It has been a very long road for those invested in the outcome of the Michael Bivins prosecution. Readers are now very familiar with the case against Bivins, who vandalized Shir Tikvah, Beth Israel, Everybody Eats PDX and set fire to the Muslim Community Center of Portland with people inside. For those who didn’t know or have forgotten, there was a time between April 30 and May 4 in 2022 when the community was very aware that they were being actively targeted by someone not yet identified. We’re thankful those crimes were mostly property damage, but his arson charges and other crimes not yet charged show he was capable and willing to take actions that could have caused great physical harm to people.

Prosecutions can take time for many different reasons, and this case was peppered with starts and stops, defense lawyer changes, and defendant challenges. Finally, the case went to trial last week, and on July 10th, Bivins was found guilty on 11 charges. The prosecuting attorneys worked tirelessly on this case, even when it seemed that it would never go to trial. It’s an important reminder that targeted communities have strong advocates in the government who believe passionately in their anti-bias work.

If you attended any part of the trial, THANK YOU! It was important for community members to be present – both to support victims and demonstrate community care and attention to this topic. This will also hold true at sentencing. Bivins will remain in custody until Sept. 19, when he will be in front of the same judge to be sentenced. He had multiple opportunities to plead guilty and receive a lesser sentence, and it’s not clear to me right now what sentencing minimums would be for this collection of crimes. The arson will carry the most weight.

“It [the crime spree] was definitely scary, and I think it adds to the fear ... it stokes fear that nobody knew who was going to be the next victim,” Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Charlie Weiss told KGW.  “What we heard at trial and what came in in the evidence is he told reporters, ‘I’m not gonna stop this,’ so it’s incredibly important that someone intervened in this case.”

The sentencing portion of the prosecution is when the judge evaluates, in part, the impact of the crimes on their victims. For court purposes, the view of who is a “victim” is limited to those directly affected by the crimes. Of course, we know that bias crimes impact whole communities – the court knows this too and has significant discretion in who it chooses to hear from. In this case, there are indications that the court may be inclined to allow additional community impact statements, which are made publicly and on the record.

For now, we’ll continue to prepare a community impact statement with anonymous signatures from community members. You can read and sign the impact statement at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1ZFShUFL67kpne_I2VC4V8jhUAZUJs82gb4yRefLrcXw/edit. We don’t know whether the court will allow it to be submitted or submitted in the way we are planning, but as of this writing, 187 have signed on to it, and we’d love to have more.

Lastly, but in some ways most importantly, crimes like these do not get to trial if people don’t report incidents. The Portland Police are deeply committed to working on bias incidents and tracking the number of incidents, and we know they are vastly underreported. Reporting to me can be made by email to [email protected] or the incident reporting form on the Jewish Federation website at https://jewishportland.org/security.