Comments

1
Who cares about this "nut graf" business? I wanna know where you're getting these fancy-ass O's from Matt!

Were instructions on how to build such glorious O's included in the Magna Carta? Can you only use those malformed vowels if you have the blood of Uthyr Pendraeg flowing through your veins? I swear I will start another Revolution and kick the Colonies back INTO England if you don't tell me how you're working these miracles Guv'na!
2
I think Sam Adams could score major points by taking over the police department, firing/demoting Sizer, and putting Frashour on leave. He could then go back to running the city normally at that point, (not that I'm encouraging that, there are some real problems in the police department that need real solutions, but my point is he could,) and people would be happy with him, and with the city as a whole.

The reason I can see why Adams doesn't do that has to do with Salty, and his upcoming election; doing that would seriously hurt Salty's odds. That is just fine with me, but I'm not trying to work with him on a daily basis and Adams is, so I can see why he might want to avoid pissing him off...
3
he risks making a permanent enemy of Saltzman & his friends (a band of whom exist at Mult Co) if he "demotes" him. it's moot if Jesse Cornett wins (and i believe he will) but it's a risk.

otoh, the City needs the Mayor in charge of the Police right now, and permanently. he needs to put the greater good above all else and take the Bureau back. (plus it would smack the O good to get another wrong.)
4
Yeah, that O article was a waste of space. It did not seem to offer anything new and as soon as I read "It appears not" I knew it was not going to say much. Maybe this is the O's way of keeping the situation in the headlines even when nothing is going on with it at that particular time.

I think Adams handed over PPB to Saltzman as a tactical move in order to avoid having to deal with situations like this himself or to take responsibility for them. Adams wants the buck to stop with Saltzman. It's politics. And should Adams be the police commissioner? Well, I don't know... If Adams lied to get into office and sacrificed Bob Ball to do it, that is not a good indication of Adams honesty or integrity, is it? Trouble is, if not Adams or Saltzman as police commissioner, then who? Randy Leonard?? We're running short on options.
5
This crisis certainly put the mayor's opportunism, narcissism, and tendency to lurch from one crisis to the next on display for all to see. He made a terrible mistake by passing on the police portfolio after the election. That said, it may have been the one decision that saved his hind-end during the first recall attempt.

Had he retained responsibility for police, the recall petitioners surely would have made the integrity of the commissioner responsible for the city's law enforcement apparatus the major focus of their pitch. (It's one thing for the commissioner in charge of planning and transportation to have trouble with the truth, but quite another to have a liar overseeing the cops.)

As for his performance on this crisis, he still hasn't caught up. An investigation will only serve to delay justice. The Campbell family and the city deserve reconciliation even while the city extends due process to the officers involved. Protecting their rights while denying Aaron Campbell his is simply unacceptable.

Perhaps the most striking contrast between the mayor's state of the city address and Chairman Wheeler's state of the county speech a week later was the chair's willingness to accept responsibility for the county's involvement in the Chasse case and use it as an opportunity to refocus his administration's efforts on its core mission to serve the community's most vulnerable citizens. When will the mayor learn that justice is more than a process?

If he doesn't learn how to lead soon, the city will pay a terrible price for his mistakes even if survives the recall and escapes personal consequences for his dishonesty and distraction. We need a mayor who understands that action and focus mean as much if not more than vision and words.
6

@Nex: It's an italics tag. Look it up.



@Matthew D: I'm not sure Frashour is the officer who should be suspended, actually. From my reading of the Grand Jury transcript on Friday morning:



"I said we're not going to go in there," Quackenbush continued. "We'd like to try to find a way for you to come out and talk to us, and maybe we can get you some place where you can get some, some help or some crisis tools or some things like that."



Moments later, Campbell's children came out of the apartment. Then, minutes later, Campbell himself emerged. But having spoken on the phone with a very sympathetic and understanding officer, Campbell all of a sudden found himself having commands barked at him by Officer Ryan Lewton.



Campbell began walking out of the apartment backwards, with his fingers interlaced on the back of his head.



"I remember he was doing what they were telling him to do," said Officer Jeffrey Elias, the K9 officer on the scene. "But eventually it got to the point where it's like put your hands up, and he wouldn't put his hands up."



"Officer Lewton said, you're going to get shot if you don't put your hands up," Elias told the Grand Jury. "And he said something like, shoot me then, or fucking shoot me then. I can't remember exactly what he said. He said shoot me then. And Officer Lewton shot him with the beanbag."



Beanbagging Over Passive Resistance



One key area of concern that emerges from the transcript is the use of the beanbag shotgun on Campbell, because this is effectively the point of no return in the incident: Campbell started moving after he was shot with the beanbag round, in such a way that Officer Ron Frashour felt justified in shooting him.



Officer Lewton had a hard time justifying his use of the beanbag shotgun to get Campbell to comply with his command to raise his hands above his head. It appears, from all the Grand Jury accounts, that Campbell was only offering passive resistance to Lewton's commands.



"He kept his hands where they were, kept them on his head," said Officer David Kemple, another witness. "And he just, he wasn't doing, and he wasn't doing anything."



"He just stands there," Lewton told the Grand Jury. "And that's when I fired my first bean bag, first bean bag round at him."



Why did you do that, Lewton was asked.



"To gain compliance."



And what was his expectation?



"My expectation was that I was going to shoot a round at him, and he was going to put his hands up in the air after that," said Lewton.



A Grand Juror pressed Lewton on this point. Earlier, Lewton had told the Grand Jury that his expectation was "at the very minimum we were going to put him on some sort of mental health hold and take him to a hospital, because it sounded like he was having some suicidal thoughts, you know."



So the Grand Juror asked: "So with all the instructions being given and shooting, and telling him to put his hands straight up in the air, was that concerning that he wasn't getting it if you felt that he was under some mental issues? Do you see what I'm saying? I mean, if he is not getting or understanding what you are saying, was it still, did you still feel like you were threatened? That you would need to shoot him with a bean bag? Or did he make any displays or?"



"I, I guess, uhm...I didn't...it didn't...I can't think," Lewton responded. "I...the thought crossed my mind that we needed to take action, not that I needed to tell him again to, ask him again to put his hands above his head. I thought that, you know, there is a million things going through my mind, you know. One of the options would be, you know, is he making a plan to attack us? I didn't know. So my thought was I need to take action."



@TA, @MatthewD The mayor has been pretty clear that he wants to focus on the high school dropout rate, the economy, and sustainability issues. I understand why he wants to focus on those things, and I think I do still buy his argument that he can better do that if the police job is being done on a day to day basis by someone else. I don't think Adams would have any qualms about taking the police bureau off Saltzman in advance of the election either. The fact is, he just doesn't want it. And as a community, we elected him on those grounds. It seems a bit fickle for us to start bitching about that now, after he never mentioned police in his campaign. A community gets the leaders it deserves.



@Ex-human: If Adams wanted the buck to stop with Saltzman, it appears that tactic backfired, somewhat, eh? I'm not saying I disagree with you, it's just, well, it's backfired if that was his intent.



@Ha_Jude: Yes, I wonder why he doesn't just tell the city attorneys to settle the Chasse case now, too. The logical answer would be that it seems to be because he doesn't want to upset the police union. But they have no case. Letting it go to court is madness. Perhaps the Chasse family's attorneys won't settle, of course. Or their terms are extortionate—like reforming the police bureau ;)

7
This case needs Federal attention with a special prosecutor. A lot of problems with the police handling of this event and many, many others.
I think Adams has been doing a decent job calming the situation and supporting a civil rights investigation. He needs to push for the special prosecutor.
Who in their right mind would want to run the PPD with their tarnished history and reputation? I don't think anyone.
PPD needs to learn how to handle these situations and fire cops who can't handle their job without shooting and beating people to death.
8
seems to me that the best approach towards a "political solution" is to quickly find someone to "throw under the bus" and get them ready for the big toss ASAP to get the media's headlines off them and on to this hapless soul...the tossee!

You say: Who is a worthy candidate?

Well, we're in luck, as the good people at PIMC have posted a most revelatory commentary (actual name of poster/with e-mail...so it's not an anonymous slam) that gives us a name to seriously consider.

Seems the PPB hired one Robert Craig Magill as their "Police Background Investigator" and he took this job after having been the local Portland BLM Special Agent in Charge (federal agency under the Department of Interior) and while no doubt a bit of step-down, the job allows him to play major role in determining who becomes a Portland Police Officer, and under questionable conditions, if a person with a checkered past wanted to, they could easily OK loser-cops from elsewhere looking for "new place to land" after being under serious investigation where they're at, or even an active Brother of the Strong member, as they control the "paper-shuffle" on new recruits.

The FBI is familiar with this dude, as they investigated him in past for ABUSE OF POWER issues (could this have anything to do with him taking dive job-wise?) for allegedly beating up 19 year kid for not having a $12 BLM recreation pass in El Centro, CA.

Folks, if a guy would do that, he'd hire unfit similar-minded yo-yo's with same sick mindsets that are shared by our known Rogue Cops that grab our headlines killing our fellow citizens for very little provocation and no reasonable justifi-cation whatsoever. This dude needs investi- gated N-O-W, for he may be a source (a gate-keeper) of WHY we've got so damned many ROGUE COPS at PPB!

A few Words of Wisdom from the Wilds for our so-called "authorities" who are grappling all about to "solve" this festering problem of rogue cops killing citizens and may seriously be looking for a solution(s) but events are coming at them so fast that they can't absorb it all: When I was trapping in the wilds of Alaska years ago and the wolves were baying 'n' screeching outside the door and threatening to come in and drag me outside, leaving my adrenalin pumping and my mind reeling as to WHAT DO I DO NOW?, I discovered the best thing to do was just quickly open the door and toss out a pelt for them to chew on and focus their attentions on...long enough to give me time to load my rifle and proceed to systemically solved the PROBLEM of too many wolves gnawing and snapping at my heels.

If it was mink pelt that I tossed out, then so be it...it did the trick! Maybe you boys need to toss out a good pelt to give yourselves some breath- ing space to come up with better solution than you seemingly have so far. Besides, this dude don't sound like a mink pelt, but like your mangy muskrat.
9
Matt, I think when Avel Gordly asked the crowd, "What do you want?", the crowd was ready to respond, "JUSTICE!" She caught all of us by surprise. Otherwise, we would have gladly yelled, "RECALL!"

the feeling I get from the people in outer northeast and outer southeast Portland is that Sam Adams broke the law with the drunk driving accident and the Bo Breedlove affair. The Aaron Campbell shooting has only motivated more people over the last week than ever to sign the petitions. three of us collected about 100 signatures at two sites in about three hours today. We only need 350 signatures per day, and there are 697 other volunteer gatherers working hard.

I understand why people like Sam Adams, as a person, but he has lost our trust. He has received preferential treatment from both the SAG and the Police. And most importantly, if we don't start demanding better from our elected officials and their appointees, we are all going to be in far more deep shit than we already are...have you noticed?
10
@Whistle Blaster: Give us a tally, then. How many signatures has the recall campaign collected, in how many days?
11
@ Matt
"It's true that the mayor was absent from this crisis in its immediate aftermath. He didn't mention it in his state of the city speech, which was a major oversight. But I've been impressed with the sincerity of his attempts to play catchup ever since Tuesday when he promised to be "more visible" on the issue. "

BEYOND pathetic, Matt.

"Major oversight", my ass. Try, "narcissist turning tricks to get re-elected and not remind any nice white fan at the City Club how FUCKED UP things are in Portland."

I once had quite a bit of respect for you, Matt. Tell me, has Adams or one of his cronies been offering you a better job? Or agitating to get rid of you in case you actually quit sucking up to him, and go back to being the healthy critic you once were?
12
"Tell me, has Adams or one of his cronies been offering you a better job?"

Really? Look I think it's easy to say Matt and I don't see eye to eye on some things. I want MLS and he doesn't. He's gone as far as to accuse me to being someone I am not (I will have coffee with you Matt if you still don't believe me).

This is one of the most pathetic reckless attempts...fuck. You fuckers lost. You lost the first recall...the second recall is nothing more than a joke and everyone knows it. Go away dude. Find a replacement candidate and volunteer for him. Don't sock the city down in a bunch of your whiny BS.
13
@Blackedout @Gonetorio

For the record: If I ever go to work for Mayor Adams, you have my permission to place me in stocks outside city hall and smear skunk-taint all over me.

#revolvingdoor #lessonlearned

Now Nick Fish, that's a different story.

#kidding
14
@Bloggedout

I'm going to track down Jim Francesconi and Bud Clark this week, and do a Saint Joan act, not take no for an answer. And canvass every resident of Sandy Terrace Apartments, you apathetic desk dweller..
16
@?pqM)

Just a reader FYI: that link is NSFW. Also, hilarious.

Thanks.
17
Never mind what I think of the first sentence of Janie Har's story in this morning's paper version of the O, journalism-wise. The second one is just plain sloppy: "Adams bucked the city charter early on by asking Commissioner Saltzman to oversee the police." Does she have a citation? Because all I can find in the charter on the subject is 3.20.020, and it vests authority over the police in the Council. In other words, he may have bucked tradition, and it may have been a bad idea, but the charter's got him covered. (It didn't take me very long to look it up, and I'm not paid to report this stuff.)
18
@Sue Hagmeier

There's also precedent. Goldschmidt did the same thing. Although you won't hear Adams make the comparison very often, for obvious reasons.
19
Sam needs to understand that a hard on does'nt count as personal growth.
20
@ Matt Davis
Remind me to tell you a funny story about that sometime.
21
@Whistle Blaster: Adam's drunk driving accident? What, where? Keep in mind that the police in this town hate the guy, if they could get him on a Breathalyzer above .08, they would have, there is no way he would have gotten out of that one. (And he can't refuse a Breathalyzer, that automatically results in a DUI.) The odds are very strongly in favor of him NOT being drunk, regardless of what some people who never got within 50 feet of him had to say about it.

But thank you for playing, this is why the recall keeps failing, you accuse him of sodomizing babies, which we all know isn't true, (and makes you look stupid,) and then the people that actually dislike him don't support the recall just by association.
22
Tell me, Matthew D, purveyor of numbers and logic, why he wasn't breathalysed? When he hit two cars, broke a curb, and stopped more than 30 feet away from the last car he hit? and offered something about the accelerator instead of the brake by way of explanation?

I'll offer you a theory, and you can run it past that computer of a brain of yours and see what happens.

You see, the two guys whose cars were hit came out of Car Toys, saw someone get out from the passenger side of the car and take off running, saw Adams come out of his truck with unbuttoned /unzipped pants, smelled a very strong smell of beer on his breath. When the cop arrived (in like, 15 seconds because we know how diligent the police are about their duties around here), guys immediately told the cop, I think he's been drinking, I smelled beer on his breath.

Now, Adams had gone back in his car and called someone before the cop got there. Probably wiped himself down quickly and put some curiously strong mints in his mouth.

Policeman is like, Jesus, I'm going to breathalyse the mayor? I don't think so. Calls his superior.

Superior is like, Jesus, i'm going to breathalyse the mayor? I can't fucking do that. We can't help it if we're stuck with this moron for three years, and now we're going to look even worse? Not just a pawer of young flesh but a DRUNK DRIVER? Oh Jesus, No, please...and besides, if it's negative I'll get in so much trouble with all the I-love-Sam people, I'll get my picture in the paper for trying to lynch the country's first openly gay mayor..oh Jesus, what am i going to do?

OK, I'll watch him, from a distance, sitting in my cop car. If I see ANYTHING suspicious, by God, I'll nail him.

Now let's see, Matthew D, bright young man of undoubted promise and prospects, how soon do you think you would have been asked to take a breathalyser if you had been in Adams shoes? Oh, right, but you're not the MAYOR, OK, I get it.
23
Regarding the post about PPB hiring Craig Magill. Its true! Not only was Robert Craig Magill the former BLM Special Agent in Charge but the Imperial Valley News did have an article about, its posted on the internet, him going down to California dressing up in a BLM Ranger uniform go riding around on a BLM dirt bike to blow off steam after his wife divorced him. That blowing off steam included participating in the assault of a 19 year old boy trying to enter the BLM recreation area in Glamas Dunes, Imperial Valley, CA. This article doese confirm that BLM tried to cover up the fact that Magill was the Portland Special Agent in Charge by calling him a BLM Ranger whose office of assignment was unavailable! A second article then has a story how Magill attempted to pressure the Imperial County DA's office to criminally charge the 19th year old boy that he put into the hospital only after the boys Father's filed a complaint with the FBI and started a law suit against Magill and the BLM for the assault on his son. Sounds like a deliberate misuse of the criminal justice system by Magill! But he was still hired by the PPB!!!

Its also reported that when he got home from his post divorce rampage in Glamas Dunes he attempted to intimidate the Red Hills Construction Company out of free construction services and supplies at cost when he hired them to build a second story on his Lake Oswego home. The owner and subcontractors are all Russian immigrants and Magill is climed to have threatened their immigration status if they didn't provide the free services. This time he claimed to be an FBI agent, to intimidate the owner. A friend of mine in the Independent Police Review Division told me they received a complaint about Magill in which these allegations were verified, but since Magill is not a sworn Police Officer the IPR forwarded the complaint to Chief Sizer who elected to ignore the allegations and to continue to allow Magill to keep vetting Police Officer candidates. Now what does that say about the Portland Police Bureau?

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