An “accident chain” is a collection of small mistakes or oversights that, together, can lead to an accident, injury or death. As the former CEO of one of North America’s safest freight trucking companies, and now the mayor of Portland, Oregon, I’ve learned to see these potential chain-links everywhere.
Earlier this month, I was summoned to meet Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski at Portland’s controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. In business, I asked for, and received, a workplace so organized and clean that we could find every tool or piece of equipment in the dark—”a place for everything, and everything in its place.” By contrast, the ICE facility was a mess of overflowing dumpsters, loose body armor and crowd control munitions and a broken HVAC air conditioning system that raised both temperatures and tempers in the aging building.
It is little wonder why Secretary Noem has ignored or denied all regional journalists who have requested access to this facility, opting instead to fly in the least credible, most ideologically compromised hangers-on that MAGA social media has to offer…