Police Union President Ripped Kruger, Command Staff in Retaliation Probe

We got a taste, thanks to the Mercury‘s copy of an Independent Police Review investigative report, of what Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner thought about a retaliation complaint one of his members brought against the controversial Captain Mark Kruger last year.

Turner, according to the report, called the claim “totally 100 percent” valid—a blunt quote that offered an unusually candid look at the union president’s involvement in a high-profile case. But the full transcript of Turner’s comments, obtained in a public records request, shows Turner was just getting warmed up.

He not only railed against Kruger, but he also accused command staff of (1) playing favorites by letting Kruger continue to serve as a supervisor in the midst of an investigation and (2), maybe worse, joining in the alleged retaliation by not initially acting with vigor and appearing to take Kruger’s side.

Kruger, you may recall, had been accused of harassing then-Sergeant Kristy Galvan, in a case that exploded into public view last year. Except, after he was cleared, he posted the letter saying so to his office door—marking Galvan’s name in red marker. And Galvan, after another cop told her the letter went up, filed a complaint with her superiors that wound soft-pedaled until a bureau management whistle-blower alerted the IPR.

(The claim was eventually substantiated, only to be wiped from Kruger’s police record as part of a legal settlement that also wiped away his discipline for setting up a shrine to Nazi soldiers in a public park.)

The Mercury isn’t publishing the full two-page-plus transcript, to avoid airing personal details about Galvan, who has left the bureau, officials said, in a “medical separation.” She’s since won a $50,000 settlement from the city, the other side of the deal that cleared Kruger’s record and paid him $5,000.

Turner referenced Kruger’s affection for Nazi Germany history the harassment claims Galvan filed against Kruger as part of his argument that bureau should have gone harder, not softer, on Kruger.

No. 1, this was a totally 100 percent retaliatory act by the captain. I will tell you that every—almost every officer in that precinct walks by there. It is a corridor between where you can go to your mailbox, so everybody’s mailbox is right by the front desk, so you have to walk past there to go to your mailbox. And everybody goes—within a three- to four-day period, everybody walks to their mailbox at least once during their shift, either beginning, end or sometime in between. It’s also the corridor from the front door to where people walk to do reports and to write reports and people bring custodies in.

Writing the name in red Sharpie obviously stands out to every other part of the letter showing whose name is on there. And this is a gloating and this is a l-can-get-away-with-anything-type act, but also it’s an act of tarnishing her reputation and saying that I can get to you even when you’re not here and that—that doesn’t just mean Sergeant Galvan, but anybody-who-goes-against-me-type retaliation.

I am shocked and surprised that he is still allowed to supervise people at this point while there’s an investigation going on. If that was a rank-and-file officer, they would have been sent to true or put on administrative leave, yet he is allowed to—even with past allegations, he’s allowed to still supervise officers and work in his daily functions.

He also blames management’s reportedly blasé handling of the claim, accusing the command staff of retaliation, for making Galvan feel like she’d have to quit. As the report and other documents have made clear, key members of the bureau brass decided before investigating that Kruger hadn’t engaged in retaliation. The city’s Bureau of Human Resources and the bureau’s own Police Review Board both disagreed and put a (temporary) mark on Kruger’s record.

She believes those are the same people that not just—along with Captain Kruger who are retaliating against her and who are tarnishing her reputation and will make it very difficult for her to come back and finish her career as a Portland police officer after putting, you know, a large portion of her adult life into this organization.

This is all interesting for another reason. Turner has criticized and negotiated with IPR as it’s worked to expand its powers and mission to do the kind of independent investigation it conducted into Kruger. Turner has said he’d rather have internal affairs investigators or better-trained IPR investigators leading investigations. This was a case when having IPR around to do that work was in his and his members’ interests, too.