Mental Health Association of Portland

By Brian Lindstrom, in the Portland Tribune, Feb. 21, 2013

Brian Lindstrom

As parents of a 7- and an 8-year-old, my wife Cheryl Strayed and I often discuss what we hope to impart to our children.

At the top of that list is resilience, which I define not only as the ability to persevere despite obstacles but also as the capacity to extend some key element of your essential being beyond the vicissitudes and surfaces of day-to-day life.

James Chasse was resilient, and the opportunity to share that and other of his defining characteristics with a large audience was one of the main reasons for making the documentary “Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse.”

Many of you know Chasse’s name through the headline “Man with schizophrenia dies in police custody.” Perhaps you followed the story through the grand jury and civil lawsuit phases, and perhaps you wondered how he received 26 fractures to 16 ribs.

The first task of the film was to delve into James’ life, adding necessary dimension, depth and nuance to a person that — through no fault of his own — was now being defined by how he died. In making “Alien Boy,” I wanted to define James by how he lived.

One of the brightest parts of James’ life was his participation in Portland’s early punk music scene. Embraced by fellow outsiders and artists, he flourished, publishing his fanzine The Oregon Organizm, writing and recording songs as lead singer of The Combos, and playing muse to Greg Sage of the Wipers and Kim Kincaid of the Neo Boys, inspiring the songs “Alien Boy” and “Nothing to Fear.”

How many of us can say one song was written about us? James had two.

A measured account

James Chasse

The onset of schizophrenia made it nearly impossible for James to maintain those relationships, though he valiantly tried, writing a heartbreakingly brave note to an old friend from his punk days, “I thought I’d try to explain who I am….”

As so often happens with people suffering from severe and persistent mental illness, his behavior put people off and his interactions became confined to family members, mental health professionals and the rare person willing to endure the discomfort of reaching across the chasm of schizophrenia. One such brave, kind soul was Russell Sacco, a retired physician who attended the same church as James.

“He’s just a person and I’m just a person, so I went up and talked to him,” Dr. Sacco explains.

After weeks of no response, one day James replied “hello” to Dr. Sacco and a dialogue began. If only the police officers had approached James in a similar spirit that fateful day — or, absent that, ignored him altogether and not have initiated a foot pursuit that the Portland Police Bureau’s Training Division would later rule should never have happened.

The other task of the film was to take a clear-eyed, calm, measured account of how and why James Chasse died. Using eyewitness accounts, audiotape of the police investigation, police evidence photos, official court documents, footage from jail surveillance cameras, interviews of Medical Examiner Dr. Karen Gunson, recent Portland Mayor Sam Adams, then-Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler, journalists Matt Davis and Anna Griffin, attorney Tom Steenson and James’ mother and father, and videotaped depositions from Officer Christopher Humphreys, Sgt. Kyle Nice and Deputy Bret Burton, the film presents a relentless, enraging cascade of actions, decisions, omissions and lies on the part of police that led to James Chasse’s death.

Then-Mayor Tom Potter and then-Police Chief Rosie Sizer attempted to divert attention from the actions of Humphreys, Nice and Burton by framing what happened to James Chasse as a failure of the mental health system.

Nothing could be further from the truth. James was a success story, living independently and managing things well. He went off his meds, which is part of the disease of mental illness, but his case manager was aware of this and asked Project Respond to do a welfare visit accompanied by a police officer.

The welfare visit revealed that James was in a bad way, and Project Respond’s Ela Howard asked Officer Worthington to file a report flagging James as mentally ill so that if the police ever encountered him again, they would know to call Project Respond rather than try to deal with James by themselves.

Officer Worthington didn’t file the report. This was on Sept. 15, 2006, two days before James died. The mental health system is not to blame for James’s tragic death.

Fueling change

Last Friday evening, at the Northwest Children’s Theater on Northwest 18th and Everett, a mere 100 feet from where Officer Humphreys first encountered James, we had a party after “Alien Boy” premiered at Cinema 21 as part of the Portland International Film Festival.

I had the privilege of introducing Mayor Charlie Hales to James Chasse Sr. What followed was an open conversation between a still grieving father and a new mayor about what steps the city can take to guard against this kind of tragedy happening again.

I’m in Missoula, Mont., where the film just played in the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The audience was enraged — may that rage fuel positive change.

But rage will only get us so far. Let Russell Sacco’s simple, wise words guide us: “He’s just a person, and I’m just a person….”

In that vein, we have to ask about the toll all this has taken on the officers involved. Have they received the necessary mental health help such a traumatic experience requires? How has this experience changed them? What have they learned? Are they still capable of doing their jobs? Do we, the public, still have confidence in them?

Portland resident Brian Lindstrom’s third feature-length documentary, “Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse,” will play Sunday through March 7 at Cinema 21 in Portland.

By Aaron Mesh, Willamette Week, Feb. 19, 2013

Portland Mayor Charlie Hales

Barely 48 hours before the first police-involved shooting of Mayor Charlie Hales‘ term—the killing of an emergency room patient allegedly waving a gun outside Portland Adventist Medical Center on Feb. 17—the mayor sat through a crash course on what not to do.

Hales attended the Feb. 15 premiere of Alien Boy, a blistering documentary on the 2006 death of James Chasse while in Portland police custody.

Hales’ offered a glowing review of the movie as he emerged from Cinema 21 on Friday night.

“It’s a stunning film,” he told WW as he left Cinema 21. “It’s a very clear-eyed look into a tragedy. We have to have a culture where officers use the minimum force that is required. This reinforces my interest in making that real. It’s a public service, and I hope more people see it.”

Other reactions were less measured. Patrons in the balcony called out “Murderer!” and “Sociopath!” at footage of Wheeler County Sheriff Christopher Humphreys, the then-Portland cop who tackled Chasse on a Pearl District sidewalk.

In the wake of Sunday’s hospital shooting, Hales has taken a cautious approach in how he responds. He hasn’t offered a public statement yet, and the mayor’s office cancelled a scheduled press conference on a city audit of road paving.

Alien Boy opens Sunday, Feb. 24, for a two-week engagement at Cinema 21.

Former Portland Police Bureau officer Christopher Humphreys has won the position of Sheriff for Wheeler County, Oregon.

A radio journalist who broadcasts in Central Oregon called yesterday to ask, “are persons with mental illness no longer safe in Central Oregon?” No, but they have never been safe in Central Oregon.

If persons who live in Wheeler County have concerns about Humphreys, contact the Jeanne Burch Wheeler County Judge at 541-763-3460 or at jburch@co.wheeler.or.us

READ – Controversial former Portland cop Chris Humphreys elected Wheeler County Sheriff, Oregonian 11/7/2012

Portland Police Bureau Sgt. Kyle Nice is now back on patrol at the East Precinct. Below, in a photo by Ross Hamilton of The Oregonian, he pepper-sprays non-violent ‘anti-austerity’ protestors on 11/3/2012

Portland Police Bureau Sgt. Kyle Nice pepper-sprays nonviolent protestors, 11 3 2012

READ – Sgt. Kyle Nice, subject of two investigations, back on street with Portland police, Oregonian 9/27/2012

Portland Police Bureau officer Brett Burton was recently highlighted on Australian TV in the documentary, Taser Troubles. Burton was a Multnomah County sheriff’s deputy when he used a Taser on James Chasse repeatedly after he had been tackled and beaten by Humphreys and Nice.

Australian TV news aired the 20 minute story on Tasers, highlighting Portland, Oregon as a community where Tasers have been in use. There is interest in Oz to have their cops use Tasers as an alternative to pistols, rifles, shotguns, cudgels, fists and feet.

From The Oregonian, November 7, 2012

Chris Humphreys, the Portland police officer who faced public scrutiny for two separate on-the-job incidents in 2006 and 2009, and also gained notoriety for his involvement in the city’s most expensive settlement in recent history, was elected Tuesday as the Wheeler County Sheriff.

Chris Humphreys, Sheriff of Wheeler County, Oregon

Wheeler County elections clerk Barbara Sitton said unofficial results show Humphreys garnered 453 of the 824 votes cast. Write-in candidates received 372 votes, with most of them going to chief deputy Mike Garibay. Because he lacked the requisite length of experience in law enforcement to qualify for the ballot, Garibay had to run as a write-in, officials said.

Humphreys replaces Sheriff Bob Hudspeth. The job pays $46,463 a year based on an hourly salary of $22.34, Sitton said. He will be sworn in on January 2.

“It was a long, hard campaign, but I guess nothing comes easy,” Humphreys said. “But I’m very, very happy.”

The sheriff’s office has three full time positions, a sheriff and two deputies. Emergency calls for the rural Northeastern Oregon county are dispatched through Gilliam County. Wheeler County’s population is approximately 1,500, Sitton said. The town of Fossil is the county seat.

Humphreys, 37, worked as a Wheeler County sheriff’s deputy for three years before joining Portland police in February 1999, where he was an officer for 11 years. He was the first to file paperwork on Feb. 10 for the position of Wheeler County sheriff.

On his website, Humphreys said he grew up in Spray, graduating from Spray High School and marrying his high school sweetheart. In 2005, his brother Paul, a deputy sheriff, was killed in a car crash.

He was medically laid off from the Portland Police Bureau Nov. 23, 2010, because of the length of time he was off work collecting disability payments – a move the city is taking more often to ensure officers or firefighters on long-term disability don’t remain on city staffing rolls forever.

Yet, as allowed, he continued to receive disability checks, recently collecting monthly checks of $1,546.86. Humphreys retired for medical reasons from the Portland police last year, according to a police department spokesman.

But as of April 7, Humphreys “no longer meets the eligibility criteria” for disability benefits after a medical report confirmed he’s “now able to perform the required duties of his job,” according to Portland’s public safety fund.

“I’m more than capable of being an officer, but I do not want to be an officer in Portland,” Humphreys told The Oregonian in April.

Humphreys was at the center of the city’s most expensive settlement in recent history after a mentally ill man, James Chasse Jr., died in police custody in 2006, after he suffered numerous injuries after being tackled by officers. The case ended in 2010, when the city agreed to pay Chasse’s estate $1.6 million.

Humphreys again faced scrutiny in 2009, when he shot a 12-year-old girl in the leg at close range with a beanbag gun after she punched another officer in the face. He was suspended during the department’s investigation but was cleared of wrongdoing.

Guest column by Jenny Westberg, published in The Oregonian, July 18, 2012

An arbitrator’s decision last week to overturn 80-hour suspensions against Portland police officers involved in the 2006 death of James Chasse will further erode community confidence in the police, particularly among those affected by mental illness.

Although the police union considers the ruling vindication, I believe most Portlanders are convinced that the police haven’t learned a thing.

When Christopher Humphreys, Kyle Nice and Bret Burton (who was working for the Multonomah County Sheriff’s office) chased, kicked, punched and used a Taser on Chasse, who was not committing any crime and who was crying out for mercy; when police leadership coolly justified their unconscionable, lethal acts; when city leadership continues to treat the involved officers like adorable but frisky pets; when every move to discipline any officer is defeated, our disbelief in justice expands.

Chasse did not go gently. He was not another unknown vagrant passing through. He was a loved member of a community — our community. His many friends stood vigil and waited for some truth to emerge. Nearly six years have passed, and we’re still waiting. And wasted time has a cost.

First the city and the county fought the civil suit — in the media, in court, in council hallways, in public meetings, in legal documents, on street corners and at cocktail parties — although both the city and county eventually settled the suit with Chasse’s family. Cops fought too; their lawyers fought; their apologists fought; their union fought; their public relations reps fought; all on behalf of those who made Chasse’s last moments a nightmare of pain and fear. And, as usual, they won.

They won in the courts. They won at City Hall. They won at the contract negotiating table. They won with government policy writers. They won with commanding officers. And now they have won with an employment law arbitrator.

But they lost a battle they don’t understand in the area between right and wrong. They kept their jobs, but they lost their honor, lost hearts and minds, lost respect and trust.

Mayor Sam Adams and Police Chief Mike Reese reframed the problem. They acknowledged mistakes and made quick apologies. They invited the community to speak at City Council meetings and in the backrooms of City Hall. They listened attentively to their constituents. They met with community leaders. They promised things would change.

And they have changed. Only one person, Brad Lee Morgan, shot dead while pondering suicide, has been killed by the Portland police so far this year. The statistical turnaround deserves acknowledgement. But how do we heap laurels so long as any of these men are Portland police officers?

Of course, Chasse’s death in custody was not due to his mental illness, nor were his ribs broken by the state and county mental health system. However, part of Chasse’s ongoing legacy is an improved system of care for people with mental illness who live in our community. But the changes — some of which were forced by court judgments — are an insufficient patchwork. Moreover, they are not changes to the police union contract with the city. This has given us neither transparency nor justice.

Yes: Changes were made, positive changes that better protect citizens with mental illness. But changes aren’t justice. And if one can measure the success of a community by how it communicates with its most vulnerable people, then the changes that have been made don’t go far enough.

Jenny Westberg is a board member of the Mental Health Association of Portland.

unsigned opinion by the editors of The Oregonian, July 17, 2012

No doubt, Chris Humphreys and Kyle Nice were pleased with an arbitrator’s decision this month related to the 2006 death of James Chasse. At least someone is. Portland residents have every reason to be disgusted, and the rest of Portland’s police force should be uneasy. Whether they like it or not, the resolution of this incident reflects on them.

James Chasse

READ – What happened to James Chasse

One afternoon nearly six years ago, Officer Humphreys was patrolling with his then-partner, Deputy Bret Burton, who was working for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office. They spotted Chasse standing “hunched” near a tree, where Humphreys thought he might be urinating or using narcotics, according to the arbitrator’s report. Chasse ran when he spotted the officers, and they gave chase. Humphreys employed what the arbitrator’s report calls a “takedown technique,” and Sgt. Nice — who arrived at the scene separately — estimated that it took two to three minutes for the three officers to take Chasse into custody.

It was quite a struggle. Chasse bit Nice on the calf, then tried to bite Humphreys and Nice again, according to the report. Humphreys punched Chasse in the face, and Burton shot him with a Taser.

The officers’ actions to this point seem to have been justified. But then the real trouble started.

Shortly after Chasse was placed in custody, he passed out, at which point Nice, the ranking officer on the scene, requested an ambulance. The primary paramedic soon cleared Chasse for transport to jail, where he passed out again. At a nurse’s insistence, Humphreys and Burton tried to drive Chasse to a hospital. Chasse died in transit of blunt force trauma to the chest, which likely happened while he was being apprehended.

Both Humphreys and Nice were suspended for two weeks without pay for violating the department’s Taser directive. Among other things, it required that people who exhibit “hyper stimulation” or “agitated delirium” before being stunned be taken to the hospital by EMS.

The arbitrator last week tossed the suspension and ordered the bureau to restore the two officers’ back pay.

Chasse, a schizophrenic, was certainly acting strangely. But Nice — who was in charge at the scene — did not violate the policy, the arbitrator ruled, because there is “significant evidence” that Chasse “did not at any time suffer from hyper stimulation and/or agitated delirium.” As for Humphreys, the arbitrator wrote, he wasn’t in charge, either at the scene or at the jail. And in any case, the paramedic at the scene told the officers Chasse was well enough to head to jail rather than the hospital. And the paramedic’s the expert, right?

In other words, unless an officer clearly violates a very explicit policy, there’s a good chance his union will, if so inclined, saw away at technicalities in arbitration until his penalty topples. No matter that his behavior might strike people outside of the union cocoon as shockingly callous. Most people understand that it might be difficult for a police officer with limited medical training to discern whether a suspect is suffering from hyper stimulation or agitated delirium. But in a similar situation, most people probably would approach the paramedic in charge immediately and say, “Hey. You might want to know that we just Tased that guy.”

Both officers should have done exactly this, but didn’t, the city argued in defense of the suspensions. Even the arbitrator acknowledged that there is “no dispute between the Parties that Sergeant Nice and Officer Humphreys could have provided substantially more information to the paramedics” about what had happened. The fact that such information would not have changed the paramedic’s assessment of Chasse’s condition is irrelevant. Chasse was tackled, Tased and lost consciousness, yet neither Nice nor Humphreys provided a full account of the struggle to the chief paramedic. There is simply no excuse for such behavior.

But that didn’t prevent their union from offering a couple. According to the arbitrator’s report, the union argued the following: “at the time of the Chasse incident, the Bureau had no policy around exactly what kind of information officers were obliged to tell paramedics. Second, the Bureau did not provide training to its officers on how to communicate with medical personnel.”

How much training does it take to say, “we just Tased him”?

If the department did, in fact, have such communication policies in place, we suppose the union would have argued that the bureau hadn’t trained officers to identify paramedics.

Few would dispute that police officers have a tough job, and most do it conscientiously and well. But the consequences when they fail can be terrible, which is why those who oversee them need the authority to impose reasonable discipline. This case and others noted this month by The Oregonian’s Maxine Bernstein indicate how difficult this authority is to exercise in the face of union opposition. The result, inevitably, is an erosion in the entire department’s credibility. That’s a high price to pay for lifting the suspensions of two officers whose performance even the arbitrator who ruled for them found lacking.

In the past three decades, Portland police chiefs have fired officers who were convicted of driving drunk off duty, leaving dead animals outside a black-owned business, and selling “Smoke ‘Em, Don’t Choke ‘Em” T-shirts to officers after a man died in police custody from a neck hold.

The chiefs had to bring them all back.

More recently, an arbitrator overturned the firing of Officer Ron Frashour for fatally shooting an unarmed man [Aaron Campbell] in the back; the 80-hour suspensions for Officer Chris Humphreys and Sgt. Kyle Nice following the death of James P. Chasse Jr.; and the 900-hour suspension of Officer Scott McCollister for his actions leading up to his fatal shooting of Kendra James.

READ – What happened to Aaron Campbell
READ – What happened to James Chasse
READ – Stories including mention of Kendra James

So just what does it take to discipline a Portland police officer?

Frankly, if push comes to shove and it goes to arbitration, you can’t do it.

Police leaders complain that they can’t effectively manage their work force when decisions are second-guessed and overturned.

Police union representatives say the percentage of discipline cases they challenge is small. And they’re right; in the past 10 years, 12 discipline cases in the nearly 1,000-member police force ended up in arbitration. An arbitrator overturned the discipline in half; the others await a hearing or a ruling.

But the cases that reach arbitration usually are high profile and involve the most egregious conduct, tactics leading to the use of deadly force or, in Frashour’s case, the use of such force. They tend to be those that reflect most poorly on the agency and anger the public, which seeks accountability for bad actors.

The result of repeated rulings overturning discipline has left those responsible for trying to command the largest municipal police force in Oregon feeling powerless.

“It’s frustrating. It’s very hard to lead an organization like that,” said Brian Martinek, a former Vancouver police chief who served as an assistant chief in Portland during the Chasse case and Frashour’s shooting of Aaron Campbell.

Once discipline comes down, union leaders frequently are in command staff’s faces, he said, taunting that, “We’re just going to kick your butt anyways, like we always have.”

The Oregonian reviewed 14 Portland police arbitration decisions since 1981 and found that discipline usually was overturned because either the bureau did a shoddy investigation or the arbitrator picked apart a chief’s decision with a grab-bag of objections: Similar misconduct by officers in the past hadn’t drawn such discipline, police policies were unclear or none governed the alleged misconduct, bureau instructors testified that an officer had acted as trained, or the officer had a prior clean record.

Darrel W. Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Police Association, said Portland’s experience is not unique.

“Quite frankly, arbitrators find it very difficult to take the police officer’s livelihood away,” said Stephens, who served as chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department and teaches at Johns Hopkins University’s Public Safety Leadership Program. “The unions may win these things, but they’re not helping the organization. The community loses confidence in the police, and within the department, it undermines the whole process of discipline.”

Portland’s police union lawyers say the rank-and-file accept most discipline, and the union takes only strong cases to an arbitrator when it’s clear an officer was wronged. Further, they say many serious discipline cases don’t stand up because they were politically motivated.

“I grant you, it’s not the perception of the public” said Will Aitchison, who served as Portland Police Association lawyer for 32 years, “but the fact is, it is very rare to find the city’s police union challenging a police termination.”

Mark Iris, who served for 21 years as executive director of the Chicago Police Board and has written about arbitration rulings in Chicago and Houston, said he’d expect serious discipline — which has gone through several layers of review, including grand jury, criminal and internal inquiries — to be upheld once it got to arbitration in at least 75 to 80 percent of cases. But that’s not happening nationally.

Over time, he said, such reversals can have a “corrosive effect” on an agency’s disciplinary process, “erode the deterrent value of discipline” and cause the public to lack confidence in the ability of an agency to control its people.

One need only look at the remarks of the Rev. LeRoy Haynes, chairman of the Albina Ministerial Alliance’s Coalition for Justice and Police Reform, who helped lead a protest outside City Hall after an arbitrator ordered Frashour back on the force.

“This decision says that those who are elected, that they cannot hold police officers in this city accountable,” he bellowed from City Hall’s steps. “It says any police officer can do what they want to do. … It means we cannot trust our police department.”

The arbitrator’s ruling that dismissed former Chief Mark Kroeker‘s 900-hour suspension of McCollister reads as a template for how arbitration has worn down Portland police discipline. The litany of reasons for overturning the suspension have popped up in multiple Portland arbitration decisions since. Kroeker had ruled McCollister should not have put himself in such a precarious position by reaching into a moving car to try to stop Kendra James from driving off, only to fatally shoot her in 2003.

Kroeker testified that he recognized the unusually long suspension was “ground-breaking” in the bureau, and said he issued it to “send a message to the officer and to the organization” that McCollister’s tactics were faulty, and led to the use of deadly force.

“Policing is the kind of profession where the employer must be able to exercise its subjective judgment in making disciplinary decisions; so long as that subjective judgment is exercised in good faith, the arbitrator should not second guess the disciplinary decisions and sanctions imposed,” Kroeker argued.

But the union quickly cited two cases in which officers had reached into moving vehicles without facing such harsh discipline.

One involved a highly respected officer, Mike Stradley, who climbed entirely into a moving van to take a suspect into custody and ended up firing his Taser while the van was traveling 80 mph through a city neighborhood. A written reprimand was proposed. The other case involved then-Officer Jim Lawrence, who shot and killed a suspect while reaching into the open window of a moving van and being dragged. He received no discipline.

The McCollister discipline was further derailed because no internal affairs investigation was ever done. Instead, the bureau relied solely on the detectives’ criminal inquiry, which the union pointed out was contrary to past practice. For a final blow, all the bureau training instructors testified that McCollister had acted as trained, and no policy existed then that restricted an officer from reaching in to a moving vehicle.

Sound familiar?

Once McCollister’s suspension was reversed, the arbitrator ordered the city to make McCollister whole not only for his back pay, but also include 1.88 hours of overtime for each week he was suspended. The union said the city must compensate him for what he “would have earned.”

“The arbitrator can always find an excuse that on its face looks potentially plausible,” Iris said.

Stephens said arbitrators can’t expect agencies to have a policy for every conceivable act of misconduct. “Some of it just has to be about common sense,” he said.

Aitchison counters that chiefs can’t discipline officers based on a standard of conduct that’s not trained. “Cops just want to know what the rules are,” he said.

Typically, only the union can decide to challenge an officer’s discipline before an arbitrator; officers can’t do so on their own. The union’s executive board votes and a majority rules. A list of arbitrators is sent to the city and union, and each side alternately strikes names off the list; the last name remaining gets the assignment.

Critics say arbitrators are well aware that if they routinely side with management, the union won’t pick them again, or vice-versa.

“The last one left standing gets the commission, gets the job,” Iris said. “I think arbitrators rein themselves in so they’re chosen the next time.”

Observers also note that Aitchison, a nationally recognized police labor attorney, historically has run circles around city attorneys.

“In many places that’s true,” Iris said. “The attorney for the union is savvy, experienced and capable, and the city lawyers are vastly overmatched.”

To make sure discipline issued by police managers is not arbitrary but consistent and fair, police consultants have recommended agencies adopt what’s called a disciplinary matrix. It would set disciplinary guidelines for a variety of violations or misconduct, intended to give officers and police managers a sense of what to expect. A few U.S. police agencies have adopted matrixes, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, Phoenix and Washington State Patrol.

Portland police are setting up a work group to consider such a matrix.

Beyond that, criminal justice experts have urged police departments to do as much as possible to limit disciplinary problems by setting high standards for hiring with effective screening of applicants, ensuring training is aligned with bureau policy and clear expectations, and there’s strong street-level supervision. Also, they stressed the importance of disciplining officers soon after the alleged mistake.

Upon learning that the Chasse arbitration ruling this week had come 5 1/2 years after his death, Stephens said: “That’s crazy! By the time you get to that point, any impact you intended the discipline to have is long gone.”

There’s no magic answer, Iris said.

“In some cases,” he said. “You basically have to gnash your teeth.”

From the Oregonian, July 12, 2012

An arbitrator has ordered the city of Portland to dismiss two-week suspensions against former Officer Christopher Humphreys and Sgt. Kyle Nice stemming from the death-in-custody of James P. Chasse Jr. in September 2006.

ARBITRATOR’S OPINION AND AWARD CHRIS HUMPHREYS / KYLE NICE GRIEVANCE

IN THE MATTER OF THE ARBITRATION BETWEEN PORTLAND POLICE ASSOCIATION ( “PPA” OR “THE UNION” ) AND CITY OF PORTLAND (“THE CITY” OR “THE EMPLOYER” )
HEARING: FEBRUARY 13 –17, 2012 HEARING CLOSED: MAY 8, 2012
ARBITRATOR: Timothy D.W. Williams 2700 4th Avenue #305 Seattle, WA 98121
REPRESENTING THE EMPLOYER: Stephanie Harper, Deputy City Attorney, Dave Famous, Captain Portland Police Bureau, Mgmt Rep, Darla Collar, Paralegal
REPRESENTING THE UNION: Anil Karia, Attorney, Sergeant Kyle Nice, Grievant, Office Chris Humphreys, Grievant, Office Daryl Turner, President, Portland Police Assoc.
APPEARING AS WITNESSES FOR THE EMPLOYER:, Michael Poorkley, PPB, Internal Affairs Investigator, Tamara Hergert, AMR Paramedic, Rosie Sizer, Former Chief of Police, Dan Saltzman, Former Commissioner of Police Bureau, Dave Famous, Captain Portland Police Bureau, Dwight Pahlke, Sgt. Portland Police Bureau
APPEARING AS WITNESSES FOR THE UNION:, Kyle Nice, Sgt. Portland Police Bureau, Chris Humphreys, Former Office Portland Police Bureau, Bob Brown, Officer Portland Police Bureau, Dan Livingston, Sgt. Portland Police Bureau, W. Ken Katsaris, Police Consultant

“The Arbitrator is certainly aware of the controversy surrounding the James Chasse case,” arbitrator Timothy D.W. Williams wrote in a 60-page ruling. “The viral nature of the events that occurred on Sept. 17, 2006 does not, however, change the standards or protocols that a labor arbitrator uses to resolve a grievance.”

Chasse’s family lawyer Tom Steenson and then-police commissioner Dan Saltzman reacted with disgust Thursday, while police union leaders called the arbitrator’s order a “vindication” for Nice and Humphreys.

Chasse, who suffered from schizophrenia, died in police custody from broad-based blunt force trauma to the chest Sept. 17, 2006, after officers chased him and knocked him to the ground in the Pearl District. Paramedics came to the scene but did not take Chasse, 42, to the hospital. Instead, police drove him to jail, but jail staff refused to book him. Police then drove him in a cruiser to the hospital, but he died on the way.

In February 2010, Saltzman suspended Humphreys and Nice for violating the bureau’s Taser directive. He found they failed to insist that Chasse be taken by ambulance to a hospital after police stunned him with a Taser, and did not brief paramedics fully about the police struggle and use of the stun gun. Humphreys also was cited for not requiring Chasse be taken by ambulance to the hospital after the jail refused to book him.

The arbitrator said the city failed to prove its charges, particularly because “competent medical personnel approved or directed the transportation of Mr. Chasse by police car.”

“While Sergeant Nice and Officer Humphreys could have provided a much more thorough statement of the observed medical problems related to Mr. Chasse, the evidence is compelling and indicates that this information would not have changed paramedic (Tami) Hergert’s conclusion that Mr. Chasse was safe to take to jail,” the arbitrator wrote.

Williams directed the city to pay lost wages to Nice and Humphreys.

The ruling comes on the heels of another arbitrator’s ruling this year that ordered the city to rehire officer Ronald Frashour, who was fired for fatally shooting an unarmed man in 2010. The city is challenging that ruling.

The bureau’s Taser Directive at the time of Chasse’s death said EMS will be summoned when a Taser is used, and “EMS will also transport” a patient to the hospital, if a child, elderly person, someone who is “obviously medically fragile,” suffering from “hyper stimulation” or “agitated delirium” is stunned.

Saltzman testified at arbitration that Chasse, based on the record, appeared hyperstimulated, and the directive should have kicked in. The union countered that the officers did not notice a medical condition that would have required transport and relied on paramedics. Further, the union argued there was no bureau policy on what officers are required to share with medics.

The arbitrator agreed with the union, that there was no evidence Chasse suffered from “hyper stimulation and/or agitated delirium,” as his vital signs showed no elevated heart rate, blood pressure, temperature or respiration.

“I can’t say it surprises me,” said Steenson, who won a $1.6 million settlement against the city in 2010 after filing a federal wrongful death lawsuit. “The city is incapable of having any kind of system in place to control its officers.”

The $1.6 million settlement was the city’s largest payout stemming from a wrongful death lawsuit. But the city admitted no wrongdoing.

“Obviously I feel my decision was the right one,” Saltzman said. “This is another example of arbitrators gone wild.”

Nice now works in the Telephone Reporting Unit and serves as a firearms instructor. Humphreys was medically laid off from the bureau Nov. 23, 2010, because of the time he missed work collecting disability payments. But he’s now considered fit for duty and is running for sheriff in Wheeler County.

Police union leaders hope the arbitrator’s ruling would amount to a “name clearing.”

“Sergeant Nice and Officer Humphreys were trained to police. They are not paramedics or nurses,” union president Daryl Turner said. “It was a tragedy what occurred. These are not victories for us. There’s some vindication for the officers involved.”

Humphreys, in a written statement, noted that his actions were scrutinized by a grand jury, the bureau’s Use of Force Review Board and now an arbitrator. “In all cases I have been cleared,” he wrote, adding that he looks forward to serving as the next Wheeler County sheriff.

The arbitrator said a key question was: What difference would it have made if Nice or Humphreys had given more information to the paramedic at the scene?

Hergert testified in a deposition that she wished she had known Chasse had been Tased, but it wouldn’t have changed “the vital signs or exam I had done on Mr. Chasse.”

“Overall and in hindsight, the Arbitrator finds much that could have been done differently,” Williams wrote. “However, based on the training that Sergeant Nice and Officer Humphreys received and on the conclusions reached by the lead paramedic, the Arbitrator does not find evidence that the failure of Sergeant Nice to have Mr. Chasse medically transported to the hospital an offense that should be subjected to discipline.”

Chasse’s death led to new policies. Since March 2009, Portland arresting officers are required to provide “complete and thorough” information on any use of force used to EMS personnel, and says EMS personnel will make a final decision on whether to transport someone to a hospital. Ambulances now must be called to transport suspects whom the jail refuses to book for medical concerns to a hospital.

Arbitrator Overturns Suspensions for Cops in Chasse Death

From the Portland Mercury, July 12, 2012

An arbitrator has told the Portland Police Bureau it must overturn two-week suspensions handed out to two police officers—Sergeant Kyle Nice and Officer Christopher Humphreys—who were involved in the fatal 2006 beating of James Chasse Jr.

The decision was confirmed by Dan Saltzman’s office, which has so far just seen an email synopsis of the finding and declined to comment without reviewing the full ruling. Saltzman, as police commissioner in 2009, suspended both officers because he thought they botched the medical care of Chasse, a man suffering from schizophrenia who was tackled, Tasered, and pummeled by officers who incorrectly accused of him of public urination and carrying drugs

Saltzman argued that the officers should have insisted that an ambulance take Chasse to a hospital, not drive him in their patrol car. And he also said, after the seriously injured Chasse passed out at the jail for the second time, that the officers again should have called an ambulance.

Here’s Saltzman testifying about his decision:

To me it’s really quite clear. It says if the Taser is used and one of certain circumstances apply to the individual, then EMS transport, that that person shall be transported by EMS. And there are two circumstances under which I felt that applied; one was sort of the excited delirium. The other was potentially the hyperstimulation. So there was two paragraphs in there as part of the directive that says EMS will transport. And I felt that both of those applied.

And just their [Nice and Humphreys] observations, too, that not only did they think he was high on drugs but they felt he had mental issues too, and I think that that’s also cited under rule 1051 as a basis for requiring EMS transport….

I felt that 80 hours was a minimally appropriate amount of suspension, and that’s what I went with.

The city attorney’s office says it doesn’t have a copy of the ruling it can send out, but the Oregonian, in a post this morning, quoted from a copy it obtained, presumably from the Portland Police Association. According to the paper and others familiar with the ruling, the arbitrator decided that even if Humphreys and Nice had more forcefully argued for an ambulance, that paramedics still would have made the call to let the police try to take Chasse to jail.

Here’s the arbitrator, Timothy Williams, explaining his thinking. He relies on the testimony of lead paramedic Tamara Hergert—but not as much from the arbitration hearing as from her deposition in a civil case filed over Chasse’s death:

There is no dispute between the Parties that Sergeant Nice and Officer Humphreys could have provided substantially more information to the paramedics. Moreover, in this Arbitrator’s view, the efforts by the City, since the Chasse incident, to require better communication between officers and paramedics is prudent and reasonable. Dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s makes good sense when dealing with medical emergencies and certainly is essential regarding risk management and the potential for civil liability.

However, the Arbitrator emphasizes the fact that in the instant case Sergeant Nice and Officer Humphreys are not being disciplined for their poor communication. The City is emphasizing the communication deficiency as a way of disarming the fact that the lead paramedic twice indicated that it was safe to transport Mr. Chasse to jail. The basic question the Arbitrator asks is what difference would it have made if Sergeant Nice and/or Officer Humphreys had given more information to paramedic Hergert. A quick review of Hergert’s testimony at the arbitration hearing provides the following:

Q. BY [DEPUTY CITY ATTORNEY STEPHANIE] HARPER: I know it’s a hypothetical question, but if you had been told that the Taser had been used, what, if any, different steps would you have taken?

A. I’m not sure, quite honestly. There is the, if they had been tasered and they’re acting completely abnormal to the situation, you transport them in case they have or develop the excited delirium stuff. But other than refusing to talk to us much of what Mr. Chasse did was seemingly appropriate. He saw people standing around him. He saw what he thought was his backpack. He yelled when people picked him up. I would like to say positively I would have transported him, but honestly, I can’t say that for sure. I wish I had known so we could have added in. It may have made a difference. It may not I wish I had known.

Q BY MS. HARPER: Do you wish you had known that he had fallen to the ground hard?

A. Yes. (Tr 165, 166)

Paramedic Hergert is more specific in her deposition given for the civil litigation. There she provides the following statement:

Q: And what was the conversation that you had at the scene when you were clearing the scene?

A: After we had left the scene he mentioned one of the officers told him that Mr. Chasse had been Tased. And when I asked him about what do you mean Tased, he says, well, no, they said he – they tried to Tase him but it hadn’t taken.

Q: And did that cause you to change anything that you had thought about in terms of your care and treatment of the patient?

A: No. It was a piece of information I would have liked to have at the – at the time, but it didn’t change the vital signs or exam I had done on Mr. Chasse [emphasis added by arbitrator]. (J 24, P 10)

The suspensions, coming more than three years after Chasse’s September 2006 death, were controversial both because they were handed down so long after the incident and because Saltzman overruled then-Police Chief Rosie Sizer, who initially proposed just a one-week suspension, for Nice. The arbitration hearing came earlier this year and was still listed as unsettled this spring, back when the Mercury reviewed 10 years of police grievances. Humphreys was also suspended for bean-bagging a 12-year-old girl at a MAX stop, and Nice was found “out of policy” after pulling out his gun during an off-duty road-rage incident. He was then suspended.

One question now is whether the city will fight the ruling, just as it’s fighting an arbitrator’s order to reinstate Ron Frashour, the officer who shot and killed Aaron Campbell in the back in 2010. I’ve not heard back from Mayor Sam Adams’ office in regards to that question, but sources say Saltzman, for one, isn’t planning on pushing this to the state Employment Relations Board.

In both the Chasse and the Campbell death, the city agreed to pay out large settlements in federal court, $1.6 million and $1.2 million, respectively.

Police union praises Chasse case discipline reversal

From the Portland Tribune, July 13, 2012

Arbitrator overrules suspension of sergeant and officer involved in controversial 2012 death

The Portland Police Association is praising a state arbitrator’s decision reversing the suspensions of Sergeant Kyle Nice and Office Chris Humphreys for their actions related to the death of James Chasse, a mentally ill man who died after being arrested in September 2006.

In a Thursday afternoon press release, the union representing the police bureau’s rank-and-file employees said the decision was based on “facts, not media supposition or rumors.”

Former Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman and former Police Chief Rosie Sizer suspended Nice and Humphries without pay for not providing proper medical care to Chasse, who died after being injured while struggling during an arrest in the Pearl District. The city settled a civil lawsuit filed by Chasse’s family in 2012 for $1.6 million, the largest settlement ever paid in a case related to an in-custody death.

The Oregon State Medical Examinber ruled Chasse died from blunt-force trauma.

In its release, the PPA said the arbitrator reached the ruling after five days of hearings, taking the testimony of several witness and reviewing thousands of page of documents.