GUN SQUAD
<<The Portland Police Bureau says two people have been taken into custody in connection to a February shooting in SE Portland.
Officers responded Feb. 7 to the 8100 Block of Southeast Knight Street on reports of shots fired. While officers didn’t find any victims, the 911 caller reported believing someone may have been hit by gunfire.
At 5 a.m. Thursday, PPB’s Focused Intervention Team (FIT), Enhanced Community Safety Team (ECST) and East Metro SWAT served simultaneous search warrants at two different homes in connection to the shooting, officials reported.
19-year-old Tavon Wilson and a 16-year-old juvenile were taken into custody. PPB says the search warrants led to the recovery of a Glock 19X 9mm, Glock 19 with fully automatic switch, Ruger .380, Walther PPQ 9mm, Glock 22 .40 caliber, .223 upper receiver, 12 fully auto Glock switches, Rifle body armor, high-capacity magazines and large quantities of ammunition.
Both suspects were charged with Attempted Murder in the Second Degree, Attempted Assault in the First Degree and Unlawful Use of a Weapon.
Wilson was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center and the juvenile was taken to the Donald E Long Juvenile Detention Center.>>
https://www.kptv.com/2023/04/07/ppb-swat-arrest-19-year-old-minor-unsolved-se-portland-shooting/
SHOOTING
<<An intoxicated man armed with a pellet gun was shot and killed by a deputy late Thursday night, according to the Lane County Sheriff’s Office.
Just before midnight, deputies responded to a home in the 88400 block of Fisher Road. The sheriff’s office said family members of an unidentified man said he was extremely intoxicated, combative and needed to go to the hospital.
Deputies arrived to the scene and found the man holding what appeared to be a firearm. The sheriff’s office said deputies told the man to put down the gun but he raised it and moved towards a deputy. The deputy fired his gun and hit the man.
Deputies began administering first aid but the man died at the scene.
His name has not been released. The sheriff’s office said the man’s weapon was later determined to be a pellet gun designed to look like a handgun.
No deputies were injured. The deputy involved in the shooting has been placed on traumatic event leave.>>
TOW COPS
<<In an ongoing effort to address community complaints about abandoned vehicles, the Longview Police Department announced Wednesday that officers have removed more than 1,000 abandoned vehicles from roadways since September.
The police department said it has addressed 1,016 reports of abandoned vehicles. These reports came from both concerned citizens and from police officers who noticed the vehicles while on patrol.
Police worked with local tow truck companies to impound hundreds of cars. In most cases, police said owners have an opportunity to remove their vehicles from the street before they are impounded.
Investigators said they have a new system in place that helps them track each report of an abandoned vehicle that’s been moved, so they know if it ends up back on the street and officers can address repeat offenders.
It also helps them know if vehicles are dumped in another part of town instead of taken care of properly.
In September 2022, the Longview Police Department said it had a massive backlog of abandoned vehicle reports and couldn’t keep up with the number of new reports coming in. A patrol sergeant came up with a new way to address and track the complaints. >>
https://www.koin.com/news/washington/longview-police-remove-1000-abandoned-vehicles-in-6-months/
JUNIOR G-MEN
<<The Portland Federal Bureau of Investigation Field Office has quite the opportunity for rising juniors and seniors in high school.
Applications are now being accepted for the Portland FBI Teen Academy happening July 11-14.>>
<<The Teen Academy is a free program open to any high school student in Oregon or southwest Washington.
Crepeaux says it is a crash course for those curious about the FBI and law enforcement.
And, it is all led by actual FBI agents like Special Agent Stephanie Shark.
“How do we collect evidence? How do we work with victims? What’s the importance of a language specialist or an analyst?” said Shark, describing some of the subject matter of the academy.
“Criminal threats, national security threats, we’re going to give them a little bit of a teaser for everything we do,” said Shark.
Shark and Crepeaux say students go through hands-on simulations, mock crime scene investigations, learn about cybersecurity and national security threats, but also learn about the other important jobs in the FBI. This includes roles like translators or analysts. Crepeux says there is a lot more to the FBI than what meets the eye, which is what fascinated her from early on.
“It is public service, and you get to see that through that week,” she said. “You get to learn the inside out that you usually don’t get to see.”>>
NEGLIGENCE
<<Longtime Umatilla sergeant Bill Wright resigned from the town’s police department on March 24, just two weeks after The Oregonian/OregonLive disclosed he was named in a lawsuit stemming from his lackluster response to a reported sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl.
Wright, 58, had worked at the 13-member Umatilla Police Department for more than 30 years.
The Oregonian/OregonLive had highlighted the inadequate investigation by Umatilla police and Wright into the girl’s reported sexual assault. The East Oregonian first reported Wright had left the department.
In his own sworn testimony during a federal trial, Wright revealed how little he did to investigate the sexual assault of the girl, according to a court transcript.
The sergeant told the girls’ parents he didn’t believe their daughter, and he directed her mother to find out the full name of the attacker. He failed to do basic investigative work, such as discovering who reserved the hotel room where the assault occurred, according to court testimony and the girl’s attorneys.
The FBI eventually conducted a proper investigation, which led to the arrest and conviction of a Florida man, Michael Wayne Lyon. Lyon began a monthslong online grooming of the then-13-year-old girl in 2018 before he flew to Hermiston, picked her up from her house in the middle of the night, drove her to a hotel, sexually assaulted her and secretly filmed the abuse, according to court records.
After the girl and her father first went to Umatilla police to report the assault, Wright testified that he talked to the girl “probably 10 minutes or less.” He wrote a brief report and referred her to Guardian Care Center, a child-abuse intervention center, for another interview.
He assured the girl’s father that a full investigation would be done.
Two days later, the girl and her mother returned to police and provided the sergeant with a recording of the video of the assault, which Lyon had shared with the girl’s brother and a friend.
At that meeting, Wright remarked how calm the girl was and suggested she might be “just upset at a boy and trying to get back at him,” the lawsuit alleges.
Wright never went to the Comfort Inn & Suites in Hermiston where the sexual assault took place, never asked for information on who registered to rent the room where the assault occurred, and relied on the Comfort Inn manager to review any video from the hotel. He never asked for a copy of the hotel’s video surveillance and never sought a search warrant to review the girl’s social-media exchanges with the suspect.
Attorney Terry Scannell, who represents the girl who was sexually assaulted and is suing the Umatilla Police Department, said he was surprised to learn of Wright’s departure from the police agency.
He added: “This is a case where our review leads us to conclude he did not do even the most minimal investigation.”>>
<<A federal judge last month sentenced Lyon, 39, to 25 years in prison for using a minor to produce a visual depiction of sexually-explicit conduct. U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut called the circumstances of his grooming and sexual assault quite “egregious,” and made even more disturbing by his sharing of the video of the assault with his victim’s brother and boyfriend.>>