A municipal PD doing tactical exercises in wilderness?

Via Danne

Note to Portland police: If you're going to go target shooting on someone else's property, you might want to give them a heads-up.

Especially if that property happens to be part of a federally designated scenic area that includes peregrine falcon habitat, centuries-old petroglyphs and a public hiking trail wending above the shooting zone.

Police didn't notify the U.S. Forest Service about the training they organized for 35 tactical team officers from Portland and elsewhere around the metro area, said Stan Hinatsu, a Forest Service manager. The federal agency oversees the site -- Cape Horn -- where the targets were set up. Cape Horn, located in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, is across from Bridal Veil along the Washington side of the river.

The Forest Service found out only after a Portland man who was kayaking along the Columbia came upon officers staging approaches from their boats and firing live ammunition at steel targets set up on the shoreline in front of Cape Horn's distinct basalt cliffs. It sounded, he said, "like a war." He then notified conservation groups.

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