The police are here to protect you. Run for your life!

For a while I have been wishing local sites had an ombudsman to be real when it comes to local issues. How much of a traffic bump does this blog get from officer shootings? How much for that bike blog when someone gets ran over?
Am I being overtly cynical when I see daggers drawn over issues like this by local web media?

You shouldn't reprint the press release as it is written by a partisan with a particular public relations goal.

The officers are the "only witnesses" because they refuse to pay for relatively cheap taser cameras (which are plug and play on the existing tasers, BTW). Also, the PPB refuses to put cameras on the front of patrol officers' cars (they are on OSP cars and some traffic cars). They apparently prefer to think about what happened first before writing it down and handing to reporters eager to print it word for word. And the price drops when you compare it the costs of the investigation and outcry and suspensions whenever there is an incident.

I'm not saying they aren't correct in what happened here, because I don't know, but one has to wonder given the track history of the PPB. My point is that the Fourth Estate should perhaps be less eager to quickly print the press release and more eager to determine exactly why the PPB doesn't want to fully record some of these encounters.

So reporters, please go ask (at a minimum) these users of the X26 elecrtroshock compliance weapons when they are going to install one of these: http://www.taser.com/products/law/Pages/TA… so we can watch the whole video of the next taser incident and make an objective rather than subjective analysis.

@ Number Six
Reread Denis' post. I'm very comfortable with the amount of healthy skepticism that prefaced the PPB's side of the story. Rest assured we'll continue to investigate as we always have in the past.

OH! I do agree about the cameras, though. Good point.

I hear you WSH and perhaps wasn't clear about my concerns about 'the Portland media' in general rather than the Mercury specifically. I think Denis(and S.Mirk) do a good job of being critical and investigating stuff, I just worry whenever I see a straight up five paragraph police press release.

The Mercury does an excellent job on independent and critical crime/court/policing journalism and deserves kudos, I'm just saying be very very careful when you just print the police position word for word for paragraph after paragraph.

And get on top of that Taser BS. Where's the cameras? (compare the cost of administrative leave for weeks and lawsuit defense to the cost of the taser cameras or dash cameras)

Silly me, I thought all police cars had dash cams. Seems like a good way to prevent litigation and to back up your story. I've even seen them in civilian cars.

I guess this goes along with not wanting to have drug tests for the PPB.