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PAMPLIN STOPS PRESSES: The Pamplin Media Group last week told about two dozen employees at its Gresham printing plant they will lose their jobs in early January when the press shuts down. Pamplin Media will shift production of its newspapers to The Columbian’s plant in Vancouver. The Gresham closure is just the latest sign of financial troubles for companies that are part of the R.B. Pamplin Corporation, run by Robert B. Pamplin Jr. As WW has reported, Pamplin Jr. has engaged in the highly unusual (and, experts say, probably illegal) practice of selling real estate from Pamplin operating companies to the company’s pension fund (“Walking on Water,” WW, Dec. 6). One of the more than 70 such properties: the soon-to-be dormant printing press at 1190 Northeast Division Street in Gresham. Records show that Pamplin Jr., both CEO of R.B. Pamplin Corp. and the trustee of the pension fund, sold that property to the pension fund in 2019 for $1.55 million. That allowed him to extract cash from the pension fund while saddling pensioners with an aging asset in a dying business, which is exactly what pension experts say should never happen. Records also show the property taxes on the printing plant are three years in arrears—a total of $62,000. Pamplin officials did not respond to a request for comment.
TWO INMATES OVERDOSED ON FENTANYL: Josiah Pierce and Clemente Pineda both died from “fentanyl toxicity” in Multnomah County jail this summer, according to autopsy reports newly obtained by WW. The medical examiner determined that both deaths were accidental. The reports confirm what has long been suspected. Sheriff Nicole Morrisey O’Donnell has previously said that several of the unprecedented seven inmate deaths this year were drug related, and has instituted new policies to limit the influx of fentanyl into the jail. The reports also fill in other details about what led to Pierce and Pineda’s deaths. After Pierce overdosed, deputies searched his cell and found a “white powdery substance consistent with fentanyl” in a rubber glove. The day prior, he’d been sent to the emergency room “after an unwitnessed ingestion of an unknown substance by jail staff” but was discharged after declining to provide a urine sample. Pineda arrived at Multnomah County from Columbia County Jail already in medical distress. He spent two days vomiting, and by Aug. 1 was complaining of “worsening symptoms” of what appeared to be withdrawals. Medical staff requested “suboxone, currently on standard protocol for fentanyl.” As WW has previously reported, Pineda was facedown and unresponsive for hours before his death, according to a corrections deputy doing rounds at the time.
ROBOCOP DEBUTS AT BIG PINK: Unico Properties LLC bought a robot to surveil the U.S. Bancorp Tower (aka Big Pink) on West Burnside Street, an epicenter of Portland blight. The 5-foot-5, 420-pound droid named Rob started rolling around the property this month, Seattle-based Unico said. Rob, an “autonomous security robot,” has cameras arranged on its bullet-shaped body that gives it 360-degree visibility. It has heat sensors to “detect potential threats” and a two-way intercom to connect passersby (or perpetrators) with Unico’s security team. It can recognize license plates and will issue “be on the lookout” alerts (BOLOs) when “banned individuals” are on-site. Legacy Health has the same model patrolling its hospital in Gresham, but Unico says Rob is the first to go on duty in downtown Portland. Both are made by Knightscope, a money-losing company based in Mountain View, Calif. If Knightscope’s stock price is any indication, few investors expect droids to take over from human security guards en masse anytime soon. Knightscope shares, which trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market, closed at 64 cents Tuesday, down from $16 at the beginning of 2022, when the company first sold stock to the public.
MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACY GROUP SIDES WITH HOSPITAL SYSTEMS: The Oregon affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness is siding with Oregon’s major hospital systems in their ongoing legal effort to make the state care for the growing number of people judges force into mental health treatment. Right now, the burden of caring for civilly committed people falls almost exclusively on local hospital systems. The reason, they say: The state’s premier psychiatric facility, Oregon State Hospital, has basically stopped accepting civilly committed patients. This puts two of Oregon’s most well-respected mental health advocacy groups in seeming opposition over how to utilize the state’s limited number of psychiatric hospital beds. Oregon State Hospital’s policies are the result of another ongoing legal battle with another advocacy group, Disability Rights Oregon. In a compromise to settle a decades-old case last year, the state hospital agreed to limit its acceptance of civilly committed patients and discharge “aid-and-assist” patients faster. Local hospitals filed suit against OHA, but a judge threw it out. They’ve now appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where NAMI Oregon filed its amicus curiae brief Dec. 11. The brief accuses OHA of providing “no options for long term care” for civilly committed patients, “shirking its constitutional and statutory obligations.” So, these patients, it says, “cycle through the jails, hospitals, courts and streets, over and over.”