News U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) today received word that the FBI is on the case in the Jan. 29 fatal shooting of Aaron Campbell by Portland police. Campbell was unarmed when he was shot in the back outside a Northeast Portland apartment. U.S. Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich assures Wyden in a letter (PDF) dated April 12 that the FBI has been asked to open an investigation. He says the results ...   More

News Portland police have released a recording of Virginia Thompson's phone call to the police bureau the day after her Jan. 28 road-rage encounter with Sgt. Scott Westerman, head of the police union. Contrary to statements attributed to Thompson in a Washington County Sheriff's Office memo obtained by WW, it appears the Portland officer who answered Thompson's call was responsive to her complaint ...   More

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News The Portland Police Bureau put out a news release this afternoon that addresses one question raised about last week's police shooting. The question came yesterday from Rev. LeRoy Haynes at an Albina Ministerial Alliance news conference: Was the 25-year-old man killed by police, Keaton Otis, the person who shot Officer Christopher Burley twice in the legs? A video of the May 12 incident reveals ...   More

News Cops say Mike Reese has wasted no time as Portland's new top cop before purging the chief's office of several high-profile figures. Three sources close to the police bureau tell WW that Leslie Stevens and John Eckhart have been told they'll no longer be employed on the 15th floor of the Justice Center. Two of those sources say Brian Martinek also is out. Stevens is head of the bureau's Office ...   More

News Mayor (and newly minted Police Commissioner) Sam Adams joined today with his new police chief, Mike Reese to discuss last night's fatal police shooting in a press conference that took place less than 24 hours after Adams had introduced Reese yesterday as the new chief. There are still many unknowns in that shooting — the third fatal police shooting in 2010. According to the cops, at ...   More

News Cops reacted with relief today at the news that Mayor Sam Adams had fired Chief Rosie Sizer and replaced her with Mike Reese, a popular commander among the rank and file. As we reported last fall, Sizer had lost the trust of her troops — many of whom viewed her as unsupportive in the face of what many cops view as unfair criticism from the public. Three cops tell WW that Facebook lit ...   More

News Sixteen months after accepting the job Mayor Sam Adams originally didn't want, Commissioner Dan Saltzman responded this afternoon to the mayor's abrupt decision to strip Saltzman of his job as police commissioner and to fire Chief Rosie Sizer. Saltzman called Adams' decision an example of the mayor's vengeful and headline-driven style of governance. "I've experienced vindictiveness by the mayor," ...   More

News Back when he was still in charge of the police, city Commissioner Dan Saltzman was making noise about drug-testing for cops. Disturbed by a widening FBI steroid investigation that began in the Canby cop shop and that has spread to neighboring agencies, Saltzman told KOIN 6 he wanted to make drug testing part of ongoing contract negotiations with the police union. Now that Mayor Sam Adams ...   More

News The Albina Ministerial Alliance this morning called the fatal police shooting of Keaton Otis "both preventable and unnecessary." "Keaton Otis did not have to die and Officer Christopher Burley did not have to be shot," Rev. LeRoy Haynes of the alliance's Coalition for Justice and Police Reform said at a news conference. Otis, a 25-year-old African-American man who suffered from mental illness, ...   More