Old FURIOUS nads! by The One True b!X

Not to, you know, tag team with Blogtown, but the latest on Robert King’s House of Wingnuttery comes via that blog’s mention of King’s editorial in the latest edition of the union’s newsletter.

While it does not yet appear to have been posted to the Rap Sheet, the front-page editorial, according to Blogtown, has King saying this: “My goal is to communicate, communicate, and communicate.” In addition, King reportedly laments the “politically liberal environment” and “little meaningful media support” in Portland.

I am, at times, tempted to be strident and I know there is widespread support in our membership for outrage. But in most cases I think our role is to be professional and respectful — even with groups that have very different perspectives from our own.

It’s a curious statement for King to make. He seems to claim that his is the voice of calm reason, holding back the flood of anger from the officers he represents.

Out here in the reality-based reality, we know that King’s conception of “professional and respectful” has been put into action (to cite just one example of many) by arguing that his officers are too dim to both know when and how to use force and to write reports about its use afterwards.

Should we expect him to be professional and respectful to other groups when his zealotry for getting his way leads him to insult his own force?

(What are the other examples? Claiming that any discussion of the issue of racial profiling is the equivalent of calling all police officers racists. Distorting and conflating fact with fiction in public comments in an effort to confuse the public after officer-involved shootings. Pick your own favorite, since there’s plenty to go around.)

No one told me this was going to be banner week for wingnuttery out of the ranks of the Portland Police Bureau. First the commentary in today’s paper, and now word of the latest King drivel. What’s next?

Clearly, the members of Robert King’s House of Wingnuttery should elect David Anderson to a leadership position. Anderson, a detective sergeant in the Portland Police Bureau’s East Precinct, wrote a commentary published in Theo today in which he claims that “constant attacks in the media on law enforcement” and “a stream of negative stories about local police” might mean the end of community policing in Portland.

(For what it’s worth, Blogtown is where I first spotted news of the commentary, although Metroblogging Portland weighs in now as well.)

Setting aside how that almost sounds like a threat — “stop criticizing us or we’ll stop working with the community” — I can’t help but wonder whether Anderson was recruited by King, or perhaps by Detective Peter Simpson (editor of the union’s newsletter), to write this piece (if in fact one of them didn’t write it for him to begin with) since they all partake of the same general arguments and positions.

Those arguments and positions boil down to one thing: Police work is beyond public discussion and outside of the public’s ability to comprehend. The priesthood of law enforcement, Robert King’s House of Wingnuttery believes, should be left alone to do what it does in secret and behind the thin blue line of silence.

Anderson misses a crucial point in his zeal to derail public discussion of police procedures and officer actions. If he and his cronies over in union leadership believe that discussing police work is outside the purview of the public for whom the police work, then the police themselves already have killed any chance of true community policing.

As threatened on Friday, I’ve just launched something of a companion site to Portland Stories. So head over and read Bringing The Past To The Present and learn a little bit about Portland Histories, where you can share what you know, what you’ve learned, and what you’ve discovered about Portland’s history.

Since its appearance in Theo on Friday as the website of the week, Portland Stories has so far received four new submissions: Old Hollywood Theatre Trained For Mickey Mouse Club by Leo Campbell, Integrity Testing In The GIMITY Lane by ParatransitTodd, Double Shot by Kathleen, and Terrorist Attack In Burlingame! by Jessica Sweeney. Come by and check them out.

Addendum: Make that five. Just since the above was posted, now there’s Square Bubbles by Paul Turner.

‘Lie can’t comment on the grand jury looking into Vladimir Golovan. But she can blog about UPS.

Could you take a quick look at this post of mine over at the MT forums and let me know if you have a solution?

Blogtown and the Mercury call out the president of the eponymous Robert King’s House of Wingnuttery over his refusal to accept phone calls from Jo Ann Bowman to discuss racial profiling.