"while still wearing nothing but a bathing suit and towel"

Why was she wearing a bathing suit? Where was she arrested? These seem like points that need explaining.

Fair point, Graham. She was arrested outside her front door.

We need review boards with actual teeth, and we need to be able to fire cops for real, and (this goes beyond portland) blacklist cops fired for sufficient cause from EVER working in law enforcement again.

The current CRC doesn't have near the power we need as Portland citizens subject to roving bands of armed police with a federally documented problem that involves killing people.

Ugh!

There go our cops again! This kind of BS doesn't even happen in L.A. or Las Vegas!

I'm as a pasty white as a snowflake and I think the crooked cops here are pretty racist. There is a real gang mentality among a lot of the city police and county sheriffs here that does not benefit the community. I do appreciate the job law enforcement does when it comes to actually protecting people from the threat of predatory behavior, I just wish there weren't so many bad apples that take every opportunity to abuse the power that comes with their position.

I'd also like to hear more about why the officers arrested her on her doorstep in a bathing suit. I can understand (if not condone) a misguided/racist "scared straight" situation, but I have no idea why they would have ever thought that was appropriate.

@CC: The police reports don't say much more than I've included when laying out the motivation for her arrest: Her statements were "inconsistent," they wrote, and her "recollection of events" didn't match what other people had said. She'd been described as the "primary aggressor" by witnesses—who were actually other children. It goes from there to say the girl "was taken into custody."

Portland is quickly getting the reputation around the country as one of the more poorly run and violence happy forces in the nation...

This is just sad, there are so many other alternatives the police could have used. The fact that we do not have a body that can look at this type of behavior by the Portland police is a shame. All the adults involved in this case dropped the ball and should feel some responsibility for this ending up a case of police abuse.

given the "fear for my life" homicide blank-check loophole afforded the blue gangbangers, it's a wonder she wasn't tasered and then shot ten or twenty times - or the other way around!

If this article was in the Portland Tribune, the tune would go something like, " Look at how brave the Portland Police are this week. Yes, they have finally managed to tackle and arrest those pesky nine year old girls in bathing suits. "

I moved from Florida to get away from this.

Portland Oregon is the most racist place I've ever lived-and I'm from Washington D.C. and from an immigrant background, being targeted by police simply for having accents and nobody listens to you unless your American, so I know what racist is. The sad truth is that tomorrow most of you will barely care or remember because you don't deal with this problem on a first-hand daily basis. I live in North Portland so I hope to see these lovely officers in my neighborhood so I might ask for their papers.

Imagine a young girl at the jail, being stared at by the officers. The other officers and personnel working take some good, hard looks too. Why not? Her parent isn't there and, hello, she is practically naked. Though, the officers are not being accused of rape, every time I have interacted with the police, they are highly sexualized about it and I am an adult. I have called police about domestic violence next door. Again, they were extremely sexualized about the whole event. Conflict between men and women really bring out the police forces, inner unwanted Romeo personalities. Its almost as though they get paid to pick up on chicks. This incident just shows how far they will go.

The police nowadays are trained to have a no lose attitude. This means that they have zero tolerance for common decency and common sense. What they say, goes. One, little, peep out of anybody, and they use excessive force. The book they go by, tells them that they are in grave danger at all times, and that for the sake of officer safety, they must always assume that everyone they encounter under any circumstances is a threat to them. This is beyond paranoia. It is policy. The police have no fear of law or law suits. Do you really believe that they have no recollection of Rodney King? What they fail to take into account, is that they are the actual minority. They foolishly and egotistically believe, that most people like them.

That is to say, that they are just going by the book, so they figure that people certainly must understand.

As if there must be a perfectly acceptable explanation for taking a cold, wet, half naked child to jail, instead of back inside her home to get warm and dry. Laws are selectively enforced all the time. The officers had the discretion to not abuse this child, but instead, they indulged in their typical, bulling behavior. It's too bad that there weren't any actual reporters on the scene. The story only could have been worse