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The Washington County Corrections Center
(Everton Bailey)
We want order and optimism in our lives, our whimsical after-dinner stories, and our opening paragraphs. I'm stuck with Robert Edward Foster.
On March 31, Washington County provided an update on the mayhem that is Foster. Community Corrections issued a sex-offender alert, seeking help in locating the guy, who was ducking his parole officer. They eventually found it at the Safeway on Northwest Lovejoy, where Foster was arrested April 3 on a charge of shoplifting.
This is Foster's 46th arrest, 27 of which are failures to report or check in with his post-prison supervision. DeAnna Horne, an attorney with Metropolitan Public Defender, is less shaken by that tally than I am.
"Forty-six arrests? For someone who has a drug addiction, that doesn't strike me as unusual," Horne says. "Your life is spinning out of control.
"A lot of us sleep in the same place every night. We have alarm clocks and calendars, and we care about getting places. But the guys who have long-time addictions, the only thing they care about is getting loaded. Chaos rules their lives."
The ongoing chaos fills two folders on the desk of Joe Simich, Washington County's assistant director of community corrections. Addiction is just one of Foster's "core issues," Simich says, "and the crimes he commits, he's usually under the influence of alcohol or drugs."
Burglary and Theft 3, if we start at the beginning, back in 2006. Criminal trespass. Unlawful entry into a motor vehicle. Interfering with a police officer.
Supplying contraband. "He apparently drank hand sanitizer while he was in custody," Simich says.
Hand sanitizer.
"At the corrections center, we had to switch over and get a non-alcoholic brand," Simich says. "It's more than 100 proof. Kids at school would light their desk (on fire) with it, then YouTube it."
And inmates like Foster would mix the slop with coffee so it went down easier. "That goes to the seriousness of the addiction," says Michael Mollahan, who supervises the sex-crimes unit.
Foster arrived on Mollahan's radar screen in 2011. He was 24 when he followed a 27-year-old Portland State student off the MAX and into a women's restroom on campus. He was arrested with women's undergarments tied around his waist, and eventually served 37 months in prison.
Chaos is one thing, violence another. What moved Foster from breaking into cars - searching, Simich guesses, for a place to sleep - to that guilty plea on attempted first-degree sexual abuse?
Simich and Mollahan don't know. Foster limped out of a broken home, they tell me. He had a juvenile record at 11, and quit school soon afterwards. He won't talk about that life, they say. He refuses therapy and ignores his PO.
"He is what we call 'pre-contemplation,'" Mollahan says. Adds Simich, "We haven't been able to engage with this guy. He hasn't made that possible. There are a whole lot of unknowns."
And no expiration date on the damage that leaks out.
"If you show up in community court on any given day," Horne reminds me, "60 to 70 percent of the people are dealing with chaos. An addiction issue that's so advanced. Poverty. Homelessness. The inability to get anywhere because TriMet has said, 'Forget it, you're not allowed on our buses anymore.'"
Horne represented Foster -- still locked up in the Multnomah County jail, awaiting his May 15 hearing -- in the PSU case. He wouldn't talk to her about this column, either. I don't know that she blames him.
"There's a very thin line that separates me from any of my clients," Horne says. "I have a healthy brain chemistry. I had parents who valued education. I had parents who didn't give me methamphetamine when I was 13, like the guy I dealt with yesterday. I'm white, so I'm privileged to begin with. But if any of those things had gone off the rails, I could be there. Any of us could be."
Washington County supervises 3,600 of the derailed, and has 12 non-custody beds for the higher-risk cases at the corrections center. "For some folks," Simich says, "it's better than being homeless."
Not Robert Edward Foster. All too often, he walks away in a heartbeat. "Why can't you send this guy back to prison?" Simich says: "It's not an option. He did his 37 months. There's a provision for dangerous offenders. We sat down with the hearing officer and asked, 'Is there any way we can get there with this guy?' It isn't even close.
"Our only option is to try to engage with him, try to motivate him so that he doesn't want to be homeless or bouncing in and out of jail."
Simich has a nice-sized office, and there's not a whiff of optimism in the room.
-- Steve Duin
sduin@oregonian.com
503-221-8597, @SteveDuin