A Response To Portland Police Chief Mike Reese

We understand that Portland Police Chief Mike Reese has issued an apology for misrepresenting the facts around the Portland Police Bureau’s delayed response time on a sexual assault report, originally blaming, in part, Occupy Portland for the delay, which was untrue. Nonetheless, the Occupy Portland Sexual Assault Survivor’s Advocacy Committee would like to issue the following statement:

Sexual assault is an incredibly serious issue in this city, across this nation and the world as a whole. As such, a report of a sexual assault should never be used as a tool or media ploy for any reason, much less an apparent attempt to defame a peaceful non-violent movement like Occupy Portland.

While we firmly believe that issues of Portland Police Bureau resource misallocation are the responsibility of the police chief to begin with, we nevertheless feel obligated to inform Chief Reese that providing help to a survivor of a sexual assault should always take precedence over an assigned dedicated police detail observing peaceful protesters.

We hope Chief Reese will keep this in mind in the future if a similar situation occurs, especially now that he has withdrawn his bid to become mayor of this beautiful city of ours and intends to serve as police chief going forward.

This entry was posted on November 21, 2011 at 6:39 pm and is filed under Occupation, Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.