Two weeks ago, Mayor Tom Potter upheld his decision to fire a
cop who apparently broke departmental rules and shot the driver of a
moving car, citing “poor judgment and decision-making.” But the head of
the police union, Robert King, says the mayor’s decision was political,
and is destined to be overturned.
“The city’s decision is going to be reversed,” says King. “It’s flat
wrong, and there is no way they are going to be able to prove their
case to an independent arbitrator.”
On Thursday, August 16, the mayor announced that he was standing by
his May decision to fire Lieutenant Jeffrey Kaer for poor
decision-making leading up to his fatal shooting of 28-year-old Dennis
Young in January 2006.
Potter’s decision to fire Kaer represents a tougher approach by the
city than that taken by Mayor Vera Katz in 2003 over the controversial
shooting of Kendra James by Officer Scott McCollister.
McCollister was suspended by Katz for five and a half months without
pay for shooting James. But in January 2006, arbitrator John C.
Truesdale ordered the city to overturn the decision and pay back wages,
benefits, and interest of $25,000, plus expunge the incident from
McCollister’s record. Truesdale based his decision to reverse the
suspension on the fact that there wasn’t an internal affairs
investigation into McCollister’s actions at the time. Notably, an
internal investigation has been completed in Kaer’s case.
King is also angry that Potter chose to tell the media he planned to
fire Kaer on May 9, before the mayor had a chance to sit down with Kaer
in an arbitration hearing on July 30. King also accuses Potter of
making a political issue out of the decision. Potter’s announcement
followed media scrutiny of the case throughout April.
“It’s unequivocally political,” King says. “When Potter released the
pre-disciplinary hearing letter to the public and the press, he biased
public opinion against the lieutenant, and has put himself in a
position that he can’t walk away from. He took a political step, which
had a harmful and detrimental impact on Kaer’s ability to be treated
fairly by the mayor at the arbitration hearing.”
Police oversight activists are unconvinced by King’s rhetoric. “My
understanding is that one of the reasons these firings keep getting
overturned is that there is no precedent for firing an officer in these
circumstances,” says Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch. “We can only
hope that this endless loop logic—where officers get reinstated
because nobody has ever been fired—doesn’t prevail this time.
It’s like living in the novel Catch-22.”
Potter’s office has refused repeated requests by the Mercury for follow-up comment on the firing decision.