Category Public Safety

PHOTOS: Police protests in Salem continued into Sunday
Demonstrators gather outside the Capitol on Sunday, May 31, to protest police violence. The protests in Salem were among those that occurred across the country in response to the death of George Floyd, a Minneapolis man who died while being taken into custody by police.…

VIDEO: Scenes from the demonstration in Salem protesting the death of George Floyd
Melvin Smith, an organizer of Salem’s demonstration on Saturday, May 30, indicates the demand that all four officers involved in the arrest of George Floyd in Minneapolis should be charged with his death. To date, one officer has been charged with second-degree murder in the…

PHOTOS: Protesters leave their mark on Salem, damaging Capitol art
Volunteers work to remove graffiti on a monument at the Capitol on Sunday, May 31. The monuments and several locations at the Capitol were tagged during a demonstration in Salem on Saturday, May 30. (Joel Zak/Special to Salem Reporter) RELATED COVERAGE: Curfew remains in place…

Curfew lifted for Salem; no arrests or injuries reported from Saturday protests
Volunteers work to remove graffiti on a monument at the Capitol on Sunday, May 31. Protesters tagged the monuments and several locations at the Capitol during a demonstration in Salem on Saturday, May 30. (Joel Zak/Special to Salem Reporter) UPDATE: This story has been updated…

Lawsuit accuses Chemeketa Community College of violating students’ free-speech rights
Chemeketa Community College (File/Salem Reporter) Chemeketa Community College violated the constitutional rights of a pro-life student group by only allowing its members to distribute pamphlets, flyers and other materials in small “speech zones,” a lawsuit alleges. The complaint was filed on March 5 in U.S.…

Brothers involved in brutal 1990s killing will have their sentence reconsidered
Ellen Rosenblum, Oregon attorney general Twin brothers convicted of murdering an elderly couple in Salem while they were teenagers will have their case reconsidered after the Oregon Department of Justice withdrew a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. The case centers around Lydell and Laycelle…

Salem attorney wins citation for focusing on helping those with convictions move into mainstream
Kimberley Mansfield, the director of the De Muniz Legal Clinic. (Jake Thomas/Salem Reporter) A remark by a kid in a juvenile detention facility planted a seed for Kimberley Mansfield. While visiting a maximum-security juvenile detention facility with a church group years ago in Boston, she…

Michael Barton died after getting sick in prison. A lawsuit says prison staff ignored his cries for help
Oregon State Penitentiary (Courtesy/Wikimedia Commons) An Oregon State Penitentiary inmate suffering from mental illness was left to die of pneumonia after staff ignored his requests for medical attention, a lawsuit filed against the state Department of Corrections alleges. The lawsuit seeks $15 million and was…

What a Supreme Court ruling could mean for contested energy projects
(Courtesy/ Wikimedia Commons) Two controversial energy projects in the Columbia River Gorge area could move forward as the result of a ruling by the Oregon Supreme Court. The court’s ruling on Wednesday concerns administrative rules adopted in 2018 by the state Energy Facilities Siting Council,…

