While we've all been waiting for the official outcome of the grand jury inquiry into the Portland police killing of Jim Jim Chasse, I've been wondering whatever happened in conncetion with the police shooting death of Dennis Squeaky Young last January. Today's Willamette Week sheds some light on the status of that case:

[Craig Colby's] crusade [to have autopsies in such cases made public] can be traced to an early winter morning when Portland Police Lt. Jeffrey Kaer responded to a cell phone call from his sister about a suspicious vehicle in front of her Northeast Portland house, even though he was on duty in another precinct. Kaer, who didn't notify anyone he was leaving his post, confronted the sleeping Young in a 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass, and had him in a "San Kajo" wrist lock until Young tried to drive away, according to police reports cited by Colby in a July letter to local officials.

According to those reports, Kaer pulled his gun after the car's doorframe struck him when the car accelerated, hit a tree and then backed up. Kaer, who later said he feared he would be run over, fired the shot that killed Young. But Colby believes the car may have been going forward again, away from Kaer, when the officer fired.

In that July 31 letter to Police Chief Rosie Sizer, Mayor Tom Potter and District Attorney Mike Schrunk, Colby argues that the case demands not only departmental discipline, but criminal prosecution. The internal affairs investigation into Kaer is finished, police say, and the case will next come before the Police Bureau's use-of-force review board, which comprises officers and citizens. Earlier this year, a Multnomah County grand jury found no criminal wrongdoing in the shooting of Young, 28.