If you ever want to see the official press releases from the Portland police before the young reporters at the O warm them over, you can go straight to the source here. We were leafing through some of the recent entries on that page, and we found an interesting nugget in the story about last week's successful arrest of an alleged hostage-taking suspect in southeast Portland. We hadn't noticed this factoid in any of the mainstream media warm-overs.

Guess who was the commanding officer for the raid. Hint: He's a colorful character, a "history buff":

At approximately 6:35 p.m., East Precinct Captain Mark Kruger, the Critical Incident Commander at the scene, directed SERT to immediately initiate the hostage rescue. SERT officers deployed numerous "flash bangs" (non-lethal explosive devices) to disorient and distract the suspect as they made entry.

The suspect was confronted inside the residence where he immediately complied with SERT officers and was taken into custody without incident or injury. The suspect was not armed at the time of his arrest.

There was more drama involved than might have been necessary, but still, if they were going to send in the troops, militia-style, they may very well have had the right figure out front.