hey, has it made national news that seattle police chief norm stamper resigned today?

my first reaction was "whoa, that seems excessive."

but apparantly he told the press conference that he decided several months ago that he was going to retire. then when he was catching so much heat for his handling of the WTO protests, he decided he'd announce his retirement now in order to "depoliticize" the investigation/post-mortem/rehash-fest. he's very firm in his refusal to take the role of scapegoat; this isn't in any way an admission of mismanagement on his part.