Embedded Files
Bad Training and a Culture of Lying Continue to Haunt PPB
By Don DuPay
Edited by Theresa Griffin Kennedy
Published to public media June 19 2020 3:55 PM
I am going to say out loud what the American people already know, and tell them from my seventeen years working as a Portland street cop and police detective (1961-1978) what is wrong with police culture nationwide.
*Number one: the police have brought this revolution on themselves following the horrific filmed death of unarmed and handcuffed black man, George Floyd, who was murdered by ex-cop Derek Chauvin. Chauvin should never have been hired as a police officer in the first place, but that is another story.
Years of lying and protecting criminal police officers have brought us to this point in history. With nothing but talk of transparency and promises to “do better” nothing has changed in law enforcement except to bring the DOJ deservedly down on our heads, in Portland, Oregon specifically.
Racism: However subtle, dishonesty and racism in the PPB has always been there. Here is the truth: The first week of April 1961 was also my first week on the job, working traffic and being coached. I wore a suit jacket, dress shirt and a black skinny tie, because I didn’t have my uniform yet. That’s how it was done back in the sixties. I wouldn’t be included in an Academy training until I had been on the streets for about eight months receiving good old fashioned OJT as a probationary police officer. The way PPB did things back then would never be allowed today for a variety of good reasons.
I remember my first day on the job well.
Coach: “You see that nigger crossing Mississippi Street up ahead of us?”
DuPay: “Yeah?”
Coach: “You’re gonna write that nigger a jay walking ticket, DuPay.”
And I did. I was 25 and remember I felt embarrassed and awkward writing the man a jaywalking ticket. It seemed stupid. Was this what police work was going to be about? Writing jay walking tickets? I also felt uncomfortable hearing him use the racial slur he used so casually. It was a word my parents never used and would never have allowed me to use. It was considered rude.
My coach that day was Officer Paul “Pete” Peterson. He was in his late forties, a family man with three kids and a wife. Pete worked two jobs to pay the bills, because being a cop in Portland didn’t pay much at the time. When I started in 1961, I earned $105 a week. It didn’t go very far.
Pete was a salt of the Earth kinda guy. He worked Albina in N and NE Portland and he was never cruel or abusive that I saw but black folks to him were still only “niggers.”
Racism Today: You would think that racism had long ago died out within PPB, but did it? No. One notorious PPB Captain, Mark Kruger, was a perfect example of the racism that was allowed to flourish and become prevalent during my time with the department. Even after I left, resigning in disgust in early April of 1978, at my physician’s suggestion, racism within PPB was still alive and well. I left because the job was killing me and in protest of the unsolved murder of Zebedee Manning, by Portland Vice cops in 1975. He was fifteen years old and he was black.
Kruger featured in photo to the left, dressed up to look like a Nazi Soldier. Mark Kruger was found guilty by Internal Affairs investigators in 2010, when it was discovered he had nailed memorial plaques of five Nazi-era soldiers on a tree in Rocky Butte Park sometime between 1999 and 2001. When the offence was finally discovered, basically due to word of mouth, Kruger was suspended without pay for 80 hours, equivalent to two weeks off. He was punished for bringing “discredit and disgrace upon the bureau” because of his poorly considered public tribute to Nazi murderers, which would have fallen under the category of “conduct unbecoming an officer.” Kruger had secured the plagues by nailing them to the tree, while he was off duty. He called the tree, with his nailed on plagues “Ehrenbaum” or the “Honor Tree.” Kruger is of German descent and is known to be extremely prideful of his German heritage. The story of Mark Kruger and his Nazi worshiping Boy Scout antics became legend in Portland for many years after he was punished for bringing discredit to the bureau, which clearly he did. I will go further than that and say he brought “discredit and disgrace” upon the city of Portland, Oregon. Many people in Portland and within the bureau were outraged and rightly so, particularly Portlanders in the black community. People were offended that PPB had a bonafide Nazi sympathizer hired within their ranks who was later promoted, even after his embarrassing monument to the Holocaust was made public. What many people might not know however is that in 2014, Kruger threatened to sue the city if they didn’t pay him a settlement of $5,000, and on top of that, he demanded that his personnel file be sanitized of the former 2010 IA conviction related to his Nazi worshiping Plaques being nailed to his favorite, “Honor Tree.”
“To settle a legal claim, the city of Portland has agreed to pay $5,000 to Portland police Capt. Mark Kruger and erase two disciplinary actions from his personnel record: a suspension for his public tribute to five Nazi-era German soldiers at a city park and a reprimand for retaliating against a female lieutenant. The steps are part of a negotiated settlement reached after Kruger, now in charge of the Drugs and Vice Division, filed a notice of his intent to sue the city in January 2013.”
Kruger got what he wanted.
Kruger, left, in an undated photograph. But despite his manipulation of the legal system, Kruger will never be able to change history, or the facts of this case, or his poor judgment in hero worshiping the killers of powerless Jewish men, women, children and infants, herded like cattle into Nazi ovens. My main question with regard to Kruger has always been; how does a Nazi sympathizer get hired with PPB in the first place? And why would such a person be promoted all the way up to captain?
One takeaway from the Kruger scandal is the fact that even in the police department, among officers and civilian employees, he was intensely disliked. One civilian employee, a man named Mike Kuykendall, working as the Police Bureaus’ Director of Services department was known to call him a “Nazi” regularly. Kuykendall was further known to send text messages to a woman Lieutenant, named Kristy Galvan. Kruger objected to Kuykendall calling him a Nazi, and claimed he was being “slandered in a series of text messages.” It was later determined, as mentioned in the above quote, that Kruger retaliated against Lt. Galvan as a result of those text messages that were shared. The nature of that retaliation is unknown.
Would it appear that PPB has had ongoing issues with racism, even recently as evidenced by the Kruger scandal and all that Portland learned of Kruger and his strange interests? Yes, it would.
Police Lying: Lying was also something I learned. I first learned about lying from my other coach, Fred Brock. Late one night in 1961 we were called to 3540 North Mississippi on a “man disturbing.” On arrival we found an older Black man on this front porch drunk and yelling at neighbors and passersby. After more than ten minutes of Fred trying to quiet the man, and reason with him, telling him people where sleeping, and it was late and they had to work the next morning, and to please quit yelling, it was clear the man was too drunk and would not stop. Fred had had enough. He snapped his fingers, charged up the stairs, and onto the porch. He grabbed the man in a bear hug, dragged him down the stairs, kicking and screaming, cuffed him and stuffed him into the waiting police car. I was told to just stand by and watch. Fred had a word for these kinds of harmless, quick arrests; he called them, “cuffed and stuffed.” Fred was a tall, burly good looking white man, with a good sense of humor, but he had a gentle side and was a wholly decent person. By that time he was a seasoned, cynical cop, with over fifteen years on the job, and had virtually seen it all. However, I do remember he was always nice to old people and kids, no matter what color they were.
The old black man was not hurt, after being stuffed into the back seat but it was a learning experience for me about how police procedure was done. After the man was put in the patrol car, I was then instructed to fill out the booking slip. Fred was my coach and I was learning the ropes. Charge: “Drunk on the street.” Fred was by that time in his career, a married man, in his middle forties, a home owner, a Boy Scout leader, and he taught me about lying as a police officer when I was all of 25-years-old my first week on the job.
When I asked Fred why we were charging the man with being “drunk on the street” when the old black man had not come anywhere near the street, Coach Brock became mildly impatient and gave me a short lecture. Below is a passage from my 2015 police memoir, Behind the Badge in River City: A Portland Police Memoir.
“Listen son,” Fred said condescendingly, “It don’t matter what he did. It only matters what I tell the judge he did. And the arrest report says he was “drunk on the street.” Besides, we’re expected to solve problems. That’s our job and law or no law, we solve the problems!” I was beginning to get the picture, so I smiled and nodded my head philosophically. The police officer was the law.” (DuPay, pg 28-29).
Contrast the lying I learned in 1961 with what happens today at PPB. What comes to mind? Do you think they’re all honest? Far from it. For me, the situation with Police Chief Larry O’Dea comes to mind. If you don’t remember, Reader, I’ll help you understand. Larry O’Dea was the chief of police from Portland who in April of 2016 came under criminal investigation when he accidentally shot a friend, a man named Dempsey, while out “hunting.” The reality was not as macho as O’Dea and his buddies would like people to believe. The reality was that rather than hunting they were sitting on lawn chairs, drinking booze and “shooting at ground squirrels.”
Bad Cops: Continuing my probationary assignment at East Precinct in 1961, I had the misfortune to be assigned with Officer Ron Still, who was a little older than I was, with five years on the job. We worked a “Beat Car” where we parked the cruiser and walked checking things out. One of the first examples of what is called “Community Policing” was what we did in 1961, unlike what some PSU professors who will nameless have suggested, community policing happened long before the 1970s. Our tasks were to bar checks and check hotel registers of the several derelict hotels known to house drunks, drug dealers and thieves, such as The Royal Hotel on SE Third Avenue, to see who might be staying there. While walking a beat with Still, I found him to be rude, sarcastic, and brutish to all we encountered.
I was embarrassed to be seen with him.
At the end of my time working with Still, a couple of months later, I concluded he was an unsophisticated brute and not very smart. Still was the kind of cop the bureau should never have exposed a young probationary officer to in any way. He was a terrible example of what a police officer should be.
My next assignment was as a jailer in the city jail, on the fifth floor of the original Police Headquarters building, located at 209 SW Oak Street. Below is another passage from my police memoir, Behind the Badge in River City: A Portland Police Memoir. The section is called “Keep Your Mouth Shut. Is that Clear Officer?” and shows what can happen to a naïve recruit who doesn’t understand how things work.
One hot evening at about six p.m. the two regular jailers and I were sitting behind the booking counter. We had an electric fan going and the outside windows were open to let in some air for the prisoners. It was an unusually slow day. No one had been booked in since we went to work at four p.m. Then suddenly, the jail elevator doors opened and an officer appeared… Sergeant Cunningham was also in the elevator just coming to work. We were all sitting down but he yelled at me: “Hey son, get off your lazy ass and get this prisoner booked in!” I flashed anger. “I’ll take care of it,” I said, “But I don’t wanna hear much of anything from somebody who is two hours late for work every day!” Sergeant Cunningham just about bit his ever present cigar in two as he glowered at me in shock and disbelief, saying nothing. Of course the very next morning at nine o’clock sharp I was ordered to be in the captain’s office. Captain Glen Harms was a grey-haired old timer who had come up through the ranks in the 1940s and 1950s. He wasn’t wearing a uniform and had on a sloppy suit jacket that didn’t match his pants and his paunch showed almost above the table he was sitting behind. Captain Harms was friendly but his message was clear. He said I had “the makings of a good policeman” but if I didn’t learn to keep my “mouth shut” about what I saw and heard at work, I wouldn’t make it past my probation year.
“Is that clear, officer?”
“Yes Sir.”
“You may go now.”
I left Harms office chagrined and frustrated, realizing my honest naivety was not welcome in the Portland Police Bureau. Learning to lie about everything was what I was being shown. I had been naïve in what I thought police work was all about and I was learning, as I did my first day on the job, that lying was an expected part of police work in Portland, Oregon.
My next working experience with Ron Still was at the city jail down on Oak Street, where I had been working already. As the junior man on the shift, my job was to operate the jail elevator when an officer was arriving or leaving with a prisoner. I will include a passage from a 2019 response essay I wrote entitled, “The Black and Blue Retort Report,” which I wrote on the history of PPB. I include this passage to illustrate my point about how Ron Still became emblematic of everything a police officer should never become:
I worked with Officer Ron Still while a probationary officer on graveyard shift at East Precinct. We worked a “beat car,” which meant we parked the car and walked the neighborhood checking bars and rundown hotels, like The Royal Hotel for any criminal activity, most of which was located on the lower east side of Southeast Grand and Union Avenue. This was called “walking a beat” and walking a beat was not uncommon for police officers during the 1960s in Portland. “Beat walks” were assigned to officers all over the city, particularly in problem areas like Albina and Old Town, in downtown. While walking a beat with Still, I found him to be a gruff, insensitive bully to those unable to answer his demands quickly and to his immediate satisfaction. I next encountered Officer Ron Still while I was still on probation several months later and working as a jailer in the city jail at 209 SW Oak street in the old Headquarters building. I operated the jail elevator and had occasion one late afternoon to transport Officer Still and a handcuffed prisoner from the Oak street entrance to the fifth floor jail. The prisoner was a thin young white male dressed in scruffy clothing. He looked poor, depressed and slightly drunk. After the elevator began its assent, Officer Still stopped the elevator between the third and fourth floors and for no apparent reason turned to the prisoner and began beating on him and cussing him out through gritted teeth. Officer Still repeatedly punched the prisoner in the ribs, kidneys and shoulders, slamming him hard against the metal walls of the jail elevator until the young man almost passed out.
As I was a new cop, the experience was alarming. I felt angry, disgusted and disappointed in Still, but if I had gone against him, I would have been fired immediately. When Still was finished with this unprovoked assault of a helpless handcuffed prisoner, he restarted the elevator, ignoring me, and we all exited into the enclosed booking area. After the man had been softened up by Still, we assisted him as he exited the elevator, as he could barely stand. I did not report the beating of this handcuffed prisoner as I was on probation and knew if I did, I’d be fired on the spot. I regret I did not stand up to Still but if I had, I would have been fired and as I’d already gotten into some minor trouble for talking back to a Sergeant a couple of months earlier, and reprimanded for it formally, I knew I was skating on thin ice, already. My next experience with a crooked cop was with one of the few black cops on the force. What he showed me was that assaulting a handcuffed prisoner was something a cop could do with impunity, just as Still had, but it always made me feel angry that a police officer could be so brutish. It never seemed fair to me. There is nothing fair about beating up someone with handcuffs on. When I was nearly finished with my assignment working the city jail, I was sometimes allowed to drive Paddy Wagon number 99 to pick up prisoners. This incident I remember well, with the black officer, which is included here in a passage from my 2015 police memoir. The officer was having trouble with an arrest on North Vancouver and Hancock and “could you hurry?” dispatch asked me. Yes, I could, I told them.
I pulled up and saw one of our black officers struggling on the front porch of a house with a middle-aged drunk black man, threatening him with a shotgun. After I jumped out of the wagon, leaving the door open, I ran up the stairs and grabbed the shotgun. I helped the officer get the hand cuffs on the man and put the weapon in the wagon. We stuffed the handcuffed prisoner in the back of 99 and the officer hopped inside, telling me to shut the door with him inside. “Gimme a minute, DuPay! he told me authoritatively. I did as I was told, stepping back and remembering Captain Harm’s admonition about keeping my mouth shut. As soon as the door closed, I heard a lot of crashing and banging going on inside the van. I heard the officer yelling “Don’t you ever call me a nigger! And don’t you ever point a shotgun at me again! Do you understand me, asshole?” A few minutes later there was a calm knock from inside the van and I let the officer out. I guess they had reached an understanding. The black officer was not an old timer but he was a veteran officer. Of course he was mad at having to wrestle a guy with a shotgun and so was I, but I was offended when he just presumed I wouldn’t question the beating up of a drunk, handcuffed prisoner. To me it felt wrong because I always felt the beating of a cuffed prisoner was not a fair fight. And none of the cops I worked with ever condoned the beating up of drunks or winos, even if they got a little lippy… During my first year, because I needed to keep my job, I let a lot f things slide that I knew were unconstitutional and just plain wrong. I knew where I stood in the bureau. At the bottom. The black officer didn’t stay with the Portland Police Bureau. He became involved in city politics and wound up elected to city council. His name was Dick Bogle.
Drunken Cops: When I completed my probation and became a permanent civil service policeman, I was assigned to graveyard shift, traffic, working alone. In the early 1960s I was parked on Powell, at Milwaukie, writing a report, late at night at about three am. A car blew by, running a red light at Powell. I pulled in behind the speeder and turned on my red light, clocked him at forty miles per hour over the speed limit. I turned on my siren, and kept behind him. The driver turned off his headlights, hoping to lose me by “running in the dark.” He blew through the red light at Holgate Street at 90 miles an hour, but when he hit the brakes; his brake lights came on, making him easy to follow. He continued on SE Milwaukee for about six blocks before turning left in an attempt to get to Mcloughlin Blvd, HWY 99. Looking for a way out, the car drove into a dead-end street and skidded to a stop. I boxed him in with my police car, ran over, and jerked him out of the car, where he fell onto the ground, a drunken mess.
It was Detective Sergeant George Hempe of the Portland Police Bureau!
I couldn’t believe my eyes. I jogged over to my car, got on the radio, and called my Sergeant, Bud Rowley, for assistance. By that time there were three other cars on scene, as backup. But they didn’t want any part of this call. They stood at a distance and talked among themselves quietly, but I could tell they were amused by the way they smiled and snickered. They knew this was a big mess and I knew they were glad I was stuck with it and they weren’t.
When Sergeant Rowley arrived, he walked over, bent down, looked into the backseat of my car and saw who it was. He was flabbergasted. He slowly took off his cap, and violently threw it in disgust on the pavement, all while his face turned bright red. Then he calmly picked up his cap again and put it back on his head. He opened the door, reached in and helped Sergeant Hempe out, assisting him to his own car as if he was his elderly father. He turned to me and tried to reassure me.
“DuPay, I’ll take care of this.”
“Okay,” I said. “But shall I write a report?”
“No, I’ll take care of it.”
“Okay, then.”
Sergeant Rowley had a fellow officer drive Hempe’s car home for him, rather than have it towed. Rowley got in his car and drove away, as I watched the other officers slowly got into their cars and leave the scene. I remember being the last officer there and feeling really angry. I had wanted to put Hempe in jail but I was denied that opportunity by my Sergeant. Internal Affairs took care of the case, I would learn later and I was never allowed to speak with anyone from IA and give them my side of the story.
Ultimately they, IA, would decide Hempe’s penalty and no one else.
I would later discover IA found Hempe “guilty” of all the charges I would have written him up for, but they would decide how he would be punished. I learned Hempe was suspended without pay for thirty days. He earned about $1,800 per month as a Sergeant Detective, which at that time was a lot of money. At the end of his month long suspension he was removed from the “Dicks” and assigned as a uniformed street sergeant at Central Precinct, significant demotion.
If Hempe had been a regular Portland Citizen, he would have racked up about three thousand dollars in fines and a couple of years in jail for the crimes he committed—Drunk driving, reckless driving, attempting to elude a police officer, all very serious charges. But because he was a cop, he got special justice, special treatment and a slap on the proverbial wrist.
I would have two other encounters with drunken police officers; Bob Wiskoff and Melvin Matoon. The encounter with Wiskoff was memorable. One night, in 1963, as I was parked on the Banfield freeway entrance at 39th Street, waiting to catch speeders, I clocked a speeding car out I-84 going 104 mph, finally getting the car stopped at Gateway Exit. I jogged over to the car, and found it was Officer Bob Wiskoff on his way home from the Police Club, after a night of heavy drinking. The Police Club was located at SE 7th and Alder, across the street from the East Precinct, originally called Precinct One. It was very popular with cops just getting off duty.
With my previous experience with Internal Affairs ringing in my ears, I leaned into the car and scolded Wiskoff as best I could—knowing it was all I could do. I remember yelling at him: “You fuckin’ idiot! Why are you out here drivin’ so fast? I clocked you at 104 miles an hour! You coulda killed someone, you idiot!” After chewing him out, I insisted Wiskoff pull over and take a nap for an hour or two, before proceeding home. I wished him luck, trying not to sound too cynical, and watched as he drove a block away and parked, climbing over the front seat and settled in the back. He knew I’d given him a huge break and he was embarrassed and grateful.
Another evening at about three a.m., I received a call on a fire alarm at Union and Shaver. When I arrived I found a drunken off duty officer Melvin Matoon, a motorcycle cop, had fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed into a free standing fire alarm box. I pulled him out of his car, set him down on the curb, pushed his car onto a side street and sent him home in a cab. I knew that drunken police officers got different justice than regular people and it made me angry but I also knew there was nothing I could do to change anything, without destroying my own career. This was in the early 1960s, and it was a different world.
Drunken Cops Today: PPB has a long history of drunken cops. The internet is full of stories about Portland cops who drink too much, drive and then crash. The quote below, from a Portland news website illustrates how this problem with alcoholic police officers, generally only men, continues to be a serious issue with PPB.
On June 28th just before 2:00 am, off-duty Portland Police Bureau Captain Steven Jones was arrested for DUI after crashing his city-issued SUV in the Lair Hill neighborhood. A witness reported that Jones was driving “at a high rate of speed” on SW 3rd Avenue near Arthur when he lost control and veered onto the median, crashing into a light pole and a tree. Cpt. Jones, a 23-year veteran of the bureau who was in charge of the Professional Standard Division, was driving with a blood alcohol content of .10.
In another case, this one from 2016, another Portland cop got drunk, and crashed a city owned vehicle, but was charged with more than just drunk driving.
PORTLAND, Ore. — A Portland police officer has been arrested on drunken driving charges after a crash Monday afternoon in Clackamas County. The crash happened at the roundabout on Southeast 172nd Avenue and Southeast Big Timber Court. Linda Obrist was walking her dog near her home Monday afternoon when she saw a black car speed by her. Obrist estimated the driver was going 100 mph. "I was wondering when he was going to apply the brakes because there was no way he was going to make this roundabout," Obrist said. Portland Police say Officer Daniel Chastain was driving a City of Portland car while "on call" but off duty when he was involved in a collision. Police said in a news release alcohol and speed were factors in the crash. "I heard the impact and saw his vehicle flipping over in the air and eventually landing on its top in the middle of the roundabout," Obrist said. From where the car hit the curb to where it landed in the roundabout is at least 30 feet. A red pickup truck was hit by the black car. Obrist said the driver has complained of shoulder pain since the crash. Neither Chastain or the pickup driver were seriously hurt. "That's probably the only thing that saved him was the airbags," said Poncho Schaefer, who was working when he heard the crash down the street. "I saw the dust cloud, there was a dust cloud above, and the car was still running." A mechanic and co-worker of Schaefer's rushed to the scene and told bystanders to cut the engine of the running car. One of the back tires had flown off. A front tire had bent 90 degrees. Deputies arrested Chastain on charges of driving under the influence of intoxicants, reckless driving, reckless endangerment and first-degree criminal mischief. He was booked into Clackamas County Jail and was released. Chastain has worked for the Portland Police Bureau for 17 years and was assigned to the Gang Enforcement Team. He's been placed on paid administrative leave while the case proceeds. At his home Monday night, Chastain told KATU News he could not comment on the crash or the current case, but he did say, "Everything will be OK."
Doing research for this essay, I found there were many more examples of drunken Portland cops. Too many to include here, but this gives you, the Reader, an idea of the extent of the problem.
North Precinct:
In 1965, I was assigned to work at North Precinct located in St. Johns. My introduction to the precinct was by Lt. Ohren. He was sitting with his feet propped up on his desk, reading a tattered girly magazine and drinking beer from an open bottle wrapped in a soggy brown paper bag. My experience “working North” would only go downhill from there. The North Precinct Captain was Jim Purcell Jr., disgraced former Portland Chief of Police and demoted in 1957. Purcell also operated two whore houses in the Albina district.
While working North, my Sergeant, Richard Walker was also pimping for a high class whore named Octivine P. Harrington. I saw him meet with Harrington several times; driving in her new Cadillac. She had a record as a prostitute, and was in my mug shot file that I kept in the back seat of my patrol car. I knew all the prostitutes on my district and Octivine was one of them. But Octivine was unusual. She had worked as a prostitute for years but by then, she was older, about 35, which was old for a prostitute at that time. Octivine was still very attractive, she was dark skinned, wore high quality wigs, was thin and willowy, and a nice dresser. Her clothing was tasteful, nothing cheap or flashy. She wore a lot of makeup but it looked nice, she used only the best perfume, and she never drank or used drugs. But I saw them together several times, Dick, in the passenger front seat of her boat of a shiny new black Cadillac, and always on his days off from work, and her behind the wheel.
Richard Walker later became Chief of Police from 1987-1990, at which time Portland Mayor Bud Clark would replace him after he was accused of slapping a female subordinate across the face during a disagreement. During my time working at North Precinct neither Jim Purcell Jr, nor Richard Walker ever got in trouble for their crimes, which were well known among the rank and file.
Eventually I ran afoul of Captain Purcell by parking my police car in front of one of his houses of prostitution and sitting there with my red light flashing. I took the time to write reports on the illegal activity going on within and scared off new clients looking for a blow job or a little “half and half.” But I was punished for doing good police work, by the captain, by being assigned to answer the phone at the precinct desk and direct traffic on the St. Johns Bridge for several weeks. Purcell had already sent me three memo’s telling me to leave those houses of prostitution alone, but never explaining why. I ignored all of his memos as I was an idealistic, defiant young cop, a “hard charger” as the old timers called us behind our backs. By being a good cop, I was punished, by pimps who out were breaking the law and destroying young black women’s lives by pushing them into prostitution and getting them addicted to heroin.
Detectives:
In September of 1967 I was promoted to Police Detective and assigned to the Burglary Detail. During the years I worked in the burglary detail, we worked on business and residential burglaries as well in the specialized and highly elite Safe Burglary Detail. I had been handpicked to join the Safe Detail by Lt. Myron Warren and nicknamed The Kid. During this time, I acquired a certain expertise in police search and seizure methods as they related to the US Constitution and particularly the 14th amendment which requires “equal justice for all.” Many people don’t understand the connotations of “equal justice for all” but what it means is that special justice is not legal, and violates the 14th amendment. The Internal Affairs Division must then be considered a way of providing special justice, for the police, rather than equal justice.
* This then makes the Internal Affairs Division unconstitutional.
When I worked in Burglary, occasionally young uniformed officers would seek my assistance in writing a search warrant for some suspect they were certain was guilty of an offense. I would sit down and consult with them and if there was enough information to pursue a warrant, meaning if they had done enough investigation, if they had done enough “work” I would assist them in writing an affidavit in support of a search warrant. If there was not enough information, I would advise them to go back and do their homework before returning. Too often however, officers frustrated with my refusal to assist and write up a phony search warrant would go down the hall to the Robbery detail office. There, they would find Detectives, Harry Boggs and Wallace (Bill) Renoud, who believed that the end justified the means and were more than happy to make up the necessary details and write up what would amount to a phony affidavit. They did it all the time. They had no problem doing it and it used to piss me off.
The culture of lying on official documents was alive and well before Boggs and Renoud ever came on the force and was probably alive and well after they were gone. Twice I complained to Detective Captain John Nolan about Detectives, Boggs and Renoud, and their regular pattern of writing up false search warrants. The first time I approached Captain Nolan; he smiled in dismay, tilted his head to the side, in an insincere display of concern, and said he would ask them about it. “Okay, Don, I’ll look into it” he said amiably. Nothing changed, nothing happened and he never looked into anything. The idea that the “end justifies the means,” or ‘it doesn’t make any difference what he did, it’s what I tell the judge he did,’ continued to prevail in the Portland Police Bureau. There were so many times I objected to the blatant corruption all around me, but I also knew, I was spitting against the wind.
It is important to remember that no search warrant is valid until it is signed off by a Judge. Many civilians don’t seem to understand this. They assume that the cop has all the power, but they don’t. There is a process that an officer has to go through to get a legal search warrant. Judges are remiss in merely “rubber stamping” search warrants without a close examination of the veracity of both the officer and the affidavit and the details of the investigation that was conducted. Rubber stamping means just glancing at the search warrant and approving it with the judges’ signature on the bottom of the form. Judges used to rubber stamp search warrants all the time.
I vividly remember a conversation I had with retired Judge Phillip Abraham sometime in the 1990’s regarding the old days. We had been talking about the 1979 biker raid in which Officer David Crowther was shot and killed. The raid was based on a phony search warrant that had gone terribly wrong. I had been gone from PPB for about 18 months when Crowther was killed but I remember wondering as soon as the story got out, if the raid was based on a phony warrant. Who wouldn’t have wondered the same thing? Years later, it became apparent that the search warrant was indeed faked.
On the night of December 12, 1979, members of the Portland police department and narcotics squad illegally raided the Outsiders MC clubhouse and Officer David Crowther was shot and killed by Robert “Pigpen” Christopher. Officers were knowingly attempting to serve an illegal warrant obtained through perjured statements about a nonexistent informant.
At the time of my discussion with Phil, I was working at the Vista St. Clair Apartments and as Phil and I had known each other for over 25 years, professionally, we were old friends. He would invite me into his apartment for coffee and we would talk about the old days. Judge Abraham once owned a lovely mansion across the street from the Laurelhurst Park, while he was married and raising his family, and when I was a young detective, I would sometimes visit him there so he could sign a search warrant for me.
Years later, after he had sold the family home and downsized to the Vista St. Clair Apartments, with his wife, we resumed our friendship and often talked about the crazy times when I’d first gotten to know him. I was a young detective and he was working as a city attorney, then later he became a judge. During our conversation that day, we talked about the 1979 Crowther clubhouse killing and Phil said: “I sure hope I didn’t sign off on that one!” His tone was amused but cautious. We both laughed and I said: “Man, I hope you didn’t either.”
Because police can lie so effectively to judges about “confidential informants” who do not actually exist, (and in the busy life of a judge, how can they double check whether or not an informant is real?) the act of rubber stamping a search warrant becomes even more problematic when it’s based on false information and as illustrated in the Crowther case has the potential to become deadly.
Promoting Thieves
For a time, Lt. Melvin Hulett was my supervisor in the burglary detail. He was usually smiling and easy to get along with and gave me good marks on my quarterly performance evaluations conducted every 3 months. But Lt. Hulett turned out to be a common thief. One afternoon, Lt. Hulett accompanied several officers on a drug raid he was supervising and became enamored with a small scale used to weigh drugs. He put it in his pocket. When the scale came up missing on the search warrant inventory, Hulett was questioned by a supervisor and later confessed to stealing it and returned it to the property room. Internal Affairs handled this theft of evidence by Lt. Hulett, in their own way. I don’t know the outcome of their investigation, but it was probably a letter of reprimand, only. My point here is Hulett was subsequently promoted to Police Captain. After being caught and disciplined for stealing important evidence from a drug raid.
Verheul in photo to the left.
In my ten years of interrogating thieves, I learned almost no one ever got caught stealing the first time. I can’t help but wonder just what else sticky fingered Melvin stole, over the years and got away with.
Officer John Verheul was a PPB cop that I knew of but had never worked with, as he was a patrolman while I was a working as a detective. Around 1974, I saw Verheul walk into the apartment house I was living in at the time with my first wife, near 41st and Tillamook, as Verheul was heading up the stairs to the second floor. I was surprised to see him and as he didn’t notice me, I called out and said: “Hey John what’s up?” He turned to his left, clearly surprised to see Detective DuPay and told me with a low-key grin and a spring in his step that he was going up to visit his new girl, Marsha. I put two and two together and figured it was none of my business, waving to him and saying: “Well, you guys have a nice night.” Later on, Marsha, who was friends with my wife, would proudly tell us, as she sat in our living room, over coffee, about “the nice policeman” she was seeing, and who would often come to visit. She didn’t realize I already knew Verheul but I could tell she was proud to have a police officer as a boyfriend. Marsha didn’t seem like a bonafide “badge bunny” or the worse variety which we called “Fender lizards” but she did have some of the characteristics. Marsha was like a lot of women in the 70s, fun loving and eager to try anything new.
She was a nice girl from a good family, and worked as an RN at Emanuel Hospital. She was also a cocaine addict and loved to brag about her relationship with the policeman who would come pounding on her door and laughing as she let him inside. Perhaps this was the beginning of Verheul’s problem with honesty, his relationship with Marsha and their growing preoccupation with cocaine.
I always thought Verheul was a flake. To me he just seemed dipped in sleaze. There was something about him I didn’t trust. So, when I heard he had been caught stealing, I wasn’t surprised. November 10th 1982, the Oregonian newspaper released a story that Verheul had been caught stealing cassette tapes from a Payless store in Gresham a few days prior. The store security saw him stealing the tapes and tried to detain him. He took off running on foot and ditched the tapes somewhere along the way, and eventually was identified and then later the story broke.
The day of the shooting, O'Dea told a Harney County deputy that he thought Dempsey had shot himself. A subsequent administrative investigation by Portland's Independent Review office found that O'Dea delayed reporting the shooting and then lied to investigators about the shooting while he was still Chief. This sad state of events cost O’Dea his job as Chief and his certification as a police officer. The O’Dea story further illustrates the ease with which police and upper command staff lie in PPB . Not much has changed since the days when I was a street cop.
Going back to my belief that most thieves’ are not caught the first time they steal, I always suspected after reading the Verheul story that he had been a petty thief for a long time. But he was still promoted to Sergeant, and sometime later that same year, in a 1982 photograph, Verheul can be seen being honored with some sort of plaque by Mayor Frank Ivancie. Being a thief and a drug user was obviously not a bar to being promoted in the Portland police bureau, even in the early 1980s when many people thought PPB had been cleaned up. Misconduct Today: Contrast the case of John Verheul with a recent case of allegations of PPB police corruption. In 2007, Lindsey Hunt resigned from PPB and gave up a career in law enforcement she said she had wanted her whole life. Hunt made the mistake of complaining about the way her coach was regularly breaking the law. She chose not to honor the code of silence. The story, as documented in a 2011 Oregonian article sheds light on corrupt police practices that would never have surprised me.
So when Hunt watched her field training Officer Quency Ho violate the bureau's directive on accepting gratuities, drive through red lights when he wasn't headed to an emergency call, point his gun at an unarmed man and try to break down his door without cause, or tell witnesses to get rid of a knife in an attempted assault case, she'd ask him to explain his actions. She said Ho would blow up at her. He'd lean in toward her, screaming and demanding to know what she'd do in an unrelated hypothetical situation: "What are you going to do if someone is raping a baby?"
Hunt wanted the exciting or perhaps rewarding life of working as a police officer but I doubt she was ever smart enough to understand what she was really getting into. She naively presumed she could tattle to a superior about what her coach was doing and she would be rewarded for it. Wrong. She was mistaken and her naivety regarding the true face of most law enforcement agencies cost her, her reputation and eventually, her job and future as a police officer.
"All I wanted to do was understand why?" Hunt testified Tuesday, the second day of her federal whistle-blowing trial against the Portland Police Bureau. "He wouldn't teach me." The 29-year-old's testimony on a federal witness stand, detailing alleged misdeeds by officers and supervisors she once worked with, is remarkable in and of itself as officers can't remember the last time a former or current Portland cop has done so. Hunt resigned from the force in June 2007.
Don’t forget, Reader, that two Chiefs of Police, Jim Purcell Junior, and Richard Walker were both once pimps. This was what I personally observed as well as what I remember being the word of mouth rumors circulated among other officers. Can you now see the myriad challenges within the Portland Police Bureau? Can you see how time really does not change law enforcement issues but remains in a way, timeless? PPB is dealing with some of the same issues today that they dealt with over fifty years ago when I was a cop. Can you see how the culture of lying, and cheating; drug using and stealing has impacted the bureaus history and become part of its ingrained culture? Problems too often ignored or even exacerbated by Internal Affairs?
Homicide
In 1975 after working Burglary for several years, I was transferred to day shift homicide detail. The detail Lieutenant was Cedric “Rob” Achiele. The desk Sergeant was Glen L. Griffitts and the Captain was Ron Still. I enjoyed the new assignment as I was often allowed to work alone as homicide was short incredibly shorthanded that year, with a total of over 60 homicides. I was still supervised but mainly I worked alone, which I preferred.
During one memorable case, I investigated the skeletal remains of a woman named Bessie Staley found long deceased in a house on SE 34’th avenue, near Hawthorne. I investigated the roof top assassination of Donald Holbert, a predator and pimp, at the Baron Tavern on NE Alberta Street. Holbert was a man no one mourned but rather celebrated knowing he was finally dead. Then there was the murder of a man in his house in Sellwood over a misunderstanding of certain sexual arrangements. The deceased’s body had not been undiscovered for several days and the weather was hot, in the 80s as I recall. I still remember the stench of rotting flesh, and how long it took for us to clear the house, just so we could walk in and figure out what had happened.
I remember the distraught and confused father not understanding why his son was dead. It appeared the young man had hung himself in the closet of his apartment. My investigation showed he had died during the ritual of auto erotic asphyxia. The cord around his neck attached to the closet door had become too tight and he lost consciousness, as about 500 young men do each year in America, due to this practice. Their deaths are ruled accidental because they didn’t mean to kill themselves, only to masturbate. I was there when the coroner’s assistant lifted up the body and we both watched stunned, as a Coke bottle fell from his rectum and thudded onto the hard wood floor of the closet below. I remember we both looked at each other and shook our heads silently. I’m sure he had seen as much as I had by that time. I tried to comfort the boy’s father in the other room, explaining his son’s death was an accident, not suicide, but he couldn’t get his head around what he saw. I felt so sorry for the father; I knew his son’s death would never leave him.
By the time I’d seen all of these things, I was a seasoned, cynical and in some ways a hardened detective. Not much threw me. Not much surprised me, but the one thing that never ceased to amaze me was the level of police corruption and racism that I was surrounded by nearly all the time.
The extent of the corruption I witnessed was never more evident than in the murder of Zebedee Manning, a 15-year-old black boy by rogue PPB Narcotics officers. Manning was shot in the forehead pointblank with a sawed off .22 rifle, while I believe he was being illegally interrogated. He refused to give up or disclose the location of a large quantity of heroin belonging to his dealer, his Uncle Henry Johnson, who had been conveniently arrested only a couple days before to get him out of the way. The heroin had been hidden in his bedroom and these rogue cops wanted it. This was at a time when Narcotics officers were stealing drugs and selling and using them personally. This was 1975, years before the infamous 1988 sweep of PPB, the drug investigation that resulted in several officers being terminated for drug possession and dealing.
After the murder, Manning’s body was arranged with the rifle laid over his chest in an attempt to make it look like a suicide. Included here are several excerpts from my 2015 book, Behind the Badge in River City: A Portland Police Memoir.
On the bed a young boy’s body was laid out, with his arms and hands folded across a rifle that lay on his chest. The eyes were shut and I could see the boy had been shot at point blank range directly through the center of the forehead. My immediate question was: how do you shoot yourself in the head, then fold your arms and lay the gun on top of you? I’ve seen enough dead bodies and murder victims in my police career to know they don’t have time, after being shot, to shut their eyes, let alone fold their arms peacefully over their chest. Most suicide victim’s arms are splayed in an outward fashion, wide open, lying where they fall after having been shot. What I saw is called staging, which happens when one, or more killers or witnesses, attempts to cover up a crime by making it look like a suicide, instead of a homicide. Staging also happens in homicide cases where the killer feels a certain level of personal remorse for his or her actions. The killer may fold the arms of the deceased or place a blanket over the body. Sometimes certain rapist/killers will cover the face of their victim with a blanket or sheet, so they don’t have to look at it. Staging also occurs when witnesses to a violent crime, or even police officers feel sorry for the victim and inadvertently alter the pose of the victim’s body, after death, thereby contaminating the death scene. Whether because of remorse or simple carelessness, I know that someone staged the body of Zebedee Manning. I am certain of that. The initial call on this case came out as a suicide, but my investigation proved it was murder. The boy’s mother, Anna Miller told me she found a significant amount of heroin stashed in a crawl space in the wall behind Zebedee’s bed. She knew this heroin to be the property of Zebedee’s Uncle, heroin dealer Henry Johnson and she flushed it down the toilet. Now it made sense. The rogue officers were trying to intimidate young Manning into giving them the heroin. An almost empty whisky bottle and four drinking glasses were left on the kitchen table in an obvious attempt to get the boy drunk so he would give up the heroin stash. When this tactic didn’t work Zebedee was marched up to his second floor bedroom where they continued to intimidate him by firing three shots from the .22 rifle through the ceiling. Ultimately because I believe the officers were drunk themselves by now, they shot Zebedee point blank in the forehead. The imprint of the gun barrel was left on his head.
Now realizing their terrible mistake, they doctored the murder scene to make it look like a suicide. But they were careless and sloppy in how they staged the scene. It was murder and my investigative reports supported that determination. Curiously and suspiciously I was ordered to drop my investigation by Lt. Rob Aichele. I will never forget what he told me: “It was a suicide, DuPay. He’s just another nigger dope dealer who cashed in his chips--so what! Work on something else.” I remember thinking: “You motherfucker. How dare you kiss off the murder of a teenage boy.” The cover-up of Zebedee Manning’s murder was when I really started seriously thinking about quitting PPB. It was too much for me. It was simply too much and I was tired.
However, I also knew no Lieutenant could legitimately order me to not investigate a murder, and so I decided I’d investigate it on my own time, and on my days off. I had to keep notes and write reports and eventually those investigative reports came across Lt. Aichele's desk. At this time the secretarial pool typed up all reports. The way this was done was I would write my reports longhand on an eight by ten Officer’s Report sheet, and then I’d call the secretarial pool and whoever answered the phone, always a woman, would then transcribe my report. After that was done, a copy would be sent to five or six departments, such as identification, records, the property room, the homicide office and my inbox as well. This might seem careless on my part but I felt there was no other alternative. I was morally compelled to investigate that murder and at that point, I think I had stopped caring what might happen to me. I was that disgusted with the upper command staff and how arbitrary they were about what murders they would and would not investigate.
When Achiele discovered I was still investigating Manning’s death and interviewing people like Manning’s mother, he was furious. He retaliated by kicking me out of the homicide detail, giving me the “bums rush" back to burglary. I was officially transferred out of homicide and back to burglary December 3, 1975. The homicide commanders Rob Aichele and Ron Still, wanted to make sure I could no longer investigate the murder of Zebedee Manning. But why? Why would any honest cop, with any integrity or values want a murder to go uninvestigated? Why? Because they have something to hide.
After being relegated back to the burglary detail, which I knew inside and out, I waited a few weeks and checked wih the records office trying to obtain the copies of my murder investigation reports for my own personal files. There I was shown a green three by five card which read, "Zebedee Manning, suicide." No other records existed. My investigation of this murder had been purged. There was no physical evidence remaining. No crime scene photos, no whisky bottle and no drinking glasses.
All the evidence had been destroyed.
* Only a police Captain could recover and destroy all crime scene photos.
* Only a police Captain could collect and destroy all copies of a murder investigation.
* Only a police Captain could remove the whisky bottle and four drinking glasses from the evidence room and destroy them, which preserved the fingerprints of the murderers.
The only police Captain involved in the Manning case was Ron Still.
Ron Still had to be the captain who made those judgment calls and made the evidence disappear.
The why of this miscarriage of justice is at least in part because of the code of silence that police culture has indoctrinated in its young recruits since the beginning, and perpetuates systemically down the line. Furthermore, there is a good amount of fear of officers’ criminal activities and a healthy fear of retaliation from individual officers if you cross them by being a rat and breaking that code of silence. Then there is the hope that any illegal activities committed by Officer A will be protected by Officer B, based on the old “I’ll scratch our back, if you scratch mine” unspoken agreement.
Detective Sergeant Glen Griffitts sat at his desk daily, knowing the Manning murder was being covered up. His head was usually downcast staring at and shuffling the papers on his desk, but doing little else. I remember he was a do nothing detective sergeant. He said nothing and he did nothing about the Manning murder. Detective Dave Simpson also was fully aware of this cover up, and he also did nothing and said nothing about it. Simpson and Aichele were tight. They were best buddies and sometimes you can judge someone by the company they keep.
I played on this fear of retaliation to my advantage once, being fully aware how afraid some cops are of each other. After resigning from the police bureau April 10, 1978 on my doctor’s orders—because of bleeding ulcers, serious depression and dangerously high blood pressure, I decided to purchase a used police riot 12 gauge shotgun and a box of 00 buckshot from the H & B pawn shop in downtown Portland, knowing my former commanders would get wind of it.
A few days later, as expected, I was visited by police chaplain Ed Stelle. Stelle was one of the finest men I ever knew and one of my longtime friends at the bureau. At a time when police had virtually no social support systems, Stelle was the one person you could talk to about your fears, frustrations and sadness, remembering all the heartache you witnessed while working the streets and being a detective. Back when I was a cop, we didn’t have “Traumatic Incident Committees” like they do today. We didn’t have therapists or counselors. Back when I was a cop, you were told to “be a man” and “deal with it” and don’t complain. I was good at that, but eventually that kind of repression resulted in my stomach rebelling and in me developing bleeding ulcers.
Ed called me on the phone that day and asked to meet me so we could talk. We agreed to meet at the former Riverside Hotel, down on 1st Street, where there was a little coffee shop. After Ed and I sat down to drink our coffee and after the initial pleasantries were over, he told me he was sent to find out why I had bought a shotgun at the H & B pawn shop. Apparently my old bosses were afraid I was coming to kill them. They knew I was furious about the Manning case and how they had labeled it a suicide when I knew better, that Manning had been murdered by dirty cops. Stelle said, and I will always remember the words—“They wonder why you bought a shot gun, Don. They’re afraid you’re gonna come back and shoot them.” I laughed and assured the chaplain I had no murderous intent. But--I still have that same shotgun to this day.
What I experienced that day shows how afraid police officers can be of each other. Make no mistake, Reader, if you’ve ever wondered why police protect each other and why the code of silence exists, just remember this story, and that there are many others just like it.
Internal Affairs and the 14th amendment.
My study of the 1954 supreme court decision Brown vs. The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas has taught me this—The court clearly states that “separate is not equal.” The Supreme Court indicated that the 14’Th amendment to the constitution requires “equal justice for all.”
Equal education and equal justice for all has been the law of the land since 1954. How does this relate to police internal affairs?
* Exactly this: The court states equal justice for all.
It does not state for instance, that electricians may have their own private justice system. It does not state that plumbers may have their own justice system. And it does not state that the police can have their own private justice system either, and Internal Affairs is a private justice system for the police, which make it unconstitutional.
·* The 1 4th amendment is exquisitely simple. In saying equal justice for all it outlaws Internal Affairs.
·* Internal Affairs is the force that denies transparency in police accountability.
* Internal Affairs is judge and jury of police misconduct and criminality and usurps the courts in determining and applying penalty.
* IA is simply unlawful and must be discontinued immediately if transparency and equality is to be achieved in cases of police misconduct.
* Accountability is what peaceful protesters are demanding, today and Internal Affairs stands in the way of that.
* When the Portland police argue that Internal Affairs is an accepted part of the department, and written in their contract the only response should be: The police labor contract is null and void when it contains a violation of the 14th amendment.
To whit—their contract should be made null and void!
Understanding the reasons for this is not easy. Most people don’t understand the finer points of the 14th amendment at all, and most people believe that Internal Affairs, because it’s been around so long, should just continue to be a part of all police departments. I’ve tried to explain these concepts to many people and sometimes they just look at me with glazed eyes. They just don’t get it. But until we deal with this issue, the police will still be able to protect each other as they always have been able to do.
Solution: My suggestion for transparency in police misconduct cases is this:
* All valid and accepted complaints against officers will be held publicly in city hall council chambers.
* Commissioners will be advisors and the mayor, who also acts as the police commissioner will have the final decision.
* The offending officer may have his own attorney present and the city will be represented by the City Attorney and /or a DA.
* If the officer is determined to be guilty of a crime, he may be taken into custody and prosecuted by the court system, the same court system that prosecutes anyone else for similar crimes.
* If found guilty of other minor rule violations the officer must pay his own attorney and any fines he is charged.
* If found not guilty, the city will pay the officers attorney fees.
This system may crowd the docket for a time but when officers realize they will face the same justice system as you and I face, I believe complaints will decrease exponentially, and greater transparency will be achieved. Officers will have a vested interest in being more careful. Another advantage of this theoretical system is there would be no arbitration which has consistently frustrated both citizens and police commanders.
Make no mistake; Internal Affairs is an expensive precinct sized operation, with a Captain, investigators, office staff and office space. In order to get rid of IA officers, the chief simply has to reassign the officers back to street duty where they can do the job they were sworn to do in the first place, instead of white washing police misconduct.
· Over 80 percent of cases that go before IA are whitewashed away and swept under the proverbial rug, with officers either not being charged or given flimsy disciplinary actions for serious infractions involving police misconduct.
Now is the time to act on this critical problem of police misconduct and lack of accountability. This is what peaceful protesters want and they should have the benefits of the 14Th amendment and what it can do to create more justice for American citizens and more transparency for the Portland Police Bureau.
The time for meaningful change is now!
By: Don DuPay
References:
DuPay, Don. L. Behind the Badge in River City: A Portland Police Memoir. Oregon Greystone Press, 2015.
DuPay, Don. L. “The Black and Blue Retort Report: Police-Community Relations in Portland’s Albina District: 1961-1967 from the Perspective of a Working PPB Police Officer and Active Participant, with Commentary on Events that Occurred in the 1980s.” October, 2019.
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