Came across this letter to the editor at blog.oregonlive.com. It reminded me of my phone call with Roger DeWitt, the Oregon concealed carry permit holder who fired on robbers attempting to mow down his cousin. Seems Mr. Lamb sees a disconnect between police PR and practice. Who knew?
A comparison of the June 2 front-page story on the Portland police shooting of Keaton Otis (“Police stop went bad almost instantly“) with the opinion piece by Gresham’s police chief is quite interesting (“Holster that gun, for everyone’s sake“). Chief Craig Junginger stresses how ensuring public safety depends on a highly trained police force rather than on any gun-toting citizen just firing away. (The chief was commenting on the case of a citizen firing his handgun at fleeing theft suspects.) The front-page news article makes clear that the officers involved in the Otis shooting did not have a particular plan, didn’t communicate with each other, and didn’t particularly work as a team, despite the claim by one officer that “they always know what each officer is going to do and how they operate.”
