Siren Nation fetes women Annual festival hopes to boost entertainers — SEE LIFE, B1 PortlandTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2014 • TWICE CHOSEN THE NATION’S BEST NONDAILY PAPERTribune • PORTLANDTRIBUNE.COM • PUBLISHED TUESDAY AND THURSDAY Todd Thawley, a fi refi ghter with Portland Fire & Rescue, dons his coat before departing Fire ER trips test new ride Station 11 in Lents in a two- person Rapid Study hopes to B y STEVE LAW the caller to a hospital costly, ineffi cient and not the Response Vehicle, The Tribune emergency room. optimal place to meet their which are But about one out of seven needs. increasingly used divert 911 callers When a medical call of those callers don’t have a An ambulance ride can cost comes in to Portland’s 911 true medical emergency, says upward of $1,000, and a typical to respond to center, dispatchers routine- Portland Fire & Rescue Chief emergency room visit can cost lower-level calls. from costly ly send a city fi re crew and Erin Janssens. Transporting TRIB UNE PHOTO: then an ambulance to drive them to the hospital “ER” is See ER / Page 12 J AIME VALDEZ hospital visits County ■ Pingpong, piano, programs begin to transform Holladay Park connects the dots on gangs Resources shift to East County as crime migrates, stats spike B y PETER KORN Nicholas The Tribune Pearson and his son Gabe enjoy When a coalition of organi- pingpong at zations this summer released Holladay Park. what may be the most com- Summertime use prehensive report ever put to- of Holladay Park gether on Multnomah County increased gangs, its executive summary dramatically this noted that “public safety year, with more agencies have lacked a cen- women and tralized method for identify- children ing and tracking gangs.” especially That same report said that visiting the gang activity had found a new public space. hotspot — the Rockwood neigh- borhood in Gresham. This week, TRIB UNE PHOTO: JO NATHAN HOUSE the Multnomah County District Attorney announced a new strat- egy aimed primarily at gaining an upper hand against gang members who have been steadi- ber, Holladay Park, staffed day- ly drifting to east Multnomah STORY BY time by park rangers and hosts, County from their more tradi- PETER KORN experienced a rebirth. Families tional inner North and Northeast with children and seniors from Portland neighborhoods. the nearby Holladay Park senior The new Prosecution and Law ortlanders will play ping- residence began to discover Enforcement Unified Strategy pong in the rain. That’s noontime concerts and after- Graffi ti and (PLUS) is intended to help pros- one of many lessons Ali- noon Zumba classes. vandalism have ecutors from a number of back- cia Hammock learned Now the Portland rains have begun to crop up P at Holladay grounds partner with police to this month. begun, and park visits have gather information and make Hammock is in charge of pro- slowed. But there are still a har- Park, including a connections about gang mem- gramming at Holladay Park in dy few willing to play pingpong recent overnight bers in East County. Northeast Portland, which re- in Holladay Park, just as there torching of the “This is the fi rst time the dis- ceived a multimillion-dollar are still Big Chess players ignor- park’s B ook trict attorney and law enforce- commitment this summer from ing the showers in downtown Di- Nook. ment together have tried — in a the new owners of the Lloyd rector Park, where Hammock TRIB UNE PHOTO: very thoughtful manner — to Center across the street. Version has overseen programming for a ADAM WICKHAM use data to determine who are 1.0 of the new Holladay Park couple years now. than at Director Park. At Direc- the MAX trains on the park’s the drivers of crime in an area of rolled out in late July, when Here’s another thing Ham- tor, yoga classes were discontin- southern border and the Mult- town that has high gang violent pingpong tables, a playable pia- mock has learned from this sum- ued because women attendees nomah Street traffi c to the north crime,” says senior deputy dis- no, Foosball and a mini-library mer’s pilot project at Holladay felt they were getting ogled by created too much noise for yoga. trict attorney Jim Hayden, who were set up for passers-by. Park: yoga classes don’t work men. Saturday morning yoga at will oversee the effort. From July through Septem- there, but for a different reason Holladay didn’t work because See HOLLADAY / Page 2 Intelligence about gang mem- bers and gang associates operat- ing out of East County has been spotty until recently, according to Hayden. The East Metro Gang Enforcement Team has docu- mented 450 gang members in east Multnomah County but esti- ‘I want to do drugs mates there may be as many as 2,250 in all. The new policy could narrow that gap. Hayden says it may in- clude looking at a gang shooting and drink in my park’ where three or more people are associated with the shooter. tugs of war. Not the rope and sions to visitors suspected of “Let’s look at these guys and who Holladay Park Kids one team pulling against an- gang activity. Fourteen-year-old else they have been with when other battles, but the kind oc- Shiloh Hampton was shot and things happened,” Hayden says. admit to vandalism, casionally waged in a city killed in Holladay three years “We need to start drawing the where the forces of order and ago. Since then, the efforts of stake claim to area disorder mark their turf. community groups and police See GANGS / Page 12 For decades the park, with its have produced results. North B y PETER KORN stately shade trees and a busy neighborhood district attorney TRIB UNE PHOTO: PETER KORN The Tribune MAX stop on its southern edge, Jim Hayden says actual gang ac- Youths who call themselves Holladay Park Kids and admit has been listed as a gang tivity at Holladay has been mini- to vandalism in the park use the tag HPK (on skateboard) Holladay Park, just south of hotspot, a designation that al- as graffi ti on park eq uipment. the Lloyd Center, is used to lows police to issue park exclu- See PARK / Page 3 “Pamplin Media Group’s pledge is to Portland Tribune deliver balanced news that refl ects the ‘NEU’HEISEL GIG stories of our communities. Thank you — SEE SPORTS, PAGE B12 for reading our newspapers.” Inside — DR. ROBERT B. PAMPLIN JR. OWNER & NEIGHBOR PORTLAND STATE IDAHO STATE VS SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1 VIKINGS BENGALS PROVIDENCECE PARK 4:35 P.M. KICK-OFFKIC 1414 & $5 KIDS DAY UNUNDER 489772.102914 ON not just a game. it’s an event! SALE goviks.com|503.725.3307 NOW A2 NEWS The Portland Tribune Thursday, October 30, 2014 Holladay: Help sought from other businesses ■ From page 1 “It’s not peaceful enough,” Hammock says. Count Linda Lauderdale among those impressed by the new Holladay Park. Lauder- dale and her husband live at Holladay Park Plaza, a resi- dential facility for seniors, a few blocks from the park. She says she rarely went through the park. But a visit this sum- mer changed her thinking. “I was just astonished when I walked through there and saw all that was happening,” Lauderdale says. Lauderdale and her hus- band attended noon jazz and evening bluegrass concerts. She says she was “a little dis- appointed” that only 20 to 25 others were present. But she took action, publicizing the Holladay Park activities sched- ule in her building’s newslet- ter, which she edits. She says building residents have writ- ten back to her, impressed by how safe the park felt to them. Park bureau employee Ham- mock keeps her own log of the comments made to park hosts by visitors. They’re impres- TRIB UNE PHOTO: J ONATHAN HOUSE sive. “We continue getting Holladay Park is staffed by Portland Parks Rangers such as Sydney Wheeler, above, and park hosts. Neither has the ability to arrest or detain troublemakers, but park consultants comments every day: ‘Thanks feel they contribute to a more welcoming atmosphere than police would. for getting our park back,’” she says. The most consistent ques- tions directed at park hosts, according to Hammock, have Park rangers to do with the park changes and hosts themselves. “People really remove graffi ti want to understand why (the and trash each park) is programmed and how morning when long is it going to be pro- grammed. And people are al- they begin work ways curious how it’s being at Holladay paid for.” Park. Often, they Cypress Equities, the Texas- fi nd the park’s based developer who bought tables and the Lloyd Center and property chairs to the east of Holladay Park overturned. this summer, sees enlivening TRIB UNE PHOTO: the park as a means to getting ADAM WICKHAM more families to shop at the Lloyd Center. As part of that the rejuvenation of neglected strategy, they are remodeling parks across the country, says “I was just astonished Lloyd Center so its entrance he was surprised that a food opens onto Holladay. Current- truck placed across the street when I walked through ly, a parking garage fronts the from the park over the sum- there and saw all that park side of the mall. mer failed, given all he’s heard As for how long the pro- about the popularity of mobile was happening.” gramming will continue, Mat- food in Portland. On the other — Linda Lauderdale, Holladay Park thew Jacobs, project manager hand, a survey of about 5,000 Plaz a resident for Biederman Redevelopment people who work in the area Ventures Corp., the New York- around Holladay Park provid- based consultant hired to over- ed some ideas for future pro- down the chairs is a trade- TRIB UNE PHOTO: ADAM WICKHAM see the changes at Holladay, gramming.