Clackamas County sergeant kills man

From The Oregonian, December 29, 2005 – not available online

A Clackamas County sheriff’s sergeant shot and killed a 24-year-old man Wednesday night after he tried to stab deputies with a large butcher knife at a mobile home park along Oregon 224, authorities said.

Deputies fired stun guns at Clint Andrew Carey, 24, but he appeared unfazed as he charged four deputies and a patrol supervisor with the knife, said Clackamas County sheriff’s Detective Jim Strovink.

“He wasn’t responding to commands, and he was Tasered at least twice,” Strovink said.

Carey was shot and killed by the patrol supervisor as his mother watched, Strovink said. “This was a very tragic situation,” he said.

Deputies went to the Riverview Mobile Home Court at 15758 S.E. Highway 224 about 6:30 p.m., after Carey called 9-1-1 dispatchers to say he wanted to fight with police, Strovink said.

By the time deputies arrived, Carey had left his home, and his mother greeted the patrol cars near the entrance to the complex, Strovink said.

“She told them he had been taking methamphetamine, was suicidal and he had not taken his medication,” he said.

The confrontation happened a few minutes later, after deputies spotted Carey walking toward them with the butcher knife, Strovink said. The supervisor, who was not immediately identified, fired more than one bullet, he said.

The supervisor has been with the sheriff’s office for nearly 20 years, Strovink said. He was also involved in a fatal shooting in the 1990s, which was later determined to be justified, the detective said.

Carey is the third person shot –and the second killed –in less than two weeks by a Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy.

Shootings, fallout strain sheriff’s office

Three officer-involved shootings in two weeks and the jailing of a Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy last week are having a “staggering impact” on county law-enforcement staffing, according to a sheriff’s spokesman.

Of the county’s 68 patrol deputies, 11 are on paid administrative leave while their roles in the shootings are investigated, a standard practice in police shootings. A 12th deputy, David Verbos, is in Tillamook County Jail on charges of menacing and armed robbery.

On top of that, the sheriff’s office has assigned an unspecified number of detectives to investigate the shootings, work that comes in addition to their regular workloads.

The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office, with 0.5 deputies per 1,000 residents, is already understaffed compared with other jurisdictions. According to numbers provided by Clackamas County, Portland has 1.8 police officers per 1,000 residents, and Multnomah County has 2.8 deputies per 1,000 residents.

Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said his office is postponing vacations, asking employees to work overtime, rescheduling trainings and calling retired staff to help. Roberts said he also is considering moving deputies off special assignments, such as traffic enforcement, so they can respond to 9-1-1 calls.

The immediate staffing shortage, Roberts said, will last for at least the next month as the shootings are investigated. Standard practice in Clackamas County is to conduct an internal investigation through the sheriff’s office and to simultaneously refer shootings to a grand jury, which reviews them for possible criminal charges.

In recent years, the sheriff’s office has been criticized in some cases for relying on lethal force and for failing to provide more training to help officers interact with mentally ill people. Roberts, who became sheriff in January 2004, said his office will study the recent shootings individually and collectively, to learn: “Are there any additional things we can do differently as an organization?”

The latest deputy-involved shooting was Wednesday when Clint Andrew Carey , a 24-year-old Clackamas resident, lunged at a sergeant with a knife. Earlier in the evening Carey called 9-1-1 to say he wanted to kill a cop. Carey’s mother told deputies her son had stopped taking medication and was using methamphetamine.

The number of recent shootings is highly unusual for Clackamas County. Of five fatal shootings over the past four years, three occurred in the past four months. Roberts finds no immediate pattern in the shootings but speculated about underlying causes.

Many people are unhappy and stressed during the holidays, Roberts said. He noted a surge of domestic disputes reported to emergency dispatchers on Christmas Eve.

Roberts also said the skyrocketing use of meth means officers across the nation are increasingly facing unruly and astonishingly strong people who don’t follow orders and don’t succumb to stun guns.

Add to the equation the high number of mentally ill people that officers routinely encounter, and it’s a volatile mix, Roberts said.

He added that deputies have little choice when a subject is sprinting toward them with a weapon.

“We do everything we can to not use force, but oftentimes the subjects’ actions dictate how we’re going to respond,” Roberts said.

At the same time, Roberts said he will focus on the psychological well-being of his employees.

“I’m going out with the troops and saying, ‘Listen, there’s a lot that has happened in the organization, but I want you to go out and do your job. Stay focused. And rely on the training that we’ve been given,’ ” Roberts said.

Roberts said he’s arranged for a psychologist to speak to staff about the emotional rigors of their jobs and to ask employees to look out for stressed co-workers.

Clackamas sheriff’s office names sergeant who killed man

From The Oregonian – January 4, 2006

A Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office sergeant who shot and killed a knife-wielding man last week also shot an armed man in the line of duty 15 years ago.

The sheriff’s office on Tuesday identified Sgt. Kevin Layng as the officer who shot 24-year-old Clint Andrew Carey on Dec. 28. Carey reportedly called 9-1-1 to announce he wanted to kill a cop. When deputies responded to Carey’s Clackamas-area mobile home, Carey lunged at Layng with a knife with 7.5-inch blade, the sheriff’s office said.

Layng became a Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy in 1987. In November 1990, Layng and another deputy fatally shot a Milwaukie man who fired shots at Layng. A Clackamas County grand jury found Layng and the other deputy justified in shooting the man. [This 1990 police shooting appears no where in the available public record - MHAP eds.]

Layng was not available for comment Tuesday, said Detective Wendi Babst, a sheriff’s spokeswoman.

In April 2004, Layng wrote a letter to The Oregonian’s editorial page expressing his opinion on a recent shooting in Morrow County of a man who attacked deputies with a machete before they resorted to deadly force and shot and killed the man. Layng wrote that the public and the media often expect police to disarm suspects before using lethal force, but that’s unrealistic.

“In many situations, police have a split second to make a lethal-force choice,” Layng wrote. “To hesitate means giving the suspect the opportunity to shoot first or, in this case, slice up two deputies with his machete. To give an armed suspect the opportunity to strike first is to roll the dice with your own life, and it is a mistake, not heroism.”

Since Dec. 28, Layng has been on paid administrative leave, which is standard practice for all officer-involved shootings at the sheriff’s office. Carey was the third person shot –and the second person killed –by Clackamas County deputies during two weeks in December.

Detectives are still investigating the shooting. The case will be forwarded to the Clackamas County district attorney’s office for presentation to a grand jury.

READ – press release from the Clackamas County Sheriff’s office.

From the Oregonian, December 22, 2005. Not available elsewhere online.

Detective Rae Klein didn’t waste a moment trying to strike up a rapport with a 30-year-old armed suicidal man who had threatened to shoot the police from a Northeast Portland triplex on Nov. 4.

Raymond Gwerder November 12, 2005 - February 4, 1975

Over the next 6 minutes and 50 seconds, the detective told Raymond Gwerder to put his gun down. She assured him police would not storm the house or hurt him. And, not knowing that Gwerder was in the backyard, Klein urged him to stay inside.

She got him talking about his pure-bred Collie. He told her the dog’s name was Lillie, and she shed a lot. “Too much actually,” he added.

Then he let out a loud guttural cry, as if someone socked him in the stomach.

A Portland police sniper had fired a shot from his .308-caliber rifle, striking Gwerder in the back as the man was about to go inside the triplex.

Detective Klein stayed on the line, calling Ray’s name at least 10 times. But she got no response.

East Precinct Cmdr. Mike Crebs, who was in charge of police operations that day, told investigators later, “The shot just came outta nowhere. . . . I thought we were talking to the guy.”

Portland police on Wednesday released a tape of Klein’s brief conversation with Gwerder, as well as at least 1,000 pages of police reports and transcripts of detectives’ interviews with police involved in the shooting. The material revealed a breakdown in communication between members of the hostage negotiation team and members of the bureau’s Special Emergency Reaction Team who surrounded the home.

It also showed that there was tension at the scene between Crebs and SERT Lt. Joe Stidham over when to evacuate a mother and her children from a neighboring unit, whether to move SERT’s armored car in front of the triplex as a show of force and just how the command post should be run.

Further, there were misunderstandings among officers regarding who was assigned to do what. For example, several commanding officers identified SERT Officer Rusty Nelson as a liaison to the hostage negotiation team, responsible for relaying information between the negotiator and the SERT officers.

Nelson, however, told investigators he didn’t feel that was his responsibility but the role of another officer, Jim Schindler. Schindler, in his brief written report, said he knew the hostage negotiation team had contacted Gwerder .

“Shortly thereafter I learned he had been shot. This ended my duties,” Schindler wrote in a three-paragraph report.

Meanwhile, Stidham said he had received no radio updates about Gwerder ‘s movements just before one of his sniper officers fired the fatal shot.

The hostage negotiation sergeant, John Brooks, who was monitoring Klein’s conversation with Gwerder, had no idea Gwerder had been in the backyard of the triplex, even though several SERT officers were watching him.

The sniper, Officer Leo Besner, later told investigators that he saw Gwerder appear to aim his gun as if “hunting” for something. He said he feared that if Gwerder went inside the triplex, he’d harm a mother and her two children in an adjoining unit. Yet several SERT supervisors told investigators later that they would have preferred having Gwerder inside the home, rather than outside where officers could be his target.

A Multnomah County grand jury reviewed the police shooting and found no criminal wrongdoing by Besner. However, several of the grand jurors interviewed last month said there was a glaring lack of overall strategy and wondered whether Gwerder would still be alive if it had been handled differently.

Portland Police Chief Derrick Foxworth said an internal investigation will examine officer communication and tactics and whether police followed bureau policy.

Instead of using a mobile command post at the scene, Crebs, the SERT lieutenant, the hostage negotiation team’s acting lieutenant and the commander of the tactical operations division stood together about a block away from the triplex. Crebs called it a “little modular group that’s constantly communicating,” saying that he expected the others around him to hear the updates he was receiving.

But that didn’t always happen. The SERT lieutenant got frustrated that Crebs would step away at times. Stidham told investigators, “I couldn’t get him to stay put. . . . So finally I just asked him, please stay here, and tell me what your goals are here.”

Crebs explained later that his goal was simple: “Get that guy out alive.”

Crebs directed the hostage negotiator to get Gwerder on the phone as soon as possible, even though Stidham argued that she should wait until all the SERT officers were in place. Crebs wanted SERT officers to figure out a way to quickly evacuate the mother and children next door; Stidham felt that would put his officers and others at risk. Stidham wanted SERT’s armored car to drive up as a show of force. Crebs nixed that, instructing officers to stand by out of sight.

After the shooting, Stidham came up to Crebs as the commander was seated in his car. Stidham told him there was nothing else that police could’ve done.

Crebs, in his interview with detectives, choked up. “You know, I didn’t want to see it end like this.”