Salem Political Snark

Man awarded $3 million due to excessive force and false arrest by Salem police officer

Not a positive moment for the reputation of the Salem Police Department, to put it mildly. Last week a jury awarded $3,150,000 to Christopher Garza after a Salem police officer, David S. Baker, treated him badly in 2021.

Christopher Garza (Oregonian photo)

An Oregonian story by Maxine Bernstein tells the tale in "Jury awards $3 million to Salem man falsely arrested by an officer who used excessive force." (The Salem Reporter reprinted this story.) Excerpts:

A jury Thursday awarded more than $3 million in damages to a Salem man wrongly accused by a police officer of stealing a car and then shoved against a patrol car and handcuffed after he walked away.

The eight-member jury ordered the city of Salem to pay $2 million to Christopher Garza in punitive damages, $1 million in non-economic damages and $150,000 in economic damages after finding Salem Officer David S. Baker used excessive force in violation of Garza’s civil rights and committed battery and false arrest under state law.

Punitive damages are awarded to punish the city and officer and to deter similar wrongdoing. Non-economic damages are for the mental suffering, distress or humiliation Garza suffered from the officer’s actions, and the economic damages are for the cost of his medical care, loss of income and earning capacity.

Baker had accused Garza of stealing a car when he pulled up to Garza and two other men who were working on a broken car in the OK Tire lot about 12:30 a.m. on Sept. 17, 2021.

Garza, who is part Native American and Latino, lived in an RV on the property.

He testified that Baker asked him if he was stealing the car. Garza said he told the officer he wasn’t stealing the car and asked who had called police, saying: “Why are you here?

“I felt like he was stereotyping me, like he was profiling me,” Garza, 49, testified. “And I turned around and walked back to the car.”

That’s when Baker grabbed Garza’s arm, shoved him against the hood of his police car, handcuffed him and wrenched one of his arms in the air, injuring Garza’s shoulder, according to court testimony and a video of the encounter. Garza was placed in the back of the police car but released about 10 minutes later with no charges.

Baker, who joined Salem police in 2013, forcefully raised Garza’s arm up and lifted Garza’s feet off the ground after he had handcuffed him with no justification and in violation of his training, Garza’s lawyer, Jason Kafoury, argued.

...“This wasn’t an armed robbery,” Kafoury argued at closing arguments. “It was just three Hispanic guys sitting around with a broken car.”

The jury of five men and three women returned its verdict after deliberating for about 90 minutes following a four-day trial before U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernandez in Portland.

...“This was avoidable. Officer Baker never had to use any force. And this never would have happened,” Kafoury said. “He was the initiator. He was the controller of every single use of force that happened to my client.”

He said a Salem police sergeant signed off on Baker’s report 18 minutes after it was written, without investigating why force was used against someone who wasn’t charged with a crime.

...Attorney Greg Kafoury, who also represented Garza, said the verdict should send a message “far and wide to police departments that even the citizens of the smallest towns in Oregon care about integrity in police agencies and deserve the kinds of officers who will serve and protect all of us.”

It's unclear whether the City of Salem will be paying the $3,150,000 to Garza directly, or if the money awarded by the jury will come from a liability insurance policy.

Regardless, it sure seems that this shameful incident should spur the Salem Police Department to engage in better training of its officers. Something obviously is wrong when a Latino/Native American man is working on a car with a few other guys and is accused of stealing it, then roughed up for no reason by a police officer.

Why did it take so long to charge DEA agent in death of bicyclist?

Yes, as the Salem Reporter and Statesman Journal have reported, it's good news that a Marion County grand jury has indicted the DEA (federal Drug Enforcement Agency) agent who killed a Salem woman after running through a stop sign.

Here's an excerpt from the Salem Reporter story by Ardeshir Tabrizian.

An agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has been charged with criminally negligent homicide for his role in a collision in March that killed a Salem cyclist, according to court documents.

A Marion County grand jury on Wednesday indicted Samuel T. Landis, 38, a special agent of the DEA, on a single count. The charge comes over five months after the collision that killed Marganne Allen, a cyclist and state official.

The charge alleges that the DEA agent killed Allen with “criminal negligence,” according to the indictment. Criminally negligent homicide is a class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Marion County District Attorney Paige Clarkson on Wednesday requested that a warrant be issued for the agent’s arrest and that he be held in jail on $20,000 bail. The Marion County Jail’s  roster did not list him as being in custody Wednesday morning.

The Statesman Journal story by Whitney Woodworth says this.

The move comes after months of silence from city and county officials regarding Allen's death.

Salem Police passed the investigation on to Keizer Police, citing a potential conflict of interest. Keizer Police said it referred the investigation to the Marion County District Attorney's Office almost four months ago. Prosecutors repeatedly said the decision on charges was still under review.

What's disturbing is how long it took the authorities to charge Allen. After all, KPTV in Portland has reported that it was known almost immediately that Allen had driven through a stop sign after traveling at a high rate of speed in the residential neighborhood.

(That's a screenshot of the KPTV video. You can view the video on the KPTV web site.)

Here's an excerpt from the KPTV story about the indictment of Allen.

Michael Baird, a retired Oregon state trooper who specialized in accident reconstruction, says he is puzzled why the investigation took so long.

“Marganne’s husband told me the night that Salem police came out and notified him that Marganne had been hit by a car, or ran into a car, and died subsequently at Salem hospital, they told him that they had clear evidence that the driver of the vehicle had run a stop sign,” Baird said. “They told him that right from the get-go, and I thought to myself, ‘Why wasn’t he cited if they had evidence of that?’”

For weeks now, FOX 12 been asking Salem police, Keizer police and the Marion County District Attorney’s Office what has been holding up the case. Only Keizer police gave a real response, and said they turned the initial investigation over to prosecutors first in May, and then did two more follow-up investigations since then.

FOX 12 learned a grand jury was looking into the case starting last week, and on Wednesday, they indicted Landis on criminally negligent homicide charges, a Class B felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Michael Baird says Marganne Allen’s family has been taking life day by day, and that justice will hopefully give them answers to some of the questions they’ve been asking for months.

It sure sounds like the authorities mentioned in the story were slow-walking an indictment (at best) or trying to find a reason to not charge a fellow law enforcement officer (at worst). Either way, this episode doesn't put our local police and District Attorney in a very good light.

Sleazy behavior by police department after cyclist's death

Keep this excellent investigative journalism in mind next time City officials want you to lavish more money on the Salem Police Department, which will occur in the November election via a proposed payroll tax. 


The Salem Reporter has a great update on the thoroughly sleazy behavior by the department following the death of a cyclist on March 28 at the hands of a federal DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) employee who drove through a stop sign and killed Marganne Allen, who was riding her bicycle on High Street.

After the Salem Reporter obtained cell phone call records, email logs and police mobile computer entries from the police department, journalist Ardeshir Tabrizian wrote New details emerge on how Salem police managed DEA crash information.

It's infuriating to read how the police department closely communicated with the employer of the man who killed Allen after driving recklessly, while keeping Salem citizens in the dark about what happened. Here's some excerpts from the story.

Salem police had more frequent contact than previously known with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration while investigating one of its agents for involvement in a fatal bicycle collision, according to recently released records. 

The contacts suggest the two agencies worked to manage what information was shared with the public beginning within hours of the crash. 

That apparent coordination conflicts with the Salem Police Department’s repeated assertions since the March collision that it couldn’t disclose to outsiders information about the investigation. 

And the records show that Salem’s police chief soon after the fatal crash was discounting that anyone would be charged in the March 28 death of cyclist Marganne Allen. That was before he decided to turn over the case to another agency because of the close professional linkages between his department and the DEA. 

Marion County prosecutors said last week that they still haven’t decided whether to charge the DEA agent in the cyclist’s death.

...The day of the collision, Salem citizens were told by police on social media only that the road was closed due to a “collision with a pedestrian.” The investigation shut down a high-traffic intersection in central Salem just before rush hour. 

But records show that Salem police spokeswoman Angela Hendrick, a civilian employee charged with providing the public information about police matters, was almost immediately on the phone with her DEA counterpart.

Public information officers for the two agencies kept up such contacts over four days while citizens were left in the dark, first about the fatality and then about the federal agent’s role in the collision, according to a Salem Reporter investigation.

The handling raises questions about Salem police coordinating with an outside law enforcement agency to steer the flow of public information that appeared to favor the federal agent – a possible suspect – over the victim.

The full extent and purpose of the contacts between Salem police and the DEA remain unclear because neither agency will explain their actions after the collision.

This is disgusting. It sure seems that the Salem Police Department cared much more about standing shoulder to shoulder with the employer of the federal agent, Samuel Landis, than with providing timely and accurate information about the death of Allen.

The Salem Reporter wasn't looking for information about the investigation into Landis' actions on the day he killed Allen. What they sought, and got, was information about communications between the police department and the DEA following the cyclist's death. 

Yet our supposedly open and transparent police department (according to department leadership) refuses to answer questions from the Salem Reporter about contacts with the DEA.

Emails from City Councilor Vanessa Nordyke showed her concern about the police department's failure to communicate with citizens. 

Councilor Vanessa Nordyke on May 16 told [Police Chief] Womack and City Manager Keith Stahley via email that her constituents were “deeply concerned about this case.” She asked that the chief speak about the Allen matter at the next council meeting and be prepared for questions.

...The chief also informed the city manager that he would be out of the state and unable to attend the May 22 council meeting.

Nordyke again wrote to the city manager after that meeting.

“​​I’m disappointed that no one from the police department presented information on this incident last night, despite the fact that I gave advance notice,” she wrote. “I have been careful to tread lightly to respect those in mourning. But when the community repeatedly asks me about a serious incident like this, they (and Councilors) reasonably expect a response. I highly doubt I’m the only member of Council getting questions about this. I have real concerns about transparency in city government, and the city’s response thus far to this incident only concerns me further.”

City officials still keeping secret why deputy police chief got $53,500 on way out

The City of Salem slogan, At Your Service, deserves to be changed to At Your Secret Service, given the lengths city officials have gone to preserve a veil of secrecy over Deputy Police Chief Steve Bellshaw's highly unusual $53,500 taxpayer payment as he was leaving his position under suspicious circumstances.

The Salem Reporter has been doggedly trying to pry what should be public information out of the closed fist of city officials. Here's how their newest story on this subject starts out.

The city of Salem was prepared in the fall to release key documents about the unusual departure of a top police official suspected of misconduct but stopped in the face of a legal threat from the former deputy chief, according to newly released records.

Salem city officials instead decided the documents were confidential even though Steve Bellshaw had retired under a special deal in which he was paid $53,500 in taxpayer money and agreed not to sue the city.

The city has been quiet about the deputy chief’s retirement in February 2022 and has resisted disclosing anything about the matter in the seven months since Salem Reporter requested Bellshaw’s separation agreement with the city. 

So much for hopes that the new City Manager, Keith Stahley, would bring with him an increased commitment to transparency. It sure looks like he's endorsing the same approach his predecessor practiced: make it as difficult as possible for the public to learn how their tax dollars are being spent.

When a government agency refuses to reveal information to journalists or concerned citizens, almost always it's because they're trying to hide something. In this case, it's what Bellshaw was being investigated for, and why the City of Salem gave him $53,500 rather than pursue the investigation.

It's bizarre that an on-again, off-again investigation into wrongdoing by Deputy Chief Bellshaw ended up not with Bellshaw being held accountable for whatever he did, but with him getting what appears to be a hefty hush money payment when he decided to retire.

Though it's impossible to know exactly what went on here given the refusal of city officials to come clean about the investigation into Bellshaw and the $53,500 payment, my suspicion is that whatever Bellshaw did, disclosing it would have made both Bellshaw and the Salem Police Department look bad, so city officials decided to let Bellshaw retire with a big bonus in hopes the whole wrongdoing thing would just go away.

Which, it might, since it doesn't look like the City of Salem is ever going to release the records requested by the Salem Reporter. Here's how their story ends.

City officials have refused to explain the allegations against Bellshaw, claiming state law wouldn’t allow it and that they had to protect the city’s legal work. But documents the city released in November showed an off-and-on effort to bring in an outside investigator.

Thenell told Salem Reporter in a November interview that Bellshaw was never told there would be an investigation. Thenell said talks to reach a settlement started with the city at the time Bellshaw was placed on administrative leave, which happened on Nov. 12, 2021.

Police acting cruelly in Tyre Nichols videos infuriates me

Here we go again.

One more of many examples where police acted really badly, so much so five officers in the Memphis police department have been charged with second degree murder after they killed Tyre Nichols, a young man, for no reason at all.

None. Absolutely none. 

Now, many people here in Salem, Oregon are going to think, "Thank heavens our police department isn't like that." They're wrong. Our police department is exactly like that. 

Meaning, the Salem Police Department is like almost every large department in the country.

It's organized on a military-style basis. Officers in the department view themselves as protecting the city against "bad guys," rather than as public servants. Leaders of the department, including Chief Womack, are resistant to reforming the way things are done, such as by not having uniformed officers handle calls better served by a mental health specialist and medic.

So when I watched the videos of Nichols being beaten cruelly by five Memphis police officers, which led to his death in a hospital several days later, I was visualizing how easily this could happen anywhere, including Salem, because our country is so screwed-up when it comes to policing.

I saw five police officers taking turns punching and kicking and striking and pepper spraying Nichols even though he posed no threat to them. I saw the familiar sight of police officers all participating in an assault on a citizen whose car was pulled over for no discernible reason. I saw the officers joking around after the assault, ignoring Nichols, who they'd propped up against a car, all proud that one of them had held Nichols with his hands behind his back while another officer punched him in the head.

In short, what I saw was what I see every time I see a police officer: an average human being, many or most of whom have an above-average propensity for violence.

It's time to stop putting police on a pedestal. Bring them down to earth, where they belong.

Police are nothing special. They're normal people who get to carry a gun and enforce our laws. But when they act like jerks, they're worse than normal people, because five normal people don't beat up a young man until he dies from his injuries. It takes abnormally cruel people to do that, people who think they can get away with murder, literally, because they wear a police uniform.

What was released today by the Memphis Police Department were several videos of the Nichols assault. The body cam videos are confusing to watch. A video taken by a camera on a light pole provides the clearest, and most infuriating, view of the assault by the police officers. It can be viewed here.

If you don't want to watch the disturbing video, I completely understand. But I hope you will watch it. It's important to see how police officers act when they think they're above the law, because they are the law. Again, like jerks, strutting around like the cowards that they are, all proud that five large police officers were able to beat up a 140 pound young man.

A Black man. And the five police officers charged with his murder also are Black.

Which goes to show that while racism in police departments is a problem, an even bigger problem is the police culture that allows a group of officers to gang up on brutally beating a citizen without any officer raising an objection.

Nichols was pulled out of his car and thrown to the ground without any explanation. He was complying with police orders, but the asshole Memphis officers kept yelling conflicting demands at him. Like get on the ground when he was already on the ground, and show me your hands when they were holding his arms.

Understandably, Nichols took off running. Almost certainly he was afraid for his life, a totally valid fear, as it turns out. He was just a few hundred yards from his home. He wanted to run home to his mother. He yelled "Mother!" several times while the police were assaulting him. 

A New York Times story describes what happened next. Again, infuriating. 

Roughly eight minutes later, after a pursuit, officers locate Mr. Nichols in a suburban neighborhood, not far from his home, and tackle him to the ground. A severe beating ensues as Mr. Nichols cries out in pain and yells repeatedly for his mother. A body-worn camera and a surveillance camera capture police officers continuing their assault on Mr. Nichols, with one kicking him so hard in the face that the officer nearly falls down.

Throughout the beating, which lasts about three minutes, Mr. Nichols does not appear to ever strike back. Several times, he moves his hands to cover his face, seeming to cower from the officers’ blows.

As an officer hits him from behind with a baton, Mr. Nichols stands up and staggers while officers hang on to his arms. As two officers hold his arms behind his back, a third officer delivers a series of powerful punches. Finally, after that officer hits Mr. Nichols three times in the head while standing behind him, Mr. Nichols collapses to the ground.

Back at the scene of the traffic stop, body camera video from an officer who did not join the chase captures his reaction around the time that he learns that his colleagues have caught up with Mr. Nichols. “I hope they stomp his ass,” he says, twice.

By the end of the pummeling, Mr. Nichols is lying on his back, appearing dizzy. The officers drag him over to a police car and sit him up against it. The video images do not show him receiving any serious medical attention for several minutes.

Mr. Nichols, who worked at a FedEx facility and was the father of a 4-year-old boy, died in a hospital three days later.

Tyre Nichols, another victim of police violence

 

Excessive force by Salem police officer costs city $1 million

Justice has been served Eleaqia McCrae, who was shot in the eye and chest with rubber bullets by Salem police in May 2020 during a Black Lives Matter protest.

Today the Salem Reporter published a story about the $1 million awarded McCrae by a jury after she filed a lawsuit.

The city of Salem will have to pay a protester just over $1 million because police violated her constitutional rights when they shot her with rubber bullets at a local protest two years ago.

A federal jury on Friday, Sept. 30, unanimously ruled in favor of Eleaqia McCrae, 22, who sued the city over its handling of a protest against police violence on May 31, 2020. She said in her suit that she was left with permanent eye damage after an officer shot her twice with rubber bullets, hitting her chest and eye.

Following a trial last week in the U.S. District Court of Oregon, the jury unanimously found Salem Police Department officer Robert Johnston used excessive force when he shot McCrae, violating her Fourth Amendment rights.

For sure, this wasn't a shining moment for the Salem Police Department. In September 2020 I wrote a blog post about what sure seemed to be an attempted cover-up by the department.

Here's some excerpts from Rubber bullet lawsuit undermines credibility of Salem Police Department. 

I'm changing my mind about the Salem Police Department. By and large, I've believed that Salem has been fortunate to have a well-run department marked by honesty, integrity, and a willingness to admit mistakes.

Sure, the department's actions during this year's Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd were questionable at best and outrageous at worst. Using tear gas and playing nice with armed counter-protesters put chinks in the Police Department's "well-run" reputation.

To me those chinks widened to a crevasse after I read the front page story in today's Statesman Journal by Whitney Woodworth, 
"Protester sues city, Salem police for civil rights violations, shooting her in face, chest with rubber bullet."

...Contrast those allegations in the lawsuit with what Police Chief Jerry Moore said in a June 24 after-action report to Steve Powers, the City Manager. The following is part of a description of what happened on May 31, the day Eleaqia McCrae was shot by rubber bullets.

At 2158 hours, Lt. VanMeter authorized the use of CS gas and other munitions on the unlawful protestors and those launching items at the officers. LRAD announcements continued to be given. While we are not aware of any injuries to those in the crowd due to police actions, we were able to assist one female protestor who officers witnessed being struck in the head by a brick thrown by another protestor/rioter. After providing medical assistance and ensuring she was safe we had her transported to the hospital via ambulance.

This sure sounds like a Salem Police Department cover-up. There's little or no doubt that McCrae's injuries were caused by rubber bullets. She says that a police officer spoke with her after she was shot in the chest and eye. She was taken to the Salem Hospital Emergency Room.

Yet Chief Moore claimed that he wasn't aware "of any injuries to those in the crowd due to police actions."

Wow. Chief Moore must not have done much investigating before the after-action report was written. Or his police offices lied to him about their not being any injuries to protesters. Or Chief Moore deliberately withheld the rubber bullets injuries from his report.

Whichever possibility is true, it's a big blow to the credibility of the Salem Police Department. Shouldn't the department have contacted the Emergency Room to learn if there were people admitted with injuries caused by the actions of police officers?

They learned about a protester being struck in the head by a brick thrown by another protester. Yet the department was clueless, supposedly, about a protester being shot in the eye and chest by bullets fired by a police officer or officers.

There's no doubt that Chief Moore's after-action report was deeply flawed. The only question is whether this was deliberate or a result of incompetence. 

Hopefully we will learn which is true in the course of the lawsuit being adjudicated.

Now we know that Eleaqia McCrae was indeed seriously injured by Salem police during the protest. Yet Chief Moore, now retired, claimed otherwise in his after-action report filed more than three weeks after the protest. 

Whether Moore and other police department leaders were lying or incompetent is an open question. Regardless, this episode shows that when the Salem Police Department claims something is true, some healthy skepticism is in order.

Salem City Council makes mobile crisis unit a low priority

If the efforts of city councilor Vanessa Nordyke to make a mobile crisis unit a reality in Salem ever come to fruition, she deserves a Perseverance Prize.

Because while the general public really likes the idea of having people other than police officers respond to mental health and other calls that don't require an officer, the Salem Police Department, City Manager, and her fellow city councilors haven't been nearly as enthusiastic. 

Last Monday the City Council dealt the mobile crisis unit proposal another setback when Nordyke's motion to seek $2 million in state funding for a multi-year pilot project failed to pass on a 4-4 vote. (Councilor Phillips was absent, leaving eight of the nine councilors present.)

As reported by the Salem Reporter, those supporting the motion were Nordyke, Jackie Leung, Jose Gonzalez, and Linda Nishioka. Opponents of the motion were Chris Hoy, Micki Varney, Virginia Stapleton and Mayor Chuck Bennett.

It's disappointing that Nordyke didn't have the support of progressives Hoy, Varney, and Stapleton. This was an opportunity for them to take a concrete step toward funding a mobile crisis unit. Instead, only a lackluster motion passed.

Salem city councilors on Monday unanimously voted to seek funding sources for a mobile crisis response team that could respond to some 911 calls instead of police.

But councilors narrowly voted against putting funding for such a project in the city’s list of priorities for the 2023 legislative session.

Only $700,000 is needed to fund a mobile crisis unit for a year. The 2022-23 budget for the Salem Police Department is $54,491,000. So $700,000 is a mere 1.3% of the police department budget. In Eugene, use of the widely acclaimed CAHOOTS mobile crisis response team answered 17% of the Eugene Police Department's call volume.

As I noted in "Police budget should be cut to pay for crisis response team," the CAHOOTS program more than pays for itself.

In 2017, the most recent year shown on the White Bird Clinic web page, CAHOOTS teams answered 17% of the Eugene Police Department's call volume. Yes, 17%. 

That's a big savings, given the much lower cost of CAHOOTS staff compared to police officers. This chart shows that in 2017 CAHOOTS diversions saved the Eugene Police Department $12 million, with the department budget being $51.3 million in that year.

...Eugene is about the same size as Salem. The CAHOOTS budget is about $2.1 million a year.

So it sure seems like one way to pay for a CAHOOTS-style crisis response team here would be to take a couple of million dollars from the Salem Police Department budget. 

Even if the initial savings from a Salem crisis response team was only 1/6 of the savings Eugene had in 2017, a Salem CAHOOTS costing $2 million a year would pay for itself.

Thus the search for funding sources to pay for a mobile crisis response team in Salem should start close to home: in the police department budget. It's extremely likely that somewhere in the $54,491,000 budget there's at least $700,000 to get a one-year pilot project underway. 

Instead, it looks like city officials are going to embark on a quest for grants, donations, and the like. Better than nothing, but way worse than funding a mobile crisis unit out of savings from 911 calls that police officers don't have to respond to.

Why isn't this being done?

Probably because Police Chief Womack wants to continue expanding the department, and a mobile crisis unit threatens his bureaucratic fiefdom. Sadly, half of the City Council is fine with this, leaving people in Salem unable to benefit from having trained mental health workers respond to many 911 calls. 

Councilor Nordyke shared her take on the City Council's action in a Facebook post.

COUNCIL VOTES FOR MY MOTION TO RESEARCH FUNDING SOURCES FOR MOBILE CRISIS UNIT; BUT IN A CLOSE VOTE, COUNCIL VOTES AGAINST MY MOTION TO ASK LEGISLATURE FOR FUNDING

The people of Salem have demanded that the City take action on our homelessness crisis. Mobile crisis units (MCUs) are a crucial part of the solution, by connecting persons experiencing homelessness with services and shelter, and much more. Far too many people are suffering who would benefit from this service.

 

FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS:

On September 26, Council unanimously supported my motion to direct city staff to identify funding sources for a mobile crisis unit (MCU). This vote was not surprising, given the outpouring of support from business owners, mental health professionals, homeless advocates, and concerned citizens urging City Council to pass the motion.

 

AND NOW, THE BAD NEWS:

By a razor-thin margin, City Council voted against adding funding for the MCU to our list of legislative funding priorities. Here’s what happened.

 

Every year, city staff recommend millions of dollars in funding priorities to request from the Oregon State Legislature. Salem City Council reviews the city staff’s recommendations and votes on which funding priorities to take to the legislature.

 

For the 2023 legislative session, city staff recommended funding for an MCU plus several other legislative funding priorities. Unfortunately, their recommendation did not make the final list of $34.1 million dollars in legislative funding priorities.

 

Now, several Councilors (myself included) are concerned about finding the funds to start an MCU. The city staff report states that the annual cost of an MCU is $700,000 per year. That’s less than 0.001% of Salem’s $700 million-plus annual budget. City staff have forecasted a budget deficit for fiscal year 2024. That deficit, however, assumes no major changes in revenue or expenditures.

 

So, I presented a solution to address our budgetary concerns and get the MCU started. I made a motion to add MCU funding ($2 million total, which would cover over two years of running the MCU) to the list of legislative funding priorities.

 

If the legislature approves this funding request in 2023, we could run the MCU for over two years without costing the city a dime.

 

Salem City Councilors Jackie Leung, Jose Gonzalez and Linda Nishioka voted in favor of my motion. Please join me in thanking Salem City Councilors Jackie Leung, Jose Gonzalez and Linda Nishioka for their support!

 

But we were one vote shy of victory. The Council was tied, and under Council rules, a tie means the motion fails. Because of this vote, the city will have to look elsewhere to fund the MCU.

 

There are, of course, no guarantees the legislature would have granted the request even if my motion passed. But there’s one thing we do know: the legislature of 2023 will look very different from the legislature of 2022. Several incumbents are leaving. Several legislative races are too close to call. Nobody has a crystal ball.

 

Refusing to ask the legislature for money is a missed opportunity. If Salem City Council does not advocate for Salem, then who will?

 

Thank you for reading, and for your support.

 

You can bet that I will continue to fight for our most vulnerable neighbors. I must speak up for those who have no voice.

 

Follow me for future advocacy opportunities!

 

For more information about the City Council meeting, watch the Council meeting here: https://youtu.be/8__GMwMNE2Q?t=945

 

Coverage in Salem Reporter: https://www.salemreporter.com/.../salem-city-council-may.../

Oregonian editor criticizes Marion County DA and Salem Police secrecy

Officials at the City of Salem, including the Police Department, along with the Marion County District Attorney's Office, are getting some well-deserved bad press.

After the Salem Reporter editor criticized the City of Salem and Marion County DA for a coverup following a public records request by his publication concerning a suspicious $53,500 payment to former deputy police chief Steve Bellshaw, today the Sunday Oregonian had a letter from the editor that makes similar criticisms.

Here's the letter from Therese Bottomly. It makes for interesting reading, especially for those of us concerned about government transparency and public accountability.

In decades of advocating for the public’s right to know, I am rarely surprised by government obstinacy. But a recent public records decision by the Marion County District Attorney’s office is truly confounding.

Here are the facts, as I understand them: A news team managed by a former colleague, longtime investigative journalist Les Zaitz, sought records related to the mysterious and sudden departure of Salem deputy police chief Steve Bellshaw.

This is classic local journalism. Salem residents have every right to know why a top-ranking city official – one with the power to arrest, one who may testify against citizens in court and one who had been granted a parting gift of $53,500 of taxpayer dollars – had simply disappeared from the city rolls.

Zaitz’s Salem Reporter, a small but aggressive newsroom, asked for city records, including misconduct complaints and records compiled for any personnel investigation.

The city denied the Reporter’s request for records related to the departure, and the newsroom appealed to the district attorney. Paige Clarkson’s office denied the appeal.

That, in itself, is shocking to me. The facts appear to strongly favor disclosure. But what Zaitz then reported is the real bellringer:

Amy Queen, the deputy district attorney who signed the opinion on behalf of Clarkson’s office, is married to a Salem police officer and has accepted campaign contributions from the police union, Zaitz wrote.

“That means Queen is ruling on whether her husband’s employer is improperly withholding information from the public,” Zaitz said in a column for the Reporter. “In addition, one of the largest donors to Queen’s current campaign to become a state judge: the Salem Police Employees Union, which gave $3,000 on Aug. 18.

“That seems a significant conflict – and one not disclosed by Queen, Clarkson or the resulting order that said the public wasn’t entitled to a single piece of paper about this matter.”

Wow.

“This was not and is not a conflict in this matter as the legal assessment and any conclusions were supervised by me and the decisions were only finalized and letter approved once I reviewed the pertinent information in light of the law,” Clarkson told me.

Clarkson, too, was married to a Salem Police employee. Her husband left the department “over a year” ago to become a police chief in Central Oregon, she said. She doesn’t consider that a conflict, either.

Clarkson’s office should have asked another Oregon district attorney to handle the matter or at a minimum assigned the appeal to someone other than Queen.

District attorneys are supposed to act in a “quasi-judicial” role when they consider public records appeals. In other words, like a judge. The seeker of records makes his or her case and the public body has the burden of defending its denial. The district attorney hears both sides and then issues an order.

A “quasi-judicial” role implies an impartiality that does not appear to have been the case here.

One of the underpinnings of public disclosure laws is that the public has the right to see how government is spending the public’s money. That’s why salaries for public officials are open to all, budgets are posted online, and contracts can be examined.

Secret settlements corrode the trust in public bodies. We all know that employers sometimes make a judicious decision: pay a little money to help a problem employee move along and save a lot of expense, time and headache that might come from a lawsuit.

But if that’s what Salem did, the citizens have a right to know it.

The city of Salem told me “an investigation was contemplated, but neither initiated nor completed,” and the decision between Bellshaw and the police department to part ways was “mutual.”

Under Oregon’s public records law, some documents are exempt from disclosure. Many exemptions, however, have what is known as a “public interest” test -- that is, does the public interest in the information in a particular instance weigh in favor of disclosure.

Decades of court and attorney general’s office rulings on public records disputes give substantive guidance for deciding these conflicts. And that brings us back to the Marion County district attorney’s decision.

Queen’s order, endorsed by Clarkson, said the records were properly withheld from the public because they were protected by attorney-client privilege; by a statute shielding records of investigations that do not result in discipline; and by various exemptions, including the confidential submissions, personal privacy and disciplinary exemptions.

For starters, let’s take the attorney-client privilege, which is intended to let clients speak freely to attorneys and receive confidential advice. The city, of course, is the client. It can waive the privilege and release the records to the public, which arguably is the ultimate client.

The other statute and exemptions the city cites each has a public interest test. It seems clear to me, as a longtime user of the public records law, the facts stack up in favor of disclosure.

First, the public records law is a disclosure law. Any analysis by the district attorney must start with the presumption in favor of releasing records. Secrecy is the answer only if there is no path toward public release.

Previous court decisions make clear the public interest in this case is overwhelming. In a 1984 ruling, the Oregon Court of Appeals singled out police work as of special interest, saying there is “a significant public interest in the manner in which those duties are discharged.”

The appeals court, in a 1999 case, also ruled that even the off-duty, private conduct of a high-ranking police official should be disclosed if the conduct bore directly on the official’s integrity.

Finally, the public and other public employees have a strong interest in knowing misconduct investigations are handled fairly and properly. Other police employees need to know that office politics, petty grudges, favoritism and the like had no place in the resolution here.

The circumstances of this district attorney order do nothing to enhance trust in government. Quite the opposite. The Marion County District Attorney should rescind the order and recuse her office from the matter.

What is Salem Police Department hiding from the public?

If anyone thought that a new police chief, Trevor Womack, would usher in an era of transparency and openness for the Salem Police Department, that thought needs to be dumped in the trashcan of unmet expectations.

Last month I described two examples of the department hiding facts from the public. The people trying to lift the lid on police secrecy are experienced journalists: Joe Douglass and Ardeshir Tabrizian.

When Douglass hit roadblocks from the Salem Police Department with his public record request for information related to communications between police officers and the Proud Boys militia group prior to a 2021 gun rights rally at Riverfront Park, he appealed the department's refusal to provide certain records to the Marion County District Attorney office.

A Deputy District Attorney rejected the appeal, showing how tight knit police and district attorneys can be when they want to join forces in keeping things secret.

Likewise, the Salem Reporter, where Tabrizian works, appealed the refusal of the police department to provide public records related to a $53,500 payment to former deputy chief Steve Bellshaw. Here's excerpts from yesterday's Salem Reporter story, "DA backs Salem's effort to keep police misconduct files secret."

The city of Salem paid a departing police official an extra $53,500 while he faced a city misconduct investigation that was never finished.

But city officials are keeping records confidential about the matter, and the Marion County District Attorney’s Office Monday sided with city officials, concluding there was insufficient public interest to require disclosure.

Deputy District Attorney Amy Queen notified Salem Reporter that she would allow the city to keep secret records sought by the news organization detailing the allegations against former Deputy Chief Steve Bellshaw.

That decision means the public isn’t allowed information about misconduct allegations against Bellshaw that the city never fully investigated.

The city earlier this year struck a deal with Bellshaw and both sides tried to keep that deal from the public. It was disclosed only after Salem Reporter sought legal recourse to force its disclosure. Under that agreement, Bellshaw declared his intent to retire but the city also agreed to pay him $53,500 for reasons it has yet to fully explain.

Subsequently, the Oregon Department of Professional Safety Standards and Training, the state’s police licensing agency, opened an investigation of Bellshaw on May 9. It did so based on the city’s report to the agency that Salem officials had a pending investigation of Bellshaw when he left.

What a lame excuse from the District Attorney's office: "insufficient public interest to require disclosure." 

I'm pretty damn sure that if Salem citizens were asked if they wanted to know why city officials gave Bellshaw a gift of $53,500 from the Police Department budget when he was being investigated for misconduct, they'd say, Absolutely, tell us what went on here. 

But Chief Womack wants to keep this secret, probably because it would make the Salem Police Department look bad if the facts of Bellshaw's shady retirement came to light. 

Here's what Womack and other city officials are forgetting: as the saying goes, often it isn't the crime, but the coverup that makes public employees look bad. Citizens deserve to know what Bellshaw was accused of, and why he was given the $53,500 as a going-away gift from the Salem Police Department.

Another example of Salem police hiding facts from public

This shouldn't come as a surprise, given that so many police departments in the United States act as if they're beyond the law. Which of course is ironic, given that police are supposed to be enforcers of laws.

But there's an unmistakable whiff of arrogance emanating from police officers these days that didn't seem to be nearly as apparent in years gone by. Partly this could be a defensive reaction to recent well-publicized failures of police officers to do their job competently.

Partly this comes with carrying a gun. That makes many people look upon police as if they were ideal human beings, whereas actually they're just normal human beings like everyone else.

Flawed. Prone to mistakes. Mostly trying to do the right thing yet often coming up short.

A few days ago I wrote about how the Salem Police Department was putting roadblocks in the path of journalist Joe Douglass as he tries to learn via a public record request how the department communicated with members of the Proud Boys prior to a May 1, 2021 Second Amendment rally in Riverfront Park.

Now Ardeshir Tabrizian, a journalist at the Salem Reporter, has described how the Salem Police Department has failed to provide a document describing the separation agreement between the department and Steven Bellshaw, who used to be Deputy Chief.

Here's an excerpt from the Salem Reporter story.

A longtime Salem Police Department official left his job in February with no public fanfare and under a separation agreement that has since triggered a state investigation.

Secrecy surrounds the circumstances of the retirement of Deputy Chief Steven Bellshaw after 32 years.

City officials have so far not publicly released the separation agreement – and won’t say what the agreement cost the city, if anything.

More than two weeks have elapsed since Salem Reporter on July 12 requested the city of Salem’s separation agreement with Bellshaw, who retired Feb. 15. 

...The city has provided no indication when or if it would release the separation agreement for public review.

Hopefully the newly hired City Manager for the City of Salem will prod, or order, staff at the Police Department to be much more open with citizens and journalists.

It doesn't look good when any public agency acts all secretive when they get a request for public records. When the agency has the job of law enforcement, it looks even worse.

If the Salem Police Department has nothing to hide, why are they preventing Joe Douglass and the Salem Reporter from getting the information they've asked for?