One Down, Three To Go...

Bob Whitsitt resigns as President/GM of the Blazers...

This is a man who failed to realize that you have to build a basketball TEAM, not just collect high-priced players. What do you get? You get a team that has outstanding players (Rasheed Wallace, Bonzi Wells) who can't lead. Game 7 of the first round of the playoffs was a prime example....in the final quarter, NO ONE stepped up in the clutch. (Well, no *Blazers* did.....)

Next on the list.....Portland Police Chief Mark Kroeker, Mayor Vera Katz, and pResident Bush.....we can only hope, can't we?

The Silence is Deafening...

....from the Portland Police Bureau regarding the killing of a pregnant woman during a traffic stop.

I am well aware of the Portland Police Bureau rules affording counsel to an officer involved in a shooting. What should be noted is not what has been said, but what hasn't been said....the cops are now getting their stories straight for the grand jury.

Normally, when there's a police shooting, the "truth" comes out fairly quickly...."X had a gun and was waving it around....Y lunged at the cops suddenly...." Not this time. The only account that has come out so far has been this one from one of the other passengers of the car.

Granted, this witness is the boyfriend of the victim, and he has a record. That doesn't discredit his statement, though; and I tend to judge both his statement and the statement the police will come up with as self-serving.

I'm well aware of how police reports diverge from the truth of the situation from my work on the lawsuit against the City of Portland and officers resulting from the police attack on peaceful protesters when George W. Bush came to town last summer.

Police reports from that event indicated that the protesters were pelting the cops with rocks, bottles, batteries, and ice, yet multiple videos show nothing crossing the police lines except soap bubbles.....until the police clubbed and pepper-sprayed people without provocation.

Undoubtedly the police reports will allege something similarly far from the truth, and there aren't any videotapes of the incident.

My take on this? The cops stopped these people on a driving while black charge, the woman panicked and tried to drive away after they arrested the driver, and the cop panicked and shot her. I'm not alleging a premeditated killing, but an overreaction to a situation getting out of the police's control, and someone ending up dead as a result. In short, a negligent homicide.