The No More Summit, an educational anti-violence conference, was supposed to happen at the Hilton Vancouver Washington in January but got derailed due to weather. Rescheduling the summit for Friday and Saturday may have made the overarching sentiment more relevant, given recent regional news.
A 911 caller threatened a mass shooting, leading to the closure of The Evergreen State College in Olympia on Thursday and Friday. On May 26, two men were stabbed to death on a MAX train in Portland as they came to the aid of two girls facing racist insults.
During Friday’s keynote speech at the summit, there was a moment of silence for the men who died: Rick Best, 53, and Taliesin Namkai-Meche, 23.
“Any one of us could have been on that train. And individuals stepped forward and lost their lives,” said Michelle Bart, president and co-founder of National Women’s Coalition Against Violence and Exploitation, the nonprofit behind the summit. “We have a dream: a world without violence.”
NWCAVE addresses sexual assault, human trafficking and missing children, among other violence-related crimes. More than 100 people from six states attended the No More Summit.
Port of Portland Police Lt. Scott Creager spoke Friday about policing in America. Creager retired from the Vancouver Police Department and began working at the Port of Portland last fall. He met Bart through his work on Vancouver’s diversity task force.
“Policing in America has been very different at times depending on the region and the time period we’re talking about,” Creager said. “When you think about some of the most unpleasant aspects of our national history, frequently law enforcement was there. These images have imprinted on generations of people and play a part of how we are perceived today.”
The recent riots in Los Angeles, Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., can “shape perceptions of law enforcement even when they occur far away.”
While police departments around the country continue to be the center of scandals and allegations of brutality, there are reforms happening to reign in abuses and hold agencies accountable. It has informed a discussion about whether police should be more like guardians or warriors.
While police are most often called upon to be guardians of the community, there is a time when they need to be warriors, and when they may need to use force without excess and in the parameters of the law, Creager said.
“The answer is that we are both guardians and warriors,” he said. “The greatest skill of all is to subdue an offender without violence, and that should always be our goal.”
How to get people to comply and how to structure police procedures so people feel that they’re being treated fairly is complex. In terms of communicating what they’re doing, agencies have to balance accountability with the demand for instant information without compromising an investigation or releasing inaccurate information.
“One reality that most agencies do understand is that especially in a time of critical incidence, they need to move to be as transparent as possible as expediently as possible,” Creager said.
Community policing that fosters relationships between community members and officers has become a top priority for law enforcement, he said. Vancouver’s Neighbors on Watch, or NOW, has 170 volunteers who patrol neighborhoods and work with police. Training new officers is focused more on interpersonal communication skills and de-escalation; Vancouver police go through Crisis Intervention Training.
“The scope of the work law enforcement continues to do becomes more complex,” Creager said, adding that there are new type of crimes and technologies involved in law enforcement work.
‘Words hurt’
“Grimm” actress Hannah Loyd, 13, is launching a back-to-school anti-bullying program with another actress in conjunction with NWCAVE. She talked at the conference about being bullied, and believes kids will be more willing to listen to her than adults. Though she is a teenager, most people think she’s about 8 because she’s looks young for her age.
“I’ve always got bullied being a tinier girl, not being regular size. And, people didn’t know they were bullying me, and they were. It hurt. Words hurt,” Loyd said. “Bullying leads to more problems. It can lead to suicide. It can lead to so many different problems.”
Social media can make it so you don’t really know how people’s lives are, and it provides more opportunities for bullying, she said. Someone once commented on her IMDb.com profile page, criticizing the show and her acting skills.
“What really got to me is they said, ‘How can your parents love you with you being so creepy on that show?'” Loyd said. “It’s just not okay.”
She emphasized that it’s difficult to know what people are going through and how they may be hurting. At her age, when somebody is doing well in school, people assume the rest of that person’s life is going well, too.
“Anyone can be bullied. It doesn’t matter your age, your sex, your race,” Loyd said. “I’m trying to put out the word that bullying happens and we just have to talk to people and fight through it. Anything can happen anywhere.”
Other speakers Friday included Bart and state Rep. Sharon Wylie, D-Vancouver, who talked about surviving domestic violence and sexual assault.