This Week in the Mercury
Friday, April 15, 2011
Cops Police Chief Takes Barnstorming Tour to City Club
Posted by Denis C. Theriault on Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 2:14 PM
Tune to OPB at 7 to hear it for yourself. This kind of event plays to Reese's strengths: He comes off equally reasonable, apologetic, and concerned—and generally says the things he's supposed to say. He also made no major announcements. Just as he did a week ago in front of city council, he painted an appropriately grim picture of a bureau struggling with budget cuts. Comparable cities, he argues, have more officers per resident. His officers can't investigate all traffic crashes, he said. And that spike in drug-dealing in Old Town?
It's "because our officers haven't been able to do the type of enforcement that's necessary to keep a handle on drug-dealing.... We really came to understand how lean our organization really is" after combing through the bureau's budget.
But Reese also took the chance to address his bureau's ties with the wider community, strained after a troubling spike in officer-involved shootings, nine since January 2010. He talked about the lack of trust, or at least the perception of it, cagily. In one important nod to accountability advocates, he took strongly affirmed his rank-and-file-riling decision to fire Ron Frashour, the officer who shot and killed Aaron Campbell last January.
"Some of our officers and sergeants didn't follow our training and policies in this incident," Reese said. "It was a complex event, and our offers had the best of intentions. Unfortunately they made mistakes. We held them accountable, and one officer ultimately lost his job."
Of course, right after, stuck between his role as top cop but also as the bureau's face to the community, he was forced to pivot. He also promised, just as strongly, to defend other officers who—even if they slipped up—were performing with good intentions, and as they'd been trained. Although Reese made his point without the same bluster he managed last year when Leo Besner, the cop who shot Raymond Gwerder, was given a promotion.
And for most of the second half of his speech, he detailed what he defined as a deep burden placed on his department by the crumbling of the state's mental health system. His basic point was this: We can only do so much until the rest of you get serious about why so many addicts and mentally ill people are on our streets.
He repeatedly hammered on the difficulties he says his bureau faces keeping the peace with mentally ill and homeless Portlanders. He estimated that 28,000 of the bureau's 400,000-plus calls in 2010 involved someone either mentally ill or distraught.
"It's overwhelming our system," he says. "It's a lot of opportunity for failure."
He said his officers now find themselves waking up transients in Inner Southeast and downtown every morning, never knowing when someone might "come out from that sleeping bag, or out from under that cardboard" with a knife in hand.
"How does that play out on the front page of the Oregonian?" he asked. "Do we as a community support he officer or vilify them for taking on the unenviable task of dealing with social disorder?"
Reese reiterated his case for new Taser weapons, new pepper-spray, and affirmed his commitment to program like the Project Respond partnership that sees one of his officers—Chris Burley, shot before fellow officers killed Keaton Otis on Reese's first day as chief—work to target mentally ill people before there's a crisis call.
He closed with a blow-by-blow of Marcus Lagozzino's shooting December 27, intended to illustrate how even when, in his words, better-prepared cops facing an unpredictable situation sometimes have to fire at someone. Lagozzino lived and is back on the streets, Reese says.
"He's a neighbor of mine. I've met with his parents. They wanted me to share with the officers involved their appreciation. There's very little help for families like them, and in our community, given the state of our mental health system."
1
Apparently Chief Reese found what the Portland postal carrier had left behind and delivered it to the City Club, or that was my impression after listening to his anti-marijuana speech on OPB last Friday. Now we know, it's because were all mentally ill or emotionally distressed and we're all self-medicating with marijuana that cops are shooting citizens all over America? And who were the "mental health experts" he referred to? My experience has been that psych majors are always trying to "figure themselves out"...
As a reflection of the intent of those who control society, the Reese propaganda presentation was followed on OPB by a story about this family who proudly paid off their mortgage years ahead of schedule, and had vowed to never, ever buy anything on credit, even their cars. Admirable? The story went on to say that if the family have gambled the same amount of money they saved on their mortgage and other credit on the stock market, based on averages, they would have been "more wealthy" -- no mention of the stress of being in debt adds to one's health. A quick closing caveat by OPB mentioned that this assumes the money was gambled on the right stock, or stocks? And that deceptive propaganda by OPB suggesting that paying interest to anyone is a "good thing", along with the Mike Reese performance last Friday night, really documents how the "Rats" have taken over the ship and we're all doomed!
First, Chief Reese mentioned how bad he felt about all the many dead citizens killed by police over the last 13 months (as if this hasn't been a product of the "Brotherhood of the Strong" for many, many decades here), and I almost cried by his remorse...
Do you notice how The corporate media and the government guns have to always spin the story ("The police are concerned there may be other victims! Call police now if you know this man!"), since they can't cover it up as easily...with more of us watching-
Chief Reese suggested that 95% of his officers are 'excellent servants'. Really? If there are about a thousand officers in Portland, then I would have to begin such a list of "good officers" by excluding every member of the current force who put on a t-shirt that read "I am Chris Humphrey". The public union that represents the police claimed this was an act of solidarity, but it was really about giving the public it's own postal delivery! At the time, the cold-blooded, brutal murder by Chris Humphrey, a Portland police officer, of James Chasse, a severely developmentally disabled man who committed the crime of urinating in public, was still fresh in the mind of almost everyone. The civil suits and "outside" reviews had not yet been completed when the "Brotherhood of the Strong" marched through the streets of Portland -- sticking their middle finger in the face of every disabled man, or racial minority, or poor person in Portland, who can't find a place to urinate. And remember fellas since your parts are not hidden, if a woman claims to see you urinating anywhere, and the police don't stomp your head into the ground (while the paramedics drive you around until you're good and dead), then you get to be a 'registered sex offender' for life...and a target of 'Johnny little bit' Strong...
So any sort of honest list of "good officers" by the Chief would have removed about 80% of his hired guns already, although we know that David Willard and other killer cops from other jurisdictions kicked in to the anti-Chasse rally-
In my opinion, only Jim Quackenbush ought to be on that list. Remember, he was the cop who convinced Aaron Campbell to come out of his apartment, walking backwards, with his hands clasped behind his head. If they wanted to, the three excited predators who waited outside (And remember only two of these three co-conspirators were called before the Grand Jury), could have calmly instructed Aaron Campbell about what else they needed him to do to keep everyone safe, and why. Like the way you might treat another human being in distress. They could have spoken to him gently; they knew his brother had just died that morning, and his actions clearly demonstrated Aaron wanted to surrender. But the "Brotherhood of the Strong" immediately began screaming at him, a quick and easy method commonly used by the police to antagonize a potential victim and justify the eventual murder, as they were trained to do in the military against hostile targets.
It is sad that the Chief would suggest that it's okay to brutally kick any person who is obviously sleeping, no matter where they are sleeping or what time it is. The fact that Chief Reese would defend Chris Humphrey and his basketball buddy from Multnomah Corrections by suggesting that this practice is any less than inhuman, is itself both a little sickening and a refection of what our society has become- It also does explain why our government feels justified in torturing Bradley Manning, a true hero for having the courage to demand that as a soldier for America he is only obligated to defend and protect an honest, transparent democracy.
The Chief would argue that because the victim is simply trying to keep warm by using a sleeping bag that it's somehow justifiable to brutally kick another human being, which is exactly how a lot of these Portland cops treat the homeless and the disabled, and exactly how Chris Humphrey murdered James Chasse. Where is Dwight Holton or the inJustice Department when it comes to investigating the cover up of Chasse's murder by the police, and maybe the DA's office?
We do know the DA left the name of the supervising officer off the list of witnesses for the Grand Jury who was investigating the shooting of Aaron Campbell in the back by Ronald Frashour. The Campbell shooting reminds me of a time I once went hunting in Florida with a friend. Tennessee John took me into the woods with him once, north of Jacksonville and said, "Ya all walk this way herre, and smack the bushes like this herr. With this stick herr, and I'll be down over therr, yonder...where I'm gonna shoot dead anything runnin'- So don't start runnin' when I start shootin'! Get that look off your face boy- But don't worry now I ain't gonna shoot ya. Ha, ha, ha, lessin' I want to-"
but the good news is that the Chief will take responsibility or any failure in the "well oiled" system. Great! And he's going to be getting all of his soldiers stronger tazar guns that can shoot you from 80 feet away and can easily penetrate any clothing. And they'll be getting stronger pepper spray so that more people will be disabled when it comes to stopping the "bad guys"...or protesters...when times really get hard for us-
My only question now, is after Carl Rove and Mike Reese have spoken, how can City Club top this and find a more "Lucifearian" figure? I have an idea! How bout Carolyn Tomai?
You can ask her, who is she really working for? Why would she want to exclude men from prosecution who happen to have an extra $20,000 laying around and who are caught trying to buy sex from underage prostitutes? And Carolyn isn't there already laws on the books that punish parents who kill their children by denying them medical care, regardless of their excuses? Why weren't those parents in Clackamas County properly punished for the deaths of those children? Isn't it all about saving the "children" for you? Who was the judge on those cases? Is he a friend of yours too? And what questions might have been raised about the judge's personal life by the defendants' attorneys and the "forth estate" if any serious convictions of those parents had been handed down, as should have been done...
To quote Clear Channel corporate shill Mark mason, "Are you people blind!"
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