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| Lieutenant Harry Jackson addresses roll call at the beginning of the second shift at the Portland Police Bureau’s East Precinct. |
| MEMO PHOTO: TIM CURRAN |
LEE PERLMAN
THE MID COUNTY MEMO
He is new to Portland Police Bureau’s East Precinct and Mid-Multnomah County. So new, he says, that he rode to a community meeting with PPB Officer Mike Gallagher “because I get lost out here when I’m on my own. I’m meeting new people and learning the area.”
It’s all as new to him as the new gold lieutenant’s bars on his shoulders that relegate him to deskwork and command, rather than patrol.
But he is not new to the Portland Police Bureau. New mayor and former Portland Police Bureau Chief Tom Potter made that clear when he encountered the small, barrel-chested man at a Gateway Area Business Association holiday party in December. Putting his arm around the man’s shoulders, Potter said, “This young man I’ve known for 25 years. He’s one of Portland’s finest police officers.”
Indeed, in inner Northeast Portland, Harry Jackson is a living legend, one for whom a leading business man named part of his building, one who, less than a year ago, personally took a shotgun away from a young gang member who was about to use it on a rival. Now he is in charge of East Precinct’s second shift.
Local hero
A Portland native, Jackson has been doing police work for 27 years. He started in the Oregon State Police, then did police work for the Port of Portland before joining the Portland Police Bureau in 1980.
He became known as a man of boundless energy and love for his job, for whom a mere 40-hour week was unusual. He was known in particular for his work to eradicate street prostitution on Northeast Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, and then known as Union Avenue, as well as Portland’s all but official red light district. A favorite method was “walking and talking” - walking along the street in an aggressively friendly way in his police uniform with the prostitutes, who, needless to say, received no solicitors. While they didn’t care for the “attention,” they also knew that Jackson genuinely cared about them, and that they could come to him if they were ever seriously in trouble.
Because of his efforts, when developer Jack Chung was designing a store for the Adidas athletic shoe company, he named the public open space in front of it Harry Jackson Plaza. “They suggested I call it Jack’s Place and I said no, I’ve done nothing for MLK,” Chung recalls. “I didn’t want it named for a mayor or someone with a big title. I wanted someone who’d done good work in the community. Then I said, ‘Why not Harry Jackson?’”
Some will recognize Jackson from his appearances on the popular “Cops” television program, which has been running in repeat showings in syndication.
As recently as last year, Jackson personally had to step into a volatile situation. North Portland’s Peninsula Park had become disputed turf between rival youth gangs, some driving there from as far away as East Portland. On one occasion Jackson stepped between two groups of youths who appeared to be about to have a shootout, taking a shotgun away from one young man.
Jackson’s world changed Sept. 23. He received his lieutenant’s bars and, a day later, his new assignment.
Unmet needs, eager volunteers
To some extent, the world Jackson used to patrol has come east with him. As one former Northeast Precinct officer says, “With the gentrification of inner Northeast, some of the gang problems have migrated out here.”
Jackson acknowledges it. “Yes, some of the problem people have come this way,” he says. “The gangs are starting to come this way. We’ve had a few drive-bys. The 18th Street and 13th Street gangs (which he chased out of Peninsula Park) are here. Burglaries and meth dealing are big deals; the burglaries are probably done to get money for meth.”
Still, he is impressed by what he sees.
“Citizen participation here is probably better than it is in inner Northeast,” he says. “They have regular meetings. Being a policeman is prestigious, which is new to me. Citizens here really do support the police. They bring us cookies. They wash our cars. There’s not too much more they can do because they’re already doing it. They’re doing block organizing. They never let go of community policing. Of course you would always like to see more participation. Now we have a core group of people doing this, but we need more of the general public, more of the whole community.”
Jackson reminds us that “Northeast was where all this (community policing) started,” and he was part of it. He was a regular at neighborhood meetings, and even accepted a role in one of them for his off-duty hours.
In what could almost be a quote from one of Potter’s election speeches he says, “We want to get community policing up to the level it was before. The level dropped because of personnel shortages. We’ll get back into it full swing, but we’re still short of people, and this is a large area with a lot to cover.
“We need to plan for summer,” Jackson continued. “We need things for kids to do so that they can have a good time, and not be a part of any problems. Now is the time to start preparing.”
For him he says, “I’m not on the street as much as I was, and I have more paper work. Now I can direct other officers to do certain things, like community policing. I’ve been in this job a long time, but I still like it.”
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