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--> --> Portland police shootings have dropped PORTLAND (AP) - A recent survey and several high-profile police shootings have triggered concerns here about police procedures, training and judgment. The survey, done by the Washington Post, ranked Portland eighth out of the 50 largest local U.S. law-enforcement agencies in the number of fatal shootings per 1,000 sworn officers, with 25 fatal shootings from 1990 to 2000. Of the five police shootings this year, two have been fatal, including the attention-grabbing death of a Mexican national in a psychiatric hospital in April. But despite the apparent surge in police violence, the number of officer-involved shootings in Portland is actually down from the early part of the decade. In 1992, for instance, 16 police shootings included five fatalities, according to Portland Police Bureau figures. Regardless of the statistics, officers are finding themselves on the defensive. "There is a concern . . . that they are being prejudged for their actions," Police Chief Mark Kroeker said. "That their motives are being misperceived." Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University, said the number of police shootings in Portland - and elsewhere - has fallen because crime is down. He said a force will often be perceived as trigger-happy when several incidents happen in a short time. "The problem is these kinds of encounters do not spread evenly over 12 months," Levin said. "They can easily occur randomly in a short period of time, making it appear that police are shooting everything in sight and that Jesse James has joined the force. But the truth is, if these episodes had happened with greater intervals in between, no one would see a pattern." State law says officers can use deadly force to protect themselves or others from what they reasonably believe to be an immediate threat of death or serious physical injury. City officers receive about 80 hours of firearms training in the basic academy and eight additional hours of firearms training during their annual in-service refresher training. They are trained on the importance of maintaining distance and cover from an armed threat and are put through scenarios with turning targets to learn how to recognize what's a threat and what is not. "Not everything we do is train to shoot," said Portland Sgt. Steve Buchtel, a firearms training supervisor who was shot in the left hand in 1996 during a standoff outside a convenience store. "We ask people to justify their actions in training and articulate why they did or did not shoot. We haven't just thrown these policies together. We're not just winging it out there." That training didn't help Bruce Browne, 40, of Vancouver, Wash. Police shot Browne twice late Wednesday after he wrestled a semiautomatic handgun away from a teen-age assailant at a Northeast Portland gas station. The officer who responded ordered Browne to get down and fired six shots at him, unaware that Browne was not the aggressor. James Fyfe, a retired New York City police lieutenant and criminal justice professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, believes the most important training police agencies can provide officers is tactical training in how to approach potentially deadly situations with the least threat of injury. "The military and fire service don't commit themselves to life-threatening situations until they know everything possible about the situation. That's what we try to get the police to do," Fyfe said. "They should try to anticipate what the other individual might do." Email your... Technical questions & comments to: WebMaster Daily Tidings editorial comments & questions to: Editor Visit our other Oregon Newspapers... | Albany Democrat-Herald | Ashland Daily Tidings | Corvallis Gazette-Times | | Lebanon Express | Newport News-Times | Springfield News | Cottage Grove Sentinel | Ashland Daily Tidings 1661 Siskiyou Blvd. Ashland, OR 97520 Telephone 541-482-3456 © Copyright 2001 Lee Northwest Publishing