And here we go again… The latest from the Portland Police Bureau:
News Release from: Portland Police Bureau
PORTLAND POLICE BUREAU RESPONDING TO AN OFFICER INVOLVED SHOOTING IN SE
Posted: January 2nd, 2011 4:41 PMPortland Police involved in an officer involved shooting in southeast Portland.
This time, it’s at 82nd and Division. For those keeping score, this is the fifth police shooting since late November. Details as we get ’em.
UPDATE 5:52 pm—
Apparently the shooting happened at an abandoned carwash on 82nd Avenue just north of Powell where homeless people are known to camp out. A formerly-homeless guy who identified himself as Steve says his friend heard eight shots from the scene. There’s still no police public information officer on the scene, just reporters and rubberneckers wandering around with cameras.
UPDATE 6:33—
More details on today’s shooting: Apparently the altercation started less than half a block down the street from the abandoned car wash, at a Food 4 Less grocery store. Witnesses say a homeless man was threatening a security worker at the store, and police were called around 4 pm today to respond. The suspect then retreated to the car wash where the shooting took place. More details will be coming soon. Mayor Sam Adams has been on site since 6:30 pm, as well as Mike Kuykendall (director of services for the PPB).
UPDATE 8:02 pm—
Here’s the police account of the situation, looks like the fatally-shot person was advancing on the police with a “large knife” and threatened to kill a female security guard twice before the incident. The fatally-shot man was apparently alone in the building, so there are no witnesses to the shooting other than the officers involved. The officers did not have beanbag guns on hand and it’s possible the Taser did not connect because the man was wearing heavy layers to protect against the cold.
At approximately 4:00 p.m. today, Sunday January 2, 2011, East Precinct officers responded to a 9-1-1 call regarding an unwanted male subject who was threatening to kill the complainant and refusing to leave. The complainant, a security officer from a nearby business, showed the responding officers to where the person making the threats could be found, a nearby closed-down car wash.
The officers contacted the subject inside the location who came out of an inner room displaying a large knife. Officers began giving commands to the subject to drop the knife. The subject refused to drop the knife and advanced on the officers. One officer first deployed a Taser on the advancing subject, but the Taser was ineffective and the subject continued to advance and was ignoring commands to drop the knife. Two officers, including the officer that attempted to use a Taser, fired their handguns at the subject and the subject went down to the ground.
Officers immediately called for medical personnel to respond and when paramedics arrived they determined that the subject was deceased.
The deceased subject is an approximately 60-year-old male.
Investigators have learned that two days ago, the same subject threatened to kill the complainant.
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.