One man’s complaint against Portland police illustrates multiple system pitfalls
Three years after the U.S. Department of Justice found Portland police had a “pattern and practice” of using excessive force, including unjustified stun gun use, against people with mental illness, the ongoing case of Matthew Klug begs notice.
“That pattern and practice – it happened to me personally,” Klug said.
Klug, 46, is a Portlander with a diagnosed mental illness, traumatic brain injury from a car accident decades ago, and epilepsy.
In March, he filed a tort claim in U.S. District Court of Oregon, alleging police used a Taser on him multiple times without probable cause.
Despite Klug’s abnormally aggressive and erratic behavior, the idea that he may have had a mental illness reportedly didn’t cross the arresting sergeant’s mind. Additionally, when the Police Bureau investigated the case, it did not contact three civilian witnesses – two of whom have said the use of the Taser was unnecessary – before calling for a complete exoneration of the officers accused of using excessive force.
Klug’s ordeal began more than a year ago, on the evening of Sept. 17, 2014. He said he was riding his bicycle south on Northwest 19th Avenue when a car “zipped up behind” him in the bike lane and struck his bike.
A road-rage-fueled confrontation between Klug and the motorist ensued a few blocks later, and a police sergeant several cars back in traffic heard the motorist yelling for help, according to the police report the sergeant filed.
He said he pulled up alongside her vehicle and she told him Klug had punched her windows while circling her vehicle. The report indicated she was crying and very upset.
The sergeant found Klug and pulled him over. He described the look on Klug’s face as “pure anger.” The sergeant’s report indicated that Klug repeatedly yelled, “Why are you stopping me?” and that after he was told it was regarding the incident with the motorist, Klug shouted, “She hit me. Why are you stopping me?”
The report noted Klug was uncooperative, and his continuous movements and angry yelling led the sergeant to believe Klug might harm him.
He later told investigators that at one point, when he reached for his weapon, removing the cover for easy access, he recalled thinking “this behavior of Klug’s was so abnormal and so seriously concerning to me.”
Two officers arrived as backup, and they also noted in their reports that Klug’s behavior was erratic, aggressive and uncooperative.
Officers reported Klug smelled heavily of alcohol; no Breathalyzer was given.
Klug told Street Roots he drank a beer at home with dinner before his bike ride but was not drunk.
The police struggled to get Klug into handcuffs, as Klug continued to kick, yell and try to wriggle out of their grip, according to police reports.
After being warned, an officer stunned him with a Taser twice directly, and then a third time through two prongs that had been deployed and attached to Klug’s back.
According to a printout of the Taser’s use, the Taser deployments all happened within seconds of one another.
About two months after Klug’s incident with police, the Portland Police Bureau issued new directives on stun gun use. Then-Portland Chief of Police Mike Reese said officers cannot use stun guns for “pain compliance against those a reasonable officer would believe are suffering from mental illness or emotional crisis except in exigent circumstances and then only to avoid the use of a higher level of force.”
Two civilian witnesses told police during interviews after Klug’s arrest that they thought the Taser was unnecessary.
A third civilian recorded a video of the struggle between the police and Klug on his smartphone. He turned the recording over to police, and Klug later posted it online after a civil rights attorney he declined to name sent it to him.
The video, shot from across the street, shows a struggle ending in three policemen kneeling on and over Klug as he screams hysterically while flailing on the pavement. It does not show how the struggle began.
In addition to the city of Portland and the individual arresting officers, Klug also named the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office and Fire and Emergency as defendants in his lawsuit, saying they did not provide him with epilepsy medication he takes daily to prevent seizures and that he contracted MRSA, a tough-to-treat skin infection, in jail.
David Austin, spokesperson for Multnomah County, said most medications are kept on hand at the jail, and if a medication is not available, which happens roughly once a year, the jail relies on its contract with Walgreens’ 24-hour pharmacy to obtain the medication needed. Because of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the patient privacy law, he could not discuss Klug’s case.
Klug’s lawsuit sought $5 million in damages for psychiatric injury and emotional distress from his interaction with Portland police and for lasting physical ailments resulting from the Taser and MRSA. He did not suffer a seizure while in custody.
According to court documents, Klug said he suffered from continuing fear of authority figures and law enforcement, severe isolation from family and friends, and loss of future earning opportunities due to the pending charges resulting from his interaction with police.
Those charges included menacing, two counts of disorderly conduct, interfering with a peace officer, resisting arrest, attempted escape and attempted assault of a public safety officer.
A former paralegal, Klug drew up the legal documents himself after a half-dozen attorneys declined to represent him, he said.
On May 5, less than two months after he filed the claim, Klug agreed to have his lawsuit dismissed with prejudice in exchange for the charges against him being dropped, according to the City Attorney’s Office.
Because Klug had filed at tort claim, the Independent Police Review had already begun a full investigation into his arrest. Internal Affairs at Portland Police Bureau opened his complaint just 10 days before he signed off on the deal with the district attorney to drop his claim.
During its investigation, the Police Bureau’s Internal Affairs investigators interviewed the police involved and a private security guard who had witnessed the incident.
The arresting sergeant told investigators that during his interaction with Klug, which he remembered thinking was “abnormal” at the time, he was not thinking about mental illness.
The security guard who had witnessed the event, however, told investigators that Klug was “yelling and frantic” as he rode his bike away from the road-rage incident and that based on the way he was interacting with the police, it was his belief that Klug was undergoing some type of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Independent Police Review and Portland Police approved the investigation in July, which determined the officers were to be exonerated.
Klug went before the Citizen Review Committee in early October to appeal this decision. His advocate, former committee member T. J. Browning, pointed out to the committee that investigators spoke only with the police and security guard and failed to interview the three civilian witnesses, some of whose statements were not consistent with the police reports.
The committee sent the case back to the Police Bureau for further investigation, which Dan Handelman at Portland Copwatch said was significant.
“In June, City Council granted them the authority to order such investigation,” said Handelman, explaining in an email that numerous times in the past, the Citizen Review Committee requested further investigation but either the police Bureau or the Independent Police Review – or both – denied the request. But this time, that request re-opened the investigation.
As of Dec. 1, Klug’s case was sitting with a Police Bureau manager for review. Klug had expected a final decision at the Dec. 2 Citizen Review Committee meeting because his case had been open for 218 days by that time. The city’s agreement with the Department of Justice requires that complaints be settled within 180 days.
For the past several months, the Independent Police Review has released a list of open cases more than 129 days old at the start of each month. It’s intended to serve as an early warning of cases that are likely to go over the desired timeline.
On Dec. 1, there were 37 cases on this list, including Klug’s. Some open cases on the list are more than a year old. Eight cases have been resolved but are still listed because the officer hasn’t been disciplined.
Derek Reinke, senior management analyst at Independent Police Review, said that only five of the listed cases are past where the Department of Justice requires them to be at the 180-day mark.
In March, Reinke released a memo examining the length of time each step in the complaint process was taking in an effort to pinpoint areas that could be improved upon to speed things up.
“Only two of the 23 cases examined were completed between 180-200 days,” he wrote, with the median time to closure being 319 days.
Reinke said it took an average of 28 days for police precinct captains to review and write their findings – double the suggested timeline. And in six instances he examined, it was more than 100 days after a case’s closure before the officer was disciplined.
Portland Police Bureau spokesperson Sgt. Pete Simpson said the cases Reinke examined were investigated before new protocols were put in place to keep cases within the 180-day timeframe, and some of these cases were delayed because officers involved were out for medical needs. He also said sometimes new information uncovered during an investigation can lead to new allegations, which adds time.
Reinke said most cases are reviewed and closed within the 180 days; it’s the full investigations that take longer.
“That’s a major improvement over three or four years ago,” he said.
The median time it took to close a case in 2009 was 344 days. By 2013, it had gone down to 177 days.
The reason full investigations take so long, he said, is all the steps and handoffs involved.
“We’re hitting 50-50 on if we get those done within 180 days,” he said.
Each case is handed back and forth between the Independent Police Review, the police and departments within the bureau more than a dozen times. When there’s an appeal, such as in Klug’s case, it takes longer, as the steps are repeated.
In October, the Independent Police Review requested funding to hire two additional investigators. On Nov. 12, City Council voted to fund one, which Reinke said will help “some,” but the investigation stage is where they’ve already seen the most improvement.
“The problem is after that, if it has to go through six or eight levels of review, are all of those necessary?” he asked. “There are some stages that need to be evaluated to see if they add value.”
Reinke said Klug’s case has moved along relatively fast, considering it had been appealed.
Klug said he’s not angry, and doesn’t know how the police could have known about his mental illness. But the complaint process has been long and frustrating, he said.
“I would love to see the city and the Citizen Review Board get the process ironed out,” he said.
As of press time, Klug’s case had been open for 232 days. Simpson said Klug’s case is now in line with several other cases, waiting for a new hearing date before the Citizen Review Committee, and that Internal Affairs has no control over the volunteer committee’s time line.
Street Roots will report on the outcome once it has been reached.
emily@streetroots.org
