Kyle Nice, the Portland Police Bureau sergeant involved in the death in custody of James Chasse in 2006 has been involved in an off-duty altercation with another motorist, the Portland Police Bureau has said this afternoon. From the cops:
“On April 3, 2010, Sergeant Kyle Nice, who is currently assigned to Central Precinct, was off-duty and driving in Washington County, when he and another motorist became involved in a confrontation.
Washington County deputies were called to the scene, investigated the incident and wrote an Information Report. No one was cited at the scene.
The Police Bureau is opening an investigation into the matter.
“We’ve yet to be fully briefed on the details, and until then we won’t have any comment,” says Brendan Finn, chief of staff to Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman. Nice is known to have a temper. We’ve got a request in to the Washington County sheriff’s office for a copy of the incident report and will update this post as soon as we have more.
- KYLE NICE: AT A PROTEST FOLLOWING THE SUSPENSION OF FELLOW CHASSE COP, CHRISTOPHER HUMPHREYS, LAST FALL
Update, 3:58 You can download the Washington County police report here as a pdf.
From the narrative, by sheriff’s deputy J.Bieker, it appears that Nice told Bieker he got into an altercation with Washington County resident Neil Ruffin after Ruffin cut into his lane outside a Chevron station. The incident happened April 3.
Nice chased Ruffin, then stopped alongside Ruffin at the next light and said “thanks for almost hitting me back there,” putting his thumb up.
Nice pulled away, then told the sheriff’s deputy he saw Ruffin following him when he turned down a side street. So he pulled over, and walked toward Ruffin’s car with his gun drawn.
“He said he was a little upset because his six week old child was in the car with two bottles of propane and it could have been a bad crash,” wrote Bieker, in his report.
Ruffin, meanwhile, had a different story. “He told me he was at SW Garden Home and SW Oleson when this truck pulls up really close to him and honks its horn,” wrote Bieker. “He said he looked over and saw Nice “flipping him off” and mouthing “fucken asshole” and then drives off.”
Ruffin said he eventually pulled over, and opened his door. “And before he got out he saw Nice in between the front of his car and the back of Nice’s truck with a pistol out,” wrote Bieker. “He said Nice had the pistol close to his left side but the barrel was pointing right at him. He said Nice said ‘You fucken can’t drive you fucken ass hole.” Ruffin decided to call the police because he “didn’t know if Nice was crazy or what.” When he called the police, Nice pulled out his police ID and said “go ahead and called the police.”
Officer Bieker did not cite either man on the scene. A witness, Elizabeth Johnston, said “Nice seemed to be the more aggressive one out of the two that she could tell,” however.
Updates as we have them.
Update, 4:43: “We don’t treat police officers differently from anyone else,” says Sgt.David Thompson, a spokesman for the Washington County Sheriff’s office. “In fact if anything, we scrutinize them more because we know our interactions with police officers will be scrutinized.”
Why wasn’t Nice charged with menacing?
“It’s subjective,” says Thompson. “He didn’t point the gun at Ruffin, at least by his and by a witness’s account. There was also the justification that he feared for his safety and his child’s safety, sufficiently to feel threatened enough to pull his gun out at that point.”
“The line between self protection and menacing,” Thompson continues. “You need to be threatening someone. It didn’t appear from what the witness said that he was threatening this man. And, Mr.Ruffin’s justification for following this guy didn’t really make sense. He said he thought [Nice] was “crazy” and our deputy asked him, well why follow him then? And his response didn’t really make sense.”
Update 4:46: “The Mental Health Association of Portland asked for this man’s resignation in October 2009,” says Jason Renaud, with MHAP. “We stand by that request, we don’t believe he’s the sort of man Portland can rely on to protect people and we’d like to see him no longer be a Portland police officer.”
Update, 4:48: “This is what happens when you don’t punish officers for the worst behavior,” says Dan Handelman, an activist with Portland Copwatch. “The spokesperson for Washington county is saying that the other gentleman’s behavior is strange, but Sergeant Nice’s behavior needs explaining too. He was willing to engage in a gunfight while driving a very young child in his truck?”
Handelman also points to this story by Oregonian reporter Maxine Bernstein, about Central Precinct Officer Thomas Brennan, who was recently reassigned to the bureau’s telephone reporting unit for raising concerns about Nice and Officer Christopher Humphreys, the other officer involved in Chasse’s death.
So that’s what the fat guy from Teen Wolf has been up to.
Or Francis, from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.
Jeez Matt, you had the perfect chance to use the headline “Chasse Sergeant Not So Nice” and you missed it.
I AM KYLE NICE
All I have to say about the update is:
OMFGWTFBBQ
How was Nice NOT cited on this? He drew a gun!!
Oh, and this is priceless: “”He said he was a little upset because his six week old child was in the car with two bottles of propane and it could have been a bad crash,” wrote Bieker, in his report.”
The mother fucker had a gun in the car and drew it!!
/facepalm
Because that’s what you do when you’ve got a six-week old baby in the car and two bottles of propane—get in a car chase. Can someone PLEASE call social services?
Wm. Steven Humphrey: You are forgetting that he got in a car chase to catch up with the guy so he could get in a fraking gun fight. If any attorneys, nurses or doctors are out there reading about this, don’t forget: you are mandatory child abuse reporters.
Are you kidding?! I will vote for any candidate willing to fire these hillbilly idiots and get control of the Portland Police.
p.s. He engaged in a road rage car chase and then left his 6 week old baby *alone* in his car with two (two?) bottles of propane? Just so he could pull a gun(!) on someone?
Oh no. Perhaps if enough of us call CPS…
uh-oh! that horrible stench coming from City Hall must surely be the boys ‘n’ girls in the City
Attorney’s Office as they defecated their pant’s ‘n’ panties when they heard that the Poster
Boy for NOT being a Nice PPB PoPiggie has made the headlines again for his hair-trigger
temper and overly developed sense of entitlement (recall he stomped a man to death because
he “thought” he’d just pissed on the sidewalk…the man didn’t, of course, but Nice and his pals
got away with killing a man that time) and it makes their “defense” of this clown all the harder
as they head to trial in few weeks…a case they’ll surely lose and now only question is…how much
will be damages be tacked on the actual award…big bucks is at stake and the main defendant
couldn’t keep his ass out of trouble as he neared the final stretch of his race for his career! tsk! tsk!
I’m so sure that if I was in Nice’s shoes in this incident, and I pulled a gun, that they would have treated it all the same way.
100% fucking positive.
If Saltzman wants my vote, this guy better be fired by the time of the election. Can’t get it done by May? Too bad, I vote for the other guy and hope Saltzman redeems himself by November. This cop got a whopping 80 hour suspension for breaking Chasse’s ribs in over 20 places. He should have been fired years ago. I hope the PPB are taking away his gun until they finish their investigation.
I’ll be voting, nay canvassing, for any Portland candidate willing to fire this Peewee’s Big Adventure Francis-lookin’ nutbag.
And I’ll be voting *against* all the entrenched candidates who have done nothing – unless they take rapid steps to redeem themselves.
Send him a letter or call his home:
Kyle S Nice
[ADDRESS DELETED: BLOGTOWN DOES NOT PUBLISH PERSONAL INFORMATION OF POLICE OFFICERS.]
“Sargent Nice Ruffin up the suspect!”
Can we say Steroids? According to the DEA, police officers are on of the four professions most involved in the use of this illegal substance. A schedule three drug that produces hyper-aggressive behavior. Sound familiar???
What excuse do you think Westerman will have this time?
“The Nice Storm”
“Nice, Nice baby”
Also, “Cop is Douche, Gets Away With it.”
@blackedout
I believe that we will be seeing the I am Kyle Nice shirts, wonder if they will have the steroid needle on the front or the back…
OK folks, let’s clarify.
Nice gets “cut off” by Ruffin. Nice pulls up alongside Ruffin and mouths off. Ruffin chases Nice. Either Nice or Ruffin pulls over first, depending on whose story you believe. Then Nice gets out of his car and pulls his gun.
Depending on the nature of the chase and who pulled over first, drawing the gun may have been borderline sane.
The real problem here is that the PoPo are looking like yahoos in comparison to — the WashCo Sheriffs. Wow, just, wow.
I would respectfully disagree. There seems nothing sane about Nice’s actions.
He has a six week old baby in the car, and he’s road raging against a guy who may or may not have cut him off?
Then after flipping off the guy (thumbs up! ;), instead of calling a cop on his cell or heading to a station, Nice leaves his baby alone in a car with some full propane tanks so he can confront a stranger on the side of the road with his gun?
Really? Sounds like Nice is completely unhinged. And that child seems endangered.
Good thing Ruffin didn’t pee himself when the gun got pulled or Nice probably would have “Chasse’d” him.
Define: To Chasse, verb, beat the life out of someone because they may or may not have committed a smelly but non-violent act near you, then laugh about it later.
Is city hall going to make me vote republican? WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING IN THIS CITY
If we can’t fire maniac cops can we at least have them spayed or neutered?
Unfortunately, the police ranks are rife with this type of aggressive personality. It’s exactly they type we don’t want.
Looks like I’ve got some ignorance – someone fill me in? Lots of people here saying they’ll vote for any commissioner who’ll fire this guy. But I thought the whole problem was the commissioner doesn’t have the power to just fire officers?
If he doesn’t get cited for this, then legally he hasn’t done anything wrong, right? Which means they couldn’t legally fire him? Even moving him to a desk position or something would be a “disciplinary action” and give him a chance to sue the city.
Not saying I don’t want him gone! Just don’t understand how voting out Saltzmann is going to help.
If I was in my car and someone was walking at me, carrying a gun, without showing Police ID, I think I would just knock him down with my car. Why do these people get away with this shit? Just another reason to have mandatory drug screening after an incident. It seems to me that pulling a gun before you identify yourself is called menacing, which is against the law, cop or not. Although, come to think of it, a Vancouver police officer pulled a gun on a butcher, in the butchers’ store, and got away with it. I believe the issue was the officer didn’t like the way his meat was processed. I believe it had started to spoil before the cop got it to the butcher store. Something like that, anyway.
So….apparently we all need to go buy guns, because we now have reason to fear off-duty police officers brandishing them angrily on city streets.
FUCK.
@ BOH –
Some of us own them all ready. I carry legally sometimes. If I put myself in Ruffin’s situation here, and a man with road rage came brandishing a firearm at me in my car, and I had been carrying at the time, then either of us could’ve wound up dead (or both).
That should go to show just how badly this situation could’ve gone, all because a dirty cop wanted to show off his dick (gun).
@Reymont – You may be right, Saltzman may not have the power to fire cops, but according to the Oregonian story yesterday he can recommend punishment at least. I understand he needs to keep a good relationship with the PMA, but there need to be a few bad cops let go if they want to regain my trust. Contract negotiation talking point number one.
http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2010/04/portland_sgt_kyle_nice_under_i.html
“Nice was one of the officers involved in the Sept. 17, 2006 police struggle with James P. Chasse Jr., a 42-year-old man who suffered from schizophrenia and later died in police custody. In November 2009, police commissioner Dan Saltzman recommended Nice and fellow transit Officer Christopher Humphreys each be suspended without pay for 80 hours for failing to have Chasse transported by ambulance to a hospital, both before and after he was taken to jail.”
oops, *PPA*
Dead on, Jackattack. You’re right on the money, and that’s what scares the hell outta me right now.
I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation here.
See, Kyle is actually a T-1000 Terminator; the baby is John Connor; the propane is a T-1000’s energy drink and the hapless motorist is a Hapless Motorist Caught in a Bit of a Mindfuck.
if he realy made a statement that he pulled alongside someone and gave him the “thumbs up” after getting cut off is such a clear and obvious lie it should discredit anything else in his report.
What a dumbass. “We don’t treat police officers differently than anyone else”? BULLSHIT.
PEOPLE….WAKE THE F UP!!!! The PPB can’t fire police officers, they have a Union and really good lawyers that will sue the department and city if they see an officer treated (in their eyes) wrongly. Hell, a whistle blower can’t get fired, but the Union won’t back him. Hmmm, double standard? People who work with this thoughtless POS called him out, warning the public and his employer of the danger of this “Police Officer”, yet NOTHING IS DONE. Wow, shows how the people who work beside him see the glaring issue, yet the department won’t touch him. The D Bag has probably warned the department to leave him alone or he will sue them. Just another way to keep your job when you should really be getting daily anger management and doses of medication to keep yourself from shooting someone.
I work in a law office and see kids taken away for a hell of a lot less than what Nice did. That is child endangerment in the first degree! What a fool! Why oh shy is this guy a father, why hasn’t his wife/mother of his child thrown his out on the curb yet? Seriously, this is the exact reason some people should NEVER have kids!
Another black eye for the city whose cops never seem to keep their guns where they belong, IN THE F’ING HOLSTER!!!! Stay out of trouble you bunch of buffoons!