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Police Association Website Celebrates History of
Abuses Everyone has to have a webpage these days. Even the Portland Police Association [PPA] has cobbled together a sparse collection of .html files and established its presence on the Information Superhighway. The PPA's website doesn't provide much information for an average citizen to ponder. The PPA shares a few words about its founding and history, a note or two about collective bargaining, and other miscellaneous tidbits. But the page describing the PPA's legal representation http://www.ppa1942.org/legalrep.html [site no longer active as of 2022] is really interesting. This page reveals that the PPA's lawyer is named Will Aitchison. His credentials and tenure are detailed. Mr. Aitchison represents the PPA during collective bargaining and in disciplinary cases. I don't want to summarize this part because I think you'll get a better feeling for the relationship between Mr. Aitchison and the PPA if I quote: "In 1981, Aitchison acted as the PPA's lawyer in a successful challenge to the discharges of two police officers who had killed opossums and left their carcasses on the doorstep of a restaurant owned by a crime family. Several years later, Aitchison represented he [sic] PPA in overturning the discharges of two officers who circulated T-shirts reading 'Don't choke 'em, smoke 'em' after the City banned the use of the carotid hold. In 1995, Aitchison represented the PPA in a 13-day hearing challenging the firing of an officer who had shot 23 times at a fleeing suspect, a case which resulted in the officer's reinstatement with full back pay." 1981 was a long time ago and I was only a small child, but I seem to remember that the restaurant in question was owned by a black family, and that the police were found to have a hobby of running over opossums with their patrol cars and leaving them in front of black-owned businesses and homes. And it seems worth noting that the City banned the carotid hold shortly after a Portland Police officer choked security guard Lloyd "Tony" Stevenson to death while mistakenly detaining him. The reinstatement of Officer Douglas Erickson in 1995 came despite the fact that Erickson shot Gerald Gratton in the back (see PPR 6), and the grand jury issued a rare statement of caution that the number of shots fired seemed excessive. It seems fairly clear that the purpose of this section of the PPA's webpage is to celebrate Will Aitchison. The PPA wants to show its members, and the world, what a great guy he is. Mr. Aitchison will do his darnedest to get cops off when they get caught harassing citizens, abusing and mur-dering people in their custody, or using excessive force. I'm sure they're very happy to have him. It's too bad the people being harassed, abused, and murdered don't have the same luck.
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April, 2000
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Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#20 Table of Contents
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