One more "grand" jury failure

Sorry, forgot to include visual aids.

When did this happen? I've been away from corpy news for some time.

Grand Jury clears officer involved in fatal crash
Gresham Police will conduct Internal Affairs investigation

By Kelly Moyer-Wade
The Gresham Outlook

A grand jury has cleared a Gresham police officer involved in a deadly crash earlier this month of all criminal charges.

A Multnomah County Grand Jury convened Friday, July 21, to consider charges, including criminally negligent homicide and two counts of third-degree assault, against Gresham Police Officer Josh Linstrom, whose patrol car slammed into a minivan at 9:25 p.m. Saturday, July 1, at the intersection of 188th Avenue and Glisan Street in Gresham, killing one of the minivan's three passengers, Marino Sanchez-Sanchez, 29.

Linstrom was en route to a call about speeding drivers when the accident occurred.

The driver of the minivan, 33-year-old Diego D. Martinez of Portland, and his front seat passenger, Jose Luis Bahena, 37, of Vancouver, suffered non-life threatening injuries. Linstrom received minor injuries.

The Grand Jury deliberated for four hours Monday before delivering a "not true" bill on all charges.

Gresham Police Chief Carla Piluso said Friday evening, July 21, in a press release that the Gresham Police Department will conduct an Internal Affairs investigation, "to ensure that no policy, procedures or general orders of the Gresham Police Department have been violated."

Linstrom, who was placed on paid administrative leave following the accident, was returned to light duty status (office work) on Monday, July 17. Piluso said she will consider Linstrom's status over the weekend and may put the officer back on patrol duty as early as Monday, July 24.

Oh, I bet the officer breathed a sigh of relief when he saw all those brown skins. Think if he'd hit a van or a limo full of one of those buttermilk skinned bachelorette parties with the fiancee a rich software magnates daughter. The cops probably hate those types too. Maybe it wouldn't make any difference.

Yeah, I wish it were just a matter of sometime in the future, white persons being the victims, would be the catalyst for reining in those "protect and serve". Really though, law enforcement, commissioned to uphold the law, are in many instances, effectively above the law. At least this is frequently a pretext by which they are routinely able to elude accountability for gross errors in judgement that occur on their part for one reason or another.

A comparatively benign example: bike cops on sidewalks, but for obvious reasons, no one else. On roads in cars, lame-brain non-cops do just exactly what officer linstrom did. I wonder how the bureau manual describes the circumstances under which different rules of the road are available to officers where they believe a suspect being pursued must be caught. Got the manual, wading through it is the next challenge.

As long as the public continues to be passive in response to these kinds of incidents, they'll just keep happening, because the present procedure law enforcement uses to deal with such incidents obviously is working just fine for law enforcement.

I agree with you st. As long as citizens sit and watch these events, they will keep happening, like some weird ball game. Maybe it is too late. After the Kaady incident, many people did keep asking questions, made appointments with the sheriff, talked to neighbors, wrote letters, made calls...on and on. Nothing has changed even a little bit. The waiting game works both ways. Law enforcement simply waits for us to lose interest, to come away disheartened and to move on.

Being in a different jurisdiction, I don't know that your Grand Juries are chosen and function differently than our here in MA. HERE ..... (from my so far limited Grand Jury experience)

a) They don't call a whole lot more people than needed to fill the jury. Not like with a petit jury. Remember, with a Grand Jury the cases aren't known in advance so "do you know anybody involved" doesn't factor in to get you off the duty.

b) Here the "going through stop signs" etc. would make it (felony) "reckless endangerment" in this jurisdiction. But something being said interests me greatly. The race/ethnicity of the victims was mentioned. Now I understand how I would know the race/ethtnicity of a witness testifying. I would also know the race/ethnicity of victims if shown pictures of them. Otherwise --- HOW? Somehow I can't imagine the doctor who examined the victims testifying "The BLACK victim Jon Doe had a crushed skull. The WHITE victim Mary Roe has a broken femur"

c)"The Grand Jury deliberated for four hours Monday before delivering a "not true" bill on all charges." Well that's a pretty long deliberation for a Grand Jury. Remember, they are JUST voting on whether or not to indict (enough evidence probably available -- they consider evidence that might not be admitted and without considering any defense). This is not like a petit jury deciding guilt or innocence beyond a reasonable doubt which has to be unanimous. With a Grand Jury, it's just a majority vote one way or the other.
What I'm trying to say here is that if it did take four hours (how would the press know? At least here Grand Juries operate in secret) -- well there obviously must have been some substantial number of folks on the jury arguing for indictment.

They have a huge pool of people on jury duty and they go through them until they find the right ones, the ones that will produce the result they want. It's rigged.

I've often wondered why they even bother to go through the pretense. Everybody knows what the outcome will be.

I'm sure they at least state the names of the victims. How many white guys you know named Marino Sanchez-Sanchez?

The criminal justice system is not a tool for divining truth and rendering justice. It is an arena in which highly cynical mercenaries do battle, and the most highly paid ones with access to the better resources are most times the ones who win. Don't ever expect justice from a court.

The grand freakin jury does/sees/acts based solely upon the information that the TOP COP (District Attorney, in case you haven't been paying attention) presents to them. He can indict a ham sandwich, according to most experts, and he can fail to indict Jack the Ripper, if Jack happens to be one of his own. Trust me, I know whereof I write, and it is a stacked jury. "How do they know the race/ethnicity of the victim?" quite simply, they are told by the DA. They also have autopsy pictures, and sometimes, as in the present case, the name is a dead give away, as was also the situation in the Fouad Kaady case. Don't be naive, they know. While race is not the total decider, I am in total agreement that had Vera Kats' niece or other close relative been one of the victims, there would be now no question as to the cops' culpability.

The "evidence" presented to the grand jury, without any challenge from any unbiased, or victim biased attorney, is the "evidence" gathered by the cops friends, or as they refer to themselves, "brothers in arms." It is then packaged, polished, and presented by perhaps the most pro cop authority in the system, the DA, who is basically elected at the cops' will, because we, the taxpayer/voters are too unaware of the ability, and the POWER of the DA, and have very little knowledge of the legal system as a whole.

We need to go back to Preliminary hearings like they showed on Perry Mason (all of those shows are preliminary hearings). That is how it used to be, public, no secrets, and with ALL the witnesses. They stopped preliminary hearings and went to Grand Juries to save time, and the defense lawyers let it happen, so what we have now are Secret Grand Juries, where ANYTHING can be said because what is testified to is never known to anyone. It is criminal in itself.

Grand Jury needs to decide to Indict.

I live on 188th and I know the stop sign well. Dont remember a cherry tree limb ever EVER being a problem for my viewing. This was his beat for almost a year. Would be like not knowing it was a two way road, speed limit 25. He was doing about 55 mph over the speed limit to cut somebody off at the pass who was already being pursued. He was going too fast to stop.
Could have easily been me driving and could have been my son that was killed in the backseat. I dont think I want to sit idly by and let this cop drive ever again let alone drive down my street. Gresham Police need to be held accountable and their Ranger procedures changed. The family of Diego D. Martinez and the men still alive need good lawyers.
Anybody know anything about the victims other than names?