Murmurs: City Faces Lawsuit After Babysitter Concussed by Lamp Post

CITY FACES LAWSUIT AFTER BABYSITTER CONCUSSED BY LAMP POST: A child care provider identified only by her initials, AL, sued the city of Portland and a Canadian hammock manufacturer Jan. 2 after she and a child were injured in 2022 by a falling lamp post in Irving Park. WW previously reported the details of the incident after her attorney sent a tort claim notice to the city last June. In a motion asking for permission to file the lawsuit without identifying the plaintiff, her attorney said AL has since faced “abuse, harassment and disparagement,” citing comments on social media following the publication of WW’s story. Here’s what we reported: According to a GoFundMe account created in the wake of the June 23, 2022, incident, a babysitter and a child were sitting on a hammock strung between a tree and a lamp post in Irving Park when the post “snapped at its base and came down on them, pinning [the child] and her to the ground....Her screams brought the crowd that was able to lift the post off of them. Ambulances rushed both of them away.” According to the lawsuit, she lost consciousness and sustained rectal bleeding and injuries to her legs. Portland Parks & Recreation later announced it was removing 243 light poles across 12 city parks after an investigation found structural deficiencies in the concrete posts, although the effort was halted halfway through amid public outcry at the parks going dark. The city has since placed red placards on many of the remaining light poles warning they are dangerous and will soon be replaced. The lawsuit faults the city for failing to test and repair the lamp posts “when it knew or should have known they were unstable and unsafe.” The lawsuit demands up to $950,000 in damages. The City Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the lawsuit.

AUDIT WHACKS FIRE BUREAU: A new report by Portland City Auditor Simone Rede blasts Portland Fire & Rescue for poor management of the bureau’s reorganized Community Health Division, which once included Portland Street Response and the Community Health Assess & Treat program. The initiatives aim to provide a more efficient response to 911 calls for mental health services (PSR) and low-acuity medical calls (CHAT), but, as the audit notes, both have been met with a mixture of hostility and indifference by the fire bureau, even though the vast majority of calls to which the bureau responds are for causes other than fires. Auditors found the bureau had failed to develop measurable goals or performance metrics for either program and had allowed them to languish. “Maximizing the effectiveness of these programs could meet the needs of Portlanders and relieve some of the workload challenges faced by the Fire Bureau’s traditional fire crews,” Rede said. In something of a departure from the polite response that city officials normally give such findings, interim Fire Chief Ryan Gillespie strongly disagreed with the premise underlying the audit. “I take strong exception to the report’s assertion that a goal of Community Health is to reduce the workload of frontline crews,” Gillespie wrote. “The common denominator between PSR and CHAT is that neither program was designed to reduce firefighter workload.”

NEW CHIEF CRIMINAL JUDGE TAKES OVER IN MULTNOMAH COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT: As of Jan. 1, Multnomah County Circuit Court has a new chief criminal judge: Michael Greenlick. Greenlick, who graduated from Lincoln High School and Lewis & Clark Law School prior to becoming a Multnomah County public defender, was appointed to the court in 2013 by Gov. John Kitzhaber. He’s taking over the top spot from Judge Cheryl Albrecht, who held the position for six years and has now hit her term limit. It’s a crucial role, responsible for managing day-to-day operations of the county’s criminal court system. As Albrecht noted for a report in this month’s Multnomah Bar Association newsletter, “her term has been very eventful.” The pandemic, which slowed criminal court operations for months, required the “reinvention of criminal court procedures,” the newsletter notes. Meanwhile, a public defense crisis and a statewide overhaul of the pretrial release system have further eroded public confidence that the court system works. Albrecht will retain oversight of misdemeanors for at least the next year, and will continue her work to “streamline the process with treatment courts and improve timeliness,” the newsletter reports. District Attorney Mike Schmidt thanked Albrecht for her service. “I have tremendous respect for Judge Greenlick and look forward to working with him in his new role,” he added.

TERROR AND LITTERING AT 16,000 FEET: When a panel blew out of the fuselage of a Boeing 737 Max 9 shortly after takeoff from Portland International Airport on Jan. 9, the implications were global. The Federal Aviation Administration grounded the aircraft, and soon alleged that the panel—called a “door plug” because it fills a door frame on the plane—had been improperly attached on multiple Boeing aircraft. (No one aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 was seriously injured.) In Portland, the result was more tangible: litter. The National Transportation Safety Board went on something of a treasure hunt across the metro area, finding bits of aircraft and passengers’ personal belongings that were sucked out of the plane. Local and national media outlets followed close behind, logging the discovery of the door plug, a seat headrest, and two cellphones (one still with battery life, in airplane mode) along U.S. Highway 26 in Washington County. Bob Sauer, a Catlin Gabel science teacher, became a central character on evening news broadcasts after finding the door plug resting in brambles in his backyard. His neighbor Diane Flaherty found the headrest on her patio. “I’m like, that’s weird, where did the dogs find a headrest?” she told KGW-TV.