The Portland police had a bad day on wheels yesterday. First they were conducting off-road-vehicle exercises in the middle of the hellacious storm -- out on Hayden Island, of all places -- and Mother Nature was not pleased. A tree crashed down on top of a veteran officer, who wound up in surgery at Emanuel Hospital. It's not clear at this writing how bad off he is.

Maybe somebody up there is trying to tell the City Council something about Hayden Island. In any event, conducting four-wheeler training in yesterday's extreme conditions seems a wee bit too macho. Let's hope the officer comes out of it and makes a full recovery.

Then last night an officer left his patrol car in drive while he was getting out of it, and it ran over the chest of a suspect that another cop had on the ground. Supposedly the incident started with a jaywalking stop -- uh huh. The guy on the ground reportedly had a misdemeanor warrant outstanding, and the cop who had him down said he had tried to run away. A pretext stop and a runner -- always the precursor to sterling police work in Portland. Let's hope that the victim recovers fully as well. At least they didn't brutally beat and kick him to death, like they did to James Chasse.

Something tells us that these two incidents are going to wind up costing us local taxpayers a pretty penny. And sadly, neither seems to have been unavoidable.