Portland Man Who Burned Neil Goldschmidt Photo Says He Was Protesting Indifference to Police Shootings: “Every Part Was Planned”

A Portland man made headlines—and today was charged with theft and criminal mischief—for stealing a photograph of former Mayor Neil Goldschmidt from City Hall last month and setting it on fire.

His vandalism reignited attention to the tarnished legacy of Goldschmidt, one of the most powerful men in Oregon political history, who sexually abused a 14-year-old girl while he was Portland mayor.

But in an interview with WW, Jeffrey Black says he burned the portrait to protest what he sees as continued indifference from the mayor's office toward the victims of police shootings.

"Ted Wheeler has no compassion or empathy for victims of City Hall or the Portland Police Bureau," Black told WW on Sunday. "His legal team destroys them after his cops kill them. Taking a predator, rapist, and man that destroyed the life of his child victim down is in support of all City Hall victims, of rape, murder, brutality, and corruption."

Black, 51, is a regular protester of police brutality, and points to the police killings of teenager Quanice Hayes in 2017 and of a legally blind man named Andre Gladen earlier this year. He invited Quanice Hayes' mother, Donna Hayes, to a bonfire in his yard, where he burned Goldschmidt's portrait. She attended.

Controversy around the police bureau—marked by near-constant protests of police shootings of black people, as well as frustration by how police handle dueling political protesters—has dogged Wheeler from the moment he arrived in office.

Black says he always intended to set the photo ablaze.

"Every part was planned," he says. "The exception being that I didn't expect to get the photo out of Ted's office. I expected to destroy it there. Once I had it, I knew it would burn when I was ready."

Multnomah County prosecutors today charged Black with second-degree criminal mischief and third-degree theft.

Mayoral spokeswoman Eileen Park says Wheeler hasn't decided whether to replace Goldschmidt's photo, which was displayed in the mayor's office lobby amid portraits of every Portland mayor.

"We haven't made a decision yet on the picture," she says. "It's a historical archive of every mayor (emphasis on historical)."

Black says his property destruction was civil disobedience, intended to show his disillusionment with two generations of city leaders.

"Neil was a star when I was growing up," he says. "Ted talked a good game before he betrayed us."