow, there just isn’t enough on the books to keep him from doing this again. Car brain is baked into our laws to give drivers essentially a free pass to kill and maim provided they aren’t intoxicated and they stay at the scene. Even then all they have to do is say “I’m sorry” and it’s back out to the streets. Again, Schrantz hasn’t had a valid license in over 30 years, yet our laws can’t stop his pattern of behavior. I don’t know what exactly the solution is, but the current penalties are obviously not working.
Maybe we should try restorative justice?
Have they tried impounding his car(s)?
If we really took safety seriously, we would sentence people like this to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. People like this guy are the reason that sentencing guideline was created.
https://www.opb.org/pdf/OPDC%206%20Year%20Plan%20Reduce%20the%20Public%20Defender%20Deficit%20Final%20Report%203_1711066724736.pdf
This is a pretty great report on the situation with public defenders in Oregon which was created by Moss Adams.
It is long, but worth at least a perusal. Outside of the suggestion to save $60MM in a projected $1.3B budget in 2029-2031 by decriminalizing some misdemeanors and some high-level felonies the most jaw dropping aspect is that Oregon has three law schools with an average class size of 145 students, so to fill this 546 defender gap, the state needs to convince 20% of those to become public defenders over the next six years, which has no historical basis and assumes that no defenders retire or quit over that period. So, basically, this doesn’t happen and the problem gets worse. Critical minds may then extrapolate what happens when guys like the subject are never punished for their behavior and the plausible slippery slope that follows.