The Porter Incident - The

The Porter Incident - The City Pages are like country music; every part of it I don't love, I pretty much detest. There's not much middle ground.

Music reviews? Awful (at least where Melissa Maerz is involved). (Note to Greil Marcus: Your writing is both wonderful and wretched. Too many of your reviews rely on the comparison of polar-opposite attritutes, and yet too few do - the comparison leaves the reader at some nonspecific middle ground, and yet it doesn't. When I read your work, I'm tempted to cry, but also I want to laugh. I'm tempted to thank G-d for Anthony DeCurtis in comparison - but then...well, actually, I still do that).

Theater Reviews? Wonderful!

Local Music 'n Arts scene coverage? For most arts? Great! For music? Like a high school newspaper where the reporters write endlessly about what their friends are doing.

Movie Reviews? Fine!

Editorial and Opinion? Dreadful.

Restaurant Reviews? Excellent!

News?

Well, there are times when the Citiy Pages astounds. G.R. Anderson Jr. And Mike Mosedale have an excellent report in this week's CP about the Stephen Porter case.

The case - which involves Abner Louima-like charges by an Afro-American man that Minneapolis cops sodomized him with a toilet plunger during a drug bust.

"Stephen Porter maintains that police detained him in a separate room for a long period of time during the bust at 2519 Third Street. Witness accounts seem to support that, and the timeline of events is consistent with it. (Porter was eventually booked into the Hennepin County Jail at 6:53 p.m.) Earwitnesses from inside and outside the house say they heard blows and/or screams of pain. (Though little is known about the medical report from Porter's subsequent examination, the Star Tribune did report that 'sources familiar with the medical report filed by a doctor who examined Porter on Monday night said his injuries were consistent with his report of soreness and tenderness of the rectum,' a characterization that is consistent with Porter's story--but also consistent with his past practice of hiding drugs inside his rectal cavity.)

Here are Porter's own words about what occurred, from his Wednesday press conference: 'Officer Jindra gestured to Officer [inaudible] to go get something out of the bathroom. So when he returned, he had a plunger... Officer Jindra tried to stick it up my butt four times. I felt it twice go in. I got teared [sic] tissues in my back--my butt.'"

But wait. The story goes on from there, covering the nuances in the story - from both sides - that the major media never got around to.

Definitely worth a read.

Posted by Mitch at October 24, 2003 11:46 AM