The True Cost of Status Quo w/ Chris O’Connor

Transcript

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Speaker 1

Welcome to our Portland with Sarah Ayana [inaudible] made possible by contributors to friends of Sarah for Portland. Portlanders have everything we need to make radical progress today on emergencies like climate chaos, housing affordability, and staggering inequality. Each episode we'll hear how Sarah plans to be the mayor to lead the city of Portland to a more equitable and sustainable future. And now here's Sarah. Hi Portland. It's election day 2020 Tuesday, May 19th. It fits before

Speaker 2

PM and you're listening to this and you have not yet turned in your ballot run. Don't walk to the nearest drop site and turn in that ballot. If you've already voted, Pat yourself on the back, you've done a good job, you can relax and listen to this podcast. This is a good one. I have a conversation with public defender, Chris O'Connor. He spent an awful lot of time at the courthouse downtown, so he has thoughts and big ones on what we need to be doing in terms of criminal justice reform. And some ways we can think differently about who ends up being, um, engaged with Portland police and our criminal justice system. And who ends up off the hook. I hope you enjoy our conversation. Don't hesitate to give us [email protected]. Hi Chris. Do you prefer Chris or Christopher? Chris. Okay, Chris. Happy Sunday. Thanks for taking time out of your day to talk to me.

Speaker 3

It's okay. Yeah, not a lot going on, so that's great. It's a pretty quiet day in the neighborhood here. So yeah,

Speaker 2

I know some people are out pulling weeds. I hear an awful lot of lawnmowers and yard equipment buzzing in my neighborhood.

Speaker 3

Yeah, there's a lot going on for that. But uh, you know, trying to keep your distance in the park, you can only take so many walks and they away from people. Yeah.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So let's talk, because I know you've been working through this quite a bit. So what's that experience been like for you?

Speaker 3

Yeah, the courts are still going, people are still getting arrested. Um, they are doing custody courts. I work as a public defender or one of the public defense agencies. Um, so we've been getting clients, a lot of new cases for folks that are not in custody or being pushed out till June and July. They come back. Um, others are be, people are being arrested and held and sort of going through a modified but basically the same process in the court. So, um, we're not shut down. Thankfully I'm still getting work and, uh, we're able to employ everybody in our law firm. But, um, uh, things are definitely different.

Speaker 2

So you're supporting me for Portland mayor, um, someone in your field and with the things that you're working on, what is, what is most interesting to you about my campaign and why is supporting that something that you would be interested in doing?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think it's important to have, um, people both in city council and in the, you know, in the mayor's office, uh, that actually have a good understanding of how the average person is interacting with the, um, law enforcement interacting maybe with the courts is, um, you find a lot of folks running for office in office, um, that obviously have only been listening to one side of the, and that tends to be the police or the bureaucrats, uh, that tend to govern that. So it was really good to see somebody with a better understanding of some of the need for reform and some of the need for a refocusing of some of the resources. That's what jumped out at me. Reading your Twitter feed and seeing it in the press and that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2

It's interesting, isn't it? How certain things that we talk about in terms of reforms, you and I are talking briefly before we went live about how they just seem like such compassionate, common sense responses. How many sets of institutions along the way have gone up to building those out? Some of the things that seem like they're radical reforms when you look at them from a human rights perspective or even just with compassion, they seem very common sense and practical.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think that's true. And I think we also have to take a historical perspective too. Most of what we most have, a lot of the problems of law enforcement weren't there a hundred years ago. It wasn't there 200 years ago. We didn't have a standing force like this. We didn't have thousands of people being arrested for misdemeanor cases every, every couple months, every year. Um, um, it just, it wasn't expected to be that way. The system was not designed for that. So we're always playing catch up. So it's not only reform, it's a restoration of kind of a previous world where, you know, if you're knocked over the spittoon and the saloon, they didn't drag you all the way across the County and lock you up for six months until you said you did it. Um, they may have had different ways to deal with it that would be problematic, but it was a different world. Yeah,

Speaker 2

for sure. For sure. So let's talk a little bit about what's on your mind in terms of some of the big issues that you're looking at this election cycle.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Um, one of the issues that's obviously come up a lot is, I mean overall, I think an interesting part of the whole, uh, criminal court process, the criminal law process is that you get a lot of folks that are spending the next person's money. So, um, if a citizen or a business owner calls the police says, Hey, this guy just knocked over a table in my, in my cafe. Um, somebody often responds it's the police agency or the Sheriff's department, something like that. When the sheriff decides, no, already taking this person to the hospital, are we taking them to the jail? Are we charging him with a misdemeanor or are we just taking them to their counselor and dropping them back off at their, you know, family or group home or their own home. Um, they're deciding a lot that other people are having to decide. So what I was interested in talking about was kind of, you know, where do you see the role of the city of Portland in terms of responding to some

Speaker 4

[inaudible]

Speaker 3

if they're sort of a right mind, they wouldn't be a crime, we just, they would be going about their day, um, or if they did do it on purpose and they'd be charged with a crime. So I'm wondering where do you see the city's role in somebody who's experiencing a mental health crisis, um, who responds, what do you think should happen? This is sort of a big question of the day.

Speaker 2

We get a lot of feedback in the advocacy community around trauma informed care and what does it mean for us to really look at the data, to look at the victims, who's considered the victim when something goes down, and then what is the appropriate response, not just in terms of the human rights and compassion in that moment, but efficacy. Right. So a good example would be someone in mental health crisis in the park walks. I'm sure. I'm sure that Portland police get hundreds of calls a month about,

Speaker 4

okay.

Speaker 2

Would it be more cost effective for us to actually have a lot more social services where those calls are happening. For peer support, for mental health support, for addiction support services, for even basic things like access to drinking water, access to shade, access to food. Because what we're understanding is sleeplessness is a huge factor, right? Uh, addiction is a huge factor. Uh, just the stress, the environmental stress and being unhoused is a huge factor. So having more facilities like right to dream to where people can access a few hours of sleep safe from harassment seems like a good investment in terms of preventative care to reduce those costs on the front end. And I see that as something that the city of Portland could be investing more aggressively and especially through the joint office and in partnership with the County. I do think that an increased investment in the street response model, uh, the, the that's informed by the white bird model down in Eugene by cahoots would be better if we scale that up more quickly here. Um, I also think we need to move some of the money around in the budget because when you look at the amount of money we spend on militarizing our police and training them for combat versus anti-biased training and deescalation training, I think we need to, we see where we need to put those resources in a different way. And that's one of the things that you and I were going to talk about was maybe looking at ways we can work around whatever the police union contract is through other city policies or even creative budgeting.

Speaker 3

Yeah. It's, it's, I think it's interesting because what you end up sort of, the budget process creates a conflict. So the two to set up a new system to set up new folks in the street response, um, means taking away some resources from other agencies and you sort of get locked in because you have this police contract that, um, with the, um, police union essentially, um, association, um, that they, uh, you know, you're stuck with a predecessor. So you're going to be having to deal with, uh, both a budget and, um, a contract that predates you, uh, that you didn't have some control over. And then frankly, I, you know, you're going to be dealing with leadership at the police Bureau that'll be there long after all of us are gone. Some of those folks that are there now will be there for decades. Um, they'll outlast every, every mayor. Um, there's people in police leadership now that have been there through three, four or five mayors, some of them. Um,

Speaker 2

yeah.

Speaker 3

Yeah. I mean, and so they can wait it out. I'm just curious how you see you, your options, what you see as sort of the problems and opportunities given that you're dealing with the last person's deal. Contracts

Speaker 2

we can look at would be even in terms of how do we increase the city's bargaining power when we go to that table over the next four years for the next contract negotiation. One of the things that I proffered is that residency requirement largely on that ground, right? Like, if we start talking as a community and building community power in the electorate or there's this, when you think about how you're going to make social change, there are some theories of change. We can look at. One of my areas of background is organizing in the streets to build community capacity. And so if we started people's movement that says we're going to have, you know, uh, accountability for Portland police in terms of what we want to see from them, the people of Portland demanding that isn't just me, the mayor demanding that that's building community capacity around something that they want to see.

Speaker 2

I think looking at that discipline guide and what does it mean for us to have objective criteria for getting rid of especially racist police officers, um, and police officers demonstrating bias. I think as the DOJ pulls out of town, um, and we to look at what that community oversight body looks like. There are some things that we've proposed in our public safety plan that are more specialized. When you look at how policing meets the streets, it's not as if there's just like one street and one officer and every engagement is the same and I don't know that one universal oversight body is going to be able to get us there. So I think carving those out and being able to move people, there might be someone working in vice who's had a really bad interaction with the public in that room. They go to the traffic division and that means we don't have to necessarily fire that person, but the community is saying we don't really want this person interacting with our community, immigrant and refugee on the um, sanctuary city status would be another one.

Speaker 2

This officer has not really performed up to our standards as a community. I think putting as much power back in the hands of community as possible is going to be essential, but I don't think any mayor can do that alone. I think that the mayor has to build the community power. That's why my people's movement, if you will, to even get me elected. We're on track to break city elections history in terms of the number of small donors that we have. It's not going to be Sarah takes on the PPA, it's going to be Sarah is functioning as a mouthpiece for Portlanders who are really over it in terms of the Portland police union shaping policy for our city. They're there to protect the workers rights of their membership, but it is actually a pretty big overstep to think that they get to say unilaterally how policing is going to go down in Portland.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I agree. And I think, uh, you always do also have to remember this sort of power of the budget too. It's like if the, the city is not going to fund certain activities until certain reforms are made. That's what I mean. That's sort of all you can hold over them when you're stuck with this, uh, grossly one-sided contract where it, uh, protects even the sort of Rottnest of Apple's kind of, um, uh, letting the whole barrel gets spoiled, um, by its association with those folks.

Speaker 2

Oh, that budget is so important. I mean, when people say, why would you run for mayor that budget and access to that budget line item by line item, even the hundreds of thousands of hours in police overtime, not to mention how they're showing up in the streets on protests and how those are funded. There's a lot of things that the mayor can do with that budget in terms of what they fund and what they don't.

Speaker 3

And I would also, I would just always say to everybody to just remember that you're uh, those decisions being made on the ground are costing the public defense services commission. The court system, uh, mental health apparatus of the city, the state, the County. Um, it's, it's decisions that just flow all the way into all the other aspects. I think, uh, um, I've always sort of joke, you know, imagine if someone in climates falls actually understood how much state money had been spent on primary tickets. Um, uh, by the time you get the public defenders, the court, the district attorney, the police overtime some. So that's a city cost, but you know, all that time to come down for a trial about whether someone did or didn't have their tickets fast enough, um, creates a, it's just, uh, it's, it's just absurd when you actually break down the costs. Um, and I think the accounting has never been there. No one actually knows how much overtime spent on certain types of cases or certain types of court appearances or um, you know, historically the, you get four hours of overtime whether you showed up for 15 minutes or not at court to major crisis, you know, that's, that's something that I think people would not put up with if they actually knew. So I'd urge accounting as part of this, you know, you got to actually account for it.

Speaker 2

Yeah. We have proposed actually a suite of government reforms in our good government framework that's talking about bringing Portland into the 21st century in terms of information and communications technology.

Speaker 3

It'd be, it's amazing. Yeah. I think it's, it's amazing how much people don't have any comprehension of even the actors don't know. If you ask the, you know, the actual people involved, how much is this costing? They have, they have no clue. You know, cause if someone has to come to court for that, if they're on, if they're off duty, it's overtime. If they're on duty, that means someone else has to fill their shifts. Um, so there's extra costs there. So it's hard to say. Um, how much it costs for a person in crisis knocking over a Starbucks cup, you know, at the attic on the street in the cafe. Um, I've spent personally many thousands of dollars of state money defending people because of police. Portland police officer chose to take someone to the jail instead of to the hospital. Um, and like you said earlier, with efficacy, with no, no concerns about the outcome or the efficacy of the decision. There's no review of this decisions.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I had an experience that transformed me in, um, January of 2017 during the snowpocalypse where we kind of took over the Mount Scott community center, my neighbors and I ran that as a warming shelter, um, for multiple days to keep that going. And there was an instance where a young man, an amputee, he had a hospital bracelet on, came in, was there overnight, was disruptive, didn't want to leave, and we had exhausted all of our channels. So parks staff was forced to call PPB. The officer essentially just basically wheeled this person who was in a teacher and pants, no shoes, no coat into the snow and then left. Right. And that was our tax dollars at work. And I just cried because I thought it doesn't have to be like this.

Speaker 3

Yeah. And you mentioned the sort of the cahoots model from Eugene witch and so what do you think the difference would be if you were able to set up something like that? What would a city response to a neighborhood crisis like that be in your, what would you see that say doesn't have to be that way? What do you, what do you want it to be? I guess

Speaker 2

I was trained to call PPB in that instance versus us having a mental health support professional who could come and probably had a good understanding of how to deal with that person of crisis. But also would have had a much better sense of the triage steps of what does the flow chart look like when this fails? Does this go to the ER? Does this go to unity? I mean thinking about what is the flow chart look like and making sure that the public is educated on that. Right. Because this is one place where I think the PP, EI and I could find some agreement in so far as our police are trained as mental health care workers, largely it's not their primary job description. They're not compensated for that expertise when they do have it. So why don't we have police actually doing what they're trained to do, which is prevent and solve crimes. And if you're going to do that, let's talk about who's actually being the victim of violent crimes in our city. Those are people mostly experiencing intimate partner violence, domestic violence, sexual assault. I mean things that we never talk about in our, in our public policy discussions at all.

Speaker 3

Yeah. You, you said it was, you know, you went home and you were, you know, the emotion of like having to think about having to have the park staff call the police on somebody. Um, the people that are experienced actual violent crime because of those low level facts. You see people who have seen their brother, their cousin, their sister sort of get hassled because they were walking at the wrong time of day with the wrong color skin or the wrong clothes on or whatever led to some of these. Um, or they've had other interactions with the police where they weren't trained to respond. Um, they won't call the police if there is something that goes on. Uh, there's many victims of domestic violence. There's many victims of violent crime that would never call the police in the city of Portland. Um, and that's terrible. You shouldn't have to have that situation, but they're worried about the response will be, you know, um, you know, you just can't call the, you can't call the police on someone like that or he's just going to get dumped in the snowbank or, uh, and that's actually probably a good outcome cause if he had taken a swing at the cop, he could have been seriously injured, um, uh,

Speaker 2

around that. And I actually waited for police to leave and then went and got him and then we actually hit him back in the community center in the back of a closet behind the door and everyone went through the Rolodex and tried to find a mental health person to come and get him.

Speaker 3

Yeah. And I mean, you know, it's almost like all the neighbors should get together and put some money together each year and hire people to administer that and set up a, I don't know, a government, um, that could run that. Um, you know,

Speaker 2

I mean the safety hub model comes from is if we actually, and this is something I would love your feedback on because we get a lot of concern, you know, coming my way in terms of housing with permanent wraparound services. And then I hear from the affordable housing providers of how expensive that is to make sure that goes with all of the affordable housing and wouldn't it be much more efficient model if neighborhood by neighborhood we had those wraparound services so it wasn't attached to your housing unit and that more people could access them. And have you heard feedback on either end about that?

Speaker 3

Well, I mean one of the things that I run into a lot working with indigent defendants, whether they're experiencing homelessness, often addiction and mental health goes part of the, is a large part of that. Um, I have over my career come to be, uh, just a housing first model. You know, to me, you would both help people, save them, save the community resources, actually access services once they have a roof over their head. I mean, frankly, that's it. You can, uh, it cost $200 a day to keep someone in the MoMA County jail. Um, on average, uh, more, you know, more if you're mentally ill and needing medical and mental health treatment. Um, last, if you're a, you know, a model model prisoner. Um, but um,

Speaker 3

so I mean it would, it would literally be cheaper to just buy folks departments. You could take the thousand most expensive people in the Multnomah County jail build. You could, I mean, you know, obviously you don't want to um, uh, necessarily like segment them away from society, but if he just bought a thousand apartments, it would literally be cheaper cash at the end of the year. Um, and then you can provide those services cause people cannot, are not in a good spot to go to services. They're hard to have a rip medical routine. It's hard to have mental health medication routine. It's hard to have a treatment, um, set up without that help. And if you without that first a solid place to sleep, like you said, sleeplessness is huge. But then, so then there's all these other requirements. So you can't stay with grandma cause she's on section eight, so you can't live with her because you have a drug conviction. You can't get your own because it's going to take a year, two years, three years. Um, and so unfortunately the folks in crisis like that are not in a good to advocate for themselves through like a, uh, assisted housing type process or subsidized housing process. Um, it's, I think, you know, the sort of Utah model just to give them a place to stay, you're going to be a lot better off. Um, uh, and I, you know,

Speaker 4

yep.

Speaker 3

I think the only way that works politically, perhaps potentially is to talk about the costs, the actual fiscal costs. Um, so I, that's my thought on that. Yeah. You're absolutely right that it needs to be a part of that, but, um, it can't be a bunch of people hiding in a community center hoping the park staff don't notice that they're trying to get help for somebody. Yeah.

Speaker 2

It's just, it's not sustainable what we're doing and it doesn't serve parks and it doesn't start housing when we waste money.

Speaker 3

Yeah. It's uh, I mean just the, the cost of one sweep is however many times the cost of getting a porta potty and a dumpster and just putting it next to the place. Um, I mean we're not thinking actually about the cost because it's segmented across so many different agencies. Um, you know, Peabody has its own goals. You know, TriMet has its goals. The state highway have their own goals. City parks have its own goals. Um, the Portland police have its own sort of framework and all of those are segmented and we're not talking about how the cost impact the next one down the road.

Speaker 2

Yeah. I think the, you know, if I'm elected, I'll probably bring a little bit of a more

Speaker 2

strident go figure approach to even the joint office because I'm going to want to know where Portland's money's going. Like I want to start to track some of our outcomes in terms of our investments and things like the sweeps. I know there are huge waste. I can look at that 22 and a half million that we're giving to Lance and rapid response with no training and no accountability and no equitable procurement process just on the front end. And how you, that's a huge boondoggle. But what does it mean for us to then look at the alternatives through our creative partnerships in our strategic partnerships of getting better outcomes with the dollars that we do spend?

Speaker 3

Yeah. I don't know how you, I guess it's hard because you have to work on so many levels because that's a County, that's the state, that's the, uh, even the federal government sometimes when you're talking about accessing federal Medicare, Medicaid funds, uh, or the housing funds so that, you know, it's going to be, that's going to be a huge battle. But I think it all starts with that accounting. Yeah. You need to find out how much did that actually cost you actually paid for that. Um, how much was the alternative? That's the thing because I think a lot of folks can't envision the alternative. Um, the sweep, you know, sweep is expensive. The arrest after you do the sweep is expensive. The story of the stuff, throwing away the stuff but lost Goodwill, it's hard. Some of that's really hard to measure. Um, there was a sweep this morning in old town. They're just checking IDs for people. Um, you know, and folks that makes people less upset, uh, less willing to work with the police when the police were the ones, you know, waking them up at, uh, nine, eight, 9:00 AM on a Sunday morning asking for their ID and telling him, you can't sleep here.

Speaker 2

I thought there was a moratorium on sweeps right now. Are they still happening?

Speaker 3

Well, I guess it all depends on how you define sweeps. Their ID, trying to identify people and ID people, which if you're on the street is perceived as an aggressive type move along. Um, whether or not they're picking up, uh, you know, sort of slave inmate crews with vans and driving, driving off with all your stuff is maybe a different, different definition I guess. But yeah, you know, this presence, even the presence missions or whatever they're calling it. A show of sort of a show of presence. Um, just the roads that community trust in any kind of governmental agency.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I was really disappointed that they decided to address the old town crisis as a policing crisis as opposed to a humanitarian crisis down there. Um, I've been volunteering down there pretty regularly and it's almost like a refugee camp.

Speaker 3

Yeah. And you know, it's interesting to me like working in public defense and seeing people get arrested. And then what's the driving barrier to accessing some of the services? Um, so you're camping outside and you get robbed and you lose all your stuff. You could call the police, but what's the point? But you lost your birth certificate and your driver's license or your state ID card. So now you can't access, you can't get it reissue your food stamp card and you got to get a new TV test if you did want to go to the shelter when it's cold. Uh, but you don't have your card from LA, you know, so it's just this crisis. I mean, you know, you're talking about efficacy. The city could literally buy an old McDonald's and put a bunch of file cabinets in there and have a drive through.

Speaker 3

So when the cops arrest people, you can at least drop off photos of their kids and the state ID card in there and they can come get them later. Um, instead of hiding it in a warehouse out in, uh, Northwest Portland or, uh, get it, leaving it on the side of the highway somewhere because they don't want to have them go in their bags. Um, so, you know, there's this constant, constant crisis of trust where people won't even bring things to the jail because I don't trust that it's going to make it there. They're going to get it. It would be able to access it on the way out.

Speaker 2

Yeah. I hear that from a lot of people experiencing homelessness that they don't really get them back most of the time is what I hear.

Speaker 3

There's a lot of artificial barriers to that, um, uh, and need to think about a different way to approach that. But I think, you know, you do a lot better off if you said, Hey, we're bringing some new halls down here. Do you get anyone want to move anywhere? We're happy to help you move. We can drop you off at, you know, to bring a social worker. We could bring an RV and actually talk to people about what they, uh, have a little office and talk to people about what they need. Um, but they don't do that. Instead, it's just a slow roll trying to ask people for their identity and see who they've, who's down there. Um, sort of a papers please. Model doesn't really work to get to any of the real issues.

Speaker 2

That's where those safety hubs, I think could almost function. As I know, we don't always act as if we care about the health and wellbeing of people experiencing homelessness. But imagine if there was almost a concierge function that was a clearing house, even if they were small store fronts where people who needed help had go, I think that we would have improved outcomes.

Speaker 3

Yeah. It's interesting because of course the constitution obligates the government to provide defense attorneys. Uh, but you don't have any obligation to provide a civil advocate, you know, like there's no, Hey, I really need to figure out how to get an ID despite not having a birth certificate. And despite having sort of been on the streets for awhile, um, if the city was willing to do that, you'd save a lot of hassle later on when they were trying to, you know, do all that. Um, so, I don't know. Yeah, you're absolutely right. It's just a question of I think where they were, where to, where to focus the limited resources and acknowledged the costs. I think, um, that those choices have on the other agencies. The other,

Speaker 2

but again, this goes back to that cost. People just take that 22 and a half million that we've chosen to spend over the next five years on sweeps as good. Like there's 22 and a half billion that if you stopped sweeping people, you could put that into the alternative

Speaker 3

and you can build some nice apartments with that.

Speaker 2

That's not a Trump change. The annual budget for R2D2 is between 50 and 75 K.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Yeah. Even if you go, even if you go absolute cut rate, that's still, you can create some really safe spots with access to services. Um, and the longterm result on public safety would be would be you'd, you'd be paid back tenfold.

Speaker 2

Yeah. And maybe this is where participatory budgeting or even some kind of infographics like, Hey, Portlander, would you rather have this for 22 million or would you rather have this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this for 22 million. I mean, maybe we just have to be that simple about it.

Speaker 3

Or maybe the police Bureau needs to say, and this decision or this unit will cut, has and will cost the County this much in jail costs this might the state this much in prison costs this much in indigent defense services, this much in loss lawsuits against our, you know, Bureau from civil attorneys like, this is what it's going to cost. We don't do that. You know, there's no, there's no accounting for the externalities, but hopefully we can, uh, yeah, a different system. Participatory budgeting would be great, but I'd like the actual people that are proposing the budgets to also talk about what they think the actual cost.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Well we have some opportunities. I mean this is why getting a progressive in that mayor seat is so important because it is about the Bureau assignments. It's about the strategic alignment of some of the functions in the city and oversight with the data. And it's really about that budget and that city budget and where are we going to allocate our general fund resources largely.

Speaker 3

And I think, yeah, I think a small business owner too has a particularly good view of it because you have to choose, you know, if you hire someone else, if you do the work yourself, it's one thing. If you hire other people, there's other costs. You're really thinking about the extra costs. You're thinking about opportunity costs. Like, well what if I got a job doing something else? Wouldn't it be? It might make more money at the end of the day if I didn't open my, you know, you have to make all those, all those costs are a lot different than if you're just coming in it from the format exists in shall always exist.

Speaker 2

Well, I appreciate you taking some time out of your busy, uh, Sunday or maybe your relaxing time, your leisure time.

Speaker 3

Yeah. I'm growing my beard and sort of, uh, sitting around waiting for him, waiting for court this week. So I think I'll be okay.

Speaker 2

Well, I sure appreciate your support. I appreciate your insight. You know, um, if we get through this election cycle, I'm going to need to tap you for your, uh, expertise. So thank you so much.

Speaker 3

Yeah. And I hope hopefully come on down to the courthouse. I'll show you where they hide all the overtime money.

Speaker 2

Yeah. I that police in the hallway. I see. Like, okay. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Take care. Good luck on Tuesday.

Speaker 2

This has been a production of friends of Sarah for Portland.