Guy shot by cops finally gets named

I see the Portland police have gotten around to identifying the guy they shot in northeast Portland, three weeks after the fact. His name is Matthew Ronald Leahey, and he is 36 years old. Yesterday the cops gave up his name as they moved him from the hospital to the county jail.

Leahey is charged with attempted first-degree murder, among other charges, reportedly stemming from some sort of exchange of gunfire that happened when the cops pulled him over at 78th and Mason (a block north of Sandy) for some unspecified alleged traffic infractions the night of May 6.

It's been remarkable how little the city's many hard-core cop haters, and the media, have said or written about this case. But with a name like Matthew Leahey, I guess, there's no racial element to milk, and so maybe that's why the crickets continue to chirp. I also note that one or more people by that name have got an interesting, and public, rap sheet. But none of that means the cops were necessarily justified in shooting and critically injuring him. Apparently four members of the newly reconstituted gun violence squad pulled their triggers.

Anyway, not all police shootings are alike, that's for sure.

At perhaps the other end of the spectrum, the family of Kevin Peterson Jr. is suing the Clark County sheriff's office in federal court for shooting Peterson to death in the 'Couve a year and a half ago. Video from the scene showed that Peterson pointed a gun at the police who were chasing him, but that was only after they had shot him in the back as he was running away. 

One of the three deputies who killed Peterson was himself shot to death in another cowboy operation of his last summer. And another one of the three killed a crime victim, instead of the perpetrator, by mistake a few months ago.