Ana del Rocío, state director of Oregon’s Color PAC and David Douglas school board member, was arrested this past Tuesday afternoon after being stopped for TriMet fare evasion. The routine fare check quickly escalated and ended with del Rocío spending six hours in Multnomah county jail.
Del Rocío was headed to a meeting at her downtown office when she exited the eastbound blue line Max train at the Old Town Chinatown stop around 1:30 pm. When she stepped onto the platform, a group of TriMet and Portland Police Bureau (PPB) officers were waiting and approached her to verify if she had a valid fare. A police report filed by PPB officer West Helfrich says del Rocío activated a digital pass on her phone before stepping off the train, but Del Rocío says she had left her paid annual TriMet pass at home and “was willing to take the citation and own that.”
The TriMet officer who approached her, however, began to ask for further identification. “I didn’t feel safe enough to give more than my name and date of birth which is all they legally need,” del Rocío says. “I was scared.” While requesting further ID isn’t unheard of when issuing citations, people aren’t required by law to comply.
Under ORS Chapter 153, fare evasion is a violation that subjects those caught without valid fare to a $175 fine. Although the TriMet Board of Directors approved a tiered penalty system for adult fare evasions at a meeting on February 28, 2018, those provisions won’t take effect until later this summer. TriMet typically issues fines for first and second offenses.
Del Rocío says that as she interacted with the TriMet officer, several nearby PPB officers surrounded her with “increased aggression” and asked for her address, social security number, and passport. She refused.
According the ACLU of Oregon, “It is not illegal in Oregon to refuse to identify yourself, but police may detain you until they establish your identity. You can be charged with a crime if you provide false identification information.” Del Rocío was arrested and charged with the crimes of Theft III of Services and Furnishing False Information to the Police, but at a preliminary hearing the next day, the theft of services charge was dropped.
“I said my name was Ana because that’s my name. I just didn’t connect the dots,” del Rocío tells the Mercury about the false identity charge. Although she has gone by Ana del Rocío Valderrama since childhood, her legal name is Rosa Valderrama. PPB maintains she intentionally misinformed officers and the district attorney will still pursue the false information charge, a class A misdemeanor.
“It’s a very Latino thing to have a legal name that’s different from the name you go by,” del Rocío says. “Ana, the name that my parents had agreed to, was changed unilaterally by my father when I was born. I didn’t know this until high school and I couldn’t get it changed as a minor because we needed to have both parents’ permission. My dad was [gone.] And as an adult, it’s really expensive to change your name.”
When asked for comment via email, PPB spokesman Sergeant Chris Burley replied, “When an officer issues a citation it is important the officer verify the person’s name so the legal document is accurate. In this case it appears the officer attempted to verify the Ms. Valderama’s [sic] name and provide multiple admonishments about providing false information prior to taking Ms. Valderama into custody.”
It should be noted that del Rocío’s release and police report were entered with her legal last name misspelled. Both documents used an incorrect spelling of “Valderama” with one ‘R’ instead of two, as referenced by Sgt. Burley. Her case has since been updated to reflect the correct spelling.
“The DAs should understand that names and identity can be fluid throughout a person’s life,” says Juan C. Chavez, a civil rights lawyer who is not representing del Rocío. “Not everyone can afford to or has the time to change their name through the court system. We shouldn’t criminalize self-identity.”
Del Rocío’s attorney John Schlosser says cases like Ana’s are tricky. “There’s a mental state attached to the crime—you have to intentionally be providing a false name. In Ana’s case, she has more of a defense in that she’s publicly known and has gone her life [using the name] Ana. But it can get very confusing, even for the police or court.”
For people who have two surnames, Schlosser says it can get even more unclear. “An officer theoretically can charge you if you give your name as Hernandez Garcia but the court or another agency has you in as Garcia Hernandez. It’s a slippery slope when it comes to Hispanic names [because other people] don’t have a real good grasp of how it works. And when you’re in a situation where officers are challenged or people are asserting their rights, they tend to take [charges] further in those situations.”
Del Rocío’s next court date is scheduled for Thursday, April 5.
Well, I see how she has good case but it is highly abse nt minded at best to forget to give your legal name to police. Supposedly she was admonished for giving an incorrect name. Personally, having had so many bad experiences with police because of my hispanic heritage, I find most of what they claim easy to be dismissed as a lie. Still, this is a somewhat unusual case. The Portland Tribune has documented that African Americas were much more likely to be arrested due to not paying tri–met fair. I’m sure the same goes for Latinos but at a slightly less percentage. To have the situation escalate to additional charges seems to me to be very unusual, but if it is the norm, that’s total racial profiling. Too bad that so meone in her position isn’t aggragating to reform police or the CRC as a PAC should be. My final opinion is she probably has anger management problems, definately has basic memory and common sense issues going on, and
the People of Color PAC she manages is likely just as corrupt as the city council and other state officials.
“Ana” is a former aid of Steve Novick’s and was Senior Policy Aolicyr for Ted Wheeler. No doubt she played a part in creating the “arrest and harrass activist policy” and in having “city hall speakers” get thrown out and arrested policy”. No doubt Ana was as high as a kite when she was arrested. How else can you explain someone who personally wrote the harshest arrest policy on civil rights in Portland’s modern history behaving like this? She definitely deserved this arrest. What goes around, comes around.
Go ahead and air speculations to the public as you wish, random commenters, but I have to point out that Ana del Rocío has never worked for Steve Novick, so the comment which says that is not only unrelated, but false as well. “LatinaVoterpdx” (lol) must be confusing Ana with her sister, Andrea Valderrama, which is pretty strange because they have different names and are different people.
Dog bites mxn.
Well, Emily, I am not certain that having a PAC director who cant sufficiently ride
tri-met peacefully, like all the non-government commuters somehow manage to, and who also has a sister named Andrea who worked for both Steve Novick and Ted Wherler as a Senior Policy Advisor, AKA the harshest dictator of policy regarding free speech and civil rights that Portland has ever seen, makes me feel even the slightest bit better about her. There must be something wrong with this family.
Got this i nfo from the Mid-County Memo website. May 1st, 2017.
“Relatives run for seats on same school boards”
Posted by Jack Rushall on May 1, 2017
midcountymemo.com/2017/05/relatives-run-…
The fee for having your name legally changed is $150, which is $25 less than the ticket for not having proof of fare on TriMet.
This seems like an abnormally harsh sentence for fare evasion. I know the charge now is for giving false identity, but how does PPB escalate a situation so that a simple missing fare results in jailing? I thought Trimet was planning to be less punitive.
When you make up terms like LatinX, you honk it’s okay to go around giving fake names. So many people in Portland have a real name, but want to be called something else. Btw, I’m a Chicano.
Nice work, Mercury, but dig that Willamette Week article on June 7, 2017 about a young mother named Ana del Rocio who complains about increased Tri-Met policing efforts (in the wake of the double-murder of two heroes, no less). Kinda relevant context.
Not impressed with Ana or her gofund me campaign. She has had two kids she can’t afford. How many more is she going to have??? She cant even afford a trimet ride!!
Found from XRay FM.
“Ana del Rocío, State Director of Color PAC, is a first-generation Chicana/Peruana based in Portland, Oregon. She is a mother of two young boys and is the past policy director to Multnomah County Commissioner Jessica Vega Pederson. Ana was elected to Director for Position 1 in the David Douglas School District in East Portland and joined Color PAC as its first State Director, January 2018. “