For those of you who believe Portland Police deserve the benefit of the doubt when it comes to complaints by the public (and I am one of those people, having spent the last year reporting on police oversight issues…) there’s a thought-provoking article on Blue Oregon this morning by Aaron Varhola and Alejandro Queral of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center—about the fifth anniversary of “the now infamous attacks by the Portland Police on peaceful Americans exercising their right to free speech while protesting George W. Bush’s appearance at a Gordon Smith campaign fund-raiser in downtown Portland.”

Somebody mentioned to me the other day that folks like Queral are effectively working to be out of a job—if they achieve what they’re after, there will be no wrongs in the police bureau that need righting. It’s interesting because I, too, am in that position. If there weren’t any police oversight stories worth reporting, I’d either have to make them up (shut it…) or find another way to make a living. Personally I’d be happy to be out of a job, if I really were out of a job. No offense to my job, of course…

But with the city effectively being policed by private security guards who are unaccountable to the public, and with the mayor’s office being accused of making arbitrary political decisions about the police bureau, and reported beatings continuing in the City’s criminal justice system, I’d say my job’s safe for a while. Right, Steve? [….tumbleweed crosses the deserted plains….crickets chirp in the trees….somewhere in the distance, a dog barks….] Anyway, back to the BUSH PROTESTS:2002: That’s not very nice, officer…

I wasn’t here at the time, although the Mercury most certainly was. But Varhola and Queral’s description of what happened is vivid enough to make me wonder how different my impressions of the police bureau might be, if I had been:

In what came to be know as A22, Portland police, many clad in black riot gear, clubbed, pepper-sprayed and shot rubber bullets at nonviolent citizens exercising their Constitutional rights to free speech, much like Southern police officers used fire hoses, tear gas, and police dogs on peaceful marchers during the Civil Rights marches of the 1960s.

Among those caught in the police-induced melee included a TV camerawoman, a family of five who were attempting to leave the protest, as well as dozens of other peaceful protesters, many of whom didn’t know what was happening until they were doused with pepper spray. Three members of the Independent Police Review Division observing the police tactics also experienced the burn-in-the-eyes and confusion after they too were soaked with chemicals. The police’s ‘push and spray’ tactics were apparently intended to move the protestors away from the target of their protest.

The NWCRC was set up with $800,000 in civil settlements against the city resulting from the protests. Has the City done enough to overhaul its civilian oversight of the police bureau since then? I think it needs to go a lot further.