Now I'm confused. Was it the police investigation which determined an officer "fell" on Chasse (as the Trib story says) or the medical examiner (as the police material yesterday says)?

Setting aside the fact that nothing we've ever seen from the medical examiner actually says that.

What the cops are saying happened, and what actually happened, are two different stories. Seeing the entire thing, I can say, without a doubt, that these cops killed Mr. Chasse when they beat the living soul out of him. The officer didnt, like he said, land on him. They actually rolled on the pavement. And, no one is even talking about the lies the cops fed witness's after the arrest was made. The cops said that Mr. Chasse had 14 prior convictions, and that he had crack on him. How in the hell did this all slip by the reports??? They lied, and they are using this "accident" as a loophole out of this case. The cops lied. Plain and simple. I cannot and will not ever trust another police officer again.

To me, 16 ribs is on the outside of credulity. However, breaking 16 ribs in one fall IN 26 Places(!)???

That's so impossible it's not the least bit funny.

PoPo is clearly out of control. And their pensions are bankrupting the city.

In addition to a nice pension, these guys get a free pass for violent, criminal, sociopathic behavior. That's a nice recruiting tool! Until something changes, this story will be repeated from time to time.

I heard a caller on the Victoria Taft Show tonight, who claimed to have been a nurse for 21 years, compare the Chasse injuries with those one might get while receiving CPR. After agreeing with the caller, the host went on to dismiss the Chasse death, compare the incident with the Rodney King beating (which she was for), and hold up "Thumper" Humphreys and Sgt. Stacy Koon as exemplary police officers, worthy of community adoration. What a great world.

Of course, nothing like this happens in The Couv.

To me, 16 ribs is on the outside of credulity. However, breaking 16 ribs in one fall IN 26 Places(!)???

That's so impossible it's not the least bit funny.

I agree it's probably impossible which opens the door for the concept that perhaps some of the ribs were broken doing CPR. It's not hard to imagine that Chasse was in the best state of health physically and that his bones were to begin with. Obviously some of the injury occurred during the incident but to continue to focus on 16 ribs broken in 26 places shows that no matter what happened your mind is already made up as to what happened.

CPR can indeed break a few ribs. But not 16 ribs in 26 places. They beat and kicked this man to death. Let's get off the River Denial and face up to it, and to what's happened in the Portland police. Dealing with an inconvenient truth is not the end of the world -- if you can't do it, you shouldn't be a sworn officer.

A long time ago, when I was a young girl in bell-bottoms, I climbed a fence to get into a rock concert

It could have been anyone, but it's the real story that leaves me with nothing left to say, leaves me curled up in a fetal position. Remembering --- the kid, dancing through the perimeter, waving his bag of pot high in the air. And then, the wave that broke him. Piled on him, kicked him anywhere a soft spot was open. He cried. I remember still, the cop who told me, "you can't change this."

I was standing there, this dumb young girl, saying, "stop" "don't do that" "you can't do that"

That was a long time ago. In another state,

And, so, the music has changed. But I will never forget that boy's face. He looked right into my eyes, as he was kicked into unconciousness. What does a person do with that?

opens the door for the concept that perhaps some of the ribs were broken doing CPR

If the Oregonian's rendition is correct, the police were on their way to the hospital --were three minutes away from the emergency room-- when they pulled off the road into a residential neighborhood to give CPR? Then called for an ambulance, delaying Chasse's getting professional medical attention?

It doesn't compute. I'm trained in giving CPR. But if I'm 3 minutes from an emergency room, and if my wife's dying in the back seat, I get her to where the professionals have far more tools to save her life. Of course if she's handcuffed and coughing up blood, I might have some explaining to do.

I hate, really hate, armchair second-guessing. But I don't understand delaying getting someone to the emergency room.

I just read the Police Bureau's power-point presentation. According to it, the officer began CPR 3 minutes after pulling off the road on the way to the hospital. It also says it took 3 minutes for the ambulance to transport Chasse to the hospital from where the officers pulled over. Why not just take him to the hospital in the first place?

I heard a caller on the Victoria Taft Show tonight, who claimed to have been a nurse for 21 years, compare the Chasse injuries with those one might get while receiving CPR.

The report clearly states that some of the broken ribs were not consistent with what can happen when CPR is given.

Time to move on.

I guess if I were the Chasse family, I'd now be thinking of a civil case for negligence and wrongful death that would include the city/police, the ambulance company, Cascadia, and Providence. Have I left anyone out?

Personally, I'd hope to be on that jury. I'm thinking $100 million might produce a little accountability. No, maybe that's too low.

The police brutally murdering an innocent man under the guise of fulfilling their duties is tragic. Compounding that lunacy, the DA's failure to get an indictment is a mockery of an already flawed justice system and the DA's office should be ashamed of their equally heinous conduct in protecting murderers. That said, what's entirely disturbing is the lack of collective outrage in the community (I have seen little commentary outside this and a few other blogs). The press is completely asleep on this and bought the police line/lies from day one. If the community as a whole doesn't condemn this type of behavior (and force meaningful change, including the firing of people unfit to serve a police), how many more people will suffer the fate of James Chasse? If we, as a community, let this slide (like we have with the deaths of so many others in the long line of Portland Police killings), we should be ashamed of ourselves.

As a wife of a police officer and a also having a sibling with mental illness, I find this situation to be so sad and feel for everyone. I wouldn't publicly post my opinions because I was neither there or heard any of the testimony personally.

However, so many of you seem to know all the facts and can easily pass judgement not having ANY experience dealing with the mentally ill or, Jack, even being able to handle being around a mentally ill person. I can only imagine how easy it is to sit in your nice house, at your nice computer, with your nice family wax poetically how wrong all of this is. People (including me obviously) actually read what you write here and I'm sure believe you know talking about. In this case, that scares me and makes me a little sick.

This is not about living with a person with mental illness. This is about a police force that kills people when it really doesn't need to do so. Chasse, Young, Perez, Poot... it's a long list, and getting longer. I'm no expert on law enforcement, but at some point it doesn't take an expert to see that a horrible injustice was done here, and that something is terribly wrong.

Does your police officer spouse regularly "thump" people beyond what it takes to subdue them? Does he have serious anger management issues? Does his job terrify him, to the point where he's a threat to innocent people? Does he cover up fatal mistakes made by his partners? Is he poorly trained? Unfortunately, that describes some of his brethren on the force.

Pardon me for speaking up.

Don't forget about Fouad Kaady, the burned, bleeding and naked young man a Sandy cop and Clackamas Co deputy shot seven times because he was acting strangely. Oh wait, the cops didn't want to get his blood on them. Oh, I forgot, they left their shotguns loaded and unsecured so they thought he was a threat. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Let's see what Gerry Spence can do with lethal force policies.