PORTLAND — Heroes American Cafe owner John Jackson said his business partner received a call at one of their shops last week. The unidentified caller said the business was on a list as being pro-police and should expect “something” to happen.
Jackson and his partner didn’t think much of the garbled threat. It seemed like a crank call.
“We kind of dismissed it as ‘whatever,'” Jackson said.
But that changed Sunday night.
Jackson was home with his family and in bed when he got a call at 9:50 p.m. from the business’ maintenance worker. Vandals had hit the shop at the corner of Southwest Park Avenue and Clay Street near the Portland State University campus during a downtown protest billed on fliers as a “Day of Rage.”
Jackson and his wife soon found the two front windows had been shot out and a third one busted with possibly a baseball bat. Glass was everywhere inside. The bullets had whizzed through the shop and into a back wall and likely traveled into the ceiling, Jackson said.
“It looked like a planned thing because they called us on Thursday and threatened us,” Jackson said.
Two other businesses to the north on the same block were untouched, he said.
An exterior security camera at the cafe, only open for six weeks, was mysteriously shut off, he said. There were no apparent witnesses, not even the usual tents of homeless people sleeping across the street, he said.
“We are pro heroes, any hero — whether it’s a teacher, a firefighter, a police officer or a vet,” said Jackson, 55. “We’ve very American in nature. I served in the military. We’re red, white and blue. Whatever side you’re on, you have a right to believe what you believe, but you don’t have a right to step on whatever you disagree with. We kind of felt like we’re neutral.”
The “direct action” demonstration was advertised in support of Indigenous people but appeared to be part of nearly nightly protests that have occurred since late May to decry racial injustice and police violence after the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis.
Jackson learned that some people engaged in recent demonstrations had been compiling a so-called “blacklist” of local businesses “guilty of WrongThink,” any that was “anti the BLM movement,” according to one Twitter account. Another Twitter account accused Jackson’s business of giving profits to cops, which he said is false.
“Black Lives Matter? I’m Black,” said Jackson, who grew up in Ohio. “They don’t even know who I am.”
Jackson called 911 three times that night.
“Police never showed up,” Jackson said Monday from the cafe as a lunch rush swirled around him.
“We waited two hours. We saw them drive by like six times, and finally flagged down a police supervisor, ‘Hey, we got shots fired, we got bullets here.'”
The supervisor also called dispatchers to report the shots fired, Jackson said. He gave the cafe owner a case number and told him someone would respond but cautioned there were “40 calls ahead of yours.”
“They still haven’t come today,” Jackson said about 12:30 p.m. Monday.
He and his staff initially waited to clean up Sunday night, thinking police might take photographs or scour the shop for evidence. But with no police response, Jackson had the glass swept up and the front windows covered with boards.
He said he was frustrated that his business appeared to be targeted and police didn’t respond.
Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell ended up stopping by around 3:30 p.m. when Jackson wasn’t at the shop, but no investigating officers had responded as of 4:30 p.m., he said.
“I think it’s an indicator of the state of our leadership in this city and in this state, for that matter,” he said. “I just think the police are hamstrung in a lot of ways, and the leadership is focused on being so passive.”
He said he supports peaceful demonstrators. “I’ve fought for that right,” said Jackson, a Marine Corps veteran.
But he denounced the vandals. “It’s ridiculous. I think the police are caught in the middle of it,” he said. “I don’t blame them one bit.”
The Park Avenue cafe is one of Jackson’s four restaurants; the others are in Portland’s Forest Heights neighborhood, Grants Pass and Medford. They advertise “Eat Like a Hero” and have the American flag and depictions on their walls of people they consider heroes. In some shops, the walls show the tools of a particular profession’s trade, such as a police shield or handcuffs, but no police depictions were up at the Heros tap and grill on the Park Blocks, he said.
“We knew Portland was not as much for vets or police, so here we played up our teachers and our nurses,” Jackson said.
Despite the challenges it took for him to retrofit his shop and get it open amid a pandemic in September, Jackson said he will stay open at the spot.
He’s going to replace his windows quickly because he refuses to keep his place boarded up, he said.
“We’re not letting nothing stop us,” Jackson said.
He said he hears city leaders decrying the violence and vandalism but they need to let police take action, he said.
“They’re just hoping it’s going away. But it’s festering and getting worse,” he said.
“If it happens again, I’m going to be sleeping here with my shotgun.”
