Liar Liar! Badge on Fire!
Mike Marshman, April 2017,
Should Portland Chief of Police Mike Marshman, caught lying on an official document and suspended from duty by Mayor Ted Wheeler have been reinstated?
Not only no, but Hell no! And here's why: Should the citizens of Portland be conditioned to tolerate a police officer who lies on an official document? The document in question revealed that Chief Mike Marshman was attending a required police training, when he was in-fact elsewhere. Chief Marshman was signed in by another officer under his command who had agreed to lie for him. Now, two top police officials are caught lying.
It begs the question, when did Marshman start lying? Did he lie on arrest reports when he was first a patrolman? Did he always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in the Portland courts? Did he ever lie on a search warrant? When did the lying start and when does it stop? And who is hurt by lying? The innocent citizen, minding his own business? The retired old man, checking his mail? PPB Falsely Arrests Don DuPay.
Former Chief of Police Larry O'Dea recently lost his chief’s job, or retired in disgrace, depending on how you want to look at it—for lying about getting drunk and shooting his hunting partner. With as many as six other top commanders found to have lied in order to protect O'Dea, Portlanders were once again introduced to a culture of lying within the culture of the Portland Police Bureau.
O'Dea was indicted in June 2016 for Negligent Wounding of Another. Once again we are seeing lying and bad decisions that are unacceptable by sworn police officers. This culture of lying has ten of our top police commanders under investigation for either lying or using unacceptable racist language. Mayor Wheeler has made a bad situation worse by reinstating The Liar Chief. It sends the rank and file street cops a very clear message; as well as their citizen employers that lying is to be expected and accepted in the Portland Police Bureau.
You may wonder, where in a policeman's career does the lying start? I can tell you it is not taught in the police academy. It starts, as it did for me as a brand new cop, that first day on the street. It is there under the direct supervision of an experienced officer coach that the practical necessity of embellishing the official report is taught in small and then larger ways. After all, it is important that the arrest case be made on paper. Officers learn what is important is not so much what actually happened, but rather in what they tell the judge happened. Officers discover how easy it is to make up search warrants, using questionable or nonexistent “confidential reliable informants." How Reliable IS a Confidential Informant?
When I was a detective in the 1970s more than one fellow detective I worked with falsified search warrants, thereby violating innocent citizens rights. The judges believing all officers to be truthful signed those search warrants without hesitation. Search warrants were “rubber-stamped” so often it became a literal joke. Narcotics officer David Crowther was shot and killed in 1979, while attempting to serve what was later determined to be a phony search warrant, furthermore drugs were found that the officers involved in the raid planned on illegally planting on the premises. Corrupt Cops Try to Plant Evidence.
As an officer is promoted through the ranks, does he suddenly become more truthful in the documents he signs or authors? It doesn't appear so. In fact the higher the rank the easier it is to get away with habitual and outright lying. The end result is what has happened to the Portland Police Bureau today. The police—or at least some of them—appear to have lost their integrity. Police and Integrity.
Mayor Wheeler's action in reinstating The Liar Chief, Mike Marshman only feeds the citizen's grumbling awareness that the police “run the city." This reinstatement also underscores that Mayor Wheeler like many mayors before him are either too afraid of the police, and their powerful union to take a proper stand against blatant misconduct, or are somehow involved in the corruption themselves.
So, which is it Mr. Mayor?
For an in depth look into the shocking corruption and lying within the Portland Police Bureau of the past I suggest you read: Rose City Vice: Portland in the 1970s, Dirty Cops and Dirty Robbers, now available by renowned investigative journalist Phil Stanford.
You may also read my police memoir, Behind the Badge in River City: A Portland Police Memoir, which corroborates every accusation Phil Stanford has ever made about the Portland Police Bureau.
By Don DuPay, published online May 2, 2017.
Edited by Theresa Griffin Kennedy