Catering for a Cause Serves up Food, Jobs
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Not home for holiday Eateries, wineries cater to Thanksgiving crowds — SEE LIFE, B1 PortlandTHURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2014 • TWICE CHOSEN THE NATION’S BEST NONDAILY TribunePAPER • PORTLANDTRIBUNE.COM • PUBLISHED TUESDAY AND THURSDAY Drug-free z ones not working as billed Funding dries up; cops say program too diffi cult to enforce By PETER KORN The Tribune Portland Police bike offi cer David Sanders knows that ev- ery day he patrols downtown and Old Town there are peo- ple walking about who aren’t supposed to be there. As pro- bation conditions, these of- fenders have exclusion orders that say they’re not allowed into the downtown/ Old Town drug-free impact area. Sanders knows the drill when he confronts such a suspect. He COMING stops the probationer and hand- cuffs them if he learns they are excluded. Then he calls the sus- pect’s probation or parole offi cer and asks that offi cer to start the paperwork and contact the county jail to be ready for a drop off. Violation of a drug impact- CLEAN area exclusion order nets an of- TRIBUNE PHOTOS: JONATHAN HOUSE fender jail time, sometimes a Former resident Norman Wicks Sr. never reported what he thought was toxic waste dumping on this site more than a decade ago. Now on a brief layover in Portland, he wants to week or more. see the site checked out and cleaned up, if necessary. But that scenario isn’t hap- pening frequently of late. Port- land police say they aren’t en- forcing drug impact-area exclu- ■ sion violations as assiduously as Ex-Portlander thinks toxic materials they once did. Multnomah County probation offi cials are aware that police are ignoring many of the violations. And the were dumped near river a decade ago county district attorney ac- knowledges the drug impact- area program isn’t working as omething’s been “I always liked this spot intended. gnawing away at STORY BY because it was so out of the When the drug impact areas Norman Wicks’ con- way and peaceful,” Wicks Norman Wicks were instituted in 2011, they Sscience ever since STEVE LAW says. Jr. recalls more were seen as an important tool he left Portland nearly a de- About 15 years ago, they than 50 barrels in the fi ght against a burgeoning cade ago. noticed one or two 50-gallon were stacked and increasingly aggressive The 70-year-old is back in was a great place to swim, barrels showed up, plopped near Bonneville drug trade in Old Town. Busi- town for a brief spell, hop- fi sh or conduct their work next to one of the BPA tow- Power ness owners and residents peti- ing to right a past wrong. taking apart and recycling ers. During the next year Administration tioned then-mayor Sam Adams, Homeless and living out computers — with no one to and a half, more barrels transmission and Adams responded with the of a travel trailer years ago, bother them. Sometimes kept showing up. Wicks towers in impact area and $250,000 to fund Wicks and his son, Norman they’d build bonfi res and checked them out and found Linnton. One day a walking beat police offi cer to Wicks Jr., spent much of spend the night, driving they were too heavy to he and his dad enforce the exclusions in down- their time here hanging out their trailer onto the dirt budge, and they smelled arrived to the town and Old Town. The at a secluded spot on the access road that leads to kind of like creosote. He re- site and a newly $250,000 also funded a deputy Willamette riverbank north three giant Bonneville Pow- calls at least 15 barrels, but dug pit was fi lled district attorney dedicated to of Linnton, a Portland er Administration electric says his son’s recollection in and the the program who would prose- neighborhood in the indus- transmission towers next to barrels had cute low-level drug crimes that trial belt off Highway 30. It the river. See DUMP / Page 2 disappeared. previously had been dealt with See DRUG-FREE / Page 7 Catering for a Cause serves up food, jobs All are destined for lunchtime you in a bank; they’re not going ‘Felon-friendly’ outfi t at places that serve some of the to hire you to be a cashier. If you gets folks back on feet, most vulnerable populations in can prove yourself behind the the city: women’s treatment cen- scenes, you can go out and do benefi ts social services ters, day-care facilities, charter other things.” schools, and centers for people in A program of the nonprofit TRIBUNE FILE PHOTO By JENNIFER ANDERSON recovery. Volunteers of America, it em- Old Town community leaders The Tribune Add in wedding parties, com- ploys former felons and other fought for a drug-free z one in pany luncheons, and summer people getting back on their feet, their neighborhood, but Portland Like all the coolest places in lunch programs, and it’s a full- teaches job skills, and gives its police say they aren’t enforcing town, there’s no sign on the service catering business — run proceeds to 18 local social ser- the impact area like they once did door here. by a staff of seven, most of whom vice agencies. because of a number of There’s only a Catering for a have come out of “the program” Businesses, institutions and bureaucratic issues. Cause delivery van parked out- themselves. individuals who use their service side on North Williams Ave- “We’re felony-friendly,” says “really appreciate that they’re nue, being loaded last Wednes- Debra Lorenzo, the catering pro- getting something for their mon- day morning with 11 thermal gram manager for Catering for a ey, and their money’s going to a TRIBUNE PHOTO: JONATHAN HOUSE containers of chicken penne Cause, which started in 2005. good cause,” says Lorenzo, Catering for a Cause’s Wendy Wyley grabs juice and bread that will pasta and black-eyed peas for “We all have some kind of back- who’ll be 10 years clean and make its way to senior centers and day-care facilities. vegetarians. ground. They’re not going to hire See CATERING / Page 10 “Pamplin Media Group’s pledge is to deliver balanced news that refl ects the Portland Tribune STAR DUCKS stories of our communities. Thank you — SEE SPORTS, PAGE B12 for reading our newspapers.” — DR. ROBERT B. PAMPLIN JR. Inside OWNER & NEIGHBOR 496126.111914 A2 NEWS The Portland Tribune Thursday, November 20, 2014 Dump: D E Q , BPA say they ’ll investigate ■ From page 1 may be more reliable. “I remember there being stacks of them,” says Norman Wicks Jr., now in his late 30s. “I swear there was at least 50 of them.” One day they arrived at their hangout and found three men wearing white hard hats, who waved them off the property. “We saw a big backhoe and a big hole being dug,” the el- der Wicks says. “The next time we went there, the barrels were gone, and the hole was covered over. In my mind, it was toxic substances or they wouldn’t be burying it.” Wicks isn’t blaming anyone for the mysterious burial because he doesn’t know who did it. But the answer to the mys- tery may be mundane. State environmental offi cials say the barrels might have been the product of a cleanup effort along the Willamette River stemming from fi refi ghters training to battle oil fi res, something offi cials were checking on Monday. Wicks is a man with strong convictions. When his son’s mother decided she didn’t re- ally want to raise a child, Nor- TRIBUNE PHOTO: ALVARO FONTAN man Sr. raised him from birth An aerial view shows the BPA towers near the Willamette River north of Linnton and a grassy area (in box) where Norman Wicks thinks toxic waste might have been buried. as a single father. In 2000, when the two were cited for sleeping in their truck, they DEQ takes such citizen obser- planation for this,” he says. It challenged Portland’s anti- vations seriously, says Keith could be that contaminated camping ordinance and a Johnson, cleanup program soil was treated according to judge overturned it. manager for the state agency’s plan and placed in barrels, But when they observed the Northwest region. then dumped legally from the pit being dug near the BPA “That could be a serious barrels into the soil and bur- towers, the father and son were Norman Wicks is dumping violation,” he says. ied, Johnson says. trespassers, and didn’t want to convinced that Even if the property owner Neither Wicks nor his son draw attention to themselves. this site contains didn’t put anything toxic into actually saw barrels being bur- Wicks Sr. also had a history of buried barrels of the soil, the DEQ wouldn’t be ied; when they returned to the run-ins with the Portland Po- toxic waste. It’s excited about someone bury- site the pit was fi lled and the lice Bureau. After he claimed possible, though, ing entire barrels under the barrels were gone. But Wicks to be a victim of police brutali- that the suspect ground, Johnson says. remains deeply distrustful of ty, he began taking videos of material was BPA has 15,000 miles of authority. police interactions with citi- part of a high-voltage transmission “None of this sounds right,” zens, and joining with other po- supervised lines in the Northwest, so it’s he says when told of the lice critics and protesters.