 link to blogtown.portlandmercury.com
"Now it seems the city attorney's office has reached a verdict to suspend enforcement of the law, and passed it on to Police Chief Rosie Sizer."
The staff at the Merc. seem to think they are the only ones who shined light upon the James Chasse case. I do applaud their part of the effort. The most credit goes to the family and lawyers of James. Let's get back to sit/lie....
I called Linda Meng's office last week starting Tuesday June 23rd when the news about sit/lie broke. She's the city attorney who for years lied to city council that sit lie was constitutional. I dared her office to fight the Judge's ruling and appeal. Seems Linda's seen the light or had her hand slapped.
The Mercury staff did a good job in posting the JPG picture of the Police Memo. It will be great when there is a Police Memo titled: "Read at Roll Call and Post" and goes on to state that cops shall not use a variety of methods to restrain protesters.
It would read something like:
From this point on no more:
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- pepper spray on non violent protesters
- asking random people for ID near protests
- forcing people to assemble in distant safe protest zones
- giving out bogus tickets in front of protest crowds to send a message
- using horses and motorcycles to intimidate protesters
- dressing up as protesters and trying to create trouble
- lying in court to make the charges on protesters tougher to fight
- taking away photo equipment of observers
- telling nearby protesters they will be arrested if they don't move on
- telling protesters to move along or stop when they are on a public way
- putting too many cops on protest duty to gain overtime
In conclusion, all of the above violate section 26 of the Oregon Constitution, which every officer will be tested upon before and after being assigned to any public protest.
Section 26. Assemblages of people; instruction of representatives; application to legislature. No law shall be passed restraining any of the inhabitants of the State from assembling together in a peaceable manner to consult for their common good; nor from instructing their Representatives; nor from applying to the Legislature for redress of greviances [sic].-
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It was something like "disordley conduct" or something like that... the memo goes on to (encourage) the collection of "supporting evidence" about the situation (to use for court latter if challenged) it describes items to document, and to make detailed illustrations, etc to note
<so as to help make the charges look spot on ...Im sure>
I myself thought it to be interesting in that, it seemed to encourage the police to act the same in regards to sitting on the sidewalk and being homeless ....by just "shifting" the charges (maybe even mor serious of a (sic)crime) to another name and maybe even trying to do a "Well this will show you for daring to challenge our sit-lie tool.... see now you have this charge *instead!"
Now I hope that wasn't the jist of the roll call memo that I seen?
I would hope that there are no "shifting" of hard feelings on what was a unconstitutional use of police/court involvement?
I wonder if any one else has read this recent memo feels the same way?
Click the link in the original post or check the Mercury blog to read it