She called 1-800-SLANDER

Portland commissioner Jo Ann "With the Bullhorn" Hardesty has filed her lawsuit against the cops and her employer, the city government, seeking big monetary damages for harm she says she suffered when someone in the police bureau spread false information about her last spring.

We've written about the sorry incident quite a few times already, and so for the details, you can go here, here, here, or here. What the cops did was outrageous.

The lawsuit story, however, broke the additional news that Hardesty is accusing not only ex-police union chief Brian Hunzeker, who resigned from the union presidency in disgrace (though not from the police force) following the incident, but also another Portland officer, a woman named Kerri Ottoman. In addition to those two, from whom Hardesty wants $1 million each, she's after the police union for $3 million.

One unfortunate note: She's also joined the city as a defendant, seeking a token $1 in damages. That will give the City Hall lawyers an excuse to continue to stonewall the public on what actually happened. A top-secret "investigation" of some sort or another has been going on for nine months, supposedly. Now it will be "We can't comment because of the litigation."

I hope Hardesty gets a big payday. The cops deserve a kick in the pants, and maybe she'll be able to retire, which would be good for everyone. But this case seems unlikely to be tried in court, and so we taxpayers may never know who did what to whom.