Clackamas County Commissioners Peterson, Kennemer and Schrader

Some programs to help needy and people with disabilities may see cuts

Clackamas County plans to reorganize — and in some cases possibly reduce — delivery of social services to aid the needy, disabled and infirm.

Under the plan, the county would contract out more services to nonprofits or transfer responsibility for them to the state.

The Clackamas County commissioners approved a timeline Tuesday they will use for the next three years to work out specifics. The overhaul affects the 500-employee Department of Human Services, the county’s largest department.

It’s too soon to say exactly which programs will be changed, but those potentially affected provide mental and medical health care to the poor, job training for the unemployed and assistance to the elderly, families and people with disabilities.

Falling revenues, rising costs and growing demand for services make changes in social services inevitable, said Cindy Becker, director of Human Services.

“The original goal was to maintain the quality of service,” she said, describing a study recently completed to help the county figure out how to do more with less money for social services.

But with the economy declining, the county likely will be unable to maintain the level of services it now provides, she said. “So we have to do the best with what we have.”

Mike Bowen, president of the Clackamas County affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said he’s “extremely worried and concerned” about the plan. “When Multnomah County tried this, it resulted in a lower level of services,” Bowen said.

County workers plan to meet with service providers, businesses and interest groups before making the changes.

OUR COMMENT – Ten years ago, Clackamas County had a well-regarded service system for persons with mental illness, amiable leadership and stable staff. They achieved it by NOT funding housing, hospitalization, outreach services, or shelter for homeless persons, which caused people with high needs and costs to migrate to Multnomah County. This “Greyhound” policy undermined efforts for change. Now, the Commission’s waffling the the Columbia Care project, an absence of any social services from the Commission’s Goals and Priorities list, matched with cuts from the state, the outlook for service improvement in Clackamas County is poor.

From the Oregonian, November 27 2008

A poignant look back at Oregon State Hospital patients on a 1972 field trip

Sometimes in all the conversations about mental illness and the Oregon State Hospital, some Oregonians forget to see the patients there as human beings, with the same emotions and needs as the rest of us.

That’s why it’s worth taking a few minutes to look at the series of photos that one of my esteemed colleagues on The Oregonian editorial board, Mike Francis, came across. The photos are available to view as part of a deal that Google has done with Life magazine to put its entire photo archive online.

The iconic collection of pictures is now available in part, and eventually there will be around 10 million images, 97 percent of which have never been seen before. Exploring the site, Mike stumbled on a photo essay that he actually remembered from 1972, of a group of patients from the Oregon State Hospital on a field trip. It’s well worth a look. It may make you think of the hospital patients in different ways.

(In addition to the large hospital patient picture on the Life website, click on and look at the other images from the field trip on the right side of the site.)

Fouad Kaady

What happened: A federal judge’s ruling Wednesday paved the way for a trial in the case of a Portland man shot and killed by police on a rural Clackamas County highway in September 2005.

The case: Fouad Kaady was 27 when Officer William Bergin of the Sandy Police Department and Deputy David Willard of the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office shot him a total of seven times. Kaady’s family filed a lawsuit in 2006, naming the two officers, the city and the county as defendants amid allegations of civil rights violations, excessive force and wrongful death. When the officers encountered him, Kaady was unarmed, naked, bleeding and burned after smashing his car into three other vehicles on Southeast Bluff Road.

What’s next: The trial, scheduled to begin April 28 in the courtroom of Judge Paul Papak, is on the docket to last three weeks.

EXTRA – What Happened to Fouad Kaady

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8WijDe5BhQ]

28 SECONDS – The Truth about What Happened to Fouad Kaady, Part 1 of 5

This video is of The Portland Indymedia video Collective and does not represent or speak for the kaady family.

SAFE / Wonderland Project – in Eugene

Mission: SAFE’S mission is to provide a place for clients and survivors of mental health treatment to obtain and create community, peer-support, and advocacy as well as services for those who are not adequately served by the mental health system. SAFE strives to develop sustainable alternatives in an inclusive and innovative peer-run environment. SAFE actively seeks to encourage the empowerment, responsibility, and untapped abilities of participants.

Services: Day Center for people with mental illness in Eugene. Some other services when funding is available.

Staff: Uncertain

Contact: (541) 762-4903

Next: Disability Rights Oregon

Prior: Northwest Autism Foundation

Portland Habilitation Center

Mission: The mission of PHCNW is to assist individuals with disabilities by providing the training they need to develop their skills so that they may obtain and maintain meaningful work.

Services: PHC trains and hires disabled persons for janitorial work, landscaping, some office work, production work. They also manage over 400 units of low income housing.

Staff: John Murphy and 200+ more.

Board: Dale Rasmussen, Gerald “Jerry” Kibe, Art Marshall, Carolyn Duran, Michael DeWolf, David Engberg,, Joshua Hoyt, Robert D. Johnson, Krista Liles, Shad Luedke, Kathleen Nixon, Gary Savadove, Edwin Wai

Contact: 503-261-1266 and jmurphy@phcnw.com

Prior: SAFE / Wonderland Project

Next: Quest Center for Integrative Health

Ginny Burdick

An Oregon Health & Science University task force is recommending that university officials pursue a change in state law to allow some of OHSU’s public safety officers to carry guns.

Local mental health advocacy organizations had come out against the idea of having armed public safety officers at OHSU. They fear psychiatric patients will become agitated at seeing guns at the hospital, or that an officer with a gun will eventually shoot an out-of-control psychiatric patient.

But state senator Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, chairwoman of the task force, said the group’s consensus was that safety officers with guns were needed in the event of a possible mass shooting at the medical center and university campus, on Marquam Hill just south of downtown Portland.

Arming public safety officers at OHSU with guns would require a change in state law. Currently, state law that authorizes OHSU allows public safety officers to make arrests as long as they don’t carry guns. The OHSU officers carry Taser stun guns.

The OHSU proposal would have a smaller number of the overall public safety force – possibly a third of the 35 officers – go through police academy training.

That, Burdick said, would include crisis intervention training, a special program that teaches officers techniques to use in dealing with people suffering acute mental illness.

In the wake of the death of James Chasse, a 42-year-old Portland man suffering schizophrenia who died after being arrested by Portland police two years ago, all Portland police officers have been given crisis intervention training.

The OHSU task force recommendation, Burdick said, was primarily based on concerns that if a mass shooter – such as the gunmen who’ve shot numbers of people on college campuses during the last decade – were to attack at OHSU, armed Portland police officers would take at least 15 minutes before they could arrive and deploy on the OHSU Marquam Hill campus.

The task force is expected to send its recommendation on to university president Joe Robertson by next week. If Robertson and the university board of directors agree with the recommendation, the university likely will seek to have state law changed to accommodate the new policy, OHSU officials have said.

Norm Frink

Schrunk’s top assistant, “Maximum” Norm Frink, has said his office will criminally review whether officer Christopher Humphreys lied to detectives. But it’s an open question about what that means.

A jail video released last month shows that on the night James Chasse Jr., died following an altercation with police, Humphreys can be heard in the jail booking area saying “we tackled him” and “he fell hard.” However, the officer’s account that night seems at odds with what he told detectives three days later: that Humphreys did not tackle Chasse, did not land on him and could not recall how Chasse fell.

If a case against a police or corrections officer cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, the district attorney’s office sometimes decides to essentially pronounce allegations false even if the evidence is just inconclusive. That’s what happened earlier this year with a county corrections officer, David B. Thompson, who’d bragged of brutality online, only to have a prosecutor call it “puffing or boasting.”

That sort of thing will be more difficult in the current case. That’s because Humphreys’ initial, videotaped account is consistent with the medical evidence, eyewitness statements, and the bureau’s official version that Chasse’s injuries were caused by Humphreys’ landing on the man.

From OPB.org, November 20 2008

State agencies in Oregon are facing tough choices. They’re looking for ways to cut their budgets after the latest round of gloomy economic projections.

The news is especially disappointing for the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, where officials had been planning to ramp up hiring in a big way.

A federal report earlier this year said the Oregon State Hospital was so understaffed, conditions were unsafe for patients.

In response, officials and lawmakers pledged to hire more than a thousand new workers over the next two years. But hospital Superintendent Roy Orr says the new budget projections are a concern.

Roy Orr: “We may very well have to make concessions in the numbers we would prefer to have in our upcoming budget.”

State Hospital employees like Rosalie Pedroza are also worried. Pedroza says the hospital has a long history of getting short shrift when it comes to state spending:

Rosalie Pedroza: “I guess the option is, we can continue to under staff the hospital and, you know, we’ll still have the dire consequences of the people not getting the care they need.”

State workers will get a clearer picture of what’s in store for them in a couple of weeks.

That’s when Governor Ted Kulongoski proposes his next two-year budget.

(photo Oregon State Hospital Ward 81, 1976, by Mary Ellen Mark)

Portland Tribune, November 2008

Hospital restraint figures revealed – State to make public quarterly data about psychiatric units

The data described in this article is available online.

Adult Seclusion and Restraint Occurrences Per 1000 Patient Days: 1st Quarter 2008 (PDF)

(NOTE: DHS has linked to data which DOES NOT provide facility-specific information for adults, as DHS informed Peter Korn of the Portland Tribune they would.)

Youth Seclusion and Restraint Occurrences Per 1000 Patient Days:1st Quarter 2008 (PDF)

A friend of the family told Elaine Shipman a week ago that hospitals don’t change their practices unless they are sued. Shipman said she didn’t believe it, that suing a hospital was just as likely to make the institution more secretive.

The subject is still a topical one at the Shipman home in Scappoose because in August 2007, Shipman’s son, Glenn Shipman Jr., was involved in one of Oregon’s most controversial hospital deaths.

Shortly after being admitted to the psychiatric unit at Legacy Emanuel Hospital and Health Center in Northeast Portland, Shipman, who suffered from schizophrenia and weighed 400 pounds, began walking away from nurses, was tackled by staff and asphyxiated while being held face down to the floor for at least 10 minutes in a position called prone restraint.

The Shipmans never sued on behalf of their son, despite findings from state and federal officials that a series of mistaken procedures by the hospital may have contributed to his death.

This week, Elaine Shipman said she feels she can tell her family friend that hospitals can change, or be induced to change, without being sued.

Largely as a result of public scrutiny inspired by Glenn Shipman Jr.’s death – and over the objections of the state hospital lobby – this week the Oregon Department of Human Services is making public the frequency with which individual Oregon hospitals restrain and seclude patients in their psychiatric units.

The department released the data to the Portland Tribune last week in response to a public records request, and later decided to post the data on the department’s Web site.

Restraining a patient can involve physical force, as occurred in Shipman’s case, or the use of leather or plastic cuffs that tie a patient to a bed, or with a special device called a Posey vest. Seclusion refers to putting a patient in an isolated, locked room, often for long periods.

But comparison restraint and seclusion data for hospitals treating psychiatric patients has never been available – until now.

“It’s the beginning of transparency,” said Beckie Child, board president of Mental Health America of Oregon, a nonprofit that advocates for people with mental illness.

The data being released covers the first three months of 2008 and shows that restraint and seclusion took place much more frequently at the psychiatric unit of the Portland Veterans Administration Medical Center than at most private hospitals in the Portland area.

Legacy Emanuel had 11 total restraints and seclusions while Legacy’s Good Samaritan Hospital had none, even though it treated more patients.

Some rural Oregon hospitals had much higher rates of restraint and seclusion than Portland area hospitals – Rogue Valley Medical Center in Medford and Bay Area Hospital in Coos Bay, particularly.

Restraint and seclusion are among the most controversial aspects of hospital care. Some mental health experts consider them necessary tools for handling patients who might endanger themselves or staff.

Other experts believe that viewing restraint and seclusion as tools rather than as treatment failures is one of the reasons many hospitals still restrain and seclude patients. Still, some Oregon hospitals, including the Salem Hospital and a few others, have eliminated their use.

But one thing experts agree on is that in the states that seclusion and restraint data has been made public, their use went down.

In fact, Oregon Department of Human Services officials said last week that they will be in touch with the hospitals whose restraint and seclusion data appears higher than the average. For the first time, they know which hospitals bear watching.

Trends worth noting

Hospital officials caution that the initial data is a snapshot, and that trends will be more obvious as more quarterly reports are made public.

For instance, the VA’s restraint and seclusion numbers were high, but the VA deals with a different population than other hospitals, according to Steve Dobscha, the hospital’s chief of psychiatry.

A large number of the veterans who use its 21 psychiatric beds are elderly and suffering dementia. Among the younger veterans, a large percentage is suffering from brain injuries suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Patients with brain injuries and psychiatric illness can be much harder to control with the de-escalation techniques hospitals use as a way of pre-empting restraint and seclusion.

And the data for the VA does not reflect that hospital’s norm, Dobscha said. In 2007, the VA had a much lower rate than for the first quarter of this year. The increase is due to two patients in the psychiatric unit who were in and out of seclusion a number of times, Dobscha said.

Meanwhile, Legacy officials said that they send their most acute psychiatric cases to Legacy Emanuel, which explains the disparity between Emanuel and Good Samaritan.

Herb Ozer, director of Behavioral Health Services for Providence Health and Services, said something as simple as a hospital remodeling also can affect restraint and seclusion rates. St. Vincent’s, he said, has been remodeling its psychiatric unit this year.

“It creates a lot more chaos,” Ozer said, adding patients sometimes react to that chaos higher than usual.

Much to be gleaned from data

Mike Morris, a Department of Human Services manager for the state Addictions and Mental Health Division, said the data might contain all sorts of lessons yet to be learned.

For instance, Tuality Forest Grove Hospital reported a higher than average rate for use of seclusion. But Tuality runs a geriatric psychiatric program for treating the elderly, some of whom might be suffering aggressive dementia, Morris said.

“This is a start for us talking about one way to look at hospitals and the services they provide,” Morris said.

Hospital officials say that if similar numbers were collected just a few years ago they would have shown significantly higher rates of restraint and seclusion.

Robin Henderson, director of behavioral health at St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, said that five years ago her hospital’s seclusion room was always in use. In the last three years, Henderson said, St. Charles has almost completely eliminated the need for restraint and seclusion.

Reporting their seclusion and restraint data has forced hospitals to overcome a long-standing taboo, Henderson said. And it will be helpful, she said.

“We have to go back and really talk among each other about what models are working and what models aren’t,” Henderson said. “This has not been the safest thing to talk about. There are not a lot of venues where we can go out and share high-risk data.”

Child, of the Mental Health America of Oregon, was secluded at the now-closed Woodland Park Hospital in Northeast Portland years ago. She said making psychiatric data public could help mental health patients avoid trauma – the trauma she said that often accompanies the aftermath of a hospital stay.

“What’s happened in the past is people have a bad experience and they complain as individuals, which means hospitals bring in attorneys and risk-management folks, so it makes it feel like it’s very personal,” Child said. “This at least gives you a chance to look at it with a different lens.”

Jason Renaud, another longtime Portland activist on mental health issues, said release of the new data represented a victory of sorts for mental health advocates.

“This required abundant public oversight, but we have had nothing up until this point,” Renaud said of seclusion and restraint. “It’s not part of the happy story of hospitals.”

Nonprofit organizations spent over half a billion dollars in 2007 to serve persons with mental illness in the Portland metro area.

The Portland Business Journal just published their 2008 / 2009 Book of Giving listing top nonprofits in the metro area. Many of the organizations, 29 out of 147, provide direct services for persons with mental illness and addiction.

An additional 16 out of the 147 provide services specific for persons who are low-income or at risk, two demographic areas which more often than not widely include persons with mental illness and addition.

The PBJ’s list includes religious nonprofits, but not churches themselves.

According to the PBJ, these combined 45 organizations had budgets in 2007 of about $569,800,000 and employed approximately 10,849 staff persons.

Although we’re grateful for these organization and the hard work of their professionals and volunteers, $569 million dollars is an enormous amount of money, spread in an uncoordinated way, which is attempting to fix and enormous set of problems.

Many of these organizations receiving government funds for providing services, but it’s not known what the total amount of money spent on providing services for persons with mental illness is in Oregon.

If you add the costs of jails, prisons, the state hospitals, the direct care from county managed clinics, private outpatient and inpatient care, and alternative medicines care, the cost could approach a billion dollars per year.

This is a conservative estimate. In 1999 a study published in the British Journal of Psychiatry estimated the annual cost of mental disorders nationwide at $204 billion. Societal costs, such as loss of productivity and the burden on family caregivers, total $113 billion.

We hope a smart local foundation interested in research and evidence-based outcomes, like the Murdock Charitable Trust or the Collins Foundation, will soon fund an audit of our mental health and addictions services, and seek to find the amount spent annually on treatment services.

Several interesting stories are in this week’s Street Roots, now available from dozens of vendors all over Portland (I bought my two copies in front of the Central Library this morning).

You can also download and read a PDF file of the paper.

Rest in Dignity: A memorial at Lone Fir Cemetery will honor residents of the Hawthorne Asylum, whose graves were paved over in the 1950s. Also, an interview with Storm Large about her song for Oregon’s first axe-murderess — one of those lost to an unmarked grave. Buy Dearly Departed: True Lies In Song Unearthed From Lone Fir. Thanks to everyone who helped steer this project in the right direction!

City’s Human Rights Group Reconvenes: Eleven years after it was cut from the budget, the Human Rights Commission is again charged with protecting the liberties of Portland residents. Amanda Waldroupe reports on advocates’ expectations and the difficulty of enforcing corrections to complaints.

Giving Shelter: The city will open more “warming centers” to accommodate the growing number of sick and homeless people on Portland’s streets.

Listen – if you’re thinking about making an end of the year gift to a worthwhile organization, consider the value of Street Roots. Make a donation today.

Northwest Autism Foundation

Mission: The Northwest Autism Foundation, which was founded in 1997, is a non-profit organization whose goal is to provide education and information for free or at a nominal cost to families, caregivers and professionals of autistic children.

Services: On review of their web site, it’s uncertain what this organization does. They list many things which other people do – but what they do is unclear.

Staff: Joe Taylor

Board: Wayne Hamersly, John M. DeHoney, Lynn Hamersly, Joanne Hazel, David Humphrey, Dave Kelley, Brad Parrott, Michelle Pardew, Ph.D., Michele Raddish, M.D., Merilee Young

Contact: 503-557-2111 director@autismnwaf.org. NWAF is located in the Willamette Falls Hospital Health Education Center at 519 15th Street in Oregon City, OR 97045.

Next: Folktime

Prior: Disability Rights Oregon

Disability Rights Oregon

Mission: Disability Rights Oregon provides legal advocacy to individuals with disabilities who have an issue related to their disability.

Services: Outreach, education, information and referral, individual case work, administrative advocacy and litigation.

Staff: Bob Joondeph + 26 more.

Board: Jan Campbell, Alex Bassos, Jack Lightcap, Byron Backlar, Monica Goracke, Drake Ewbank, Steve Kramer, Francisco Lopez. Traci Murry, Denise Spielman, Tyrone Waters, Mark Williams

Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness Council Members – Drake Ewbank, Yehimba Yafeu, Bambi Lee, Alex Bassos, Beckie Child, Mark McKechnie, Connie Olson, Tyrone Waters

Contact: 503-243-2081

Next: Northwest Autism Foundation

Prior: Portland Aspergers Network

From the Oregonian, November 13 2008

Skeptical neighbors met this week with Luke-Dorf staff for the first time since the mental health care nonprofit changed its plans for what used to be a secure residential treatment facility.

They gathered in the now-empty Connell House, which the state closed in June after a resident escaped by climbing over the tall fence.

That fence is now gone, as are the original plans for the home, which Luke-Dorf is changing to an unlocked treatment facility for lower-risk residents.

After nearly two hours of presentations and sometimes tense discussion between the two sides, Cornelius resident Jim Claeys said he felt more comfortable with Luke-Dorf’s plans.

But he wondered why such a community discussion didn’t happen the first time.

In 2007, Luke-Dorf got a conditional use permit from the city to develop and operate a secure residential treatment facility.

But it wasn’t until December that neighbors — and the planning commissioners who approved the permit — discovered most of the home’s residents were people who had been found “guilty except for insanity” of crimes such as arson, attempted murder and rape.

The clients had been conditionally released from the Oregon State Hospital by the state’s Psychiatric Security Review Board.

City officials revoked the permit in January, leaving room for Luke-Dorf to reapply if it scaled down its plans. That’s what Luke-Dorf is doing now, with a public hearing before the Planning Commission expected in early 2009.

But the initial neighborhood uproar led to harsh feelings about Luke-Dorf that hadn’t faded Wednesday.

“You’re not trusted,” said Larry Gehrke, one of a dozen neighbors who showed up. “This is not a pro-Luke-Dorf crowd.”

Still, the meeting reassured some. Officials said they were working closely with the Washington County sheriff, who alerted neighbors to the home in December. “I trust Rob Gordon,” Claeys said.

And Ashleigh Brenton, who left Review Board jurisdiction in February, spoke movingly of her own path through the mental health system after being found “guilty except for insanity” of robbery and assault.

Brenton, a poised, friendly 52-year-old with no other criminal history, described the psychotic episode eight years ago that culminated when she sped away from a gas station with the attendant clinging to her car.

Neighbors applauded her honesty. But Claeys called Brenton’s behavior a “one-time thing” and said, “It’s the repeat offender we’re worried about.”

Mary Claire Buckley, the Review Board’s executive director, said the board considers patients’ criminal histories when deciding on releases. She cited confidentiality protections and said client profiles would be shared with Gordon and Cornelius Police Chief Paul Rubenstein but not the public.

Neighbors toured the 12-bed home and heard about the clients’ structured days: meals, medication management, community meetings, office visits, therapy and recreation.

The goal is to have clients ready to be on their own when the board’s jurisdiction ends and they go into the community.

At Connell House, residents could leave on their own but would still be closely monitored. Violations — skipping medication or returning late — could send them back to the state hospital — which none of them want, Luke-Dorf officials said.

James Chasse

Officials consider whether Portland cop should be prosecuted for lying to investigators

The Multnomah County District Attorney’s office said Thursday that it will review the police investigation surrounding the 2006 death of James Chasse Jr. to determine whether Portland Police Officer Christopher Humphreys lied to police detectives during that probe.

On Sept. 17, 2006, Humphreys, Sgt. Kyle Nice and Sheriff’s Deputy Bret Burton, then patrolling Portland’s Pearl District, gave chase to Chasse, whom they suspected of urinating in public.

Outside the Bluehour restaurant, the officers subdued Chasse – who resisted furiously, according to eye witnesses – and took him to jail. Nurses there refused to accept him due to the extent of injuries he sustained during the encounter with police. The officers then took him to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:04 p.m.

The 42-year-old, 145-pound man suffered at least 26 broken bones in his rib cage and a punctured left lung, according to a medical examiner’s autopsy. The autopsy concluded he died of “blunt force trauma.”

The fact that officers’ accounts of the altercation do not explain the extent of Chasse’s injuries has led to continued questions about his death.

One possible answer was provided last month by a new, enhanced jail booking-area video first made public by the Portland Tribune. It shows that on the night of the incident, shortly before Chasse’s death, Humphreys told corrections deputies that “we tackled” Chasse and he “fell hard.”

As Humphreys spoke, sheriff’s Deputy Bret Burton, while standing next to him in the booking area, held his arms in a hug-like motion while leaning forward, apparently providing emphasis for Humphreys’ account. Then Burton appeared to simulate the impact of Chasse hitting the ground: “Doofh!” he said.

Reviewed from a ‘criminal perspective’

The two officers’ account recorded on video appears to significantly contradict what Humphreys told criminal detectives three days later – that Humphreys merely pushed Chasse to the ground and did not tackle him. The release of the video caused Police Chief Rosie Sizer to announce the case would be reviewed to determine whether another investigation is in order.

Enhanced by a consultant hired by a lawyer for Chasse’s family — which has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the city of Portland — the video is significant because an officer who is found to have lied in an official investigation can be disciplined and even criminally charged. Moreover, the contrasting statements by Humphreys could become a factor in the Chasse family’s lawsuit.

Pushing a suspect to the ground is justifiable under the bureau’s training. However, officers, are no longer trained to tackle suspects due to the potential for injury.

Therefore, admitting to tackling Chasse would have exposed Humphreys to greater risk of discipline. Humphreys’ account to jail deputies, while seemingly at odds with what he later told detectives, is consistent with eyewitness accounts.

“A straight bearhug-type tackle” is how the officer’s sergeant, Nice, described Humphreys’ takedown of Chasse to detectives.

Today, Chief Deputy District Attorney Norm Frink confirmed that an investigation was under way and that it could lead to criminal charges if Humphreys is found to have lied to detectives.

“This will be reviewed from a criminal perspective” to settle the question, Frink said, and “there will be an answer one way or the other.”

Asked if that meant the investigation would be presented to a grand jury, he responded: “Not necessarily.”

Different accounts of incident

The discrepancy between Humphreys two accounts is relevant in part because Humphreys outweighed Chasse by 100 pounds. And prior to the release of the video, police bureau officials had privately expressed the opinion that Chasse’s injuries were caused by Humphreys landing on him.

Humphrey’s claim to detectives three days after the incident that he did not land on Chasse or make any contact with him during the fall was due to the fallibility of memory in the heat of the moment, these officials said.

If Humphreys did not cause the injuries by landing on Chasse, however, then only two other possible explanations have been raised by people who’ve tracked the case, such as by Jason Renaud of the Mental Health Association of Portland.

First, that the injuries were caused by officers using force during the fracas with Chase — which is not consistent with eyewitness accounts. Or second, that officers stopped their patrol car on the way to jail and beat Chasse, which the bureau says did not happen.

The release of the video, therefore, supports the bureau’s account of the cause of Chasse’s injuries — but at the same time suggests that Humphreys may have shaded his later official statement.

The Police Bureau has disciplined officers in the past for failure to follow police training. Failure to follow training, among other things, was cited in Mayor Tom Potter’s decision to fire Lt. Jeff Kaer for killing Dennis Lamar Young in 2006. That decision was later overturned by an arbitrator, noting that Kaer feared for his life.

As the Portland Tribune reported last month, in 2000, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office referred an earlier arrest by Humphreys to federal prosecutors for potential criminal charges, after Humphreys was accused of lying. However, insufficient evidence existed to charge Humphreys, documents show.

New twist in federal case

In addition to Thursday’s announcement by Deputy DA Frink, there is another new development in the case.

A new filing by the city in the family’s federal wrongful-death lawsuit against the city suggests that the officers did not follow their training in subduing Chasse — and that an internal Portland Police Bureau report on the incident would be so “highly prejudicial” to a jury’s objectivity that attorneys for the city are trying to keep it from being presented as evidence to show the case merited discipline by Mayor Tom Potter and Chief Sizer.

Filed by Deputy City Attorney James G. Rice, the city’s Nov. 6 brief argues that the Chasse family’s claims against Potter and Sizer should be separated from its case against the arresting officers because the family’s lawyer, Tom Steenson, plans to introduce as evidence a training division report on the incident. That report would unfairly bias the jury against the city’s case, Rice argued.

The city has filed for a protective order to ensure that many internal documents on the case are not revealed to the public pending the lawsuit’s outcome.

For that reason, the training division report is being kept secret. However, Rice’s briefing suggests that the training division did not approve of officers’ handling of Chasse — much as the equivalent training-division report had questioned Kaer’s actions in his 2006 shooting.