The police are ultimately there to protect rich property owners.

Killing the wee folks actually keeps everyone in a state of fear - which is part of the strategy of protect and serve (the rich).

btw - does anybody know how much money we are paying to have that surveillance plane circling around Portland, night after night?

And does anybody know what exactly are they doing up there? Listening to our cell phones? Using night-vision, infra-red see-through walls technology?

I'm guessing we could pay for the school arts programs with the money we are are wasting on that kind of crap.

The police bureau is only as trustworthy as its worst member.

Maybe it is time for the rank and file to encourage their union to stop defending the thugs and scumbags among them. As it now, they neither have, nor deserve, the trust of the public. Plus, they have to work alongside trigger-fingers and at least one known neo-nazi.

It is in the rank and file's own interest to purge these people off the force. Instead they are caught up in "winning" petty battles against management.

I am guessing we could pay for a lot in schools with money wasted on crap.

I find a particular plane flying around sometimes for hours and at times days in a row very disconcerting and nerve wracking.

I find a particular plane flying around sometimes for hours and at times days in a row very disconcerting and nerve wracking

Wearing tin foil can help.

The plane has been around for years, and chiefly gives the street kids something to laugh and point at while making rude remarks about the police. Some officers, I am told, do take some comfort in having air support.
The plane is registered to the bureau, and got some publicity in 2009. I often saw one flying repeated figure 8s over NE Portland in the summer months of the 1980s-90s and while the bureau did not like to talk about it because of noise complaints, lots of people knew what it was. It was at that time chiefly detailed to the then-rampant NE gang activity, which seemed like a good idea at the time.
It is not a spy plane, because the Supreme Court condones aerial searches as being not unlike other forms of patrol. There have been news accounts of Portland assisting in a search using flir infrared heat sensing. Don't know if the courts ever said anything about that, altho there is a US SC case out of Oregon requiring a warrant for seaches with similar thermal imaging devices.
Sgt Josh Goldschmidt of the PPB is a pilot and was an instructor in flying as an observer at an airborne aviation conference sometime back.