[This opinion piece is being published to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the death of Deg, one of the victims of the 2022 Normandale Park shooting that left two people dead and another three injured. The mass shooting was carried out by a man who was angry about a peaceful protest happening in his neighborhood. One woman died at the scene and another was paralyzed from a gunshot wound that left her dependent on a ventilator. Last year, she chose to remove her ventilator. Her death was ruled a homicide.—eds.]
The first time I visited Deg in her home was maybe a month before she took a bullet in the neck at Normandale Park. She was living in her parents' in-law apartment while finishing graduate school. I met Deg's parents, but that first time, we didn't get past polite hellos.
Deg had a term paper conundrum. She had a strong draft, but her instructor's feedback was confusing. We puzzled through the assignment and her draft. I was sure she would end up writing something insightful and provocative that I would enjoy reading, whether or not my advice proved useful.
Though I would return to that house again and again, that conversation never advanced. Nobody ever got to read a final version of that paper.
In February 2022, a resident of an apartment complex about a half block from Normandale Park approached five quiet, unarmed people as they prepared to support a protest. Having followed incendiary social media posts about protests, he brought a gun. After shouting and swearing at them, he shot June "T-Rex" Knightly, killing her on the spot. Another shot paralyzed Deg from the neck down and ultimately ended her life two years later. He shot three other people before being subdued.
All this happened prior to any police response.
“The Murder of June Knightly,” a documentary film featured in the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s 2024 “Policing Justice” exhibit, showed 911 dispatching officers to a scene with an “anti-police protest nearby.” (The protest followed the fatal police shooting of Amir Locke in Minneapolis.) Police arrived displaying overwhelming force. The film shows police interfering with both volunteer and professional medics' access to patients.
The Portland Police Bureau’s initial statement made matters worse, misidentifying the murderer as a homeowner and misidentifying victims, who had been talking quietly among themselves at the corner of a city park, as armed participants in a “confrontation.” It inaccurately described the initial scene as “chaotic.” It ignored the pivotal moment that ended the shooting before police arrived. After gathering information, PPB misinformed the public and the media, describing an unprovoked mass shooting as a chaotic scene triggered by political activism.
Three years later, Portland's chief of police did something unusual: He acknowledged harm caused by the Bureau’s inaccurate and incomplete press releases, and apologized.
The apology addresses important points, but doesn't explain why PPB failed victims and the city they serve so badly over such an extended period. A letter accompanying Day's video statement suggests responding officers were under stress. It doesn’t address their hostility toward victims and bystanders.
Local author Kristian Williams elaborated on the impact of PPB’s messaging in a 2023 TruthOut article. He argued that the police gave the killer an "opportunity to claim self-defense,” and described "a decades-long pattern of the Portland Police ignoring, excusing, or facilitating violence from the right, while simultaneously criminalizing the political left."
Maybe Williams' analysis illuminates why Chief Day's apology feels incomplete. The handling of this event offers a rare and valuable window into how police use the public's funds, and we should study it through that lens. Anyone hoping to understand how the Portland Police Bureau operates, or to evaluate its role in our community or its frequent requests for increased funding, should pay close attention.
In an April 2023 press release PPB asserted it has been "victim-focused in every stage" and implied their own detectives (rather than a full chorus of independent press) had prompted them to change a word in the original document–a change they made quietly, without explanation. Day calls PPB a "learning organization." But PPB resisted properly acknowledging thoughtful criticism from multiple sources for years, relenting only under extreme and sustained external pressure.
Three years after the Normandale Park shooting, I have the uneasy feeling that my city has moved on, failing to absorb important lessons about its most expensive bureau. Those lessons may not be unique, but they are unusually vivid and unusually well-documented in this instance.
Nathan Vasquez, then prosecuting T-Rex's murder and now district attorney for Multnomah County, formally debunked the PPB's disinformation in the sentencing hearing in 2023. “It’s important to set the record straight,” he said. Because the prosecution resulted in a plea, it did not "air out all the facts.” As one of the few who had viewed the footage at that time, Vasquez went on to correct the only formal public “record”—the statements from PPB.
PPB claimed credit for the guilty plea in its 2023 press release. DA Vasquez's sentencing statement neatly undercut that claim, clearly asserting that the decisive evidence was the footage captured by a survivor. Vasquez gave no credit to PPB.
Chief Day's apology on behalf of PPB is meaningful. In his video statement and letter, the survivors and the public finally have a formal correction on three crucial points—that the murderer was not a homeowner, that victims were unarmed, and that a trained protester ended the shooting.
But if PPB truly valued learning, it could have acted after reporters initially pieced everything together, after a guilty plea, after public statements from family and survivors, after the prosecutor’s critical statements, or after the investigative documentary. PPB finally responded when the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing (PCCEP) stood poised to make a formal recommendation that PPB apologize.
PPB's disregard for facts and clarity parallel that of then-mayor and police commissioner Ted Wheeler, who declined to seek reelection in 2024. Back in 2021, Wheeler famously urged the public to “make [protesters] hurt a little.” Despite criticism, he stood by the statement multiple times.
That disdain resurfaced at a 2023 City Council discussion about a memorial site for T-Rex at Normandale. Wheeler called T-Rex a “young woman” three times, apparently oblivious to the established fact that she was a year his senior, and apparently unconcerned with the belittling nature of the term when applied to any adult. No councilor corrected him; most condemned Portland activists. None mentioned the killer’s sentencing just one week prior, or displayed more than cursory familiarity with the city's deadliest mass shooting since 2009.
Police and government leaders' role is to serve. Perhaps they instead saw an opportunity to advance a narrow political agenda. Perhaps they assumed that activists, so frequently annoying to them, shared responsibility for the murder. Perhaps this simple explanation is just too uncomfortable for Day or Wheeler to articulate.
I wasn't present for the shooting, but several hours later I found myself in a sea of flashing lights and animated police officers at the south edge of Normandale. I was waiting for a police captain, to give him the phone number of T-Rex's widow, to relay to the coroner.
I could fill a book with stories about Deg and T-Rex, as could many others. A year after her death, moments like struggling through Deg's term paper intrude on my thoughts without warning.
Police statements reverberate widely. We have felt their sting and battled misinformation about this shooting for years. While Day’s apology resolves several crucial points in the formal record, further damage remains unacknowledged. It doesn't just harm survivors, it harms the city that funds a police force and expects a service in return.
As PCCEP indicated, the public's ability to trust the Bureau is a key factor. Why did it take three years and a new chief before PPB acknowledged failures? Day didn't say.
For decades, Portlanders have fought the worst tendencies of a bureau that too often harms when it should serve. Some fight for reform while others target its budget. But any path to a better Portland can only be as effective as our understanding of what drives the PPB. And it can only be as effective as the PPB’s capacity, which Chief Day insists exists, to learn.
Pete Forsyth (he/him) has lived in Portland since 1991. He has owned and operated two businesses, served on committees reporting to City Council, guided traffic during street protests, chaired his neighborhood association, and since the Normandale shooting he has worked as a certified caregiver. Not that it matters, but like several of those assaulted at Normandale, he is a homeowner.
