Police Chief Mike Reese has announced he’s fired Officer Dane Reister—the Portland cop who nearly killed a man in a mental health crisis more than two years ago after repeatedly firing a beanbag shotgun mistakenly loaded with lethal rounds.
The dismissal comes just shy of six months after a record $2.3 million settlement between the city and lawyers for William Kyle Monroe, the 20-year-old man Reister permanently injured on June 30, 2011. The bureau, in a short statement this afternoon, said Reister violated the bureau’s policies on overall job performance and the proper handling of less-lethal weapons.
“This has been a long and thorough investigation, which had complexities due to the pending criminal charges,” Reese said in prepared remarks. “The events of June 30th devastated the lives of those involved, but we hope that this action will bring some sense of closure.”
Reister also has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges in connection with the incident—an unprecedented indictment by a Multomah County grand jury in a police use of force case. Reese and then-Mayor Sam Adams, the city’s police commissioner, both publicly apologized to Monroe and his family the day after the shooting—issuing a strong condemnation of a mixup that could have taken Monroe’s life.
“I want to be clear about this,” Reese said during a July 1, 2011, news conference. “Using lethal rounds in less-lethal situations is a terrible mistake. We don’t know how it occurred, but we know it should not happen. It is not a part of our training protocol.”
Reister’s firing for the inappropriate use of force is the second of Reese’s tenure. Reese fired Ron Frashour, the officer who shot and killed Aaron Campbell in January 2010, in November of that year. The city later settled with Campbell’s family for $1.2 million in 2012—but an arbitrator a few months later overturned the city’s decision, and Frashour has returned to the bureau while the city challenges that ruling.
Monroe’s lawyers, as part of settlement talks with the city, had demanded Reister lose his job. Monroe’s lawyers also urged the city to fix its policies and safeguards around the handling of lethal and non-lethal ammunition. A report by the Citizen Review Committee in 2012 noted that some improvements had been made, but urged the bureau to go even further by buying beanbag guns incapable of firing live rounds.
The Oregonian in the spring reported Reister still on paid leave. In that story, it summed up Monroe’s shooting as such:
He ended up in Lair Hill Park the next morning, where children from a day camp were playing. Monroe pulled discarded flowers out of a park garbage bin and tossed them near the children. Camp supervisors told Monroe to leave. Police received two 9-1-1 calls from camp officials. The camp director said in the second call that Monroe may have had a pocketknife up his sleeve.
Reister responded to the call. He spotted Monroe on Southwest Naito Parkway, commanded him to stop and get down on his knees with his hands behind his head. Reister asked Monroe whether he had any weapons, and Monroe emptied his pockets, discarding his miniature Swiss Army knife, the suit said. Monroe put his hands behind his head but asked why he should get on his knees. Reister grabbed his beanbag shotgun from his car as two more officers arrived.
Monroe assured police he hadn’t done anything wrong as he backed away, then began running and yelled for help. Without warning, the suit said, Reister fired five times. The fifth round jammed because of Reister’s “excessively rapid firing,” the suit said.
The Portland Police Association had been raising money to help with Reister’s legal fees and his family’s expenses. PPA President Daryl Turner declined to comment on the announcement, citing ongoing litigation.
“We’re not going to say anything right now,” he told the Mercury.
Update 4:46 PM: KC Cowan, a spokeswoman for Mayor Charlie Hales, the current police commissioner, said the mayor wouldn’t have a statement of his own.
“He signed the termination notice. Clearly he feels that was the right thing to do.”
Curiously, the O’s story notes that Reister had been defended in the federal civil rights case by Janet Hoffman, the attorney Jeff Cogen has reportedly hired to help defend him in an ongoing investigation in whether he used public money in an affair with a county employee. She argued in court, the paper reported, that Reister’s mistake was because of the police bureau’s negligence.
Update 4:54 PM: Cowan phoned back and said the mayor would have a brief statement, after all. “This is an appropriate ending to a very sad story,” the mayor says.
Update 5:09 PM: The O has spoken with Hoffman:
“We’re very disappointed in the chief’s decision,” said Reister’s lawyer, Janet Hoffman. “However, we’re confident the union will pursue all grievance procedures.”
The pigs got too many toys on their Batman utility belts to begin with. Their tiny, peanut sized brains can’t figure out which ones to grab.
A simple rule of thumb that anyone who’s ever taken so much as a hunter safety course knows, is to never point even an unloaded gun at anyone, and never to point a gun at anything you don’t intend to kill.
Less than lethal loads are fucking bullshit. Even a BB gun can kill.
The pigs are a bunch of chickenshit packdogs, anyway. They don’t have the guts to go man to man, empty hand. How about replacing the entire regular patrol force with British style Bobbies that only carry a Billy-club? If they get in over their heads, then they can call the CERT Team, that only shoots to kill.
Well, this would certainly seem like a fireable offense to me.
Chef, you sound a little nutty yourself, this isn’t DamosA under a new name is it?
Fire him? Was he even fired upon? Yes, of course, by all means, can his abusive ass. I may be sarcastic, but seriously, pigs shouldn’t have guns. Only citizens ought to be packing heat. If the Sheriff needs assistance, let him deputize some citizens. It’s cheaper that way, too.
This weapon wasn’t on his belt. It was a shotgun. They normally carry two, one loaded with lethal and one loaded with less than lethal. Whoever had loaded the less than lethal shotgun had loaded lethal rounds. Normally the less than lethal shotguns are brightly coloured to differentiate them, as seen in this photo:
http://i.imgur.com/l17vsgD.jpg
The officer didn’t follow protocols in the situation and someone severely fucked up when loading the shotgun. He’s fired as should happen. The end.
I realize that the piggywig wasn’t carrying a fucking shotgun on his belt. That’s not even to mention the delightful assorted array of long guns in the rack, or the computer, or the radio, or the cell phones, or the camera.
The problem is you’ve got Neanderthals required to have an IQ below 120 in order to be on the force in the first place, because prosecutors don’t want officers who are capable of listening to reason. Then they have their conscious minds overloaded with technological decisions to be made, when they ought to be thinking about what’s actually happening.
What’s needed is smarter people with well trained empty hands and top notch people skills. The end won’t be until they get rid of all the dumbass pigs.
It’s not that Reister grabbed the WRONG gun, he shouldn’t have grabbed ANY gun. Monroe could have been handled with good applied psychology and/or, some half way decent T’ai Chi Ch’uan. The police have an attitude that they must prevail as the greatest force, both verbally and physically, or else they lose control of the situation and then some back talking jaywalker might tear up his ticket and be contemptuous of the Multnomah County, Kangaroo Court. Police have zero tolerance for questions which might lead to them having to alter their presumptions of guilt. They deliberately antagonize the hell out of people, hoping for an excuse to whip out the Tazar or pepper mace. The Bill of Rights means nothing to the police. You can just argue your case to the judge. Trouble is, some people actually manage to pony up a large enough wad to retain a shyster.
Southwest Portland resident Wally Jones had a brief conversation with Monroe, before the shooting occurred.
Jones was standing outside his home at the corner of Southwest Pennoyer Street and Naito Parkway with his 1-year-old daughter the morning of June 30 and noticed Monroe. He said he picked up from Monroe’s body language that he “was a little off,” but thought maybe he could socialize with him briefly.
“I waved hi to him,” Jones recalled, “and he gave me a peace sign.”
Jones said his daughter, who is learning sign language, made the sign for a hat, noticing Monroe wearing a baseball cap.
“They don’t understand me,” Monroe said to Jones, who figured he was referring to children. Monroe was leaning against a sign pole on Southwest Naito Parkway when a Portland patrol car pulled up, and Reister got out.
“The officer told him to sit down on the curb in about as stern a voice as you can picture,” Jones said.
Jones said he was struck by Monroe’s response: “Why?” he replied to the officer.
“The officer said, ‘Because I said so.’
When the young man didn’t respond to the Reister’s command, the officer walked to the back of his car, and pulled out an orange-painted shotgun, Jones said.
When Jones saw the officer grab the weapon, he went inside his home with his daughter.
Rustin Neese, another witness who watched from his Southwest Pennoyer Street window, said he saw Monroe running from police, south along a sidewalk hugging Southwest Naito Parkway, behind Caro Amico Italian Cafe. Neese heard Monroe yelling “help me,” and “no,” and the officers ordering him to “freeze” or “hold it.”
Monroe suffered two entry wounds to his left thigh. One of the two was a “through and through” shot.
“The wadding from the shotgun shell was found intact in the wound,” said his lawyer, Thane Tienson. The other blast struck his right gluteal muscle, or buttocks, “with sufficient force to shatter his pelvis, and puncture his bladder, his colon and cause injury to his rectum.”
Dan Handelman, of Portland Copwatch, sent Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Schrunk a letter, asking him to consider criminally negligent assault charges against the officer. Handelman argued that although the less-lethal shotgun was mistakenly loaded with lethal rounds, the shooting itself was deliberate and excessive.
“It is particularly of concern that the shotgun is being fired multiple times when its purpose is to knock a person down or incapacitate them without using lethal force,”
Excerpts:
Maxine Bernstein | mbernstein@oregonian.com
on July 08, 2011 at 10:05 PM, updated September 23, 2011 at 2:31 PM
That’s right, shoot ’em in the back! What a fucking chickenshit. It wouldn’t have mattered if the piggywig had called and waited for backup; they all would have emptied their clips, just because the kid wouldn’t stand still to be brutalized.
Has anybody even heard mention in this case of any probable fucking cause for the pig to harass the kid in the first place?
Sadly, this will probably just be overturned like Frashour because the police union has WAY too much power, and citizens basically have none. No matter what cops do in this city, it’s nearly impossible to get them fired for good. That’s why they–some of them, at least–shoot and taze and beat people with impunity.
Bean bag rounds and lethal rounds should not be able to be inter-mixed. Common sense should tell you that.
If an eight year old child plays with a yellow plastic squirt gun, some obstinate fucking pig will come along and empty his clip in the brat.