It was infuriating to read the headlined first page story in today's Portland Oregonian: "Documents detail Campbell death."
Now we know a lot more about how the Portland police killed a man who was distraught over his brother's death and was walking outside of an apartment at the behest of an officer, unarmed.
Officer Frashour is the trigger-happy cop who shot Campbell in the back. Officer Campbell was communicating with Campbell through voice and text messages.
Frashour was not wearing an earpiece to listen to radio communications but said he had his radio microphone on his lapel. He said he wasn't part of any police planning on how to handle the situation and didn't know much when he was summoned to the scene upon the request of an AR-15-certified officer. He knew the suspect was black but he didn't have a detailed description, he told detectives.
More than an hour into the police response, Frashour said he did remember Sgt. Reyna saying police were communicating with Campbell by text and things were going well. But he wasn't told that Quackenbush had asked Campbell to come out of the apartment.
If this were the Keystone Cops playing around, their incompetence would be funny. But since a man died because of police blunders, this is no joke. (Jesse Jackson sure agrees.)
Portland blogger Jack Bogdanski correctly calls for righteous fury. And fierce citizen action.
...it's crystal clear that this is going to take the majority of the voters in Portland, and some brave, energetic souls among the citizenry who are willing to give a year or two of their lives to a serious effort to reform the city code, and probably the charter, as regards the police. There needs to be serious civilian oversight over the police -- not the muddled mess we have now. And that means crafting a package of new rules that the average person in the city will embrace. It entails collecting the thousands of signatures it will take to force these measures onto a citywide ballot. It includes hiring smart lawyers to make sure that what gets passed stays passed. And like everything in politics, it's going to take some fairly serious money.
Most of all, there will need to be endless patience and resolve among city residents as the police union stages job actions, throws other tantrums, and takes its vicious swipes at the people who spearhead real reform.
One thing is certain: If the police bureau is going to get fixed -- and that's a big "if" -- it is not going to be by government, from the inside out.
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