At first, only the back half of the beat-up pickup truck with a faded-blue paint job can be seen in the security-camera video. About 10 yards behind the truck and to its left, a lone tent stands on a vacant lot near the edge of the street.
Then, the truck backs up and makes a sharp turn that takes it into the tent. Its rear bumper shoves in one wall and then pulls it out again as the truck, with a small spray of dirt, makes a sharp right turn and accelerates away.
David Cooper, a 53-year-old homeless man who had been sleeping in the tent with his girlfriend, said he woke with a start, thinking, “What just happened?” He said his back was hurt during the incident. His tent was located just off Northeast Halsey Street, near 92nd Avenue, in Portland.
Today, months after the early-morning attack in May, the back is still bothering him. “I’m in constant pain.” He said he had to give up his night job cleaning stove hoods in restaurants just as he was getting close to saving enough money to get housing. He said he is afraid to go into a tent and sleeps in his car.
In the video, which Cooper said he acquired from a nearby shop, the license number of the truck and the identity of the driver couldn’t be seen.
Cooper filed a police report with a copy of the video.
A spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau said: “The video was placed into evidence. No arrests have been made, but we would like to talk to anyone who has knowledge of this incident.”
Cooper and his girlfriend aren’t alone when it comes to hostile, even violent, responses to homeless individuals by fellow residents in Portland and around the nation. Most recently, Willamette Week reported on a man who called 911 on Aug. 31 while witnessing four youths attack a homeless person on the street. He took photos of the incident while it was happening. The dispatcher reportedly told him police would not respond unless the victim reported the assault himself. The newspaper’s report stated that police eventually arrived more than 20 minutes later, long after the alleged perpetrators and victim had left the scene. A police spokesman told Willamette Week that bureau policy calls for responding to a reported crime, whoever makes the 911 call.
In its December 2018 report, titled “Vulnerable to Hate,” the Washington, D.C.-based National Coalition for the Homeless said it had tracked 1,769 acts of violence against homeless people by housed people since 1999. “These crimes are believed to have been motivated by the perpetrators’ biases against people experiencing homelessness or by their ability to target homeless people with relative ease. The crimes include an array of atrocities such as murder, beatings, rapes, and even mutilations.” It said 476 people lost their lives in the attacks.
Among the attacks cited in the report:
• An Oklahoma man was accused of murder after running over a group of homeless people in 2017, killing one.
• In Arizona, a homeless man awoke in 2016 to find someone had set his legs on fire. He survived the attack.
• A Florida woman was criminally charged in 2016 with allowing her minor sons to shoot BB guns at a homeless man. The woman reportedly said she’d been having problems with homeless people rummaging through the trash at her family’s business.
The report also included several incidents in Oregon. A Portland man was given two years' probation for tossing a homemade bomb under the RV of a homeless woman in his neighborhood in 2016, according to a story in The Oregonian. The device didn’t explode. The man was reportedly upset that his two young children had to regularly walk past the RV, as well as garbage and excrement from an enclave of homeless campers.
John Brown, a Street Roots vendor, recalls being asleep early one morning several years ago outside a store in the Pearl District when he was jolted awake by an air horn blasting in his ear. Brown looked up to see two men in their 20s or 30s. One of the men was filming the event. “‘It’s time to get up,'” Brown recalled one of them saying before they walked away.
In August, Roy Elworthy was charged in a Multnomah County court with “reckless burning,” a misdemeanor, for allegedly setting fire to a homeless man’s tent and belongings on Aug. 15. In a news release, Portland Fire & Rescue, which made the arrest of the 44-year-old Elworthy, described the incident as “a houseless person’s tent and belongings were intentionally set on fire in a lot near Southeast 136th and Powell, destroying the tent and the person’s belongings. It was reported that earlier that day a man living nearby told a group of houseless people in the lot that if they did not move, he would set their things on fire.”
Local news reports identified the homeless man as Darrell Pattum.
KATU News quoted Pattum as saying that since the incident, he had been sleeping on a cot with no shelter in the homeless camp where his tent was burned.
Christopher Howard, Elworthy’s attorney, declined to comment, citing the still-pending criminal case. Elworthy has pleaded not guilty.
If convicted of the misdemeanor, Elworthy could face up to a year in jail. The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office decided not to pursue a felony charge of arson, which could have brought a longer sentence.
Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty has criticized that decision. “No one deserves to be dehumanized or targeted because members of our community are unable to find, afford, qualify for or keep a roof over their head,” she said in a statement to Street Roots. “These are not the values of Portlanders and I urge leaders to stand up for our unhoused community members.”
The District Attorney’s Office said that after reviewing the information in the case, prosecutors determined “there was no evidence to prove the elements of arson in the second degree beyond a reasonable doubt and therefore, it was our legal and ethical obligation to inform the court that the state could not proceed on the arson charge.”
Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office, when asked about the incidents, said attacks and threats aimed at homeless people “have emerged as another grim reminder about the consequences of our housing crisis.” His office added, “We are currently working on building a support coalition to explore options for addressing this troubling issue.” A spokesman said that effort is “just at the exploration phase” but promised more details as things moved forward.
Attacking someone because they are homeless is “an act of terror and cowardice,” said Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury in a statement to Street Roots. However, she added, “we have to acknowledge that this is what happens when we allow our neighbors to casually demonize people experiencing homelessness.” Kafoury said she plans to look into possible responses, including law changes, to deal with such “crimes of hate.”
Cooper told Street Roots about his tent being hit by the truck while he was sitting in the Northeast Portland offices of JOIN, which provides services to the homeless. Others who were at JOIN on a recent day also recounted cases of harassment.
Orion and Brienna, who declined to give their last names, said that one evening several months ago someone in a bright green car fired a pellet gun at them and their tent.
“It happened so quick that I didn’t really register it at first,” said Orion.
“I think they were trying to scare us out,” said Brienna.
Earlier this year, JOIN staffers were helping some homeless people pack their belongings to move when several angry men confronted them, said DiJonnette Montgomery-Thompson, JOIN’s director of day space services. The homeless people “weren’t moving fast enough for the neighbors who were yelling and screaming,” said Montgomery-Thompson. Some “were throwing, kicking homeless people’s stuff into the street,” she said. “It was really, really scary.” Eventually, the police were called in and the confrontation ended.
On the other side, neighbors also feel frightened, said David Fenske, who owns and operates a vinyl window frame firm that’s on the same street where Cooper’s tent stood when it was hit.
Last year, Fenske said a homeless encampment of about 100 people was in a large empty lot across from his business for months. He said he saw drugs and weapons dealt and prostitution taking place. He also said he suffered a number of thefts, including a flat-bed trailer. The situation was “frustrating and also quite scary,” he said, adding that the authorities eventually moved the people out of the encampment.
While he supported that action, Fenske wonders whether anything was really resolved. “The problem is, where are they going to go?”