Mental Health Association of Portland

By Maxine Bernstein, The Oregonian, April 8, 2013

Protest following Aaron Campbell’s shooting death by then-Officer Ronald Frashour.

Portland police disciplined for using excessive force would not be able to challenge the discipline before a state arbitrator, under a bill that will have a hearing before state lawmakers on Wednesday.

State Sen. Chip Shields, D-Portland, has sponsored the bill, at the request of Portland attorneys Greg and Jason Kafoury. The Kafourys are disturbed by the high-profile Portland police discipline cases that get overturned by a state arbitrator.

The bill would only affect Portland police, as it’s written for Oregon cities with populations over 300,000.

An arbitrator’s ruling ordering the reinstatement of fired Officer Ronald Frashour, who fatally shot an unarmed man in the back in January 2010, is among the most recent examples.

The Kafourys said they’re pushing for a legislative change because the city has not been able to negotiate changes to the Portland Police Association contract, which allows for binding arbitration.

Senate Bill 747 will be heard at 3 p.m. before the Senate’s General Government, Consumer and Small Business Protection Committee.

The proposed legislation also would allow police managers to issue serious discipline for misconduct that may have drawn a less severe penalty in the past.

“Our goal is to have a police union contract in Portland which does not allow for arbitration in cases of use of excessive force,” said Greg Kafoury on Monday. “We want there to be political, democratic control of the police department. That’s only going to happen when the mayor has ultimate power over police discipline.”

Kafoury called the arbitration cases enormously expensive for the city of Portland, “and they lose virtually all of them.”

“Even when we sue an officer and win six figure verdicts” Greg Kafoury said, “they’re routinely ignored.”

Police union representatives have argued that the percentage of discipline cases they challenge is small. A 2012 Oregonian review found that in the prior 10 years, 12 discipline cases in the nearly 1,000-member Portland police force ended up in arbitration. An arbitrator overturned the discipline in half; the others were awaiting a hearing or a ruling.

Daryl Turner, president of the Portland Police Association

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.

For example, an arbitrator overturned Frashour’s firing; the 80-hour suspensions for former Officer Chris Humphreys (now Wheeler County Sheriff) and Sgt. Kyle Nice following the death of James P. Chasse Jr. in police custody; the 900-hour suspension of Officer Scott McCollister for his actions leading up to his fatal shooting of Kendra James; and the firing of Lt. Jeff Kaer, for his actions leading up to the fatal shooting of a motorist who was parked outside his sister’s home.

Will Aitchison, who represented the Portland Police Association for 32 years, said there were only three terminations of Portland officers related to use of force that were overturned by an arbitrator during his tenure: that of Kaer, Frashour and Officer Doug Erickson.

“It’s a solution in search of a problem,” Aithison said of the Kafourys’ legislative initiative.

Aitchison argued that the bill would “deprive police officers of the right to an independent review, as to whether discipline is fair.”

Last summer, 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.

Greg and Jason Kafoury said they plan to play at Wednesday’s hearing part of a Feb. 9, 2011 deposition they took from former Police Chief Rosie Sizer stemming from a lawsuit against Sgt. Kyle Nice, in which she said she didn’t recall firing anyone for excessive force during her tenure as chief. Further, the deposition shows that Sizer thought all Portland police terminations for use of force “were all overturned through the labor process.”

During Chief Mike Reese‘s tenure, he’s had to rehire two officers he fired: Frashour and Scott Dunick, who smoked marijuana off-duty, gave one of his prescription pills to a fellow officer and then drove drunk while under investigation. An arbitrator ordered the chief to reinstate Dunick, albeit with a three-month suspension.

The Kafourys said they recognize the bill will face vehement opposition from the city’s police unions and likely does not have the support to pass this session.

“It’s going to be a long-term battle,” Jason Kafoury said.

Greg Kafoury met briefly with Mayor Charlie Hales to discuss the bill.

“We are aware of the bill and are monitoring it,” said Dana Haynes, the mayor’s spokesman.” We have not taken a position to support it or not at this time.”

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 Andrea Damewood, Willamette Week, Dec. 6, 2012

Charlie Hales

Mayor-elect Charlie Hales says is committed to keeping Mike Reese on as Portland’s police chief.

Hales, who will serve as police commissioner, says he hasn’t set a time table for when they’ll decide if the relationship is working out.

“I haven’t set a schedule other than obviously, I’ll be watching his performance, just like every other key manager at the city—daily and weekly,” he says.

During the campaign, Hales wouldn’t say whether he would keep Reese on if he was elected.

But October’s U.S. Department of Justice agreement recommended a continuity of leadership may be best to enact reforms regarding what the DOJ said is a “pattern and practice” of excessive force against the mentally ill.

Hales agrees: “Chief Reese is a good man who is working hard, and who has a lot of credibility in the bureau,” he says. “He’s got crediblity with the city council, and despite these (DOJ) problems, still has the support of people the community.”

He added that it’s “very disruptive to change police chiefs, and we’ve done an awful lot of that lately.”

Portland’s gone through four police chiefs in the last decade. Reese took the helm in May 2010. His predecessor, Rosie Sizer, served from 2006 to 2010.

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.

From The Oregonian, April 10, 2012

Christopher Humphreys, a Portland officer who was collecting stress-related disability benefits on and off for more than three years since his involvement in the controversial in-custody death of James P. Chasse Jr., was found fit for duty this month as he runs for sheriff in Wheeler County.

Christopher Humphreys

READ – what happened to James Chasse

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.

But as of April 7, Humphreys — who recently announced his run for sheriff — “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.

Humphreys said Tuesday he used the time off to obtain counseling, and now is feeling good and eager to give back to the Wheeler County community, home to five generations of his family.

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

Linda Jefferson, director of Portland’s Fire and Police Disability and Retirement Fund, said the public safety fund had the medical re-evaluation done as part of its “routine claim-management activities.” It also came as word spread of Humphreys’ plan to run for sheriff.

Humphreys said he scheduled the medical evaluation, an annual requirement, before the fund notified him to do so.

The fund cut off Humphreys’ disability benefits on April 7, which means he can no longer accrue time toward his pension since he’s no longer an active member of the Portland police bureau or a disabled member. He’ll be eligible to collect his pension Nov. 30, 2024.

According to the city’s public safety fund, Humphreys was off duty from the Portland Police Bureau and collecting disability benefits between Jan. 27, 2006, and Jan. 3, 2007, and again from Nov. 27, 2009, through April 6, 2012.

The benefits were connected to a stress-related claim.

“Every time, I used that to protect myself and do what needed to be done, to seek counseling,” he said. “No one is ever going to say I abused it.”

Supporters of Officer Christopher Humphreys walk through Lownsdale Square in Portland in November 2009. Humphreys, who had been drawing stress disability payments from Portland, is now running for sheriff of Wheeler County.

Humphreys gained notoriety for his involvement in the city’s record $1.6 million settlement stemming from a federal wrongful death lawsuit brought by Chasse’s family. He faced public scrutiny and internal police review for two separate on-the-job incidents: Chasse in 2006 and another in 2009.

Humphreys spent a year off duty on disability, starting about four months after the death of Chasse, a 42-year-old man who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, in his custody Sept. 17, 2006. Chasse was knocked to the ground after he ran from officers who suspected he was urinating in a street. He died from blunt force trauma to the chest.

In November 2009, then-police commissioner Dan Saltzman and former chief Rosie Sizer proposed Humphreys be suspended for two weeks for failing to insist that Chasse be taken by ambulance to a hospital after police stunned him with a Taser and after the jail refused to book him because of his physical condition. Saltzman also found that Humphreys failed to provide paramedics at the scene with a full account of the violent struggle.

Humphreys later filed another stress-related disability claim when the bureau began an internal investigation into his Nov. 14, 2009 shooting of a 12-year-old girl with a beanbag shotgun on a Northeast Portland MAX platform.

Former police union president Scott Westerman told The Oregonian then that Humphreys was devastated when the commissioner on Nov. 19, 2009, ordered he be removed from the street, with his gun and badge taken pending the investigation. The move led to a police union protest, with members wearing , “I am Chris Humphreys” shirts in his support. In September 2010, Chief Mike Reese found Humphreys acted within policy.

Humphreys, 37, had worked as a Wheeler County sheriff’s deputy for three years before joining Portland police in February 1999. He was the first to file paperwork on Feb. 10 for the position of Wheeler County sheriff. Wheeler County Deputy Sheriff Mike Garibay will run against him as a write-in candidate.

Of the Wheeler sheriff’s office, Humphreys said, “They really need good leadership. Somebody like me.” He described himself as a highly qualified candidate, with experience in a small sheriff’s office and a large police agency where he worked patrol, in the transit division and emergency management unit. He also has a master’s in criminal justice from Boston University.

“I have a concern and abiding love for that county,” he said.

Should he lose the election, Humphreys would have until November 2015 to decide to return to work at the Portland Police Bureau– the five-year period allowed for return-to-work after a medical layoff.

By Jake Thomas, Street Roots, March 15, 2012

View Full Size    (REUTERS / Steve Dipaola)

Riot Police monitor Occupy Wall Street protesters in Portland, Oregon on November 13, 2011. Occupy Portland protesters and police confronted one another in the streets, as authorities around the United States tried to close down encampments occupied by demonstrators for weeks.

A common pattern often emerges after a citizen dies at the hands of police. There is public rage. The city promises reform, and then the rage simmers off until the next incident. Less noticeable, however, is the constant work of people dedicated to bringing reform to the Portland Police Bureau, notably Jo Ann Hardesty (formerly Jo Ann Bowman).

Originally from Baltimore, Hardesty has been an Oregon state legislator, the head of the civil rights organization Oregon Action and one of Portland’s most vital and outspoken critics of the Portland police.

Two years ago, Hardesty was part of a coalition that helped pass a city ordinance aimed at strengthening oversight of the police by expanding the Independent Police Review (IPR) Division’s powers to investigate police and giving it more of a role in how officers are disciplined. The ordinance was passed in response to a string of incidents where Portlanders were killed in standoffs with the police. But despite the efforts of the city, the bureau now finds itself the subject of a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Justice Department.

Recently, Hardesty served as a member of the city’s charter commission, a group of citizens selected by City Council and charged with making changes to what is basically Portland’s constitution. Although City Council intended the commission to refer “house-keeping” amendments to voters for final approval, Hardesty used the occasion to propose two measures related to how police can control crowds.

That opportunity was dashed when the commission adjourned Feb. 27, amid controversy and acrimony, with no signficiant policy proposals recommended for a public vote. Still, Hardesty hopes that the proposals, which were inspired by people involved in the Occupy Portland movement, will spark a broader discussion on police accountability while voters are also getting ready to select their next mayor.

Jake Thomas: Regarding the charter commission, you proposed two amendments that would bar police from using animals or chemicals to control crowds. Why should this be in the charter?

View Full Size   Jo Ann Hardesty                         

 

Jo Ann Hardesty: It actually shouldn’t be in the charter. We should have a police chief that would just implement it, or we should have a police commissioner who would say make it so because it’s good public policy. But since we have neither of those, the charter is the only option to the public right now. It’s not the whole police accountability package, but it certainly starts us on the process, and what I love is the opportunity to talk about it during the election season. Really, what does police accountability look like? I’d say that there are certainly other things that should be included with police accountability, but these two things are the most visible today right now and mostly on peoples’ minds because of Occupy and because of some of the most recent encounters with police. If it’s on the ballot, people will be talking about it, and we can create real community dialogue about what real police accountability looks like, and it forces people on the ballot to have this conversation.

I think the charter commission was set up for failure, quite frankly, because the mayor and the City Council didn’t want us doing policy issues. They gave us inadequate staff they gave us inadequate resources. They really tried to tie our hands. They didn’t expect in the short period of time that I would be able to come up with a couple proposals that would make it to the ballot.

J.T.: Was this a lost opportunity for some real change?

J.H.: I certainly agree with the lost opportunity for the public. It is really frustrating to work as hard as we did without the support of the public body that put us together. It supports the need to remove this process from the political process.

One of the housekeeping measures if passed in May, will provide a structure and timeline for the next charter effort. It would appoint commissioners for a two-year period of time. I continue to believe what the mayor said to me in a private meeting: he didn’t care about these issues, and it is reflected in the lack of staff and resources dedicated to this effort.

J.T.: It’s been about two years since City Council passed an ordinance meant to bring greater oversight to the police bureau. Looking back, how well has this ordinance worked?

J.H.: Commissioner Randy Leonard put together a work group that came up with 54 recommendations for changes. The City Council implemented four of those changes, and I would say that it is not working yet. We don’t have true police reform in the oversight process yet.

J.T.: What needs to happen?

J.H.: Several things need to happen. The IPR director needs to have the ability to have her own attorney. The city attorney represents the police, the City Council, the IPR director and anyone else within the city government. Their advice is always about how to limit liability or limit the possibility of a lawsuit. But if the IPR director had an independent attorney that could advise her about the appropriateness of filing charges against police officers, holding them accountable for some egregious behavior, then she would have much more power to implement her own investigations, get her own legal advice and then be able to recommend what the punishment should be.

The problem with the current system is the independent review process really does no review. They review what the police and the internal investigation committee has already done, or they recommend that the Internal Affairs Division actually conduct the investigation. So in and of themselves, they have the ability to do their own investigations, but they don’t. The whole IPR system is flawed. So trying to fix a flawed system becomes very, very frustrating.

I would like to see that system go away because it was supposed to be temporary 10 years ago. It was created by then Mayor Vera Katz who said, let’s try this for a year and see what happens. It’s become institutionalized and the assumption is that it works, and it doesn’t. It doesn’t work for community members, it doesn’t work as far as giving the community certainty that police are being independently investigated and then held accountable for their behavior.

J.T.: So what specific things should have been in the police-reform ordinance?

J.H.: Before the ordinance was passed, a work group made 54 recommendations and laid out some good ideas, like making sure that the auditor has the ability to show up at crime scenes and actually conduct her own investigation. She has the power to do that, but it actually looks like the City Council lessened her ability to do that in a follow-up ordinance. I don’t think it’s police that should be investigating police. There should be an independent citizen committee investigating police. If those 54 recommendations had been adopted by the City Council, I think that this system would be better because at least it would have those independent pieces in place, and then we would have to wait and see if that worked.

J.T.: Are any other cities doing anything worth emulating?

J.H.: I think San Francisco has a true independent body that actually investigates police. We wouldn’t want to copy them exactly, but they had some good things like their total independence, and their budget is set by statute so it doesn’t get in a political fight if people don’t like the outcomes. They have community members that serve on the body. I think that’s just one of several models around the country that we should be looking at.

J.T.: In response to a string of incidents where mentally fragile individuals died at the hands of police, the bureau has taken steps to make officers better equipped for such encounters. Has the bureau made any progress in this area?

J.H.: Some days I think that they’re making progress. We read every once in a while how the police were able to come to a situation where someone is suffering mental illness and they’ve been able to de-escalate the situation. But we hear that rarely. Most of the time what we hear is that they had to kill them because they had a little knife or they were aggressive in some manner like the poor guy on the roof of a garage downtown.

We’re told that under former Mayor Tom Potter that every law enforcement officer had been trained in how to identify and de-escalate situations with people who are suffering from mental health issues and be able to call a special team if they need it. So sometimes they use that system, and sometimes they don’t, and when they don’t another community member dies unnecessarily. And what’s frustrating for me, and I think others, is there is training in how to address people with mental health issues. We have mental health workers all over this state where every single day they confront the kind of things Portland police confront, but they don’t kill people. They are able to immobilize people, to calm them down, to de-escalate the situation. So, if we’re training police in de-escalation why is it not working for them most of the time?

J.T.: You mentioned the Justice Department’s investigation of Portland police. What are some things you hope will come out of that?

J.H.: Well, I’m hoping that the Justice Department investigation will confirm that people of color and people with mental health issues are treated differently by Portland police, and I’m hoping the Justice Department will have very specific steps that Portland police will be required to take to remediate that activity.

What’s good about when the Justice Department comes in, is that they recommend very specific actions that they want to see the local police department take. I hope they come out with a laundry list of things for Portland police, so that the community can have a better level of comfort with interacting with the police.

J.T.: Has any progress been made on the issue of racial profiling? Former Police Chief Rosie Sizer did some work on the issue, but have we seen anything since then?

J.H.: No, actually once the racial profiling committee was disbanded by Mayor Tom Potter, the replacement was supposed to be the Human Right Commission’s sub-committee on Police and Community Relations. I used to go to those meetings. The predominance of that committee were cops. The community members that they selected for the committee had to apply, and the people they selected had the least knowledge of police activities. I would go to those meetings and sit through the whole two hours until the 10 minutes of public comment, and I would be a bit appalled because I would hear police lying to community members about tactics or about activities or about what they’d been involved in. The people on the committee, because they didn’t know police other than from that committee, believed them.

They were not getting to the problem because it was a police-led kind of effort, and the police got to frame the conversation. They didn’t want anyone to talk about anything that was going to make the police uncomfortable. Well, it’s uncomfortable when police shoot people in our community. That’s uncomfortable. When they racial profile people, that’s uncomfortable. So it didn’t matter to me that people who are paid with taxpayer dollars are going to be uncomfortable in a meeting. They need to get over that.

J.T.: Do you have any thoughts on how racial profiling has affected police work, specifically with gang violence?

J.H.: Keaton Otis is dead because we had ill-trained gang officers riding the streets of Northeast Portland. That young man is dead because someone looked at him and thought he was African American and is between 14 and 24, therefore he must be a gang member, right? That moment when that officer made that decision to pull that young man over, they just escalated everything up until the point where they shot and killed him.

I think the police have a huge challenge because the community distrusts them because of their experience being stopped and searched just for walking down the street in their neighborhood. The police don’t get a lot of African Americans saying, “I know so-and-so is a gang member, and so-and-so has a gun.” They are not getting the community cooperation from people because people have observed over and over again this behavior.

When my office was on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, I can’t tell you how many times I saw the police pull over young African-American men, search them, search their car, search their back packs and then let them go. Now the interesting thing about that is there is no record of those stops. Even though the Portland police keep records of traffic and pedestrian stops those aren’t captured because they don’t call that a traffic stop. They call that a “walk and talk.” They’re just trying to find out what they’re doing in the neighborhood, even though they’ve searched them, and they’ve stopped them and limited their ability to move freely, they don’t consider that a stop. So the data doesn’t tell us how bad the situation is. But if you observe it, you can see this happens over and over and over again in certain communities.

This police chief doesn’t even mention racial profiling or the plan to reduce racial profiling that former Chief Rosie Sizer actually produced a year late. It certainly doesn’t come up during budget times because there were some very specific recommendations that Chief Sizer developed that had financial implications. We’re in the budget season now; I’ve heard no one talk about how we are going to fund the plan to eliminate racial profiling.

J.T.: How do you rank current crop of mayoral candidates on issues of police accountability?

J.H.: I think they’re all bad, and they’re not bad because they’re bad people, they’re bad because they don’t know what they don’t know yet. So I don’t think that there is any one candidate that stands out that’s going to do a great job reforming the police bureau. But what I’m hoping is that during this campaign season the community will ask these candidates that want to be mayor, what is your vision of true community policing? What do you think the role of a police chief should be? Do you like the one we have? Then based on those answers, pick the best person that we think is going to move the police bureau forward. I guess the good news is that all three candidates, because they’re not insiders to City Hall and downtown, could make the changes, but the question is if they will have the political will to make those changes.

J.T.: What would prove to you that we have police accountability?

J.H.: This is the first time in over 20 years that a Portland police officer has been indicted for using deadly force on duty — the cop who shot the guy with a shotgun using real bullets and not bean-bag rounds.

Real police accountability would say it’s impossible to think that out of 5,000 employees that nobody ever does anything wrong. So I would suspect that there are officers that would be fired, there would be officers that would be demoted, officers that would have to go through some kind of supervised training. And right now, I don’t believe that any of this happens. For me, real police accountability would mean that periodically that a police officer would be fired, or demoted or sent back to retraining and that would be public knowledge.

J.T.: What is the police bureau doing right?

J.H.: (Pause) There are a lot of good men and women in the police bureau who go to work every day and do their job in a respectful, thoughtful manner, and I don’t think there’s a lot of police officers that misuse their power. But I think that police become more empowered to misuse their power when they’re not held accountable. They answer over 40,000 calls a year and they don’t kill 40,000 people a year, so that means most of the time they get it right. When they don’t get it right, the problem is they don’t say, “yeah, we messed up that one.” They say it’s the person that they killed who is at fault because they didn’t follow directions, which I’ve never heard of anyone in a mental health crisis following directions.

We certainly know that there are some police officers whose names show up in excessive force complaints. But we have no certainty, quite frankly. I don’t know who is a good police officer. I would hate to be in a position where I needed a police officer, and I was unsure if the one I got was the right one. That would petrify the daylights out of me. That’s why so many community members are petrified of calling the police.

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From the Oregonian, October 9, 2011

Portland police twice walked away from confronting a mentally-ill man who had alarmed neighbors in recent weeks in his Southwest Portland apartment complex by striding the halls armed with a rifle and shotgun, and screaming out his window wearing a gas mask and bulletproof vest.

It wasn’t until the man was seen pointing a rifle out his window at a neighbor and muttering “murderer’s apartment” that Portland police had a tactical team surround the complex and successfully coax him out after a six hour stand-off.

MORE – about what happened to John Griffin.

The go-slow, deliberative response marked a dramatic change in Portland police practice as the bureau strives to figure out how best to respond to calls involving people in mental health crisis.

“It is a big shift. This concept of maybe walking away has not been a typical response for law enforcement,” Central Precinct Cmdr. Robert Day said. “We tend to show up and see it finished all the way through. We got into this job to do the right thing and help people. We’re finding out more and more, when dealing with people in mental crisis, they may not be receptive to our help. So at what point do we force ourselves on them?”

The peaceful resolution of the Southwest Portland calls has been hailed as a prime example of the new approach’s effectiveness. Yet some mental health advocates and residents ask whether the bureau has swung too far to a hands-off response, potentially putting the public in danger.

Earlier this year, the bureau trained sergeants to consider not engaging people with mental health problems if they’re not an obvious threat to others, even if they’re suicidal and armed. The training, begun under Chief Mike Reese but the result of discussions former Chief Rosie Sizer initiated, may be expanded to officers.

Derald Walker, president of Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, praised the police response to John L. Griffin, 50, described as paranoid and delusional in his Southwest Portland apartment. Walker is among a group of mental health experts and advocates meeting with police supervisors studying how to eliminate unnecessary police encounters with people suffering from mental illness through a grant by the non-profit Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. He’s had lengthy talks about how police should label the response.

“Walking away implies they’re leaving a situation, physically leaving and dropping the case,” Walker said. “It’s basically pulling back, stepping back, regrouping and accessing what the risks are, and I think this case illustrates this beautifully. Instead of rushing in with limited understanding of who they’re going to be face to face with, they decided to step back and gather more intelligence around how to predict the person’s behavior.”

Neighbors said Portland police and Washington County’s hostage negotiators and tactical officers – who were called out because Portland’s tactical unit was training out of town – displayed remarkable restraint when dealing with Griffin.

“I was amazed,” said Diana Corbett, Griffin’s friend and neighbor. “They were patient. They took their time. They handled it very well.”

Yet others wondered why police didn’t act earlier or summon someone with mental health experience to step in right away.

“If the police went out there, and this man was walking through the hallway with firearms, I think they should have taken him in for an evaluation,” said Margaret Brayden, executive director of the Multnomah County chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “It’s unfortunate, we have to wait for a crisis. Suppose, the next day he shoots 20 people in the street?”

Genevieve Mercantante, a third-floor resident in Griffin’s apartment complex who had trouble finding out what was going on when police surrounded the complex Sept. 29, said, “I wonder why the cops had to wait until he committed a crime?”

Day acknowledged it’s a difficult “balancing act,” and the decision to step back after the first two calls was not done without serious thought. After the first two calls, Griffin was back in his unit, refusing to come out but quiet. Police reached out to his family, girlfriend and mental health experts to get a court-ordered civil hold.

“The decision to walk away…is really based upon risk to the community versus reward,” Day said. “Neighbors were concerned, but it’s not something where there was a demand for action. Had we gone to that door and forced that confrontation, the conversation today would have been: ‘How come you didn’t wait?’ ”

Having a mental health worker approach Griffin, who was armed and paranoid, may have been too dangerous, Walker said.

Karl McDade, a retired Portland sergeant who led the bureau’s first crisis intervention team, said criticism of past police fatal shootings or violent struggles with the mentally ill, and the current federal probe into Portland police use of force involving people with mental illness, is probably making officers reluctant to engage.

“I think they’re apprehensive about all of the problems that have ensued,” McDade said. “The citizens have the right to complain about what police do, but when it gets to the point when police are hesitant to take action, it becomes a problem for everybody.”

Former Chief Rosie Sizer had the bureau review police response to suicidal people and consider less-tactical ways of approaching such calls, said Portland Lt. Dave Meyer. “The ultimate thing we want to avoid is using potentially lethal force against someone who is suicidal,” Meyer said. “She wanted us to consider, ‘Is what we’re doing, what we should be doing?”

In training this year, Meyer advised sergeants to collect information from neighbors, consider statements the person made and whether he or she committed a crime before deciding whether to engage or leave. Police are not legally required to take a person in for a mental health evaluation, but “may,” Meyer said.

If police leave the person alone, they’re told to alert Project Respond, or the bureau’s mobile mental crisis officer, who is paired with a mental health worker, for follow-up.

The bureau hasn’t adopted a policy that officers should walk away from people in mental health crisis, but it should be an option if supervisors determine the public is not at risk and resources are provided to the person in crisis, Meyer said.

“I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way,” Meyer said. “Our response should be based on the individual circumstances of a call.”

Earlier this year, police and firefighters responded to a call on an unresponsive, suicidal woman with knives in a Southwest Portland apartment. City housing authority managers and firefighters entered the unit, but police backed away as not to incite her. At one point, firefighters yelled to police, “Take action!” when the woman got up holding knives. Police ended up firing their Tasers at the woman and took her to a hospital for evaluation.

Walker, of Cascadia, recommends that a mental health specialist be at the scene of such a call to advise public safety, and one agency take the lead.

Griffin, who pleaded not guilty Friday to unlawful use of a weapon, pointing a firearm at another person and menacing, remains jailed on $1 million bail after a prosecutor argued he was a danger to the community. Experts suspect he suffered a psychotic break, possibly schizophrenia, due to stress. He lived in his Southwest Portland apartment complex for more than a decade, and held a temporary/seasonal job at Oregon Zoo between April 2006 and November 2009.

“I think putting him in a jail or prison for any extended period of time is not doing anyone any good,” Walker said. “Unfortunately, this is the only way he’ll get the treatment he needs, mandated through the criminal justice system.”

From the Portland Mercury, May 22, 2011

Mike Reese Didn’t Grow Up Dreaming He’d Be a Cop. But he’s the guy who just led Portland’s police force through its most “tumultuous” year in memory. We talk shootings, mental health, and Tasers—and how next year might be better.

Symmetry is a funny thing. When Mike Reese, then merely the commander of the Portland Police Bureau’s sprawling East Precinct, woke up the morning of May 12, 2010, he had somewhere important to be.

It was the press conference where Mayor Sam Adams would take over as police commissioner—amid a low ebb in community-police relations, and after a nasty budget squabble with then-Chief Rosie Sizer—and make Reese the city’s top cop.

“This is a can-do police chief,” the mayor said at the time, “and I’m going to be a can-do police commissioner.”

That night, the pair would come together again, immediately put to the test, to answer for what was then the third officer-involved shooting of 2010.

Keaton Otis, 25, a mentally disturbed man, was killed in a messy shootout with officers from the bureau’s gang enforcement unit. They had decided to tail him because they said he looked suspicious—walking perilously close to racially profiling Otis. And in the scuffle after they stopped him, officials say, Otis shot one officer, and three others returned fire 32 times.

One year later, on an anniversary Reese hoped would just “fly under the radar,” he also had somewhere to be: Nashville—for what his spokesman described as a national gathering of police chiefs. And, in the wee hours as Thursday, May 12, turned to Friday, May 13, there also was some news on an issue that has bedeviled the bureau in recent months: Two suspects sought in the gang-related shooting of a 14-year-old outside Lloyd Center had been arrested after weeks of investigation. No one was shot.

But if Reese, 53, took over at a low point for the bureau—mired in mistrust over the James Chasse settlement, reckoning with a troubling surge in shootings, and facing layoffs—has anything changed?

Portland cops have fired their guns in the line of duty six more times since Reese’s first day, killing three men also battling mental illness and nearly killing a fourth. It’s been the largest spike for the bureau in years—since before officers were armed with Tasers and given training on crisis intervention.

In one incident in March, two cops were shot, one of them sent to the hospital with serious injuries, when a mentally ill man opened fire from his Southeast duplex. The man, Ralph Clyde Turner, was not shot. Last fall, Reese fired the officer who shot and killed Aaron Campbell, citing his history of poor judgment on the job, but then courted controversy a month later when he promoted the officer who shot Raymond Gwerder, seemingly overlooking a far more costly history of mistakes.

Reese knew, even if the mayor didn’t, that the FBI was helping a 19-year-old Somali American plot mass murder in Pioneer Courthouse Square—and now Portland’s tighter with the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Gang crime took over headlines last summer and led to new gun-control laws. And the budget? Reese found a way not only to avoid laying off cops, but also to hire more. But that’s only because Portland is suddenly drowning in cash.

The Mercury sat down with the chief earlier this month to talk about the year that was and the year that might be. Questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

MERCURY: Is every year like this? Is busy the right word?

MIKE REESE: It’s been tumultuous, actually, for the first year. Certainly the number of officer-involved shootings is higher than in the last few years, and if you combine that with the transition between chiefs, and the budget—the fact that we had to lay off 24 people last year and hold 31 sworn vacancies for six months—it’s been a monumental year.

How would you say you handled it? Rate yourself.

I would let other people rate me.

Okay then, here’s an easy one: What’s something good you’ve done this year?

[Long pause] I think trying to help the officers and the community understand the new dynamics around policing and that we’ve had a shift in what we do and who we deal with. Over the course of my career, it’s gone from traditional crime to where we’re dealing more and more with social disorder. It’s been so incremental over the last 25 years, particularly with the breakdown of services to people who are mentally ill, that we didn’t realize it was overwhelming us. This is a new dynamic.

But couldn’t you have done something sooner?

Absolutely. Our officers would have been better prepared and better trained to deal with the issues we’re facing now.

You didn’t realize this shift was coming before you became chief?

I’ve certainly made my share of mistakes and learned as I’ve gone on in the past year or so. But I guess I started to see it probably when I was Central Precinct commander. I started having conversations with social service partners and doing outreach.

Before we go any deeper, this is a good time to stop and talk about your background, how you got to be chief. Let’s have the basics.

I grew up in North Portland, but I moved around a lot as a kid. We were very poor, and my parents were divorced. I went to six different elementary schools before graduating from Roosevelt High School and then from Portland State, with a master’s in public administration. I’m married to a counselor at Lake Oswego High School. We have three daughters—and the oldest one just graduated from college a year ago. We live in Southwest.

You made your oldest daughter stand up during your City Club speech last month.

I was kind of joking. I said that as her father, I can say she’s looking for work. She’s still looking.

What do you do for fun—besides play the guitar?

My kids, the two younger ones, are in athletics so I go to a lot of basketball games. Lacrosse. Soccer. I coach basketball, and that takes up a lot of time. I also compete in triathlons.

I spotted you running down Willamette Boulevard last year, during the Portland Marathon.

I’ve done the Portland Marathon 10 times. I don’t specifically train for running events. I train for triathlons but I do half-marathons and marathons as part. This morning I got to work at 7 am and went for a nine-mile run. We had a good time.

How often do you play music?

We still get together. The band practices once a week.

Quick. What’s your favorite band? Song?

I love Carlos Santana. He’s probably my favorite guitar player, and “Black Magic Woman” is one of my favorite songs of all time.

You started working as a counselor at the Boys and Girls Club. How did that lead into law enforcement?

I was working at the Lents Boys and Girls Club and I was the person in charge of that facility. And our executive director was retiring, so I applied. The board of governors, they were very kind. They said, “God, Mike, we really love you, but you need a lot more experience. You should be the executive director in Salem or in Lebanon or in Boise.” But my family is here, and my daughter was young. So I started looking for a different profession. I saw an ad for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, applied—and it took seven months. During the course of it, I thought, well, I really like my job. I think I’ll just forget the law [enforcement] thing. And then they’d call me up two months later and tell me I was number one on the test, come take the physical. It went through a cycle. I’d think I didn’t want to do it, and then they’d call me. Finally they offered me the job, and I said okay.

And now you’re chief of police in Portland.

I didn’t start until I was 32. Most officers start when they’re 24 or 25.

Let’s talk about shootings. You’ve been consistent. Before taking over, you worried about mental health funding, and you’ve kept saying it while trying to explain all the shootings since then.

It’s very hard right now because the state and the county are making some difficult decisions about what to fund. Over the course of my career, we’ve seen the resources for mental health evaporate. They decided 30 years ago to deinstitutionalize people and build community-based treatment facilities, but they never built the other facilities. So you can’t walk in downtown Portland without coming across somebody who’s mentally ill. Almost all of the incidents last year where officers had to use their firearms involved people in some sort of mental health crisis. Not all of them were mentally ill but certainly some of them were responding to an emotional crisis.

What are you doing in the absence of those services?

We’re working with treatment providers and looking at the interaction between mentally ill people and police and where the system is breaking down. We’re telling officers—giving them information—about the new dynamic: Here’s what we are experiencing. Here are some options. Here are things you have to look for when you have someone who’s mentally ill and they’re abusing substances and have a weapon.

Some experts have criticized the bureau’s crisis training program, saying it’s best aimed at a specialized group of officers with the right temperament, not all officers. Are you considering changes?

We’ve gone down that road. It’s the right model. It works. Just yesterday, Central Precinct officers spent hours talking a person who was going to jump off of the Ross Island Bridge out of doing that. We’re having our hostage negotiation team be more involved. But going back to where we have just a few officers trained, I don’t think that’s a good model.

In explaining the recent shootings to community groups, you’ve said the majority of the decisions officers made were within policy. That means that some decisions were not. Should we expect further discipline?

Those cases are still going through the review and analysis process, so it would be premature for me to say that I foresee discipline coming out of those. As we’ve looked at those, with a snapshot review from the training division and from the strategic services division, officers used good tactics.

They used less lethal weapons when appropriate. They were faced with folks intent on harming the officers or the community who were armed with deadly weapons, and officers had to make difficult decisions

The incident with Ralph Turner, in which Officer Parek Singh was hospitalized, was resolved in a way that even critics of the bureau acknowledged was peaceful and professional. What worked?

We had two officers shot that day; one officer’s bulletproof vest protected him. That’s not a successful outcome for us, having two officers shot in an incident. Having said that, our officers reacted heroically and very professionally to a person who was trying to kill them.

You took flak from the Portland Police Association (PPA) when Officer Ron Frashour was fired. Is there still a rift with rank-and-file officers?

I have a good relationship with the leadership of the PPA. We’re going to disagree about labor and management issues sometimes, but we’re going to do it in a respectful and professional manner. [PPA President] Daryl Turner and I have the best interests of the bureau at heart… and the community at heart.

Promoting Leo Besner [the tactical unit officer who shot Raymond Gwerder in 2005, and who also has cost the city hundreds of thousands in legal costs in other use-of-force cases] caused outcry. At the promotion ceremony, you ripped “ubiquitous critics”? Were you courting that reaction?

With promotions, we look at a whole range of aspects: how people do in the promotional process, their history, and the position that’s available. I believe strongly in redemption. People are going to have bumps in the road, if you will. I’ve certainly made plenty of mistakes in my career. And when I have conversations with people about what I need to see from them to prepare themselves for that next step, and they do those things and they have made transformative changes, then I value that and I think they’re ready for promotion. I’m not going to make everybody happy. What I want is to be able to look in the mirror and say I did what I believe is right.

Some have compared Besner’s record to Frashour’s. In Frashour’s termination letter, you mentioned his “bumps in the road” to justify your decision.

It’s not fair to Sergeant Besner to characterize the Gwerder shooting as his responsibility. Certainly he was the person who fired the shot, but there was a monumental breakdown in communication, and the Portland Police Bureau realized that we had collective fault. We made some really dramatic changes, and to say that Leo Besner is solely responsible for what happened would be a mischaracterization of the events.

Let’s talk about resources. What’s the biggest crime-fighting challenge facing the bureau right now?

Other than the fact we’re dealing with so much social disorder: homelessness, mental illness, drug addiction, what’s ticking up now is burglaries and auto theft. Burglars [are] exploiting the internet [to fence their wares], so we have to adjust. We put together a burglary task force identifying prolific burglars and also looking at how we can get to the fencing operations

Does the bureau have enough resources to do its job?

No. We’re constantly robbing Peter to pay Paul. When we created the burglary task force we took away precinct detectives, and neighborhood officers, and drug and vice division officers to put them at that mission. That means we don’t have as many detectives investigating other property crimes or neighborhood response officers responding to problem areas and locations.

The Illegal Drug Impact Areas in Old Town have been approved, but the district attorney’s office needs to do some work. What’s being done in the meantime?

We’re working with other criminal justice partners, the DA, and parole and probation, to hold people accountable. For the last year, because of budget cuts, the DA hasn’t been prosecuting drug crimes. Officers tell me they go to court and see people getting higher fines for speeding tickets than for possessing heroin. That doesn’t work, when you allow people to spiral down into addiction. It makes it much tougher for us to break that cycle. If we can interdict that behavior sooner, when they first start getting addicted and get them into treatment and housing, employment, we’re going to be a lot more successful. The criminal justice system has to be whole, and it has to work.

It emerged during the city council hearing on the Illegal Drug Impact Areas that there are empty beds in the city’s Service Coordination Team program. How can there be empty beds at a time of need?

We’ve lowered the threshold from when we started the program. We were looking at the chronic offenders, the people who are doing the most damage, stealing everything that’s not nailed down to support their addiction. Some of those folks were being arrested 30 times in three months. So they were cycling in and out of the criminal justice system. But the bar has dropped down to three or four arrests. The recidivism rate among that group has dropped dramatically. We also increased capacity because the program was successful. We got a federal grant to increase outpatient services, so now we’re working to identify people who may not be getting the number of arrests but we know they’ve got a drug problem.

The gun crime task force the bureau resurrected last year—was that the mayor’s big push, or was it yours?

The mayor asked for some ideas about how to attack the problem of people acquiring firearms and using them in a violent manner. I was the first city sergeant assigned to the Youth Guns Anti-Violence Task Force. We kind of put that model together. Due to resource issues, it got disbanded about three years ago. But I thought we were very effective. So we talked to the mayor: Here’s an option. The mayor liked it, so we put it back together.

People hear about targeted gun, gang, and drug crime efforts, and they worry about racial profiling.

When we look at criminal behavior, we’re blind. But when you look specifically at gang crime, the problem we’re having right now is you’ve got African American young men who are being killed, and the suspects in those crimes are African American young men. When we’re having conversations about our enforcement efforts, and why we’re looking at these gangs, that’s who is involved and that’s who is being victimized.

Let’s talk about Tasers—and the city’s Taser policy.

Do you want me to Taser you?

I volunteered. I wanted to. [The city attorney's office told the police bureau no.] Have you ever Tasered anyone?

No.

There was a city audit on Taser use last year. And some lawsuits reported on in the Oregonian. When should Tasers be used?

When someone’s engaged in aggressive physical resistance, or is likely to engage in it, it’s appropriate to use a Taser. Dave Woboril [a deputy city attorney] has talked to community groups about our Taser policy. We provide scenarios about where we use Tasers, and people thought we were very thoughtful and very judicious.

For example, you get a person in a stolen car, and we get into a pursuit. Maybe they stop the car and get out and take off running. Is it appropriate for us to Taser that person to keep them from getting into a neighborhood as they’re going over the fence? When we ask community groups, they say that’s a pretty good use of a Taser to stop that person from getting into my backyard. Or when someone balls up their fist and you can tell they’re ready for a fight—they want to assault an officer. Is that an inappropriate use of a Taser, as opposed to us going hands-on and punching the person.

Would running from an officer always be considered an act of active resistance?

We have to look at the situation. What threat does this person pose to the community? What’s the severity of the crime? What are your options? Are you there by yourself, or do you have four or five officers with you. It’s the totality of circumstances.

Quickly, on the Joint Terrorism Task Force. How detailed are the council’s annual reports going to be?

We’re working with the mayor right now, and deciding what information needs to be captured—providing as much detail as we can without compromising investigations or the identity of investigators who are working undercover.

To join a federal investigation, do you need the police commissioner’s permission? Or do you merely need to notify him?

The mayor and I will be on the same page as we move forward. He’s been very supportive of our involvement.

So you’re a boss now. And you’ve been a boss for a while. Do you miss anything about being on patrol?

When I go out and work shifts, I really feel like I’m missing my calling. That ability to be in the patrol car, out in a neighborhood helping people, it’s powerful.