RIOT CHARGES
<<A soldier stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington exchanged text messages with people on the street in Portland, egging them on to smash windows and damage property and broke out windows himself at the Blazer Boys and Girls Club during protests in 2021, according to an indictment filed in court this month.
Kenneth George Harold, who separated from the Army in May, is charged with one count of interstate riot in U.S. District Court in Portland.>>
The indictment accuses Harold of causing $11,188.43 in damage from breaking large glass windows of a business located in downtown Portland.
It does not identify the business.
That same day, according to the indictment, Harold wrote in a text message to an unidentified person: “It’s at the justice center I’ve always wanted to do one of those ones!! Those nights go insane!”
The grand jury returned the indictment on Feb. 7.>>
SHOOTING
<<Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office deputies early Saturday shot and injured a man who had reportedly been firing a gun at windows near a business complex in Troutdale.
Employees in a business near the 25100 block of Southeast Stark were advised to stay down and inside to be safe.
Deputies say they responded with Gresham Police Department officers, arriving on scene shortly after 1:40 a.m. and demanding that the man drop his weapon. A deputy shot the man, who police say was then transported to a nearby hospital with non-life threatening injuries. He was later discharged from the hospital and booked into jail on charges of unlawful use of a weapon and other crimes. No one else was injured.
The deputy who fired his weapon has been placed on paid administrative leave as law enforcement investigate the incident.
Sheriff’s deputies didn’t name the business where the man had been firing a gun. There’s a shopping center in the area that includes several franchise businesses and fast-food restaurants.>>
<<A man firing shots at windows in Troutdale was shot by a responding Multnomah County sheriff’s deputy overnight Saturday, officials said.
According to the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, police responded at around 1:40 a.m. to the report of a man firing shots near a business on Southeast Stark Street.
MCSO Deputies along with Gresham police responded to the scene and told the suspect to drop his weapon, officials said, but as the situation continued, a deputy shot the subject.
The suspect was taken to a hospital and treated for non-life-threatening injuries and then was booked on an unlawful use of a weapon charge, as well as other crimes, police said.
Officials said the investigation is ongoing and that the deputy who fired his weapon is on administrative leave.
The names of the suspect and the deputy were not immediately released.>>
https://www.koin.com/local/multnomah-county/mcso-man-firing-gun-in-troutdale-shot-by-deputy/
SHOTSPOTTER
<<The Portland City Auditor has opened an investigation into ShotSpotter for possibly violating city lobbying codes, according to an official in the auditor’s office.
The revelation that the gunshot detection technology company is being investigated comes four days after the submission period closed for proposals to run the city’s planned one-year pilot.
Becky Lamboley, a supervisor in the auditor’s office, confirmed the investigation was open but declined to comment further because it is still ongoing.
The city requires private companies to register as a lobbyist once they have spent a minimum of either $1,000 or eight hours on lobbying within a quarter. City code defines lobbying as “attempting to influence the official action of City Officials.” There are a number of exceptions, including the time it takes to submit a bid, respond to information requests, and negotiate the terms of a contract.
Much of ShotSpotter’s activity over the past 15 months appears to fall outside those carveouts.
For more than a year, representatives from ShotSpotter have worked closely with senior leaders at the Portland Police Bureau and members of the civilian group overseeing the bureau’s gun violence team, called the Focused Intervention Team, to convince city officials to invest in the company’s technology.
OPB previously reported text messages going back to Nov. 2021 show how ShotSpotter sales representatives forged close relationships with Police Bureau leaders. Captain James Crooker helped Terri Greene, ShotSpotter’s western region director, prepare and tailor presentations to city officials. Greene also provided city officials with talking points to refute public criticism directed at the company. At one point, emails indicate Crooker encouraged Greene and the civilian oversight group responsible for making a recommendation to Wheeler on ShotSpotter to communicate directly in order to avoid public records laws.
Emails between Crooker, Greene and ShotSpotter’s customer success director, Paul Lusczynski, show the company also arranged for Police Bureau representatives and members of the Focused Intervention Team oversight group to meet with Tampa police and see how the agency uses ShotSpotter. The visit coincided with a trip to Florida for a gun violence reduction conference. In emails between Police Bureau leadership and Lusczynski, who is also a recently retired Tampa police captain, Lusczynski says he will meet the Portland delegation in Tampa to “facilitate the introductions.”
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler’s office initially planned to award a sole source contract to ShotSpotter for the planned pilot but backtracked in January and opened the bidding process to other companies. The bid solicitation period closed on Feb. 13. According to the city procurement website, ShotSpotter is one of four companies that submitted proposals.
ShotSpotter did not respond to requests for comment.
Wheeler did not respond to emails asking if he had concerns with the city awarding a contract to a company being investigated for violating city code.
ShotSpotter has been penalized for breaking municipal lobbying laws before. In 2019, Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission fined the company $5,000 for violating the city’s Lobbyist Registration Act and the Oakland Campaign Finance Reform Act. That illegal lobbying blitz happened in 2014 after the Oakland police chief said the money being spent on ShotSpotter was likely better spent elsewhere and suggested the city not renew the contract.
In response, ShotSpotter representatives lobbied the Oakland city council, the mayor and senior members of the police department in the hopes of saving the contract.
ShotSpotter has become embroiled in controversy in the past two years as a growing body of evidence calls into question the company’s claimed 97% accuracy rate.
The company closely guards its technology and has never allowed an independent review of the underlying artificial intelligence algorithm which decides what is and isn’t a gunshot. A study by the MacArthur Justice Center found that over 21 months in Chicago, 89% of ShotSpotter alerts turned up no gun-related crime. A Chicago Inspector General report found similar results, finding that of 42,000 ShotSpotter calls police responded to, only 9% included a gun-related crime.
According to a confidential ShotSpotter document, human analysts at ShotSpotter overrule and reverse the algorithm’s decision about 10% of the time. The document, first reported by the AP, is part of a Chicago court case and was unsealed by the court after ShotSpotter spent a year arguing the document was a trade secret. In that case, ShotSpotter initially classified a sound as a firework but a human overruled the algorithm and marked it as gunfire. A man named Michael Williams, who was 63 when police found him near a murder victim, was charged with the killing and spent nearly a year in jail before a judge dismissed the case due to insufficient evidence.
ShotSpotter has previously told OPB that the MacArthur Justice Center’s study was designed poorly and the Chicago Inspector General report didn’t find fault with the technology, but with how the police were using it. The company told the AP that the human review is a “positive check on the algorithm.”>>
<<Officials confirmed Friday that the Portland City Auditor is now investigating the gun-shot detection tool ShotSpotter for potentially violating city lobbying codes.
The company claims to use microphones on light posts to alert officers to the location of gunfire, and it is one of four companies hoping to win a contract with the city for a new pilot program slated to start in March.
PDX Privacy Director Chris Bushick said she’s glad the auditor is looking into this issue before a contract is awarded.
“We have seen reports and public records showing that Shotspotter employees were working closely with the police and the community oversight group, trying to get a contract with the city,” Bushick said.
“And we do have concerns that the process was not transparent.”
Bushick said her organization is concerned about always-on microphones being placed in neighborhoods, and what that data collection would mean for residents’ privacy.
Those concerns as well as equity questions are shared by a Freedom to Thrive community organizer named Aje Amaechie, who said she fears whatever gunshot detection technology the city chooses will be disproportionately placed in communities of color.>>
<<This is not the first time ShotSpotter has been accused of violating lobby codes to help secure a contract.
Public record shows the company was penalized in 2019 by the City of Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission after they found Shotspotter violated both their lobbyist registration act and the Oakland campaign finance reform act.
In that case, the company pleaded “no contest” and agreed to pay a fine of $5,000 on equipment that Bushick said could potentially cost millions “is the cost of doing business.”>>
BODY CAMS
<<The City of Portland and the Portland Police Association have released their “final offers” in a dispute over how to implement body-worn cameras for officers, and the documents show that the deadlock stems from a single sticking point: whether officers can review camera footage before writing reports on use-of-force incidents.
The city and the union have been bargaining for months over body camera policy language, one of the hurdles in an implementation process that has dragged on for years and left Portland as the only major U.S. city without camera-equipped officers.
City officials announced Tuesday that the two sides had reached an impasse and would need an arbitrator from the Oregon Employment Relations Board to step in.
The city and the union both acknowledged on Friday that the officer review language — section 11.2 of the overall draft — is the sole piece of the policy where the two sides have failed to reach an agreement.
In the city’s proposal, there are separate guidelines for reviewing footage following an incident, depending on what occurred:
Incidents that don’t involve use of force by police
Incidents that involve use of force by police
Incidents that involve use of deadly force by police, or when someone has died while in police custody
Officers would be allowed to view footage before writing reports that don’t involve force.
After incidents that involve police force, officers would be allowed to view the video only after first providing “a full and candid account of the incident to a supervisor,” which would also be recorded.
If someone died during a police force incident, officers wouldn’t be allowed to view the footage at all, unless the police chief authorizes it. >>
<<The police union’s proposed version is much shorter and simply states that officers will be able to view their own camera recordings “before writing a report of any kind (e.g. force, general offense, etc.).”
The union argued that allowing officers to review footage will make reports more comprehensive, and would be consistent with the camera policies of most other law enforcement agencies in Oregon and throughout the country.>>
<<After Schmautz’s assertion that the union’s offer is of a standard that’s “settled around the country,” KGW’s The Story did some checking around.
While the Salem Police Department did just roll out its body cam program this week, The Story spoke with the agency’s chief of police Thursday and got an answer that contradicts what Schmautz said. Chief Trevor Womack said that, while his officers are able to review their body cam footage before writing a report most of the time, they are not in instances of deadly force.
In deadly force cases, an outside agency immediately takes over the investigation and the Salem officers involved cool their heels until they’re interviewed by the investigators. The investigating agency does its own review of the body cam video.
The Story found that Gresham and Eugene do allow pre-report body cam review even in instances of deadly force. Oregon State Police had yet to respond about its policy as of Friday evening.
Results were mixed in similarly-sized cities around the U.S. Las Vegas does allow for pre-review for any kind of incident. Boston will immediately download body cam footage back at the station after a use of deadly force incident, and supervisors can decided whether an officer can then review it.
In Nashville, the city’s metropolitan police force operates under very similar rules to what the city of Portland has proposed in its final offer. Officers can review body cam footage before writing a report for any incident except in where use of force resulted in serious bodily injury or death.
In those cases, Nashville’s police chief has to give permission for an officer to pre-review footage — the same as in Portland’s proposal.
It’s worth noting that while body cams help provide additional evidence and transparency in cases that can be otherwise opaque, they aren’t a silver bullet. Body cams can be knocked to the ground in a struggle.
Even when they’re kept secure, they may not capture the full scope of a scene. As a result, the recollections of officers and other witnesses remain a key part of reconstructing cases that are often high-profile and sensitive.>>
<<Vancouver Police Department announced Friday that it will begin rolling out body-worn cameras to its officers at the beginning of next week.
Rollout of body cams will be phased, the agency said. It starts Monday, Feb. 20 with patrol officers. Non-patrol staff will be next to receive cameras, and eventually all sworn VPD members will have them. The rollout is expected to finish by March 9.
The next phase, Vancouver police said, will be the installation of front-facing and rear passenger vehicle cameras in patrol vehicles.
That’s expected to start in the fourth quarter of 2023 — the result of supply chain delays, VPD said.>>
<<After several months of negotiations, The City of Portland and Portland Police Association have announced they still can’t reach an agreement on body camera policies – further delaying efforts to equip Portland police.
Portland is the only city of its size with a police force that doesn’t wear body cameras, but the impasse comes down to when officers should be allowed to review camera footage.
The city says officers should not be allowed to look at recordings before writing a report or giving a statement about situations involving use of force. The union says officers should. Sgt. Aaron Schmautz said PPA’s position has been the same for about 12 years.
“The policy that we’re seeking is consistent with best practice. It’s consistent with every agency in the state, every major agency around the country,” Schmautz said.
In a final offer submitted to the state employee relations board Friday, the union laid out the policy that said an officer may have the opportunity to review recording before writing any kind of report.
Meanwhile, the city’s final offer on Friday said officers would be allowed to watch camera recordings when writing police reports for incidents without use of force.
In situations where the officer used non-deadly force, the city says the officer would have to provide a full and candid statement before reviewing any footage.
And when it comes to deadly force, the city’s proposed policy also said officers would not have access to any body camera footage unless authorized by the police chief.
The next step is mediation, but selecting an arbitrator for mediation could be a long process.>>
https://www.koin.com/news/portland/city-of-portland-police-union-delay-decision-on-body-cameras/
<<Starting on Monday, the Vancouver Police Department said patrol officers will be outfitted with a camera. VPD expects the remaining non-patrol personnel to be issued a body camera by March 9.
The department will then move to install front-facing and rear-passenger vehicle cameras in all patrol vehicles. Due to shipping delays and supply chain issues, VPD said that the vehicle cameras will not be installed until late 2023.
“This is a very important milestone our personnel have been looking forward to for some time and one we know the community has also been anticipating”, said Vancouver Police Chief Jeff Mori.
The move is part of a camera program approved by the City of Vancouver in 2022.
Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle told KOIN 6 that the program includes “200 body cameras and the whole computer system that goes along with it, but also keeping all of the data and then using it both for the prosecuting attorney, and for the officers, and for the public, that is a huge piece. So, the implementation of that program will take quite a bit of time.”
In addition to advancing its camera program, the city also hired a new police chief along with additional officers.>>
https://www.koin.com/news/washington/vancouver-police-department-equips-officers-with-body-cams/
<<Portland has considered using body cameras since 2014 when the technology was recommended by a federal judge overseeing Portland’s settlement agreement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ), which seeks to address Portland police officers’ pattern of using disproportionate force against people with a mental illness. Concerns with funding, public opposition, and the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic delayed body camera conversations until 2021, when the DOJ determined the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) must begin using body cameras as part of the ongoing settlement agreement. The city has $2.6 million set aside to purchase cameras and run a pilot program, but disagreements on the details of the pilot program between the city and PPA have continued to delay outfitting Portland officers with body-worn cameras. Portland is one of the last major cities in the US to not utilize body cameras.
According to proposed body camera policies released Friday, the city and PPA agree on most of the conditions surrounding the use of the cameras.
Portland leaders and the police union agree that all sworn officers must wear the cameras unless they are undercover, the cameras will be automatically turned on via Bluetooth when officers activate their emergency lights or draw their weapon from their holster, and officers will manually turn on their camera when conducting a traffic stop, responding to a call, or conducting a search.
The disagreement revolves around when officers can review footage that their body cameras recorded, particularly after they have used force against a member of the public.
The PPA argues that officers should be able to review their camera footage prior to giving a statement or writing a report in order to give the most accurate account of the incident.
“The PPA is a strong proponent of achieving best practice, and our position reflects that,” said PPA President Aaron Schmautz in a press release Friday. “In fact, utilizing available evidence, including video, to complete comprehensive reports is consistent with every major agency in the State of Oregon with body cameras, as well as the vast majority of national agencies.”
The city of Portland, however, argues that the police should not be able to review their body camera footage before being interviewed or writing a report about a use of force incident. While the city did not elaborate on its position, supporters of restricted review policies argue that an officer’s account of a use of force incident—untainted by reviewing video footage—is critical to understanding why the officer chose to use force.
Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch, a police accountability advocacy organization, argues that an officer’s memory of an incident is central in use of force investigations due to the legal precedent in Graham v. Connor, a US Supreme Court ruling that determined the reasonableness of a police officer’s use of force must be determined based on the conditions the officer knew on the scene, not in 20/20 hindsight.
“When they say you can’t base it on 20/20 hindsight, that means the officer can’t go back and look at photos or video of the scene and decide whether or not what they did was appropriate based on what they saw,” Handelman told the Mercury. “They have to say what they thought and tell their story or write down a report, and then they can look at the video.”
Despite that ruling, the majority of the largest cities’ police departments around the country allow officers to review footage before giving a statement.
While the city and PPA have spent over a year negotiating policies, the final policy may ultimately be up to the DOJ. Because the body-worn camera pilot is a condition of the city’s settlement with the DOJ, the Feds have final say on whether the policy conditions agreed to by the city and PPA are suitable. Notably, US attorney Jared Hager has already indicated that the DOJ is not supportive of allowing the police to review body camera footage before officers are interviewed or write a report.
“We believe that any use of force report should be written before officers review their body worn camera footage, in order to ensure that we have an accurate captioning of an important piece of evidence that the body worn camera is not going to capture and that is: ‘Why did the officer use force? What was in the officer’s mind the moment before they used force against a civilian?’” Hager said in a 2022 community listening session. “That evidence can only be captured if an officer writes a report before viewing the footage because otherwise their memory gets tainted by what they see on camera.”
Arbitration could take several months to conclude, further delaying the pilot body camera program. The proposed timing of the body-worn camera pilot program may become more clear during the upcoming settlement hearing check-in on February 28.>>
SEXUAL HARASSMENT
<<Washington County paid $175,000 last month to a former Sheriff’s Office deputy who alleged years of sexual harassment by a patrol corporal, who is no longer employed by the agency.
The settlement resulted from a civil complaint filed in federal court against Washington County and Tyler Whitely, the former Washington County Sheriff’s Office corporal. County leaders approved the payment on Jan. 17, during a period of the county board meeting where items are typically approved without discussion.>>
<<The allegations against Whitely are detailed in federal court records and in an Oregon Employment Relations Board (ERB) arbitration report that came in response to the incidents.
Pamplin Media Group is keeping the identity of the woman anonymous due to the sensitive nature of incidents involving sexual harassment or sexual assault.
The victim, a former patrol deputy, said Whitely frequently subjected her to inappropriate remarks, including comments about liking her yoga pants and telling her intimate sexual details about his own marriage.
But the victim said she was prepared to suffer the conduct, which reportedly began as far back as 2019, rather than report it — until a 2021 incident proved to be the final straw.
In January 2021, the complaint alleges that Whitely told the deputy while the two were on patrol about a dream he had where they woke up in bed together in a Las Vegas hotel room.
The complaint and the ERB arbitrator’s factual findings both state that Whitely concluded this conversation by telling the deputy, “I would tell (you) the other stuff but it’s just like way too dirty for work.”
The deputy described in follow-up interviews with investigators how she felt “really disrespected and it just really bothered me … it made me feel really devalued.”
ERB arbitrator Judy Henry also states that the deputy sent an Instagram message to Whitely after she’d completed her shift, describing how the comments about his dream were “inappropriate and unprofessional.”
Whitely responded, “Sorry, I meant no offense and the dream was more awkward and comical than anything else. I never meant to make you feel uncomfortable and I apologize completely.”
The deputy did not respond to the message and blocked Whitely from her Instagram account, the ERB report notes.
The deputy also described in interviews with investigators how she felt that Whitely’s behavior was escalating and that it felt “like he’s grooming me.”
In Whitely’s initial interview about this incident, he said he recalled relaying the dream about waking up in bed with the deputy, though he denied saying that the rest was “too dirty for work,” the arbitrator states.
However, the report then states Whitely and his union representative asked for a follow-up interview that occurred on Feb. 23, 2021. In it, he admitted to making that comment.
Explaining why he said this, Whitely told the interviewer, “The comment I made, in my mind, was to say, ‘Hey, there was nothing else to the dream. If there was, I wouldn’t talk about it at work with you.’”
He further explained that if there was a sexual component to the dream, it wouldn’t be appropriate to talk about it at work.
When pressed about why he felt it necessary to describe the dream to the deputy at all, Whitely said he didn’t see any necessity to it and described it as “an excited utterance, like my brain just recalled it and I just blurted it out.”
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office investigated the complaints against Whitely after the deputy lodged a formal complaint a few weeks after the January 2021 incident. The Sheriff’s Office demoted him from corporal back to patrol deputy in June of that year.
Whitely then filed a grievance against the county, saying the agency lacked just cause to demote him and that its discipline was excessive in this case. The arbitrator disagreed with these assertions and the grievance was closed.
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office says Whitely no longer works for the agency. According to records in Oregon’s Criminal Justice Information Records Inquiry System, he resigned from the Sheriff’s Office on Jan. 3.
Washington County said Whitely submitted his resignation “during an ongoing personnel investigation unrelated to (this) matter.”
Whitely’s accuser later resigned from the Sheriff’s Office as part of the settlement agreement.
The complaint also lists Washington County as a defendant in the lawsuit, stating the county failed to act on harassment complaints properly and promptly, and fostered a culture of acceptance of this behavior through its inaction.
“WCSO historically had shown a pattern of tolerating sexual harassment and downplaying complaints made by female employees,” the complaint states.
The victim described previous incidents of harassment by male Washington County Sheriff’s Office employees.
One account describes a 2011 incident of alleged sexual assault, where the employee described having her buttocks grabbed by a male deputy while she was working in a civilian position at the jail.
The Sheriff’s Office says it investigated this incident and the agency “took immediate and corrective action,” placing the male deputy, Robert Bingham, on a two-day suspension, and he was “provided with clear expectations of his conduct moving forward.”
The victim’s complaint said the agency’s response was inadequate, as Bingham “continued to work during the ensuing internal investigation and WCSO did not immediately intervene or prevent Bingham from continuing to work in the same building as (the accuser) and other female employees,” the complaint states.
The complaint refers to the deputy’s punishment as “minor discipline and a forced apology.”
A spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office acknowledged that information about the 2011 case is limited because records of older personnel investigations used to be purged regularly before the passage of Oregon House Bill 3145, which now mandates reporting such disciplinary action to the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training (DPSST).
As such, Bingham’s name does not appear in a DPSST records database that details disciplinary action against law enforcement officers, though that’s likely because this resource only became active in 2020.
Bingham’s records may have already been shredded as part of the county’s routine records purges.
In 2013, another deputy, Adam Slater, sent the victim and other women working for the Sheriff’s Office pictures of his genitalia.
The arbitrator’s report states, “This was apparently a common enough occurrence that Slater has a reputation for it among WCSO’s female employees and was reviled for it.”
The victim said that when she reported this to a now-retired female superior, she was told: “she must have done something to encourage his harassing behavior.”
It does not appear that this superior relayed the allegations to higher management officials, and no investigation was launched at the time.
The former employee said this experience made her less willing to report sexual harassment in the workplace.
However, in 2016, she was interviewed about this incident after Slater again was accused of sexually harassing female coworkers. Slater was fired from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office as a result.
The lawsuit called out the county’s failure to investigate in 2013, stating that “negligence on behalf of WCSO’s management allowed (Slater) to continue his behavior for three more years before any action was taken.”
The Sheriff’s Office said Slater wasn’t investigated because the allegations were not raised to agency leadership until 2016.
“Upon receiving the information, WCSO initiated an investigation,” a statement by the agency said. “The investigation substantiated the allegations, and Mr. Slater was terminated.”
Aside from these other incidents, the victim states that when she made the complaints against Whitely to management, he was placed on administrative leave and, when he returned, Whitely was briefly placed in the same patrol district as his accuser, despite the two having been kept apart following the complaint.
The Sheriff’s Office says the placement was an error that was quickly rectified.
“On Mr. Whitely’s first workday following his suspension, they were inadvertently assigned to the same district for several hours, and it was immediately corrected,” the agency said.
In her civil complaint, the former deputy pointed to these and other instances to state that the Washington County Sheriff’s Office has a history of bungling its handling of investigations and not properly addressing employees’ concerns about an unsafe workplace.
“She felt WCSO’s ‘investigations’ took too long and lacked any sense of empathy or compassion, and that it would be less traumatic to endure Whitely’s behavior rather than go through months of interrogations in interviews … that seemed more focused on proving Whitely’s innocence than gathering the facts of the situation,” the complaint states. “This sentiment is shared by many of WCSO’s female employees.”>>
DO LAWYERS HAVE ETHICS?
<<An Oregon State Bar disciplinary and ethics board concluded that a former longtime Wasco County district attorney and his former chief deputy did not violate professional conduct rules.
Eric Nisley, the county’s district attorney from 1999 to 2021, and Leslie Wolf, the former chief deputy district attorney, were the subject of an ethics complaint filed by Nisley’s successor, current Wasco County District Attorney Matthew Ellis, who defeated Nisley in a 2020 election.
The complaint said Nisley should have disclosed to the court disciplinary letters about Jeff Kienlen, a Dalles police officer, but did not. Kienlen, who was fired by the police department in 2021, served as a witness in hundreds of criminal prosecutions during his years with the department.>>
The Oregon Bar concluded there wasn’t enough evidence that Nisley or Wolf acted in “bad faith” by not disclosing information that might call into question Kienlen’s court testimony or the integrity of Wolf’s work.
The complaint also alleged that Wolf and Kienlen had an extramarital affair. Both denied this, saying only that they “became very close emotionally.”
Wolf is now the deputy district attorney in Hood River. From spring 2021 to June 2022, Nisley worked as a temporary deputy district attorney in Jefferson County. He’s not currently practicing law and recently moved to New Orleans with his wife.
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum briefly removed Nisley from his Wasco County position in 2020 after his law license was suspended for 60 days over his conduct in a separate matter. He sued Rosenblum in a pending case that is scheduled for trial in January 2024.
In a statement released to the press last week, Nisley said he was “relieved to know that the Oregon Professional Responsibility Board concluded that Leslie Wolf and I did nothing wrong in this matter.”
He closed by taking a shot at his successor, writing that “Wasco County deserves a district attorney who understands the rules of evidence and will spend his time going after criminals, not police officers.”>>
THE PBA IS CLASS WAR
<<The leaders of three Portland area governments have lined up against a May ballot measure that would institute a capital gains tax to provide legal defense for tenants facing eviction.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson and Metro Council President Lynn Peterson expressed opposition to the measure during a Portland Business Alliance retreat Feb. 3 and confirmed to The Oregonian/OregonLive this week that they oppose the measure.>>
<<If passed, Measure 26-238 would levy an adjustable countywide capital gains tax, initially set at 0.75%, to provide free legal representation for all tenants facing eviction. >>
HOMELESSNESS
<<Of the roughly 1,700 homeless Portlanders offered shelter during city sweeps of encampments over the past 10 months, just 11% remain in some form of temporary shelter and fewer than 1% are permanently housed, data provided by Multnomah County shows.
Two-thirds of people swept from camps declined the offer of temporary shelter, the county reported. And among the other third who did move indoors, the typical individual stayed for two weeks and is back on the streets or at another unknown destination, the data shows.
That adds up to as many as 89% of the individuals cleared from an encampment back sleeping unsheltered somewhere in the city.
While shelters across the county are usually near capacity most nights, the city sets aside some beds for people whose encampments are swept.
Of the people who accessed shelter after being swept, 16% still are using a shelter bed, with those individuals clocking stays of two or three months.
Not everyone whose tent was swept was offered shelter. This could be because they were not in their tent at the time of the sweep.
Of the nearly 1,700 people who were offered services:
Less than 1% have moved into permanent housing.
Slightly more than 1% went to transitional housing including hotel rooms paid by vouchers, temporary stays with friends or family or temporary apartment placements while they wait on a permanent home.
About 3% moved to a different shelter program such as a motel shelter or tiny home village.
Less than 1% exited to an institutional facility such as a hospital, jail, nursing home, or psychiatric or substance use treatment center.
Two people died.
Those who moved into a group shelter after being swept from camping outdoors typically stayed in a shelter bed for half as long as people who came to congregate shelters on their own, said Denis Theriault, spokesperson for the joint city-county homelessness services office.
Tent sweeps have increased dramatically since Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler last spring ordered an unprecedented mass sweep of Old Town. He also declared emergencies that banned camping along high-crash corridors and commonly traveled routes to schools. Most recently, he ordered a mass sweep in the Central Eastside.>>
<<This week, Commissioner Rene Gonzalez also banned Portland Street Response from handing out tents or tarps to homeless individuals. The response team, which provides emergency support to people experiencing a mental health crisis, previously offered those items to people as part of their life saving supplies for those who couldn’t access shelter or housing, particularly during severe weather.
Gonzalez said handing out tents led to more tent fires, which people typically start to keep warm or to cook food. In his announcement, he encouraged people to seek shelter instead of sleeping in a tent.>>
HATE CRIME
<<Weeks after a family says their child was targeted in a racially-motivated attack at West Sylvan Middle School, Portland Public Schools issued an apology for the incident and not alerting the community.
The apology was issued by PPS Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero and PPS Board of Education Andrew Scott, according to the press release, which was sent out just after 5 p.m. on Friday.
Raheem Alexzander, the father of the student, says his eighth-grade son was accosted by two students in the middle of the school day while going to get a drink of water during class.
“They put him up against a wall, they bound his hands behind his back and they told him they were doing the George Floyd on him,” said Alexzander. “They put him face down on the ground with his hands behind his back, they proceeded to put a knee in his back. One of the students said to him that now they were turning off the body camera and they’re going to wait 20 seconds.”>>