A culture of lying

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.