A federal judge finally ordered the City of Portland last
week to turn over crucial documents regarding James Philip Chasse
Jr.—the schizophrenic man beaten and killed by Portland police
last September—but added one condition: The attorney for Chasse’s
family cannot release any of the information in the documents to the
public.
That’s not good enough, says a conglomerate of local media including
the Portland Tribune, the Oregonian, and all of the
city’s TV stations, which hired attorney firm Davis Wright Tremaine to
intervene as a third party in the case last week. The interveners say
the information is in the public interest and should be released not
just to Tom Steenson, the Chasse family’s attorney, but also to the
public at large.
Protective orders, such as the one keeping the Chasse documents out
of the public eye, are often imposed on information about police
officers involved in controversial in-custody deaths like Chasse’s. The
city agrees to release information to the victim’s attorneys about the
officers, like their disciplinary and phone records, but copies of the
documents are made on pink paper to signify their confidentiality
between the parties involved in the lawsuit.
If the case is settled financially between those parties before it
goes to trial, as often happens with in-custody deaths, then the most
controversial documents never get a public airing. The officers can
continue working for the police bureau without journalists or the
public being able to ask tough, evidence-based questions about their
fitness for the job.
The stakes over the Chasse case’s protective order are high, and a
fight between the city and Steenson over whether to impose one has
delayed “discovery,” or handing over, of many documents in the lawsuit
so far.
Among the most controversial documents Steenson asked for last week
was a copy of the cops’ Internal Affairs Division (IAD) investigation
into what happened. Over a year since Chasse’s death, that
investigation is still incomplete.
Steenson also asked for police training documents and standard
operating procedures relating to use of force in encounters like
Chasse’s. The city attorney’s office says it has tried to get those
documents from the police bureau’s training division, but for some
reason the division has withheld them.
Furthermore, Steenson wants copies of all 2,400 police reports
written by Officer Christopher Humphreys during his eight-year career
at the police bureau. Humphreys has the bureau’s second-highest
use-of-force rate according to statistics released last November, and
Steenson argued that his office has evidence that Humphreys has a
“history or pattern of falsifying police reports,” and wants further
information to prove it.
Humphreys had been the subject of seven IAD complaints when the
numbers were released. Since the Chasse incident, Humphreys has been
accused (along with three other officers) of beating another man,
Charles Manigo, during an arrest at the Rose Quarter TriMet stop in May
2006. Manigo is seeking $135,000 in damages in that lawsuit, filed on
August 21 of this year.
“There won’t be a written policy saying, ‘We’re not going to
discipline officers based on what they do,'” Steenson said in his
opening arguments on Thursday, October 11. “But I believe there will be
evidence [in these documents] that the city does not take the steps
necessary to discipline or terminate officers in cases like these.
“The word on the street [is] if you’re a police officer,” Steenson
added, “you can essentially act with impunity.”
Judge Dennis J. Hubel struck a compromise: He ordered the city to
produce some of the documents Steenson is asking for—including
the incomplete internal affairs investigation, training documents, and
Officer Humphreys’ arrest reports—but only the ones leading to
legal claims against the city.
Hubel also scheduled a separate hearing for Tuesday, November 13, to
hear the media’s arguments over the protective order and to decide
whether it should still stand, and if so, precisely which documents it
should include. Nevertheless, Steenson and Deputy City Attorney James
Rice took the opportunity last week to argue about the protective
order.
“[The information] relates to the operation of the Portland Police
Bureau,” Steenson said. “And I believe that… historically, lawyers
have not been as conscious about the public’s right to look at things
as perhaps we should have over the years.
“The public interest here is probably off the chart,” Steenson
continued. “I don’t think that the generalized concerns the defendants
have [about the protective order]… are enough to outweigh citizens’
concerns in this case.”
Rice countered by arguing that releasing the information to the
public would threaten the officers involved.
“The threat of harm to officers in this case is not theoretical,” he
said.