I'd like to thank Aaron Varhola and Alejandro Queral for this piece and for reminding us of both A22 and the need for a truly independent review board that has some teeth.

What, if anything, is being done to try to implement any of the four excellent suggestions given above? Is there any movement afoot?

I was at that event. I remember being surrounded by police... I tried to walk up one street, and there was a line of cops with masks on. I walked to the other street, another line of cops. I asked if I could go by... they said nothing.

A mother and father and a newborn baby were next to me. I believe they were aparty to the eventual lawsuit. They tried to get by. They pleased with the cops. The cops said nothing. A few of us hung back by the cops... well, the cops started marching forward...

I ran into the nearest Kinkos and got online. Pepper spray was flying outdoors... I felt a bit guilty for sitting in the air conditioned Kinkos, but, shit, who wants to be sprayed?!

There is little mention of the riot by the sheriff's posse in Klamath Falls, when they rode down on a group of Klamath Indians and other citizens who were at the A-Canal gate. The posse was there to intimidate them and get them out of the way to allow a group of vigilantee farmers, in violation of federal law, who were opening the gate to let water into the canal against court order. There was no protection from local or state or federal authorities against the onslaught of the Klamath County sheriff's deputies. A friend of mine was there and that was the moment she decided that a group of thugs were now in control in Klamath County and she was going to move as soon as she could. Senator Smith's (and Karl Rove's) support of those thugs and their lawlessness should be a campaign issue.

Oh Tre Arrow we need you.

The big issue is the military type arms that are being purchased by police departments. It also reflects in their attitudes- and the " War on ---- " mentality.

Police officers are not soldiers, and the mindset between a soldier ( sworn to kill enemies and win wars ) and a police officer ( paid to protect citizens and uphold civil order ) should be worlds apart.

 Getting the police officers out of their cars and into the community would do wonders when it comes to law enforcement. Remember the beat cop? They were allowed to interact both positively AND negatively with citizens, as opposed to racing to the nearest bad guy.

  Removing the culture of omerta ( silence and protection ) in bureau would also be a big help. The rights of the citizenry should be more important than protecting your buddy's job-

  Also, maybe a class on The Constitution and the value of The Bill of Rights, and an annual refresher class- with maybe a dose of history and the reason our founding fathers  ( and dare I say mothers ) drafted these documents.

Maybe these officers thought they were doing good work? Maybe they need to fear disrupting the American process at the peril of losing their jobs, and maybe their own freedoms?

I introduced legislation in the 2005 session (HB 2427) which directly addressed the needs Aaron and Alejandro aptly describe. Since my term expired when the legislature convened (and my friends weren't in charge!)I was unable to push for its consideration. I hope someone takes it up again in 2009. You can find the language of the bill through the legislature's website.

SAVE DEMOCRACY, VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT!!

We the beloved and honorable Americans,we freedom loving Americans, we protectors of democracy, we Americans.

We are indeed Americans, yet are we truly freedom loving protectors of democracy, do we project honor, and are we beloved anymore?

Why? Do you really need to know? Do you need anyone to tell you? If you read, and post on this blog, I dare say you don't!!

So, I beg my fellow Americans to recognize that if you are a registered Republican that you rejoin America the free, home of the brave, and VOTE FOR A DEMOCRAT!

Yes, the Democrats need a back bone, but a super majority in both houses, and a Democrat in the White House for a couple of terms will do it. If they don't roll back the distortions in our constituitional and representative democracy, then I will be the first in line to vote for whomever will!

Happy Thoughts;

Dan Grady

Remember that Gordon Smith and/or his staffers had two elderly women arrested at Smith's Portland office because they had the audacity to demand answers to their questions about the Iraq War. Those women spent the day in jail.

Thanks to Aaron and Alejandro for this piece that reminds us how "un-progressive" Portland is when it comes to how we police our city.

The IPR was the fruit of Mayor Vera Katz' effort to block the creation of real police accountability in Portland. Following another police riot - the May Day 2000 debacle -Mayor Katz appointed a blue ribbon committee that spent several months researching review boards around the nation. At the same time, some of us, skeptical of the mayor's commitment, launched a ballot initiative campaign - PAC 2000 - to place on the ballot a measure that would have created a civilian police review board built around the same criteria Aaron and Alejandro have cited. When the mayor's own committee recommended a structure similar to PAC 2000's, she announced she wasn't bound by their findings. In a move to pre-empt the ballot initiative campaign, she charged city auditor Gary Blackmer with pulling together a proposal that would mollify some of the critics while taking the steam out of the ballot measure campaign. A skilled politician, Mayor Katz achieved her goal of averting a political disaster for her administration, but at the coast of saddling Portland with an ineffectual review board that pays lip service to the idea of police accountability.

As Aaron and Alejandro point out, the IPR has consistently failed to curb police misconduct in Portland. It could not do otherwise, being a solution to a political problem rather than to a problem of injustice.

Portland's progressive community needs to support the NWCCR's efforts to build real police accountability in Portland. That means real support - donations, volunteer time, speaking to our friends, neighbors and families about the importance of these issues. It also means holding our elected officials accountable for their failure to create the same in our police bureau.

Dave Mazza Local Writer and Chief Petitioner of the PAC 2000 and PAC 2002 campaigns.

So, free speech cost me and you almost $1,000,000.

Just don't post any images of the Portland Police in their leather hoods, we beg you!

It'll just turn-on fat, creepy, balding, white, geezer Republicans, in Boise and here on the AM radio dial.

The stories I could tell... but won't.

I mean really, what do all these great big protests do? Sure, it's fun to vent. But in terms of changing voter's minds? Worthless.

Like the WTO protests in Seattle, the civil rights marches in the South, the crowd in the Washington Mall when Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I have a dream" speech 40 years ago, the strikes along the waterfronts in 1934, the protests led by Viktor Yuschenko in Ukraine, etc. Never achieved a thing.

Bill,

I'm not going to try to argue you on the point that marches, etc. don't change a thing, but what I can tell you is that my experience at the WTO changed my life and many people's lives that have since dedicated their lives to activism. The WTO woke me up to those history book examples, and you can't argue that direct action hasn't contributed to numerous postivie changes in our lives. It's a revolution of the heart, and if you've never experienced that you probably aren't going to get what those events did for countless people that have gone on to be a part of something special.

Right now more than ever we need balenced accountability. The marches sometimes bring out certain aspects of behavior for certian individuals with law enforcement, but if you are poor, addicted, etc. you feel that every day. It may not be always by the boot, but regardless if you are being asked nicely, or being forced to do something - discrimination is discrimination. In the context of drug-free zones, criminalization of the homeless, war on drugs, etc. - it's our policy makers that have put police in the awkward circumstances of carrying out laws that violate human rights.

In the context of certain individual officers that cross the line. They should be punished the same way any of us would if we handled a peaceful circumstance with violence. Police officers put their asses on the line every day of the week, but so do social workers, firemen, etc., etc. and it's not acceptable for those professions to use violence to defuse a potential circumstance.

We must be fair to officers, but it also has to fair to the people they serve...

To Raul: Soldiers are not only sworn to do war, they are PAID to do war. In fact study after study shows that the main reason the majority of kids join the military is travel (they need money to do that) and money/college money; they could care less about freedom and democracy. And police are not just paid to enforce laws, they are SWORN to enforce laws. They swear an oath, and they sign an ethics pledge. And the police can go to jail if they dont follow "LAWFUL ORDERS" from those appointed to give them orders, just like soldiers.

Why don't you all quit knocking the police. Since they are doing such a horrible job, well heck, why don't you all just go to the City of Portland HR website, and sign up to take the next hiring test. The Portland Police and many other local agencies (Clackamas and Washington Counties come to mind) are going through a massive hiring right now due to retirements and expansion. They would love to have you. They love having fresh, bright and motivated officers on thier staffs who are fully ready to implement the great concept of community policing and other community empowerment based policing ideas. So instead of complaining, do something. They pay real good, all the training is free and you make lifelong friends. Go for it!

Steve: Your problem is that you cherry pick facts that suit your agenda and ignore others. You didn't by any chance pose as "DJ" a while ago, did you? He had the same modus operandum. As others have indicated, the WTO gatherings had an effect. They were followed by the G-8 protests in Europe so that that organization now practically looks for some closet where they won't be bothered by protesters.

What about the other examples I suggested. The civil rights marches and the gathering in the Washington Mall where Martin Luther King, Jr. had a historic impact. (And, what in your peculiar way of thinking caused you to have such an absurd idea as to think I might have been equating myself with MLK, Jr? Did you think you might score a point even if you had to stoop to a tactic like that?)

Too bad, Ghandhi wasted all those rallies trying to get independence from Britain. It's still a British colony, isn't it? Maybe if Hitler's brownshirts had gone door-to-door with leaflets instead of their mass rallies, Hitler might have become chancellor of the Third Reich. I can just see your mind working on this one, Steve, thinking I'm advocating a fascist takeover.

There are no parallels between Portland in 2002 and the civil rights abuses of the 1960's. None.

To suggest otherwise only serves to diminish the insitutionalized racism and brutality of the police departments and KKK members/apologists that gleefully observed those abuses.

Civil dissent and free speech rights do not include trying to intimidate (pushing, spitting, blocking access) to the Bush supporters who were trying to enter the hotel fundraiser. The courts have upheld the city's right to require permits in advance of demonstrations, especially those that pose a hazard to the general public and seek to block the roads and rail systems.

We only have to look back to those subsequent protests which spilled over to I-5 and many downtown bridges to understand the risks of unfettered protest.

Your free speech rights do have limits.

Portland is to Selma, Alabama as Paris Hilton is to Nelson Mandela.

I believe Aaron and Alejandro wrote this post to futher the discussion on police accoutability. They're proposing a healthy path to do this.

The debate on protesting, marches and organizing do touch on this, but the just of this is the idea that we can become a progressive and innovative city in the way we deal with police accountability that touches many peoples lives for a myraid of reasons. While we do have the right to free speech and the right to block access to institions and their supporters who effect the people - we also have the right to have a say in those who keep the peace on a day-to-day basis.

So what role should the police union play in this effort for greater accountability? The unions (specifically Robert King of the PPA and, to a lesser extent, the PPCOA) are stridently and vocally opposed to any external oversight of police activities. Given the union's stated view, should they be at the table if we want to achieve real reform? Or is one prerequisite to achieving greater oversight and accountability actually to reduce the union's role?

Many of the barriers to oversight are actually enshrined in the collective bargaining agreements of the PPA (e.g., inability to interview officers immediately without union representation, which some say gives the cops time to get their stories straight; also extensive due process process rights for officers that make it almost impossible for the city to get rid of the bad apples -- case in point, almost everyone believes the Jeffrey Kaer firing will be overturned on appeal).

Also, the PPA and PPCOA are extremely powerful in city politics. One barrier to better oversight is that those unions have the ability to turn out hundreds of volunteers to canvass for -- or against -- City Hall candidates, as well as donate hundreds of thousands of dollars. So if you run on a platform of greater oversight, you can be pretty sure you'll be targeted for defeat.

Finally, I would second DJD's point that one way to improve things is to become a police officer and change the culture from the inside.

And the only "tactic" I've used is called "sarcasm mixed with humor". It deflates greatly overheated rhetoric - such as your trying to equate an absurdly ineffective anti-Bush rally with Martin Luther King's greatest political speech.

Wrong, again, Stephen. You made a categorical statement that mass protests are, to use your word, "worthless." My point in response was to show that mass protests can be productive. This is not to say that all work out well, but to write all of them off on the basis of some failures shows the same intellectual dishonesty inherent in condemning a group of people on the basis of a few people within that group. That's the problem with categorical statements. One of the beauties of the English language is that it has many qualifiers we can use to be more precise in our statements.

Stephen: In your opening statement, this is what you said, "I mean really, what do all (my emphasis) these great big protests do? Sure, it's fun to vent. But in terms of changing voter's minds? Worthless."

Among several examples that I considered contradicted the preceding, I cited the massive gathering on the Washington Mall when Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I have a dream speech."

This is how you attempted to shoot that down: "I could tell you that it was MLK's televised speech, not his audience, that moved America (which is why the words are still quoted today)."

I would be the last to downplay MLK, Jr's speech, but do you think it would have achieved the same national and world-wide impact if he had given it in some small church, or even a large church, in some city in the South without the presence of television cameras? It was the enormous gathering of people on the Washington Mall that got the television news cameras there to record his speech. And, when the cameras panned the crowd they put King's speech in context and gave it much greater impact.

In his speech King said, "But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition." The cameras brought those words to a greater impact when they forced their audiences to see real, live African-Americans by the thousands who were "still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation," living "on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity" and "languishing in the corners of American society and ... an exile in his own land." With those visuals of thousands of the people King was talking about, his speech could not be written off as some abstract theory as some would have liked to have done. They were the prosecutor's conclusive and damning evidence.

Contrary to one of the erroneous conclusions you have carelessly ascribed to me, I am not gung-ho for mass protests. While I do believe they can be effective, I don't believe all are. To the contrary, some can be counter-productive, so we should be judicious in their implementation. And, the words we use to describe them.

The TOPOFF 4 Full-Scale Exercise

A Rigorous Full-Scale Response to a Coordinated Attack Taking place October 15-24, 2007, the TOPOFF 4 Full-Scale Exercise (T4 FSE) will feature thousands of Federal, State, territorial, and local officials. These officials will engage in various activities as part of a robust, full-scale simulated response to a multi-faceted threat. The exercise will address policy and strategic issues that mobilize prevention and response systems, require participants to make difficult decisions, carry out essential functions, and challenge their ability to maintain a common operating picture during an incident of national significance. As in a real-world response, agencies and organizations will deploy staff into the field and will face realistic incident-specific challenges, including the allocation of limited response resources and exercise actions needed to effectively manage conditions as they emerge. Planning and preparation for the exercise will also help strengthen working relationships between departments and agencies that are critical to successful prevention and response in real emergencies.

Extensive National Participation The T4 FSE will involve more than 15,000 participants representing Federal, State, territorial, and local entities. For the first time, a U.S. Territory, Guam, will participate in the TOPOFF series, providing an opportunity to practice coordinated prevention and response activities between the continental U.S. and a U.S. territory. At the Federal level, exercise play will be marked by the coordinated participation of multiple agencies and departments. For example, in addition to response, DHS will be exercising prevention through its Terrorism Prevention Exercise Program (TPEP). In the weeks leading up to the full-scale exercise, law enforcement and intelligence community players will work the information gathering, intelligence analysis, and information sharing capabilities that help to thwart terrorist activities. In addition, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will mobilize around emerging public health issues related to a radiological emergency, and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) will run concurrent exercises to address global terror threats.

Exercise Scenario The T4 FSE is based on National Planning Scenario 11 (NPS-11). The scenario begins as terrorists, who have been planning attacks in Oregon, Arizona, and the U.S. Territory of Guam, successfully bring radioactive material into the United States. The first of three coordinated attacks occurs in Guam, with the simulated detonation of a Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD), or "dirty bomb," causing casualties and wide-spread contamination in a populous area near a power plant. Similar attacks occur in the hours that follow in Portland and Phoenix. An RDD is not the same as a nuclear attack. It is a conventional explosive that, upon detonation, releases radioactive material into the surrounding area. Although it does not cause the type of catastrophic damage associated with a nuclear detonation, there are severe rescue, health, and long-term decontamination concerns associated with an RDD. Real weapons will not be used in the scenario, but the response will be mounted as if they had been.

So....Thomas Aware, are you suggesting that a multi-agency SIMULATION of a coordinated response to a terrorist attack is really just an excuse to trample on civil liberties and militarize local responders?

Or was the above press release cut and pasted into the wrong thread?

Or would you prefer the reduction ad absurdum logic of Tenskawata: the Department of Homeland Security is merely preparing to launch the next big terrorist attack...cause we all know that George Bush was the mastermind of 9/11.

Maybe you should use more tinfoil? Because the vast majority believe that trying to prevent/respond to terrorism is a good thing; not a transparent facade for the Next Big Conspiracy.

Better yet, if Operation T4 FSE is the blueprint of our first responders conspiracy to attack us, do you really think they'd issue a press release?

I am reminded of Lenny Bruce's story of why we have police (from memory, so not word for word - and cleaned up a bit.):

You may not believe this, but a long time ago there were no police. Everybody was just hanging around, and it was a mess.

One day a guy said, "Let's get organized. Let's all agree that we eat here, sleep here, and s**t here. OK?"

And everyone agreed, and things went well.

Then one day the guy wakes up and sombody is urinating on him, and there is all this noise and ruckus.

"Hey! What's going on here!" he says.

"Religious holiday." is the reply.

So he goes to another guy and says, "I have this job for you. You remember when we all agreed that we'll eat here, sleep here, and s**t here?"

"Yes."

"Well, some people are getting out of line. Do you see that building over there with the bars on the windows? Well, your job is to grab anybody who is out of line and throw them in there. Got it?"

"Yes."

"Now, you're gonna hear that it takes a certain kind of mentality to do this kind of work, but that's all Bullst. Remember, Out of line - in the cphouse. OK?"

"Yes. But... why don't you do it yourself?"

"Well, I would, but I gotta do business with these a**holes."

While there are certainly bad police (there are bound to be bad apples in any group that large) that is not the point. The point is that the entire structure of the police force is flawed. The people who determine who is "out of line" have a vested interest in protecting themselves, and in not exposing themselves as the ones who make the rules.

We need to take back the authority and responsibility for making the rules, and we need to have a police force that is responsible to the public, not the "movers and shakers" and their paid for politicians operating in the myth of democracy.

A public police review board with real teeth is just one step in the right direction.

As I once testified before such a committee, "I find it frightening that all a police officer has to do to avoid responsibility for shooting and killing an unarmed civilian is to state that they were in fear of for their life.

Everytime I see an armed police officwer I am in fear for my life. Does that mean I can shoot them, and kill them, and suffer no consequenses? I hope not."