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Rapping Back #25: Flaming fanmail from fierce "five-oh" who favor finding foxholes for fighting phony foes "It will be a sad day for America if a police officer, deep in the 'fox hole' of a life-threatening incident, is prohibited from calling upon the name of Jesus Christ, God Almighty, for protection and deliverance." --Sergeant Steve Morrow pondering the separation of church and state in his monthly "Eternal Affairs" column for The Portland Police Association's Rap Sheet, July 2001. Pay No Attention to the Silly Newsletters In July, Rap Sheet editor and retired cop Loren Christensen sent a pep talk to the Portland Police Association's membership: "Ignore the Cop-Bashers." Says Christensen, "While they put on a show of being outraged every time officers use force, the reality is that they squirm with delight at such incidents. They publish silly newsletters about it and they rent shabby storefronts in Old Town where they get aroused whenever the police are forced to defend themselves against someone they deem 'powerless.'" We assume when he says "they" that he's criticizing the "cop-bashers" for deeming the police brutality victims as "powerless," not praising the cops for doing so. He continues: "Know that these professional protestors and all those self-proclaimed leaders of various groups that the City kisses up to are not the majority. Most of them are using you only to get their 15 minutes of fame. The majority of the people you serve believe you are doing a wonderful job." Glimmers of Hope Where We Can Find Them We're always being told to say nice things about the cops. So yes, we thank the police for not attacking this year's May Day parade or any of the several peace marches that have broken out spontaneously in the last few months since September 11. On that note, Captain Jim Harvey (retired) wrote in September's Rap Sheet about an incident in Seaside on Labor Day Weekend, 1963, at which he and other Portland officers in plain clothes joined a crowd that was engaged in a standoff with Seaside and State police. He noted that, to his surprise, the "disorderly" crowd was really made up mostly of curious spectators, and that "it pays to know the makeup of the crowd in order to take the most appropriate police action." Of course, infil-trating the crowd in plain clothes as a social experi-ment is one thing, but doing so to relay infor-mation to other officers and make arrests is consti-tutionally questionable. In a similar vein, Loren Christensen reviewed the video training tape "The Moment of Truth: How to Physically, Mentally, and Legally Survive a Street Fight" in the July issue. Christensen, whose contempt for the public has never been a secret, actually praises the video for using 70 percent of its hour-long running time to present "how to recognize a physical threat and ways to de-escalate without ever having to resort to force." This praise is immediately off-set by a mildly disturbing tidbit: "There is even a small portion on how to act so that you can create witnesses who will testify that you didn't want trouble. The remaining 30 percent of the tape suggests ways to physically respond when de-escalating doesn't work." Does this mean that the police learn how to appear as though they don't want trouble by merely saying the right words for witnessesbefore they go in to beat on someone? Kurt Nelson, in an interesting piece contemplating the September 11 attacks, considers the difference between police and the military. His October column notes that the police have "a daily commitment to the very concept of justice" while military personnel "care nothing for justice now, only the attainment of our national priorities... In doing so, some innocent people will suffer... This is not about justice, this is about the safety of our citizens." These are interesting concepts, and except for the fact that Nelson seems to be citing the military's actions as justifiable, and implies that all police action is done in the name of justice and preserving and protecting liberty, we might even nod in agreement. "I want the community to know that the recent shootings are a reflection of segments of today's society to push the envelope, challenge the rules, disobey the law and disregard the mandates of the citizens of Portland wanting civilized and safe neighborhoods and streets... Sometimes peace comes with the ultimate cost." --PPA President Robert King (August Rap Sheet). Dueling Statistics Duke Smith (retired), used the front page of September's Rap Sheet to jump on Oregonian columnist Steve Duin for referring to the Washington Post statistics on Portland's police shootings rate. Those statistics show Portland as fourth highest nationally in police shootings per murder (see PPR #24). Smith began by focusing on crime rates instead of police shootings, then noted that from 1990 to 1999, 658 officers were "murdered" on duty in the U.S. (No mention here that only two of those deaths were in Portland). Then he pointed out that a Department of Justice Study claims 294 civilians were "justifiably" killed by police in 1999, while over 15,000 people were murdered by other civilians. By his logic, then, one is 53 times more likely to be killed by a fellow citizen than a police officer--but that still doesn't address the issue in its local context. In Portland, there are only about 20 homicides a year and about two to four of those are police shootings. This means (again following Smith's logic) it is only five to ten times more likely in Portland to be a homicide victim than a police shooting victim. It's not actually a comforting thought that if you are killed in Portland, there's a 10-20% chance it was by a police officer. Dipping back into other statistics, he notes that taxi drivers are killed on the job at a rate of 1 in 5587, whereas for police officers it is one per 22,727. In other words, police claims that they have the most dangerous job are clearly false, Portland needs more training for officers on alternatives to violence, and Steve Duin is probably owed an apology by Smith, who compared Duin to rabid anti-Communist Joe McCarthy. "War Stories" Show Cruelty, Lax Policing Loren Christensen, who retired several years ago from the Portland Police, has decided to use the Rap Sheet to publish "war stories"--allegedly humorous tales of his times in Vietnam and on the streets of Portland, usually with a twist ending. (He's trying to encourage other cops to write in, but so far, no takers.) In the August issue, he degrades a panhandler who approached his car asking for a dollar. Christensen calls the man's face "the most horrible face ever given a human," and refers to him as an "aberration." The high-larious twist is that when Christensen refused to give because he only had a 20 dollar bill, the man offered to give him change from a big wad of cash. So, the panhandler had money! What a humorous anecdote. In September, Christensen relates another side-splitting story about how he used to torment his fanatically neat partner Ralph, nicknamed "Mr. Clean." Christensen would drive their patrol car up near prostitutes and ask them questions so they would lean into the car and be right in Ralph's face. In the end, "Mr. Clean" threatened to kill Christensen if he did it one more time, and Christensen swerved back into traffic when he heard "the distinctive sound of Ralph's gun breaking leather." Christensen's story reveals a few troubling attitudes. First, he thinks it is funny to engage a person in dialogue because he knows their presence and demeanor will bother someone else; second, his partner's threats and disregard for gun safety are also treated as humorous; and third, he doesn't seem to be interested in pursuing the arrests of the prostitutes or any of the "customers" they were bragging to him about, meaning he could have been a lousy cop or just an advocate for legalizing prostitution. We would never have guessed. "You are an idiot."--Last sentence in a letter from Peter Simpson of the Gang Enforcement Team, sent to the Oregonian to dispute another person's opinion that police in Bend may have over- reacted when they shot a teenager several years ago (August Rap Sheet).
The Rap Sheet is available from the Portland Police Association, |
December, 2001
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People's Police Report
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