If true, that Oregonian report is certainly at odds with today's Page One, above-the-fold headline: "Man with gun killed by police".

Were they presumptive, or perhaps misled by the PPB? Or a little of both?

While the dead guy certainly appears to have been a waste of perfectly good oxygen, it's sad even those of us law and order types now automatically doubt any version of events that come from PPB.

When I was on a jury, the judge told us that if we found any witness had lied in part, we could discount any or all of the rest of their testimony.

So now, I do.

The Oregonian article, if accurate, paints a picture of a fellow who society will not long mourn. What a self imposed waste of a life.

So - if you go into a hospital parking lot with a lid from your Starbucks Vente (a black piece of plastic), you can get shot by a PPB hero (?). But, its OK if you are a worthless loser (?). I think that is what we have learned from this latest episode of PPB "enforcement." At some point the trigger happy PPB cops are going to run into some idiot 2A open carry wacko and there is going to be no winners in the outcome.

It's really sad to read such cold,cold testimony from this man's mother. It's obvious to me that she did NOT do her job of lovingly raising her child.
Horrible parenting.

"He was troubled," said Hatch, who lives in Iowa. "He was in and out of prison most of his adult life. He got into drugs early. There wasn't much left of the person we knew as a kid growing up."

Really? What happened?

"So - if you go into a hospital parking lot with a lid from your Starbucks Vente (a black piece of plastic), you can get shot by a PPB hero (?). But, its OK if you are a worthless loser (?)."

...So did you miss the part about the hospital calling 911 reporting and that the guy had a gun and had pointed it at the security patrol? Sorry, I understand that PPB has issues, but this doesn't seem to be one of the cases where an innocent citizen has been wronged.

No, in this case a guilty person has been wronged. There is no death penalty for menacing. When the police got there, apparently there was no gun.

Pretending to have a weapon is a capital offense. Just ask Saddam Hussein.

Pretending to have a weapon is a capital offense. Just ask Saddam Hussein.

I hope everyone saw the MSNBC special the other night called "Hubris". To use Cheney's expression about Mohammed Atta meeting with Iraqi intelligence agents in Czechoslovakia, it has been "pretty well confirmed" that the official story of why we had to go into Iraq was a bunch of lies.

Most damning of the information shown in the special? The Rumsfeld memos. Michael isikoff:

By late November, Rumsfeld was meeting with Gen. Tommy Franks, Centcom commander, to plot the “decapitation” of the Iraqi government, according to the now declassified talking points agenda from the sessions (shown on television for the first time in the documentary). The talking points suggest that Rumsfeld and his team were grappling with a tricky issue: “How [to] start?” the war. In other words, what would the pretext be? Various scenarios were outlined: “US discovers Saddam connection to Sept. 11 attack or to anthrax attacks?” reads one of them. “Dispute over WMD inspections?” reads another. “Start now thinking about inspection demands.”

So 3 or 4 trillion dollars later - and with over 3,000 dead American soldiers - we now have solid proof that Iraq was sold on lies and that Bush, Cheney, etc...have betrayed the American People. Will they pay for it? Of course not. Over one hundred thousand people dead and it was a deception.

I believe this all ties together with an earlier comment here by itjd about this police shooting:

While the dead guy certainly appears to have been a waste of perfectly good oxygen, it's sad even those of us law and order types now automatically doubt any version of events that come from PPB.

I would say the reason is that we are now living in a post-law era where our leaders get away with horrendous crimes without a thought of being held accountable. It's bound to affect society as a whole. Oh, and the credibility of the media has been destroyed.

I don't know enough about the details of this shooting to judge the officers here, but I did see the Oregonian headline at the store that read "Man with gun killed by police" and like other readers here, I immediately doubted that it was true. Call it the lessons of the Iraq War.

Chumps.

It's Wednesday, right? Have the police publicly stated anything about a gun? What is goong on?

oops, "going"

Update: he was armed, with a phone.