Damn you're here early-

I saw the video on the news earlier this morning. Though the firemen may have felt threatened- there's no justifiable cause to continue kicking a man in the gut after he's already been restrained on the ground by 4 other large firemen.

Not only is there no justifiable reason for kicking a man who's down and well-restrained, but it looks like the fire department threw the first punch. The punchee looked like he had some serious things to say, and said they aggressively, but they were only words and it is not ever justifiable to answer words with physical force.

can someone tell me why the fireman were there in the first place? theo doesn't tell me that.
Matt, you are such a racist toward men in uniform. Don't you know that all Police and Fireman are HEROES!

HEROES Biatch!

Screw him. He was obviously being confrontational and looking for a fight. The only reason for the firefighters to be more disciplined is to avoid lawsuits and PR problems. In an ideal world, this idiot would have gotten a severe smackdown. Don't screw with the people you hire to serve you. Plain and simple.

The standard solution would be to pay all the firefighters massive amounts of overtime on top of their massive salaries (since of course they are busy all day at the firehouse between calls surfing the internet, or maybe knitting...) to get some training in dealing with mentally ill clients with a little compassion. They are people too.

The little guy that did the kicking seems to have some anger in him. He had no visible reason to kick that guy. Then he jabs his finger into the chest of another guy, who was probably just asking him why he's so angry.

No matter what the guy said, it didn't justify what happened.

There's no justification for anyone to kick someone when they're down. I'm talking to you, G.

Lt. Bedford said that he kicked the guy "defending himself." That's a lie. He took several shots at the guy when the guy was already restrained by three other guys and could not conceivably be a threat to anyone.

Obviously, the City of Portland is saving a few bucks by now sending firefighters to the same "community relations" schools as the cops.

Here's my take on what really happened: these firemen were
PoPo rejects (maybe flunked out of the Academy) that had to
settle on being just firemen. All their drinking buddies are all
PoPo and fellow Brotherhood of the Strong, and they'd gotten
bored with fireman work...not enough "action" to suit 'em!

So, they wanting to move over to PoPo and stay under same
retirement system, decided to show everybody what they
could do...in as in-your-face and brazen a manner as possible
as they darn well they could get away with it. Afterall, didn't
Humphreys & Nice (along with Bernie's Thug) get by with the
stomping and kicking to death of James Chasse because they
merely thought he'd pissed on the sidewalk, and so these fire-
men figured the precedent was well established in their favor.

Soon, I suspect Robert King will be telling us that what we saw
is not really what happened, as he's got a bevy of well-used &
rehearsed excuses to bamboozle the sheepeople with; and he
can call up Rosie and Tom and tell 'em to hire these guys on
with the PoPo and if either are hesitant, he'll bitchslap 'em into
submission (as he runs the PPB anyway) and they're hired on.

We know what they can do...we see it with our own eys. So,
that's my take...anyone got another version, then put it up here!

Tee Jay seems to have a little chip on his shoulder, wonder if he is a little man just like lt.bedgood seems to be, kicking someone while they are down, not good, not good, but then we can't judge all firefighters and as the little Tee Jay puts it, Po Po by a few peoples actions, there are lots of awesome fire fighters and police officers out there, too bad the 1 or 2 bad ones always make the rest of them seem bad. Let's put this in perspective and not listen to the little "Tee Jay's" of this world. One guy made a bad mistake and should be demoted or fired, the rest of the bureau should not take the brunt of it.