PPS Sexual Conduct Rules
The Portland Public School Board has released its new proposed policy on professional conduct, but not everyone is happy with it.
The six page document is the result of a promise made by the School Board to adopt a policy of conduct after it was revealed in October of 2017 that the district ignored complaints about teacher and coach, Mitch Whitehurst for several years over sexual misconduct. The document details how teachers, staff, and volunteers should conduct themselves when interacting with students both on and off school grounds as well as interactions via social media.
However leaders of the Portland Association of Teachers are not happy with the policy as it is written, complaining that it is vague in some areas, and hard to apply. The association also said that it could place normal teacher student interactions in a gray area.
The Union demanded that the district negotiate the policy with them last month. This puts the vote by the board on the matter on hold for 90 days from when the union made its demand.
Portland Pharmacist Secretly Records People
A Portland-area pharmacist has been accused of secretly recording people at his work.
Thirty-four year old Johnny Tuck Chee Chan was arrested and booked into the Multnomah County Jail following a year-long investigation. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of encouraging child sex abuse and invasion of personal privacy.
Chan is a licensed pharmacist with Kaiser Permanente at their Airport Way Center pharmacy supply and laboratory. Prosecutors argue that Chan used secret cameras to record people, including children, in a bathroom at his work. According to court documents, the recordings took place between December 1st of 2016 and November 14th of 2017.
Chan’s next scheduled court appearance is January 14th of next year.
Portland Man Bribes ICE Agent
A Portland man has pleaded guilty to attempting to bribe a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent to deport his estranged wife and her child.
Forty-eight year old Antonio Burgos followed an ICE officer from the facility in Portland to a Vancouver parking lot. He then offered the agent money to deport his wife. Burgos explained that he was in the processes of divorcing the woman. He had sponsored the woman’s residency in the US, but now that they were separating, he wanted her out of the US.
The officer declined the bribe and reported it to the Office of Professional Responsibility.
The office contacted Burgos on a recorded call. He offered them three-thousand dollars to deport his wife. Burgos was arrested and has pleaded guilty to a bribery charge. He will be sentenced on May 6th of next year.
Crabbers Sue Fossil Fuel Companies
Commercial crabbers in Oregon and California are suing thirty fossil fuel companies. They claim that the fossil fuel companies are to blame for climate change, which is hurting their industry.
The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations filed the lawsuit last week in the California State Superior Court in San Francisco. They are suing thirty different companies including Chevron and Exxon Mobil.
Noah Oppenheim, the executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, told the San Francisco Chronicle, “The scientific linkage between the combustion of fossil fuels and ocean warming, which leads to domoic acid impacts in our fisheries is clear. We know it, and it’s time to hold that industry accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”
Crab is the most valuable single species commercial fishery in Oregon.
In October of this year, the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations successfully sued the US Environmental Protection Association to protect salmon and steelhead trout populations in the Columbia River basin from warm water temperatures caused by dams and climate change.
- KBOO