Salem Political Snark

We are all Ukrainians. Except for Putin admirers.

Four words really says it all. But being a wordy guy, naturally I want to say more about how proud I am of how Ukraine is bravely fighting against Putin and his Russian military.

Many times a day I check my Twitter feed to see how the Russian invasion of Ukraine is going. I follow The Kyiv Independent, @KyivIndependent. This screenshot of their most recent tweets shows how gripping real-time coverage of the invasion is.

The stories of heroism and sacrifice coming out of Ukraine are wonderfully inspiring. They spur me to exhibit more courage in my own hugely easier life, which has its own challenges, but nothing like fighting against a Russian invasion of a nation that loves democracy, which makes Putin hate Ukraine. 

What's difficult for me to understand is why every freedom-loving American, which seemingly should encompass virtually all of our citizenry, isn't supporting the Ukrainian people. 

Sure, it makes sense that Tucker Carlson would praise Putin and disparage Biden on his Fox News show, because that's what Trump has been doing. It doesn't seem to bother Carlson that his words are being used as Russian propaganda.

However, it makes little sense that gun-crazed Republicans, who support the right of everyone to own a military-style assault rifle, aren't backing Ukraine vociferously, since guns are being handed out there to every person who wants one for a much better reason than we have here in the United States.

Namely, to defend their country against the Russian invasion -- which occurred (1) because Putin is sad that the Soviet Union disintegrated into just Russia, and he wants to reconstitute the USSR, and (2) because Putin fears democracies on Russia's borders, since that would give his own people the idea that democracy would be good for them also.

Sadly, conservatives aren't the only ones going soft on support for Ukraine. I've been arguing with a fellow liberal, who usually is more left-leaning than I am, about his conspiracy theory that Ukraine is a hotbed of Nazis.

Sure, there are some Nazis in Ukraine, just as there are some Nazis in many countries, including the United States. But the president of Ukraine has a Jewish background, as do other leaders in the government, so it's crazy to echo Putin's lie that he invaded Ukraine to "denazify" the country.

A milder, yet still disturbing, skeptical attitude toward Ukraine was on display by Bill Maher in his HBO show yesterday. Maher disparaged the Ukraine armed forces, bizarrely saying that he saw them training with wooden weapons.

Maher also pushed back against a guest's correct assertion that it was a mistake to let Hitler take portions of European countries, as that emboldened Hitler to believe that he could conquer all of Europe.

"Putin is no Hitler," Maher said. Obviously true, but Putin also has a goal of taking over sovereign nations. If he gets away with invading Ukraine, other countries could be next.

Even MSNBC's Chris Hayes, who I almost always agree with, is expressing concern that sending military equipment to Ukraine could draw the United States and our allies into a conflict with Russia. That sort of argument for appeasement didn't work in the prelude to World War II, and it doesn't work now either.

Putin is a bully. Yes, he's a bully with thousands of nuclear weapons. That's concerning. Not so concerning, though, that Putin should be allowed to take over Ukraine without the US and our NATO partners doing everything we can to support the Ukrainian people in their fight against Russia.

President Biden and his national security team have performed almost flawlessly in handling both the Russian build-up of troops around Ukraine and the invasion itself. Our intelligence services were spot-on accurate in predicting what Putin would do and when he would do it.

The Biden administration has been able to bring along our European allies with sanctions against Russia to a degree that few had predicted. In addition, it's heartening that Germany, Belgium, and other European Union countries are unabashedly shipping military equipment to Ukraine.

Even if Putin manages to install a puppet government in Ukraine, it seems pretty damn clear that the Ukrainian people won't put up with either a Russian occupation or being ruled by Putin's choice to succeed the democratically-elected Zelensky. 

Nonetheless, the invasion of Ukraine has shaken me up, along with countless others. The world now is a more dangerous place. If Putin succeeds in taking over Ukraine, other authoritarian leaders will think they can do the same thing. Taiwan could be next.

This piece in The New Yorker appeared before the invasion. But the sentiment does a great job of reflecting how my psyche feels right now.

The world condemns Putin for invading Ukraine. Trump praises Putin.

The depths of depravity to which Donald Trump will sink appear to be bottomless. As Putin was invading Ukraine, Trump was calling the ex-KGB authoritarian ruler of Russia a smart guy for sending his military into a sovereign nation without any good reason.

Donald Trump on Wednesday called Russian President Vladimir Putin "very smart" for launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, suggesting that he supports a military conflict that will lead to untold civilian death. 

"I mean, he's taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I'd say that's pretty smart," Trump said during a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser. "He's taking over a country, literally, a vast, vast, location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in." 

We can't let the astounding nature of Trump's remarks pass by lightly, just because Trump has been spewing crap like this for so long, it's difficult to be surprised at his offensive remarks.

Trump is an ex-president of the United States. He isn't a performer in a cheap comedy club.

Trump is saying that the first invasion of a sovereign nation in Europe since World War II is just fine and dandy with him, even if the United States and all of our key allies are united in condemning Putin's action.

Soon the full extent of the horrors Putin is producing in Ukraine will come to light. Things are already bad enough, but they will get worse. 

If we're so unlucky that Trump runs for president in 2024, the clip of him saying that Putin is very smart for invading Ukraine should be front and center in political ads calling for the election of Trump's opponent. 

Sadly, it seems that most Republicans don't care about Trump's love of the havoc Putin is inflicting on the world. All of Oregon's Democratic members of Congress have condemned the invasion of Ukraine, while the sole Republican, Cliff Bentz, has been silent.

Here's some Twitter tweets I've been collecting about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There's courage of display, as the people of Ukraine battle the stronger Russian military, and brave Russian citizens demonstrate against what Putin has wrought, risking arrest for speaking truth to power.

Here's how Salem police killed a man for lousy reasons

A few days ago I wrote a blog post about how angry I was that Salem police killed a mentally ill homeless man after he failed to comply with a traffic stop when he failed to come to a complete stop upon exiting a parking lot.

A moving violation shouldn't be a death sentence. But as I said in "Killing of mentally ill man shows Salem police are incompetent," the officers involved in killing Richard Meyers did a lot wrong in the early morning of February 7.

In this post I want to use excerpts from a February 17 press release from the Marion County District Attorney to cast more light on how Salem police screwed up in a deadly fashion.

The press release is billed as a "factual summary of evidence" by the grand jury that found the four officers were justified in using deadly force against Meyers -- a conclusion that I heartily disagree with.
Download Marion County DA Report on Meyers Killing

Actually, the press release reads like what it is: a District Attorney putting a positive spin on a highly controversial killing of a man who had a tough life and didn't deserve to have it ended by the four officers. 
Below I've shared screenshots of portions of the District Attorney report. Each is followed by how I view the excerpt. Naturally this is my opinion. Others look upon what happened differently.

Keep in mind, though, that grand juries aren't like regular juries. Prosecutors, who typically favor law enforcement, control what information the grand jury gets. There isn't an attorney for the other side, such as the family of Richard Meyers, who can rebut that information or provide a different perspective.

So what you'll read below is the best effort by law enforcement to justify the killing of Meyers. Even so, I believe it shows that Salem police did a lot wrong.

We aren't told why Officer McDowell thought Meyers was trying to avoid him. It just "appeared" to McDowell that this was the case. As we'll see, McDowell believed other things about Meyers that weren't true. McDowell claims that he attempted a traffic stop because Meyers' car failed to stop before leaving the parking lot. There's no dash cam or other evidence provided to support that claim. 

"They could see that he was clearly agitated." OK, I can believe that. They didn't know that Meyers, a homeless person, had been living in his car at Northgate Park. So Meyers had driven to his home, the park, after failing to comply with the traffic stop. His sister has said that he might have been afraid that his car would be taken from him. It's understandable that Meyers would be agitated when three police cars with flashing lights on tried to box his car in.

Somehow three police officers in separate cars aren't able to prevent Meyers from leaving the park's parking lot. There's no indication from this first encounter with Meyers that he was eager to engage in violence with the officers.

Later, a court order allowing police to access the dashboard camera in Meyers' car revealed that Meyers spoke (to himself) about being shot by police officers. The report of the grand jury proceedings says that he had previously expressed a desire for "suicide/death by cop" numerous times. Sadly, because of the incompetence of Salem police, he got his wish.

After the officers allow Meyers to drive into the park itself, Officer McDowell now says that he was concerned Meyers would be able to drive across the muddy field, even though his car appeared to be stuck. The report adds "or unable to control the vehicle," but that sure sounds like weasel words added to "stuck" intended to make the decision to try once again to box in Meyers' car a wise choice.

Again, keep in mind that what's said above is based on testimony from Officer McDowell. Apparently there was no dashboard camera running in his police vehicle. And Salem Police don't use body cameras. We know that sometimes police officers lie. We know that police officers can be mistaken in their memories.

But let's give Officer McDowell the benefit of the doubt. He thought he saw Meyers holding a sawed-off shotgun or rifle. He was wrong about this. It was a pellet gun. McDowell also claims that he believed he was about to be shot. He was wrong about this also, since not only didn't Meyers ever fire the pellet gun, it wouldn't have penetrated even one windshield, much less two.

But McDowell panics. He fires three or four shots through the windshield of his police car, even though he couldn't have been sure that Meyers had a lethal weapon or, if he did, that Meyers was going to fire it.  McDowell doesn't appear to think clearly.

Meyers wasn't accused of armed robbery. His "crime" was failing to come to a stop when leaving a parking lot. How likely is it that Meyers now is out to shoot a Salem police officer? Extremely unlikely. Yet McDowell fires through his windshield at Meyers, not giving Meyers a chance to comply with a order to "drop the gun!" because McDowell chose to escalate the situation, not deescalate it. 

McDowell compounds his mistake by telling the other officers that Meyers pointed a gun at him. McDowell claims that Meyers re-pointed what is now called an "object" at McDowell. We don't know if that really happened, because Meyers is dead and can't speak for himself, and there's no video or testimony from the other officers that this is what actually happened. 

Regardless, McDowell persists with escalating the conflict. Meyers hasn't fired the pellet gun. McDowell could have backed off and reassessed the situation. If he had, Meyers might be alive today. Instead, McDowell fires again through the windshield of Meyers car, this time from outside his police vehicle, which he was using for cover.

So at this point we know that neither McDowell nor the other Salem police officers were in any danger from Meyers. They're safe. Yet after McDowell shoots through the windshield of Meyers car, Officer McNichols sees the windshield shatter and apparently thinks that Meyers is firing through his windshield, whereas actually it was McDowell who was doing all the shooting.

That causes McNichols to fire eight shots at Meyers. This is now sounding like something out of the Keystone Cops, except the screwups by Salem police aren't funny, because they led to the death of Richard Meyers.


After firing 22 shots at Meyers, hitting him five times, the Salem police officers aren't done with their misguided cruelty. (Misguided, because they wrongly thought the pellet gun was a deadly weapon, and Meyers never even fired the pellet gun.)

They spend the next three and a half minutes not in summoning an ambulance, nor in giving Richard Meyers medical aid, but in yelling orders at Meyers. Wow, these police officer "geniuses" told the grand jury that "Meyers appeared injured and in pain." Yeah, being shot five times will do that to you. 

But they don't give a crap about the homeless mentally ill man they just fired 22 shots at. No, the only human being they care about is themselves, having "safety concerns" that Meyers might still be a threat. It's mind-boggling that four police officers who supposedly are dedicated to protecting and serving the public were so uncaring about protecting and serving the man they just shot five times.

Except, it was a pellet gun, not a sawed-off shotgun. This editorializing by the Marion County District Attorney leaves no doubt that the grand jury report wasn't intended to be a dispassionate neutral description of what happened that night, but rather an attempt to make it appear that the Salem police officers did everything right and nothing wrong when they killed Richard Meyers.

Note the language above. The grand jury didn't decide that deadly force actually was necessary, or that the Salem police officers actually didn't have a reasonable opportunity to use a lesser degree of force or warn Meyers that deadly force was about to be used.

All the grand jury found is that the police officers believed those things. Belief can be a long way from reality. Unfortunately, in this case the false beliefs that Richard Meyers posed a lethal danger to the police officers caused him to lose his life for no good reason.

Killing of mentally ill man shows Salem police are incompetent

Angry. Pissed-off. Furious.

That's how I feel after reading stories about how a grand jury found Salem Police were justified in shooting and killing Richard Meyers, a mentally ill homeless man whose "crime" was failing to pull out of a parking lot without stopping.

In Salem, as elsewhere in the country, that will be a death sentence if you have the bad luck of encountering incompetent police officers who are clueless or uncaring about deescalating a situation, choosing instead to shoot first and think afterward.

Maybe you think "incompetent" is too strong a word. Actually, it isn't.

If a grandmother carrying a piece of pie knocked on the window of Meyers' car and said, "Looks like you're having a bad day, honey. Come on out and enjoy this pie," she would have kept Richard Meyer alive, but four Salem police officers couldn't.

Meyers was shot and killed because Salem Police mistook a pellet gun for a real gun. They were never in danger.

But since they ran up to Meyers' car, which was harmlessly stuck in Northgate Park where he'd been living in his vehicle, and where he drove after the attempted traffic stop, wrongly believing they saw a shotgun or rifle, these officers chose to escalate things and kill a man for no good reason.

Officer Chad Treichler
Officer Griffin McDowell 
Officer Jonathan McNichols 
Officer David Baker

Dashcam video taken by the Oregon State Police after Salem Police arrived at the park first, shows officers yelling conflicting orders at Meyers. There's no attempt to calm him down. Even after he'd been shot with what turned out to be fatal wounds, they keep demanding he raise his hands while Meyers says he can't, because he's been shot.

His cries of not being able to breathe made me think of the George Floyd debacle. Instead of expressing concern for Meyers after he'd been shot and immediately calling for an ambulance, the Salem police officers persisted in yelling orders at Meyers. Cruel and heartless.

Zero empathy. Zero caring. Zero concern for the homeless mentally ill man. Just macho behavior from the four police officers above who should be fired or at least severely disciplined, but probably will get a medal from Chief Trevor Womack instead.

The title of today's Statesman Journal story, "Grand jury finds police justified in shooting homeless Salem man," shows how screwed-up our policing and criminal justice system is.

All it takes for a police shooting to be justified is that an officer, or in this case, officers, feel that they were at risk of death or serious bodily harm. The criterion isn't that there actually was such a risk, just that a police officer believed there was.

Not surprisingly, almost all police shootings are considered to be justified under this extremely loose standard. What's especially irksome is that while the Salem police officers who shot and killed Richard Meyers get to have their subjective feelings put front and center before a grand jury, the subjective feelings of Meyers gets little or no legal attention.

The Statesman Journal story says:

A grand jury has ruled three officers were justified in shooting Richard Allan Meyers after officers attempted to stop his car in northeast Salem last week.

Marion County District Attorney officials said Meyers was struck by five bullets police fired. Dashcam video of the shooting provided to the Statesman Journal shows multiple officers firing more than a dozen times at Meyers, who was in his vehicle.

Officers testified Meyers raised what looked like a firearm at officers following an attempted traffic stop and chase in the early hours of Feb. 7.  Police later reported the object Meyers raised was a pellet gun. 

There's so much that Salem Police did wrong here.

Meyers was in his car, hemmed in by police vehicles, in a park that he considered his home, since Meyers was living in his car at the park. There was no danger to other people. There was no danger to police officers if they'd shown even a bit of compassion and common sense.

The officers could have stayed back, speaking to Meyers through a loudspeaker. If they were incapable of talking respectfully and calmly to Meyers, they could have brought in someone more experienced who could do that.

If Meyers refused to get out of his car, they could have told him, "OK. We'll wait until you're ready." Until morning. Until the next night. For as long as it took. How long is too long to wait to save someone's life? How long is too long to wait to deescalate a problem with a mentally ill homeless man?

Answer for the Salem Police Department: any wait is too long.

They rushed toward Meyers' car right away, yelling orders. When an officer wrongly believed he saw a dangerous gun in the car, he fired immediately. Then two other officers joined in, hitting him five times and firing twelve shots.

All for no good reason. Richard Meyers would be alive today if the four Salem police officers hadn't rushed to an erroneous judgement that Meyers was armed and dangerous. Actually, he had a pellet gun and was suicidal. 

If Police Chief Womack doesn't use this tragedy to discipline the four officers and make it clear to the rest of his force that being homeless and mentally ill shouldn't be a death sentence, this will show that the Salem Police Department is just like so many other departments in our country: staffed and run by incompetent, cruel officers imbued with an outmoded "shoot first, think later" mentality.

Womack wants more officers added to his department. Citizens should utter a big loud "No way!" to that idea. At a minimum, the Salem Police Department needs to prove that its officers are competent in handling situations with mentally ill and homeless people. 

A Salem Reporter story adds some details to what reportedly happened, such as:

Dash camera footage from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office shows the scene following the shooting as police repeatedly order Meyers to get out of the car.

A man, presumably Meyers, responds, “I can’t” and at one point says, “I can’t breathe, I’m dying.”

“Meyers appeared injured and in pain, and sometimes even responded to the officers’ commands stating that he was unable to show his hands,” according to the statement. He later got out of his car and fell to the ground, where officers got him “safely in custody” and then began medical aid.

Preliminary toxicology results from Meyers autopsy showed he had methamphetamine in his system, the statement said.

Keep in mind that the Salem Police Department doesn't use officer cameras, so most or much of what the officers say can't be verified. Earlier in the stop Meyers' supposedly said: “(Expletive) you! You’re going to have to shoot me! Shoot me mother (expletive)! Shoot me! Shoot me!”

Well, that's what they did.

Combine incompetent, poorly trained police with a mentally ill homeless man who, according to the Statesman Journal story, had told people about wanting to commit suicide, saying that he wanted law enforcement to shoot him, and you've got a tragedy that will keep on recurring until we reform how policing is done in Salem.

Richard Meyers would still be alive in most of the world, especially advanced countries with much less militaristic approaches to policing.

The United States has so many police shootings/killings because we've been willing to allow police to behave like wanna-be combat soldiers who view their fellow citizens suspected of a crime as enemies deserving of harsh treatment rather than as fellow human beings who deserve the same "protect and serve" as everybody else.

The Salem Reporter had an excellent story about Richard Meyers, "Man who died after confrontation with Salem police was homeless, had lifelong mental illness, family says." It's so tragic that his life was cut short by such a needless killing at the hands of Salem police.

Wife of Salem's Mayor makes anti-Muslim remarks

Chuck Bennett is the Mayor of Salem, Oregon. Cherie is his wife. Below is a You Tube video of a portion of a video someone sent me of a slide presentation by the Bennetts about their trip to London.

One of the slides 

In this part of the video Cherie Bennett speaks disparagingly of Muslims after noting the location of London terrorist attacks. I made a transcript of what she said.

Given the nature of the terror attacks, it was truly shocking to see huge ads on buses promoting Muslim organizations and issues, calling for support of Muslim charities. "For the love of Allah, support Islamic relief." TV ads featured Arabic writing. The number of women in head scarves and burkas had doubled from what we saw just two years earlier. Muslim presence was pervasive. At the same time, there were admonitions everywhere, in signs and announcements, to say something if you see something. The cognitive dissonance was unnerving. 

It took me a while to decide whether what Cherie Bennett said was newsworthy. Or, blog post worthy. Obviously I decided that it was, for several reasons.

First, after the 9/11 attacks President George W. Bush made a point of saying that the United States wasn't at war with Muslims, but with Islamic terrorists. He correctly told the American people that most Muslims are peace-loving.

So to have Cherie Bennett basically lump together ordinary Muslims and Islamic terrorists is as disturbing now as it was back in 2001. 

Also, in early 2017 the City Council declared that Salem is an Inclusive City. That resolution said, in part:

Whereas, Inclusion and integration of all residents of Salem is a vital concern for the general welfare of Salem in all respects;

Whereas, Discrimination based on national origin, race, ethnicity, or religion or perceived national origin is a chronic aspect of life for immigrant and refugee populations of Oregon;

Whereas, Chronic discrimination leads to community disengagement, diminished opportunities for integration, increased stigmatization, greater incidents of health morbidity;

In the video above you can hear Mayor Bennett speaking right after his wife finishes her anti-Muslim remarks. He doesn't correct her, or say that her views about Muslims don't reflect his own. Maybe because he agrees with her. Maybe because he didn't see a need to comment on her remarks.

Regardless, the Mayor of Salem isn't on duty only when at City Hall. As a city leader, people look to the Mayor to embody the values of the City of Salem. Cherie Bennett's remarks are at odds with those values.

Look, I understand that what Cherie Bennett said is in the mainstream of conservative politics in these Trumpist days. Her remarks would be applause lines in right-wing circles. But Salem is a liberal-leaning town. Our City Council passed an Inclusive City resolution.

Which met with some criticism from Mayor Bennett and other conservative council members, as I noted in a February 2017 blog post. 

The conservative councilors, including Mayor Bennett, mostly used their discussion time to emphasize that an Inclusive City designation just reiterated current City of Salem and State of Oregon policies about immigration issues. True, but they failed to appreciate how much the resolution meant to people-at-risk in these Trumpian times.

...The conservative city councilors -- Mayor Bennett, Brad Nanke, Jim Lewis, Steve McCoid -- pretty clearly were boxed-in by the overwhelming citizen support for Salem becoming an Inclusive City. As noted above, mostly their comments were along the lines of "This doesn't change existing City policies, but I'll vote for it anyway." 

I didn't hear much compassion and emotion in their words, in contrast to how Andersen, Kaser, and Sally Cook spoke about the resolution (the fourth progressive city councilor, Matt Ausec, didn't say much, as is his style).

Lastly, recently The Seattle Times had a story about a prosecutor in Washington whose wife made racist remarks. While what Cherie Bennett said wasn't nearly as bad, this shows that a wife's views can affect the reputation of her husband who holds a public office.

Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell has officially apologized and attempted to distance himself from his wife’s racist rants on social media, but defense attorneys, experts in legal ethics and civil libertarians think his office and reputation are damaged, maybe beyond repair.

Lesley Haskell, 57, has found herself in the eye of a hurricane-force storm of controversy after the Inlander alternative newspaper in Spokane published a story on Jan. 27 excerpting a string of posts on the conservative social media site Gab.com in which she freely used slurs referring to Blacks, Jews, Latinos and other ethnic groups — defending those statements as “free speech.” She had declared herself a “proud white nationalist” and held up the Ku Klux Klan as a beacon of “white culture.”

...In a private memorandum shared with attorneys in his office and obtained by The Seattle Times, Haskell said, “I very much love my wife and want her to freely express herself; however, at times, we do not share or express the same thoughts.”

William S. Bailey, a professor from practice at the University of Washington Law School, notes that while Haskell’s statement appears “thoughtful, honest and sincere,” it does little to lift the taint of his wife’s words.

“This is a very interesting situation, somewhat unprecedented,” said Bailey. “There is no question that, at a minimum, this creates a fundamental appearance of fairness issue.

“I do know that if I was a member of a minority group, his wife’s comments would be transferred to Mr. Haskell, notwithstanding his comments to the contrary,” he said. “There is just too much bad history to ignore.

“There is no doubt in my mind that if Larry Haskell was a judge and this information about his wife came out, he would have to recuse himself from any case if asked to do so by an attorney for a party,” Bailey said.

Shameful secrecy surrounds killing of man by Salem police

The more I learn about last Monday's killing of a man by three Salem police officers who fired their weapons after the man drove into Northgate Park following an attempted traffic stop, the angrier I get.

I'm angry that a homeless man with mental health problems is dead. I'm angry that the Salem Police Department won't say why the officers shot Richard Meyers or if he was armed. I'm angry that the Oregon State Police, which is investigating the killing, are using the grand jury system as an excuse to not provide any information about how and why Meyers died.

Let's look at my reasons for being angry.

Our local news sources, the Statesman Journal and Salem Reporter, are pretty much asleep at the journalistic wheel when it comes to the death of Richard Meyers. The Statesman had one story, basically a rehash of a Salem Police Department news release. Salem Reporter has been completely silent.

Fortunately, some Portland news outlets have been on the job.

KOIN News has reported that the Oregon State Police asked that a man who lives in the area delete a video from his surveillance camera that showed Meyers' car in the park, but not the shooting, after he gave a copy of the video to OSP. The story says about the man:

He didn’t say why they wanted him to delete the footage but guessed it was because OSP didn’t want it shared with anyone while they investigate.

Or, a less charitable view is that OSP doesn't want the public to see what happened.

Screenshot from Fox 12 video

Fox 12 News has reported that according to the sister of Richard Meyers, Rachel Coble, he was homeless and mentally ill, living in his car at Northgate Park. So when he drove into the park after failing to comply with a traffic stop, Meyers was going home. 

Further, Meyers was known to police.

A Salem woman said she believes her brother was having a mental health crisis when he was shot and killed by Salem Police early Monday morning in a park.

Rachel Coble said her brother, Richard Allen Meyers, struggled with mental illness and addiction for much of his life and was homeless at the time of the shooting.

...OSP said three Salem officers fired their guns, hitting Meyers and his dog that was inside his car.

Meyers died in the hospital and the dog was later euthanized.

Coble said her brother had been staying at the park and sleeping in his car in the parking lot.

The details surrounding the shooting are still unclear and investigators have not said why police attempted to pull Meyers over, or what exactly led up to the shooting.

OSP has not said whether Meyers had a weapon at the time of the shooting.

It’s also not clear if Meyers was inside the car when he was shot or outside on the grass.

Coble told FOX 12 that her brother was no stranger to law enforcement.

“Salem PD has had contact with my brother on multiple occasions and they knew he was in crisis, and they knew he was homeless,” Coble said.

"Investigators have not said... OSP has not said... It's also not clear." So much for the public transparency that the Salem Police Department vowed to achieve in a recently-released strategic plan. 

A news release issued by the Salem Police Department on the day of the shooting says, unhelpfully:

No further information will be released by Salem Police.  All future media releases will be provided by the Oregon State Police.  The next release is currently anticipated midday when additional information will be provided by the Oregon State Police. This timeline is subject to change based on the investigation. 

OK. So I signed up for Oregon State Police news releases, since that's where Salem Police said to look for more information about the killing of Richard Meyers.

An OSP news release, also on the day of the shooting, contained the names of the four Salem police officers involved in the killing, but otherwise no pertinent additional information about what happened. The OSP news release ends with:

Standard next steps in this type of investigation include: the Oregon State Medical Examiner to determine cause and manner of death, additional witness (if any) interviews, evidence being analyzed and tested, and a Marion County Grand Jury review of the incident.

No further information will be released prior to the Grand Jury’s consideration to protect their objective review of the incident. Any future media release will be provided by the Marion County District Attorney’s Office. Due to the Oregon Rules of Professional Conduct for Attorneys, which limits the type of information lawyers can release prior to anticipated judicial proceedings, additional information will only be released as appropriate after the conclusion of the Grand Jury proceeding.

So the Salem Police Department says to ask the Oregon State Police for information about the killing of Meyers. But the Oregon State Police says no further information will be released before a Grand Jury's consideration of the case, and maybe even not after the Grand Jury proceeding. 

Great job, law enforcement agencies. You're constructed an impenetrable Blue Wall of Silence around the killing of a homeless mentally ill man.

If this sort of thing doesn't sound familiar, you haven't been paying attention to the many instances of police killings around the country in recent years. Also, in not-so-recent years.

After George Floyd's murder, Black Lives Matter and similar efforts cast light on how unjustified police killings often are swept under the rug rather than investigated in a neutral fact-based fashion. In many cases, our screwy Grand Jury system is at fault.

A bit of Googling revealed lots of criticism of how Grand Juries are used to allow police officers to get away with unjustified killings. You can check out some of what I found here, here, here, here, here, and here. 

Basically, Grand Juries can be flawed when killings by police officers occur because unlike regular juries, only one side of a case is presented -- the prosecution's case. So a District Attorney can control what information a Grand Jury sees and what potential charges are considered. The proceedings usually are kept secret, so the public doesn't know if a reasonable decision was reached by a Grand Jury. 

Here's an excerpt from a New York Times story, "Grand Jury System, With Exceptions, Favors the Police in Fatalities."

The extraordinary steps taken in North Carolina — along with the recent grand jury decisions to bring no charges against white police officers who killed unarmed black men in New York and Missouri — illustrate how the justice system can favor the police, often shielding them from murder or serious manslaughter charges.

The balance tips toward the police from the start: In most felony cases, an arrest is made and a grand jury indictment follows within a prescribed period of time. But in police fatality cases, prosecutors generally use special grand juries sitting for lengthy periods to investigate and gather evidence before determining if an arrest and indictment are warranted.

Another hurdle is the law itself. Most states give officers wide discretion to use whatever force they reasonably believe is necessary to make an arrest or to protect themselves, a standard that hinges on the officer’s perceptions of danger during the encounter, legal scholars and criminologists say.

“The whole process is really reluctant to criminalize police behavior,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former prosecutor who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “The grand jurors are, the jurors are, the judges are, the appellate courts are.”

The sad thing in the screwy way police killings are handled is that there's a large gray zone between the extremes of Killing Richard Meyers was totally justified; couldn't have been handled any better, and Police officers were guilty of negligent homicide or manslaughter in the killing of Richard Meyers.

When all the information about Meyers' killing isn't shared with the public in a timely manner, there's no opportunity for a community discussion about how the Salem Police Department handled the Meyers incident, or a broader discussion of how police respond to homeless people with mental health problems.

Salem police not being transparent about recent killing by officers

Early Monday morning, officers with the Salem Police Department shot and killed a man who drove into Northgate Park after police attempted a traffic stop. 

I'm bothered that the Salem Police Department isn't saying what led to the shooting, or if the man was armed. An OPB story describes what happened. It's unclear what caused the death of the man's dog.

Salem police officers fatally shot a man Monday during what officers called a “confrontation.”

The shooting happened at Northgate Park, and began as a traffic stop. A dog that was with the man was injured in the shooting, and later euthanized.

According to Oregon State Police, which is the agency investigating the shooting, Salem Police officer Griffin McDowell attempted a traffic stop on a gold Mercedes in northeast Salem around 12:37 a.m. Instead of pulling over, police said, the driver of the car fled from the officer in the vehicle.

The person driving, identified as 40-year-old Richard Allan Meyers, ultimately drove into the park on Northgate Avenue. Meyers entered the northeast parking lot and then drove onto the northern field of the park.

Additional Salem officers responded, and they stopped the Mercedes in the field. Police did not describe the shooting in detail, but said a confrontation ensued. It was at that point, according to Oregon State Police, that three Salem officers fired their department-issued firearms.

Police did not say if Meyers was armed, or what had led to the shooting.

Emergency medical staff transported Meyers to Salem Hospital where he later died.

A pitbull that was in Meyers’ vehicle was injured and transported to a veterinary clinic, but Meyers’ family decided to put the dog down.

Four officers — Chad Treichler, Griffin McDowell, Jonathan McNichols and David Baker — were placed on administrative leave for either firing their weapon or being on scene during the shooting.

It shouldn't take long for Salem police to issue a statement about central facts such as why the man was being pulled over, whether he was armed, and what led to the killing of the man. So why the delay?

Also, KOIN News is reporting that a person who lives nearby said that investigators asked him to delete a recording made by his security camera that showed the car, but not the shooting. Maybe there is a good explanation for why this was done, but it adds to the suspicion of a coverup.

Carl, a homeowner in the area who only wanted his first name used, told KOIN 6 News his surveillance camera captured video of the car but not the shooting.

“You can see the car coming in from that side and then spinning around and all these cops just swarmed on in, and that’s probalby about when the gunshots were heard,” Carl said. “My cameras don’t have mics on them so you don’t even hear the gunshots.”

Carl also said he gave a copy of the surveillance video to the Oregon State Police. Investigators “told me to” delete that surveillance footage. He didn’t say why they wanted him to delete the footage but guessed it was because OSP didn’t want it shared with anyone while they investigate.

KOIN 6 News asked both Salem PD and OSP why someone would be told to delete footage after it’s shared with investigators and if that is standard protocol. Neither agency has yet responded with a comment.

Yesterday I downloaded a copy of the recently-completed Strategic Plan for the Salem Police Department. Scrolling through it, I'd noticed several references to transparency. Here's one of them, from page 11 of the PDF file.
Download Salem-police-2022-2024-strategic-plan

Words are cheap.

I'll believe the Salem Police Department really cares about transparency, information-sharing, and communication when the department truly shows a commitment to "timely and accurate sharing of information." 

Whenever police officers kill someone, especially after a traffic stop, people in the community want answers to basic questions. How was the person killed? Was the killing necessary? Did the person present an imminent danger to the officers or others? Was the person armed with a gun?

Suspicions arise when it takes a long time to get answers to simple questions. It sure seems that when a person killed was armed, that information is released much more quickly by police departments than when the person wasn't armed.

There's also a problem when officers involved with a killing have an opportunity to get their story straight by communicating with each other. Hopefully the Salem Police Department isn't allowing this to happen.

Each of the involved officers should have zero contact with each other until the investigation into the killing by the Oregon State Police is completed. 

Salem Keizer We Stand Together is a wacko school group

Today the Statesman Journal ran a lengthy subscriber-only story by Natalie Pate, "School boards in the Mid-Valley and beyond have become political battlegrounds." 

It's well worth reading.

In looking the story over again before writing this blog post, my attention was hijacked by a mention early on about Salem Keizer We Stand Together, a group dedicated to the false conspiracy theory that our local schools are hotbeds of leftist teachers and administrators pushing students to embrace critical race theory, premarital sex, Marxism, and a LGBTQ sexual orientation.

But the story almost makes Salem Keizer We Stand Together sound reasonable. 

What curriculum is taught, how schools respond to the ongoing pandemic and where educators stand on issues of race, gender identity and sexuality are increasingly being debated in board rooms across the United States.

And though Salem-Keizer school board members are elected as nonpartisan representatives, more and more political action committees and organizations have been throwing tens of thousands of dollars into these races, hoping candidates who hold the same values win. 

While those in Salem Keizer We Stand Together see themselves as a group of concerned individuals fighting for the safety and wellbeing of their students, others see many of the things they're advocating for as dangerous.

For the full Statesman Journal story click here.

Yeah, count me in that group. I definitely think this group is dangerous.

Not because they're conservative, since even though most conservatives these days have joined the fact-free Cult of Trump, there's still plenty of reasonable people who inhabit the right side of the political spectrum.

What instantly turned me off about Salem Keizer We Stand Together after I visited their web site was the invitation at the top of the home page to come to a forum today, February 6, featuring Jeanette Schade. 

Since this screenshot is rather hard to read, I've copied in below how Schade is described. I've boldfaced the especially crazy parts.

As you read what follows, ask yourself if you want students in the Salem-Keizer School District taught in line with how Schade views the world.

Jeanette Schade | Chief Intelligence Officer  

Jeanette has been in public school education, in multiple states, for more than 24 years as a certified classroom teacher. As an advocate for American values and equality, she has been fighting against Marxist indoctrination throughout her career. In May 2021 she ran a nationally recognized Beaverton school board campaign in fierce opposition to Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) and Comprehensive Sex Education (“CSE”). She was featured on Fox News, News Max and the Glenn Beck show.
 
She was publicly doxed by Antifa and teachers’ unions but refused to back down. While her race for Beaverton School Board was lost, among legitimate indications of election fraud, her message to parents in the Beaverton area was a huge success. Post-election, Jeanette focused her energy to expose corruption and indoctrination in the Beaverton School District deploying FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) and Public Records Requests. As a result of her efforts she mastered the PRR process, exposing scandalous (and illegal) financial activities by district administrators and undeniable institutionalization of Marxist ideologies.
 
Jeanette is the Founder of Build Back Basics in Education. In her activism she has trained numerous parents and concerned citizens, across the state of Oregon, to successfully execute the Public Records Request process. She leads the team of analysts at Free Oregon as the Chief Intelligence Officer and is our leading expert on public school policy.

My rule of thumb is that one mention of Marxism brands you as a crazy right-winger, but Schade squeezed in two mentions in three paragraphs, so she earns my Wacko Right-Winger designation.

 

Her association with Free Oregon confirms that designation, since that group's web site says: "Upon decades of Marxist indoctrination in our government schools, power thirsty ideologs [sic] have used Covid-19 to springboard the 'Great Reset' on American civil liberty."

OK. But I doubt it was Marxist indoctrination that caused the folks at Free Oregon to not learn how to spell "ideologues."

After reading the Statesman Journal story, my initial inclination was to write about how wrong Salem Keizer We Stand Together is on issues involving racial justice, LGBTQ rights, public health/Covid, and such.

But I changed my mind about this after realizing that Salem Keizer We Stand Together isn't interested in bringing reasonable conservative views into discussions of school policies.

To echo the Free Oregon web site, it seems clear to me that Salem Keizer We Stand Together is a group of power thirsty ideologues who care much more about promoting their Trumpist political agenda than in improving local schools.

Read how the Republican Party views the insurrection as normal

The Republican Party now officially supports the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 that sought to overturn Biden's free and fair election and make Trump the presidential victor.

Today the Republican National Committee approved the resolution below. I'll also share it as a PDF file.
Download RNC Resolution

It states in the last "WHEREAS" that those who stormed the Capitol, injuring hundreds of police officers and leading to several deaths, were "ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse." 

Shameful. Unpatriotic. Disgusting.

Keep this in mind next time you see a ballot with an R after someone's name. Don't vote for someone who belongs to a political party that thinks it's just fine to try to overturn an election because their leader, Donald Trump, has spewed his Big Lie that the election was stolen.

We know this is the case, because the objects of the resolution's wrath, Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, are members of the bipartisan House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. 

The committee isn't concerned about "legitimate political discourse."

They're looking into a coordinated, well-planned scheme to have Vice-President Pence declare that certified election results in a number of swing states won by Biden were invalid, thereby preventing Biden from getting enough electoral votes to be president. 

Then the plan was for Republican-controlled state legislatures to declare that a Trump slate of electors should be counted, thereby giving Trump an illegitimate victory. This was horribly disturbing when it appeared that the scheme was only supported by fringe elements of the Republican Party.

But now we know that the Republican National Committee, which is made up of party leaders from every state, fully endorses the Trump insurrection and opposes the effort to prevent another attempt to overthrow a free and fair election that Cheney and Kinzinger are part of.

Read the resolution and you'll see how authoritarian and hypocritical the Republican Party has become. The GOP supposedly derides "cancel culture" and political correctness. However, the resolution censures Cheney and Kinzinger because they dared to think for themselves and defy Trump. 

The resolution also says that the primary goal of the House Republican Conference is to win back control of Congress. Not to make things better for the American people. Not to protect our democracy.

Just to win. At any cost.

Including doing away with the values that used to make the Republican Party a reasonable alternative to the Democratic Party. Now the not-so Grand Old Party is entirely dedicated to kissing Trump's ass, no matter how bad this is for the country.