- Chief Reese and Mayor Adams: Put to the test.
A press conference this morning at the Justice Center revealed more details about last night’s officer involved shooting and also gave Mayor Sam Adams and new police Chief Mike Reese their first chance to play by the rules of what they say will be a more transparent and community-oriented police department.
Despite having arguably the worst first day ever, new Chief Mike Reese seemed calm and collected at this morning’s briefing as he spelled out the details of the what went down last night.
According to the police account, officers on the HEAT team began following a car around the Holladay Park area after they saw it violate a traffic law. With the (perhaps unmarked) cop car behind it, the suspected car made several unsignaled turns and cut across lanes of traffic, prompting the HEAT officers to turn on their lights and siren in an attempt to pull the car over. The driver, who was alone in the car, did not pull over for some time but eventually pulled over to the curb at NE 6th and Halsey.
“As officers approached the vehicle, the subject shouted profanities at the officers and was not complying with directions. Additional officers arrived and witnessed the subject reaching over toward the passenger area of the vehicle,” reads the official police statement. “A taser was deployed, but did not stop the subject’s movements. Another taser was deployed and again did not have any effect on the subject’s movements. At some point, the subject pulled out a gun, shots were fired and Officer Christoper Burley, a 5-year veteran assigned to HEAT, fell to the ground.”
Two other officers, Cody Berne, Andrew Polas and Jim Defrain opened fire. Still unsure if the driver was a threat, the officers then shot beanbag rounds at him, until they approached him as a group and removed him from the car. “The subject began receiving medical assistance but was pronounced dead at the scene.”
Officer Burley, meanwhile, was shot once in both legs and is expected to make a full recovery. The mayor stopped by his hospital room yesterday before heading down to the scene and wrote him a “Get Well” note on the back of a business card. What? No Get Well tweet?
The identity and age of the deceased driver are not being released until the Medical Examiner can tell his next-of-kin.
During the briefing, Chief Reese and Mayor Adams stressed their commitment to transparency and openness, but couldn’t answer many of the specific questions about the investigation, such as how a man who’s being tasered managed to grab his gun, or what specifically prompted the initial traffic stop.
“I can certainly say that my first day as chief of police was eventful. I’m so grateful that the officers are doing okay,” said Chief Reese, who told papers yesterday that he hopes to be a “peacekeeper” on the force. “I’m proud of their actions and their response.”
“This was a heartbreaking scene to see: a young Portlander dead on one of our sidewalks,” said Mayor Adams, adding that he was not passing judgment on the officers. “This shouldn’t happen in my city, this shouldn’t happen in Portland.”
More details about the investigation (and Adams’ promises of transparency!) below the cut.
Mayor Adams stressed that the investigation into this shooting would be more open than those in the past, starting with a release of the grand jury testimony of all the officers and witnesses involved. “This is the first case of the new administration of the police agency, where we are going to debrief as we go,” promised Adams. He went on to explain some delays in releasing information: the car, for example, has not been searched because the police need legal permission from the owner. The body of the driver was left exposed on the street for several hours as the police waited for a medical examiner.
Adams spelled out that he and the new chief had discussed crisis contact protocol just after Reese was sworn in. Some wondered why Adams turned up at the scene yesterday evening. “I told him that I would be going to these scenes not to direct but to get a lay of the land,” says Adams. The mayor says he also called up Pastor Haynes of the Albina Ministerial Alliance (an outspoken critic of the Aaron Campbell shooting) and emphasized that he would be doing “outreach to the community.”
Asked whether he thought the post-shooting protest at the scene was justified, Adams replied, “Peaceful protest is a key right in this county. I think the concerns are justified. Use of deadly force is as a last resort.”
They tried the Tazer multiple times, to no effect, and didn’t fire until fired upon (and hit, I might add).
Adams’ being there seems right to me, as it was his first day on the job as Police Commish. I would’ve done the same.
Also, I realize I’ll receive harsh criticism for this next statement but I feel disingenuous not posting it here:
After reading Adams’ statement of, “This shouldn’t happen in my city, this shouldn’t happen in Portland”, I couldn’t help but be moved. I feel the same way.
And great reporting as usual, Smirk.
Very good reporting
I agree with Jackattak. Well put.
un-fucking-real has clearly never had a blowjob, if he thinks that was one.
I know whose comment is getting deleted!
“This was a heartbreaking scene to see: a young Portlander dead on one of our sidewalks,” said Mayor Aams.
More like a worthless piece of shit dead on one of our sidewalks. The kind of person who would even consider shooting at cops shouldn’t be mourned, to ANY degree, by our fucking MAYOR.
Sarah, great reporting. Thank you! Please follow up on the “confiscated” video from the person who was shooting from their private property with their personal device. That just sounds wrong.
I’m with dieselboi. While I’m not in a rush to watch someone get shot for the fifth time in my life, I would like to watch to see how it all went down.
Everyone points out that this is a terrible first day on the job for Reese. I imagine it’s a GREAT first day of retirement for Sizer. She was probably upset with the firing yesterday and suddenly totally okay with it today.
@CC: From a systemic perspective, they’re a victim too. Where did society fail them so badly that this is their response? Maybe, just maybe they’re that one in a million sociopath… but I doubt it.
It must have been Rasputin in that car.
“This shouldn’t happen in my city.” I couldn’t disagree more, Mr. Mayor. Portland will always have criminals who carry guns and inflict harm on others. Community policing doesn’t make the bad guys go away. Better the perp was confronted by officers and not an unarmed citizen who cut him off on the onramp.
If we could persuade citizens to simply follow verbal instructions given by the Police, they wouldn’t get shot. How about a big yellow patch on the front of their uniforms that says, “Do what I tell you and you won’t get shot.”
@ Graham: I agree that society/parents/etc MAY have failed them, and that is a shame that we should try really, really hard to prevent.
However. At some point, fucked up people cross a line where where it doesn’t matter much how they got to be the way they are – THEY are the ones fucking up society now.
I don’t know where that line is, but it’s certainly before they open up on a group of cops.
Colin: I think the mayor was more mourning it as a loss of a young man’s life than the fact that this particular person died… if that makes any sense. But I agree with you about everything else. There are plenty of people who face poverty and societal adversity who are working hard and getting educated and not shooting at cops. There is a certain point where you did, in fact, ask for it. And he got it.
I wonder if the deceased had any kind of a criminal record.
I would believe so, ujfoyt, although for now it’s simply conjecture (which I happen to love).
I think so because the responding officers were immediately on guard and immediately requested backup, which typically spells “felony offender”.
The car didn’t belong to the deceased however, so that might mean that the deceased was clean to a certain extent, as well. Although, if you’re willing to fight with and shoot at cops, you had it coming eventually anyway.
It’s too bad, Jackattack, but some people just refuse to be law-abiding and civil. The really bad ones usually wind up like this, if they don’t kill some innocent person first.
@ bruce
yes, now unarmed citizens just need to worry about running into off duty cops on the on ramps huh?
It amazes me how people deploy the fascistic reasoning that if you just do what the armed thugs tell you to then you won’t get shot. Did you know that there have been cases where disobeying the commands of an officer has been deemed acceptable if the broader social context reasonably leads the person to believe that they could be in danger from, not an individual officer, but the police in general. Like say if they have killed a good number of citizens with no accountability. Or maybe if they have repeatedly publicly stated that in implementing their LA wannabe anti-gang tactics they feel that race is entirely appropriate as a factor for picking out criminals.
In fact within the last couple months the federal courts ruled that a person can legally resist arrest if it can be reasonably judged that the force being used on them is excessive. That might sound like a crazy law to folks who think that you should just do what cops say but to my mind the crazy part is that that wasn’t the law already.
I don’t know what happened in this case but I do know that the sort of blind faith in authority that you advocate is the kind of thing that gives me slepless nights.
As far as a little bit of context goes,its important to keep in mind that the Hotspot Enforcement Action Team doesn’t exist to make routine traffic stops. They don’t pull anybody over without; knowing the driver from previous encounters, running a license plate and getting a ‘familiar’ name or, at least a hunch that just about any black dude driving a car is up to no good. They don’t get out of the car without expecting trouble, whether its of their own creation or not.
Like everybody else that wasn’t there the day of this present incident, I have no idea what happened. But for the naive bunch that thinks the PPB is incapable of provoking a shootout the case of Robert Christopher can be informative.
@eastside
“[officer]Berne acknowledged that race is ‘a factor I’d consider’ in deciding who to pull over.”(http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/Blogto…)
“Corno is frank about who they’re targeting: young black men. ‘Statistics don’t lie,’ he says. ‘You gotta go where the numbers go.” (http://wweek.com/editorial/3512/12150/)
So there’s some hints as to how narrow the target of the heat team is.
Sounds like suicide by cop.
I vote with Demondog. It will be interesting to see the deceaseds’ police record, if they release it. Sounds like he was a bad guy.
Every life has value, even those who meet their demise in this manner. They are someones son, daughter, sister, brother, mother, father, they are loved, and every act of violence by one human being against another diminishes us all. I’m glad the Mayor showed up, and for some reason, I choose to believe that our newly appointed Police Chief, whom I know personally will be transparent, as well.