Paper tells readers, "Having an Emergency? Don’t Call the Police"

Maybe they would care more if they were actually paid reasonable salaries.

 

The first time? Oh, when the cops aren't called. The end of the editorial lists a bunch of times it has happened. When they were called and killed someone.

 

You stay classy, Portland.

 

If I was non-white or poor I would never call the Portland police unless I had no choice. There's been a pattern of excessive force and overreaction for some time, and I think a lot of it is an ingrained culture that can trace its roots back to the Kroeker regime.

 

Yeah, I wonder if they realize how many times the police are called every day. On balance, if you weighed the times the police are called and nobody is shot, to the handful of times that someone has been shot, it would make this argument very stupid. Accidental shootings happen. These guys aren't perfect. They're humans. They make judgment errors. Of course they should be punished if they were in the wrong, and we should never ignore these kinds of mistakes, but to hold the PPB responsible as a whole because of a small number of cases such as these is very stupid.

Oh, and Vinyard, most police departments in Oregon START their officers out at between $3500-$4000 per month, with benefits. That's pretty damn good for a job that doesn't require a bachelors degree.

PPB requires some college, but most departments don't require anything but a high school diploma and 21 years of age for employment. The overall process to become a cop is VERY long and tedious. It takes between 6 months to a year before you get the job you applied for. There's a written test, a physical, oral board interview, lie detector test and psych eval. Then you spend another three to six months training at the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training, learning how to become a cop. So a candidate is looking at up to a year before they finally put on the uniform and carry the gun.

 

I think people should think twice before calling the police.

There are some young individuals running around with a badge and a gun . . . and for a grand jury to find that these people are not being trained correctly in Portland. . . WTF! You are literally giving the power of life and death to these officers . . . train them correctly!


As much as one might hold this writer morally responsible if someone didn't call the police and things went bad. Do you also give the writer a medal of honor if someone reads his article, doesn't call the police and avoids being shot to death?

 

"Newspaper," lol...

 

There is a pattern of paranoia that is for sure.

I've had friend's that were very paranoid against the police... but I must say they all doing things that were against the law... they had a right to be paranoid. =)

If you don't trust the police... don't call them... but they will still do their jobs regardless.

It's_go_time... what are you talking about that people are running around without training? Oregon officers go through something like 20 weeks of training... double what I went through for basic training as a soldier.

Advising people not to call law enforcement or talk to law enforcement is a wonderful way to perpetuate crime don't you think? There are plenty of places that have gone down that route... some countries too... not nice places to live.

 

Have you read what citizens of Ptd (who had a chance to listen to Ptd police training) had to say. They wrote a scathing letter about PPB training. The commander acknowledge the letter and said changes will occur. That is what I am talking about.

I don't care how long they train (never said they weren't trained at all). . . they need to be trained properly and apparently people who heard all the facts about the wrongful death of a citizen think (very strongly) they are not trained properly.

 

I'm pretty sure PPB goes through the same DPSST training that every other officer in the state of Oregon goes through. They all have the same certification through the DPSST.

 

That's a good thing.

The question is whether that is enough training so that Portland officers can covers the situations they face in the field. Citizens of Ptd who got an inside look at PPB and training didn't think so. The commander of PPB agreed and plans to change training procedures.

I know that being a police officer can be a hard job. I am very pro-law enforcement and have literally over 50 aquaintances who are in law enforcement. but when a unarmed person is shot in the back, and the grand jury finds the officer didn't do anything criminal but instead the problem lies in the training of officers, then that needs to be addressed. I'm glad PPB recognizes this and are trying to fix the problems.

 

Less money then.