It's Monday morning here in Portland, and if you're a weekday-only blog reader, there were a couple of stories over the weekend that you may wish to catch up or weigh in on. First, late Friday afternoon the medical examiner revealed that Jim Chasse, the mentally ill man who died in Portland police custody on Sep. 17, died from blunt trauma to his chest. Meaning that he may very well have been trampled (or beaten or kicked) to death by the police officers who pursued him on "strange behavior" and "suspicion of public urination." (Or maybe he just fell...) Astonishingly, the medical examiner has also already ruled the death an "accident," a conclusion about the officers' state of mind for which no evidence (not even the officers' own testimony) was cited. Oh well -- we've been warned about the "independence" of the medical examiner before. Our latest post on Chasse was here.

On Saturday we learned that the city has been holding secret talks with Warner Pacific College to sell the college a goodly chunk of Mount Tabor Park, and that there are proposals being circulated that would result in "divestiture" of other parts of the park as well. Another nasty slap to the face of the neighborhood by Big Pipe Saltzman, who made no friends on Mount Tabor with the reservoir cover fiasco. The post on this one is here.