By Joanne Zuhl
Staff Writer
Tom Steenson doesn’t count too many police officers among his close friends. In fact, he has to think back to his late grandfather, who was one of two deputies for Clackamas County back in the 1930s and 1940s, to even get close. But his relationship with the Portland Police Bureau spans more than three decades, dating back to his days as a newly minted law school grad when he filed his first suit against the bureau. Since then, he has established himself as the state’s premier litigator in police misconduct cases. By some estimates he averaged about five lawsuits against the city per year. In some years, it could spike to a dozen or more, he says.
But that all changed when he took on the case of James Chasse Jr. That case, more than all that came before, was a personal and professional watershed for Steenson, who represented the Chasse family and helped secure a record $1.6 million settlement from the city for the wrongful death of their son. On Sept. 17, 2006, Chasse was chased, tackled, Tasered and beaten by police under suspicion that he was urinating in public. He was denied medical care on the scene and taken to the jail, which refused to accept him in his condition. He died en route to the hospital, the cause of death being “blunt force trauma,” according to the medical examiner.
The real cause, according to Steenson and fellow Chasse attorney Tom Schneiger, was the cover-up that began moments after Chasse was tackled. Outraged at the lack of discipline to come from the case, Steenson and Schneiger, on Oct. 18, released more documents about the case — a condition made as part of the settlement. According to the attorneys, the documents indicate the officers went to work immediately to cover their actions by withholding critical information, making false statements to witnesses and even crafting a scenario that painted Chasse as a drug user, a repeat offender and a transient, none of which was true.
With the Chasse settlement concluded, Steenson has taken on a new case, representing the family of Aaron Campbell. Campbell was shot by police in January after a family member made a distress call saying he was armed and suicidal. Campbell was reportedly distraught over the death of his brother earlier that day. He was shot in the back by police. He was unarmed. It is a case eerily similar to the death of Raymond Gwerder, whose family Steenson represented in 2007, securing at the time a record $500,000 settlement from the city for the wrongful death of their son.
In October, Steenson was awarded the Arthur H. Bryant Public Justice Award by the Oregon State Bar, recognizing his three decades in civil rights advocacy.
[caption id="attachment_4356" align="alignleft" width="270" caption="James Chasse"]
Joanne Zuhl: Why did you choose this field of legal work?
Tom Steenson: When I got out of college I was either going to go into the Peace Corps, in Brazil, where I had been accepted, to help people to farm. Or I was going to go to law school because I could maybe do something good or progressive by getting a law degree. So, I went to law school, became friends with a couple of people who were of like thinking about the law; that we should make it work for people and that meant that government, corporations and the police who enforce the laws were sometimes not doing the right things. I probably filed my first police misconduct case, here in Portland, within three to six months of getting out of law school.
J.Z.: Did you always have a particular interest in police issues?
T.S.: It’s always been a particular interest to me because the police have so much unfettered authority and control, and if it isn’t fascist, it verges on being fascist, in my opinion, in terms of how the police handle themselves and what they get away with. It’s very difficult for the community or the public to get the control of the police that we deserve. The police end up thinking that they’re above us when really they work for us, they should do what we want them to do, and they don’t think that. They think they should do what’s best for them, which is not necessarily best for the community, the public, so I found them to be an impediment to a lot of things that I thought were right.
J.Z.: In the 30 years of doing this do you think things have gotten better or worse?
T.S.: I don’t think there’s been a lot of change. When there’s a significant case, usually involving a death or some serious life-threatening injury, depending on the public’s awareness of it and the outrage, you see a shift, a moderate shift by the police department and politicians, but it’s not permanent. And, they revert back, in my opinion.
In mid-1980s, the police killed a black man, Lloyd Stevenson, I represented that family. They put a hold on him and he blacked out. They stood around him for six minutes without giving him CPR, and by the time the paramedics got there, he was dead. And that kind of conscious, deliberate indifference resulted in no discipline of the officers. If you look at the Chasse case, with the cover-up, the discipline of the two officers is so minor, that the bureau failed to investigate the deliberate indifference in the cover-up, it tells me that nothing really has changed. I think the bureau views us as the enemy, most of the time, and they want it their way.
J.Z.: How has the Portland Police Bureau changed since Chasse’s death?
T.S.: I think it’s too early to tell. Cosmetically, they’ve made some changes, but if you look at the death of Keaton Otis, and without getting into details, the death of Campbell, you see the same heavy-handed use of force by police as in Chasse. And it still remains to be seen whether or not there’s even going to be any discipline in the Campbell case. So, maybe there’s some change, but I think it’s too early to tell.
J.Z. That must be incredibly frustrating. It’s one thing to achieve civil justice for the family, but then to see going back to the 80s, and here again we have Chasse, so little actually changes, even after all the money spent, the effort, the tragedy …
T.S.: One of the reasons I’ve been able to do it for so long is because I recognize, not happily, the limitations of what I can do. I think the community can potentially do a lot more to the police department than I as a lawyer can do. One of the things I try to do for my clients, besides whatever justice I can get for them, is in conjunction with the litigation, to try to expose the Police Bureau and get them to stop hiding the truth.
They always do the same thing. In significant cases involving wrong doing, death specifically, they try and get protective orders, they try to hide the truth. They claim they’re going to be transparent and let us know, and then they don’t. For three years, with Chasse, they hid as much as they could, and only as part of the settlement could we get them to release some additional information, which led to the press conference we had two weeks ago where the other trial lawyer and I went through the clear cover-up by the police of what had happened, and in the end the cover up by the bureau in failing to investigate. It is easy to see what the police were doing, and the bureau didn’t even bother addressing those issues. They were so concerned about their image and keeping the information away from the public with no real interest in trying to get to the truth or trying to change anything.
J.Z.: They also didn’t want to lose a lawsuit.
T.S.: What’s more important — losing the lawsuit, or saving someone’s life down the road? And their reaction, historically, is always the same: Let’s worry about the lawsuit and not worry about public safety. Not only is it short-sighted, it’s just wrong. That’s not what the community wants. This is what the Police Bureau wants, the lawyers, the politicians. And it’s so short term, the gain, to try to avoid a bad result in a lawsuit. They didn’t avoid, from their point of view, a bad result in the Chasse lawsuit by keeping the truth away from the public and by not disciplining the officers. That’s not what public safety should be about.
J.Z.: How much did the efforts of the media and the advocates play into the case, as a help or hindrance?
T.S.: The length of time that the Chasse case went on and the interest that the community, the public, had in that case for such a long period of time, is unprecedented. ... It stayed in the forefront because the media and the Mental Health Association of Portland and other entities were following it because of what was going on in the litigation. There’s no question that the media in this case, and the Mental Health Association in this case, did a heck of a job in focusing on the true issues and keeping it in the public eye, which isn’t always the case. They didn’t forget this case.
J.Z.: Police Chief Mike Reese has said he will mend the relationship between the police and the community. What do you think needs to be done for that to happen?
T.S.: I have said this for a very long time, it’s a legal issue in the Chasse case, and it’s a legal issue in the Campbell case, and that is, the city and the Police Bureau, in death cases, usually a shooting or in-custody death, the bureau, to my knowledge — going back to 1980 — in that 30-some-year period of time, they have never disciplined an officer for force used in a shooting case or an in-custody death case. And I do not believe it’s because force was reasonable in every one of those cases. It’s because the bureau wants to defend the lawsuit, defend its image, and it refuses to appropriately investigate, discipline and terminate when appropriate. And the tragedy of that is that it tells officers that they literally are better off killing somebody, or allowing somebody to die, because they are going to be immune to discipline. Because if you look at where they get discipline for force, it’s in lesser types of force, that might be a Taser, or a fist. … Mistakes get made. When they’re egregious, then there should be discipline and termination, and until that changes, I think officers think they can act with unfettered discretion.
J.Z.: How much is City Hall complicit in the Police Bureau’s conduct?
T.S.: Historically, the public and the community can’t get the police to do what we want them to do. More directly, the particular member of the council who has the police bureau, usually the mayor, they do not exercise enough oversight. And they end up, as does the chief, in almost every case and every situation, doing what the union wants them to do, and that means not disciplined, not terminated, so they are complicit. … I had a conversation with Mayor Potter back in the summer when there was a public forum around the Kendra James and James Jahar Perez cases, and he agreed with me, that until the city got control of its labor management issues, and successfully disciplined officers for what they were doing, we wouldn’t be able to control them. And they haven’t done it since.
J.Z.: Because the Portland Police Association is just so powerful?
T.S.: They’re very powerful. Remember the march when they were able to gather people together to claim that “I am Chris Humphreys?” And if you look at what Humphreys did, the cover-up, do they really think that we, them, us — are Humphreys? (On Nov. 24, 2009, hundreds of police officers and their families marched on City Hall carrying signs and wearing T-shirts stating “I am Chris Humphreys” after the officer was suspended for shooting a 12-year-old girl with a beanbag gun.) Is that what we want? What you almost always hear from the union is, “This is terrible, what they’re doing. They shouldn’t be investigating this officer. The public doesn’t understand how tough it is,” on and on and on. Even in Chasse, with all the evidence of the accepted course and the cover-up, the union continued to make statements supporting what those officers had done. If they really believe it, that’s a sad thing. If they don’t believe it and they’re just saying it, it’s a sad thing.
J.Z.: Do you believe, as the Chasse family has said, that civil action is the only form of justice that our local system will allow in the case of a police killing? Where does that leave the poor, the people who do not have resources or the confidence to pursue justice?
T.S.: It’s very sad. The district attorney in this county, to my recollection, has never charged a police officer with a crime, other than for off-duty situations or for something involving sex. So, when they use too much force, when they withhold critical information from paramedics, when they don’t provide CPR, whatever it is that causes the death or causes the injury, the DA never gets an indictment. But if the DA wants a criminal charge against some citizen for beating up somebody, for doing something that is uncalled for, he’ll get that grand jury to indict. At the outset, people — whether they’re living on the streets or otherwise — unfortunately, should have a sense of hopelessness about the DA, because they’re not an effective tool in terms of addressing police misconduct.
J.Z.: If you’re compromised.
T.S.: Right. And to take on the city — there’s not a lot of lawyers to do it, and it expensive, time consuming, and it leaves lots of victims with no place to go. Internally, it’s kind of a black hole. You make your internal complaint, and the bureau is terrible at investigating. They don’t look at things, they don’t interview witnesses. With Chasse, there were approximately a dozen civilian witnesses to what happened on Northwest 13th. When they conducted the internal investigation for purposes of looking at force, withholding medical information and the cover up, they interviewed one of the witnesses. One. So what they essentially did was operate on the assumption that what the police said was true. They made no effort to find out what the true story was for purposes of considering policy issues, training issues, or discipline — corrective action. That’s a form of cover-up beyond the officers on the street. And that leaves these people with virtually no place to go.
Internally, there’s no true independence. And the civilian oversight is kind of a joke, in terms of the oversight of the internal investigation.
J.Z.: I can imagine that talking with the Chasse family and your other clients regarding police misconduct, that it takes an emotional toll on you. And if so, does that play a role in helping or hindering your work as an attorney?
T.S.: On a couple of levels. Virtually every client, where the family of someone who died, almost always ask the same question. That is, “We thought the police were here to protect us. How could this have happened?” And, “Can’t we stop it from happening again?” It’s because the average person doesn’t have the experience with the police, they don’t understand how it could happen. And they don’t understand why it can’t be changed so it won’t happen again. That goes back 30-some years. The questions and responses by the families is always the same. My response is always the same. It’s hard, but on a personal level it is very draining. I’ve shed my share of tears.
J.Z.: It’s not just the loss of their loved ones, but a shattering of what they believed was right and wrong about their society, which must be traumatic.
T.S.: The confidence and faith most people have in the law enforcement system, it’s pretty high … So when the system provides little more than some money, it becomes very hard for the family to understand that this is all that we can accomplish. It is the exception when you get more done. In the Chasse case, we did force the disclosure of some documents and get them to share some information to the public and the community, like the Training Division report. (The bureau’s Training Division concluded that Humphrey’s chase and take-down of Chasse were inconsistent with bureau training and should not have occured because Chasse was not suspected of committing a crime or considered a danger.) That was written in fall of 2007, and we couldn’t disclose it to the public. The public didn’t know about it. Humphreys claims he didn’t know about it. It was under protective order. Here we have the Training Division that says Humphreys shouldn’t have pursued Chasse, shouldn’t have taken him down. But here you have the union saying that anything Humphreys did is fine. So now you not only have Humphreys, but all the members of the union, believing that what Humphreys did was correct, and there has never been a correction of that. To my knowledge, the bureau has not said to Humphreys or anyone in the bureau, as a training example, to not allow this to happen again. They haven’t done that. So what does the average officer on the street think? If somebody runs, you chase them. It’s OK.
J.Z.: Do you have any police officers who are friends of yours?
T.S.: I do not have any police officers for friends. I have respect for lots of police officers. I think lots of police officers do really good work. Some repeatedly do bad work and dangerous things, and some occasionally do bad things and dangerous things, and they’re not held accountable. When you speed and you get caught, you’re held accountable. When the police break the rules, they’re very seldom held accountable. But a lot of them do good work. A lot of them don’t break the rules. They respect people. They don’t use too much force.
One person I would consider a friend is Penny Harrington, an ex-chief of police for Portland in the 1980s. I represented her. I had asked her when I represented her if she ever had to shoot at someone. She said, “No. You just talk to people. Be patient and talk to people.” If they had just talked to James Chasse. If he didn’t want to talk and he ran away, let him run away, so what? He doesn’t want to talk to you. But try talking. He wasn’t hurting anybody, wasn’t threatening anyone. There hadn’t been any complaints about him. You should talk to people. Have patience. Patience really works.