Newsweek

Portland Police End Gang List

Some law enforcement experts say their gang member databases help fight gang crime and improve public safety, while critics say they are overly broad and include people who never were or are no longer in gangs.
Last week the Portland Police Bureau announced that it would end its policy of documenting people as gang members, in what experts say appears to be the first such move by a police department in recent years.
09

He was busted for his flannel coat—and not by the fashion police. The authorities stopped him on his way home from work and thought he was in a gang. Or so the man realized after police in Portland, Oregon, sent him a letter saying they’d added him to a list of known gang members.

“I did tell the cops that I use[d] to bang,” the man wrote in a 2015 appeal letter obtained by Newsweek (his name was

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from Newsweek

Newsweek3 min read
Newsweek
GLOBAL EDITOR IN CHIEF _ Nancy Cooper EXECUTIVE EDITOR _ Jennifer H. Cunningham VICE PRESIDENT, DIGITAL _ Laura Davis DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS _ Melissa Jewsbury OPINION EDITOR _ Batya Ungar-Sargon GLOBAL PUBLISHING EDITOR _ Chris Roberts SENIOR EDITOR
Newsweek1 min read
The Archives
“After the bloody steps, the heart-rending funerals, the surreal chase through the twilight of Los Angeles, O.J. Simpson surrendered himself into the darkness his life has become,” Newsweek wrote after the famous white Ford Bronco chase on a Californ
Newsweek1 min read
Banding Together
Members of Haiti’s National Palace band are escorted into the official residence by an armed guard on April 25 for the swearing-in of a nine-member transitional council. Prime Minister Ariel Henry had handed in his resignation amid spiraling violence

Related Books & Audiobooks