THE CUSTODY REPORT for this North Portland assault call from April 2013 reads pretty much like all the other reports Portland police officers write up every day.
It recounts a relatively minor fight full of cursing and punching—but no injuries beyond some bruises. It mentions “vague answers” and “inconsistent statements” from a suspect who “became angered” by follow-up questions—someone whose breathing notably sped up while she “looked down at the ground, sighed, [and] crossed her arms.”
All of that, the report says, was enough to justify a trip downtown for fingerprints and a mug shot. Still typical.
Except, of course, that this case was anything but typical: The suspect hauled away in handcuffs was only nine years old—a straight-A student in Portland Public Schools’ gifted program.
She was arrested almost a week after the fight—which erupted among a group of preteens at the Boys and Girls Club in New Columbia. And she was taken to jail just before dinner, without her mother, while still wearing nothing but a bathing suit and towel. The officers didn’t read the girl her Miranda rights. She was never charged.
It’s a disturbing tale. Months later—following a formal complaint by the girl’s mother—her case has opened up a bitter rift between the city’s police brass and Independent Police Review Division (IPR). It’s also raised uncomfortable questions about how police officers are trained to handle children, particularly when those children aren’t threatening harm.
Meanwhile, the officers in question, David McCarthy and Matthew Huspek, have continued to earn plaudits for their community police work in New Columbia and with children in particular. Their faces appear on the Facebook page for the bureau’s New Columbia detail.
“They put the handcuffs on her,” the girl’s mother, Latoya Harris, told the Mercury. “And everybody saw my daughter get perp-walked to the car. What stood out was the expression on my daughter’s face. The fear and the sadness. We still have to see these officers in our community.”
Harris says she’d already punished her daughter over the fight and that the encounter with the police has left the girl traumatized. Her daughter changed schools, she says, and is still in counseling.
“I didn’t get the same girl back,” Harris says.
Harris first told her daughter’s story at this month’s meeting of the Citizen Review Committee (CRC)—a citizen panel charged with studying police bureau policies and hearing appeals in police misconduct cases. She spoke with the Mercury in more detail in the days after the meeting and later shared the eight pages of police reports she’d obtained. The Mercury is not identifying the girl because of her age.
Harris said she went public after she filed a complaint with IPR last year—only to be told there would be no meaningful consequences.
Because bureau policy doesn’t place any limits or conditions on the arrests of small children, IPR Director Constantin Severe explained, the most he could do was mark the complaint as a “service improvement opportunity” and send it to the officers’ bosses at North Precinct.
It’s a finding that essentially lets a complainant talk things over with the cop they’ve accused of wrongdoing. It lingers on an officer’s record for three years, but it’s not considered discipline.
“I feel very badly for the complainant and her mother,” Severe said at the CRC meeting, acknowledging his office had “significant concerns” and that what happened “seems wrong.” “This isn’t a case we felt comfortable dismissing.”
But even that limited step apparently led to outrage among senior police commanders in North Precinct—with some suggesting the whole thing was “meritless.”
“We sent it to North and had some discussions,” Severe said. “They made clear their feelings and their appreciation… or lack thereof.”
North Precinct Commander Mike Leloff failed to return multiple messages seeking comment as of press time.
The bureau’s public information office was also sent a list of questions. Among them: How officers are trained when it comes to taking children into custody, whether handcuffing is normal for children who aren’t agitated, and how often children ages nine or younger are taken downtown for processing.
But Sergeant Pete Simpson, a police spokesman, emailed Tuesday, April 15, saying he couldn’t comment on the arrest because of potential legal action. He did offer a general comment on how often children are arrested—and said it’s policy, once someone’s arrested, to handcuff them before they can be driven somewhere.
“I can say that the arresting of a nine-year-old is a rare occurrence,” Simpson said, “but if an arrest is made, we have to handcuff for transportation.”
Joseph Hagedorn, head of the Multnomah County juvenile unit for Metropolitan Public Defender, called this case “outrageous” and said the bureau ought to feel “embarrassed.”
He said cops maybe could have taken the girl to the county’s juvenile detention center instead of Central Precinct, and certainly not in handcuffs, given her age. But he also said the juvenile facility “would be unlikely” to accept her.
“It almost seems like there’s an embarrassment aspect to it,” Hagedorn says. “Like they were trying to make a point of embarrassing this child and scaring her straight. They have procedures, and their officers should know better—especially ones who are working with kids.”
He also said he wasn’t surprised Harris’ daughter was in counseling and had struggled since her arrest. And he raised concerns about the girl’s race—she’s African American—and the disproportionate number of arrests facing young African Americans.
“When you make a decision like that, to arrest a child, it has long-term traumatic effects,” Hagedorn says. “They are responsible.”
McCarthy’s report says he and Huspek were called to the Boys and Girls Club after the fight involving Harris’ daughter had ended—and after club officials had sent Harris’ daughter home.
The mom of another nine-year-old girl who’d been fighting—that girl accused Harris’ daughter of knocking off her glasses and somehow hitting her head on a brick wall—had told officers she wanted to see Harris’ daughter arrested.
A counselor at the club told police he thought the fight lasted only “about 30 seconds”—and though he missed most of it, he saw both girls throwing punches. McCarthy’s accounting of the fight primarily relies on statements from other children.
Traci Rose, chief communications officer for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Portland, says staff have to call cops maybe three to five times a year, citywide. That doesn’t include, she says, calls made by parents. She confirmed Harris’ daughter was suspended from the club and sent home after the fight.
Rose also said that the fight involving Harris’ daughter was the last time, no matter who placed the call, police showed up at the club in New Columbia.
“There isn’t one club over the other we can point to and say that there’s been a problem,” Rose says.
Harris says her daughter knew she’d made a mistake. Harris even said she’d have been okay if the officers’ visit was just that: a stern reminder that scuffles can lead to more serious problems. But she says that wasn’t what happened.
“If they had just told her not to fight, I would have totally condoned it,” she says. “But they went over and beyond.”
“while still wearing nothing but a bathing suit and towel”
Why was she wearing a bathing suit? Where was she arrested? These seem like points that need explaining.
Fair point, Graham. She was arrested outside her front door.
We need review boards with actual teeth, and we need to be able to fire cops for real, and (this goes beyond portland) blacklist cops fired for sufficient cause from EVER working in law enforcement again.
The current CRC doesn’t have near the power we need as Portland citizens subject to roving bands of armed police with a federally documented problem that involves killing people.
Ugh!
There go our cops again! This kind of BS doesn’t even happen in L.A. or Las Vegas!
I’m as a pasty white as a snowflake and I think the crooked cops here are pretty racist. There is a real gang mentality among a lot of the city police and county sheriffs here that does not benefit the community. I do appreciate the job law enforcement does when it comes to actually protecting people from the threat of predatory behavior, I just wish there weren’t so many bad apples that take every opportunity to abuse the power that comes with their position.
I’d also like to hear more about why the officers arrested her on her doorstep in a bathing suit. I can understand (if not condone) a misguided/racist “scared straight” situation, but I have no idea why they would have ever thought that was appropriate.
@CC: The police reports don’t say much more than I’ve included when laying out the motivation for her arrest: Her statements were “inconsistent,” they wrote, and her “recollection of events” didn’t match what other people had said. She’d been described as the “primary aggressor” by witnesses—who were actually other children. It goes from there to say the girl “was taken into custody.”
Portland is quickly getting the reputation around the country as one of the more poorly run and violence happy forces in the nation…
This is just sad, there are so many other alternatives the police could have used. The fact that we do not have a body that can look at this type of behavior by the Portland police is a shame. All the adults involved in this case dropped the ball and should feel some responsibility for this ending up a case of police abuse.
given the “fear for my life” homicide blank-check loophole afforded the blue gangbangers, it’s a wonder she wasn’t tasered and then shot ten or twenty times – or the other way around!
If this article was in the Portland Tribune, the tune would go something like, ” Look at how brave the Portland Police are this week. Yes, they have finally managed to tackle and arrest those pesky nine year old girls in bathing suits. “
I moved from Florida to get away from this.
Portland Oregon is the most racist place I’ve ever lived-and I’m from Washington D.C. and from an immigrant background, being targeted by police simply for having accents and nobody listens to you unless your American, so I know what racist is. The sad truth is that tomorrow most of you will barely care or remember because you don’t deal with this problem on a first-hand daily basis. I live in North Portland so I hope to see these lovely officers in my neighborhood so I might ask for their papers.
Imagine a young girl at the jail, being stared at by the officers. The other officers and personnel working take some good, hard looks too. Why not? Her parent isn’t there and, hello, she is practically naked. Though, the officers are not being accused of rape, every time I have interacted with the police, they are highly sexualized about it and I am an adult. I have called police about domestic violence next door. Again, they were extremely sexualized about the whole event. Conflict between men and women really bring out the police forces, inner unwanted Romeo personalities. Its almost as though they get paid to pick up on chicks. This incident just shows how far they will go.
The police nowadays are trained to have a no lose attitude. This means that they have zero tolerance for common decency and common sense. What they say, goes. One, little, peep out of anybody, and they use excessive force. The book they go by, tells them that they are in grave danger at all times, and that for the sake of officer safety, they must always assume that everyone they encounter under any circumstances is a threat to them. This is beyond paranoia. It is policy. The police have no fear of law or law suits. Do you really believe that they have no recollection of Rodney King? What they fail to take into account, is that they are the actual minority. They foolishly and egotistically believe, that most people like them.
That is to say, that they are just going by the book, so they figure that people certainly must understand.
As if there must be a perfectly acceptable explanation for taking a cold, wet, half naked child to jail, instead of back inside her home to get warm and dry. Laws are selectively enforced all the time. The officers had the discretion to not abuse this child, but instead, they indulged in their typical, bulling behavior. It’s too bad that there weren’t any actual reporters on the scene. The story only could have been worse