News You knew this was coming. When Portland Police Officer Joseph Wild was sentenced to prison last fall for making sexually harassing phone calls to 10 females — including minors, a family member and police recruits — it was only a matter of time before the lawsuits would fly. In some calls, he threatened rape. In others, he claimed he saw the victim naked. Wild made some of the ...   More

News The Oregon Court of Appeals has reversed a Marion County judge who ruled a cop searching a woman's bra was simply part of "mere conversation." Here's the back story, according to the Court of Appeals ruling: On Sept. 3, 2006, Dena Idell Mathis of Eugene was at the Oregon State Fairgrounds when the State Police pulled over the car she was riding in for several traffic infractions. Police ...   More

News I "shot" a police officer last Friday. And though the gun was fake, the fear was certainly real. On the morning of Feb. 19, a handful of journalists from local media (including OPB's April Baer in the photo above with the Portland Police Bureau's Tracy Chamberlin) showed up at Camp Withycombe in Clackamas for a four-hour firearms training session presented by the Police Bureau. Portland police ...   More

News UPDATED: Portland police say they fatally shot an adult man this afternoon outside an office at Hoyt Arboretum after a disturbance was reported there. Central Precinct officers responded to the call around 3 pm and no officer was injured in the incident. There are no other details immediately available on the fatal shooting, which comes less than two months after Portland police fatally shot ...   More

News Local cop-watchers have had today's date marked on their calendars for some time. Tonight the Independent Police Review Division's Citizen Review Committee will hear the appeal of a complaint by Jason Krohn, the son of retired Portland cop Kelly Krohn. The Oregonian published a lengthy article in December about Jason Krohn's drunken tussle with police outside a downtown bar in August 2006 ...   More

News Portland Police say the 13-year-old girl whose case created a public uproar when she was shot with a beanbag gun last fall by Officer Christopher Humphreys was arrested again last night. The girl set her bedroom on fire after she became enraged watching evening news coverage of her sentencing yesterday to one year of probation, one cop says. Detective Mary Wheat, a police spokeswoman, confirmed ...   More

News Well, that didn't last long. I arrived at Col. Summers Park in Southeast Portland at 6 p.m. to cover what was billed as a "Convergence & March to Oppose Yesterday's Police Killing." That killing, of course, being the fatal police shooting Monday in Hoyt Arboretum of a person who has been identified only as a 58-year-old white male. In the park I found about 70 people gathered on the grass. ...   More

News Demonstrators protesting Portland police abuses again took to the streets Friday night, gathering at NW 13th and Everett – the Pearl district spot where police in 2006 first confronted James Chasse Jr., who later died in custody. This protest was smaller and much more peaceful than a larger anti-police demonstration downtown last week. At 5 pm Friday, around 30 protesters mingled on the ...   More

News The victim of two road-rage encounters this year with the head of the Portland police union told a sheriff's deputy she believes the two encounters were connected, according to an internal Washington County Sheriff's Office memo. The memo obtained by WW in a public-records request says Virginia Thompson told authorities her second encounter with Sgt. Scott Westerman "stemmed from an incident ...   More

News The identity of the person fatally shot Wednesday evening by Portland police has been released, along with a summary of the medical examiner's report and the bureau's explanation of why it has taken until now to release the identity. Here's the release about the third person fatally shot by Portland police this year: The deceased subject involved in the May 12, 2010, officer-involved shooting ...   More