DIRECTOR’S DESK | The police killing of Robert Delgado was among a national spate of such killings since the Chauvin trial began
Her brother loved making people laugh.
“He was always cracking jokes. Extremely dramatic. Every time he told you a story he was completely animated.”
Paulette Martin stood near where her brother, Robert Delgado, was fatally shot by Portland police Officer Zachary DeLong in Lents Park on Friday, April 16. She looked at the memorial created over the weekend — a heart-shaped wreath of many-colored flowers woven through the wires of a cyclone fence. Tall, white candles steadily burned.
“I’m really grateful for all the support and all the people that’s been out here to support us and him,” Martin said, through tears.
Delgado was homeless at the time of his death. Martin last saw him about a month ago when he visited her so she could take him to the hospital for a cut on his head.
“He had an impact on a lot of people that he met,” Martin told me. “He always loved and cared for people a lot. He’d give his sweater or jacket off his back or his last dollar for somebody.”
That impact was described on the posters placed around the memorial. One, written on bright blue paper, said, “Thank you for always being my friend. I love you so much,” signed “Jen.”
The police killing of Delgado joins a national spate of such killings that parallel the trial of Derek Chauvin, who was found guilty today of the murder of George Floyd. Since the trial began, more than three people have been killed every day by police in the United States, over half of them Black or Latino, according to The New York Times. Twenty-year-old Daunte Wright was shot dead after a traffic stop. Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old in Chicago, was shot while he held in his hands in the air. And only about 20 minutes before the Minneapolis jury delivered its verdict today, Columbus, Ohio, police shot and killed 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant.
Despite the year of awakening and outrage, despite the national attention on the Chauvin trial, police continue to kill people.
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Repeatedly, Portland police have killed people struggling with mental health — more than half of the 40 deadly shootings between 2003 and August 2020, according to an Oregonian report by Margaret Haberman. The previous person who was killed by Portland police, Koben Henriksen, was also homeless and mentally ill. The report did not tally the number of people who were homeless.
Police responded to Delgado’s distress in Lents, also the neighborhood of the Portland Street Response pilot. His homelessness, his mental health struggles, his distrust of police — all this seems like a situation in which Portland Street Response could be successfully deployed. And yet, reports assert the police thought he had a gun, and so the call would not be routed to Portland Street Response.
“When they shot, he didn’t have anything,” Paulette Martin told me. “I guess they found a fake gun? That’s not justifiable in killing somebody.”
“For 20 minutes they were telling him to put his hands up, and he was already dying.”
— Paulette Martin
Too often, the early claims favor police response, and when other facts come out, it’s too late. I return again and again to the death of Andre Gladen in early 2019, also in outer southeast Portland.
Legally blind and diagnosed with schizophrenia, Gladen was killed by a police officer two months before Street Roots published our Portland Street Response plan that helped lay the groundwork for the city pilot. We had been building up to pushing for a non-police first responder system since the prior summer, looking at CAHOOTS in Eugene as a model. When Gladen was killed, I called people at CAHOOTS to think about whether a program similar to that could have responded to Gladen. But at the time, that didn’t seem likely, because we thought Gladen had a weapon.
But here’s the thing. Only months later, we learned Gladen was not holding that knife at the time of the 911 call because the knife at the scene belonged to the officer. When a resident called 911 after Gladen showed up on his doorstep in distress wearing a hospital gown, he was seeking help for Gladen, exactly the type of welfare check that could be routed to Portland Street Response, if it had existed at the time. In fact, an officer was sent alone, a low-priority call.
And here’s the clincher. The situation escalated when Gladen was confronted by a police officer. Had the first responder been unarmed, it’s reasonable to expect that Andre Gladen would have left the scene alive.
And it certainly seems the case for Robert Delgado too, who also reportedly feared police. Instead, Martin is haunted by the fact that her brother was shot — and then lay dying:
“I just don’t understand why the medical response didn’t come and check on him. For 20 minutes they were telling him to put his hands up, and he was already dying.”
Portland Street Response issued a statement clarifying that the call was not routed to them because it was outside operating hours for the pilot, and that they do not respond to calls in which a gun is reported. As it is, Willamette Week reported that the Bureau of Emergency Communications is routing less than two calls a day to this trained team of a medic and a social worker. This is a bottleneck that demands immediate remedy if we want to prevent senseless trauma and death.
For each call to which a team arrives without weapons, focused on de-escalation, we fortunately never know the alternate reality where someone would have gotten traumatized, tangled in the legal system or shot. The same is true when we invest in other areas of public health, such as housing, education, mental health and substance abuse treatment.
But if we continue to invest in weapon-based policing, people will keep dying.
Martin looked out at the trees maybe 55 yards from where her brother was shot, trying to determine where DeLong was standing.
“Why? Why are they shooting people?” asked Martin. “Why was the gun out anyway? The beanbags are enough.”
I was grateful Martin talked to me about her brother on that hot Sunday afternoon. Families are sharing their grief. George Floyd’s family. Daunte Wright’s family. Andre Toledo’s family. Society grieves, and people keep dying.
Kaia Sand is the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand
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