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Silverton Officer Kills Irish Immigrant, Is Arrested for Sex
Abuse An international scandal erupted on June 30 when Silverton officer Tony Gonzalez shot and killed a 20-year-old Irish immigrant, Andrew James Hanlon. Hanlon apparently was known to all 16 officers in the tiny town of about 9000 near Salem. A according to Hanlon's brother-in-law, Nathan Heise, they knew of Hanlon's "mental health issues" as well. Hanlon apparently was banging on the wrong door, prompting a 911 burglary call. The small community turned out about 100 people on July for a candlelight vigil at the site where Hanlon was shot and a protest at City Hall. This would be the equivalent of about 6500 people turning out for police accountability protest in Portland, so far unprecedented. Irish media covered the story extensively, with a reason given in the July 5 Oregonian by Irish Independent reporter Fiach Kelly: "Police don't carry guns around here, so it's a big shock when one of our young people is killed by a police officer." While there has been no public comment by the DA on the number of bullets fired, the family's attorney said Hanlon was shot in the abdomen, arm, thigh and back. The DA did express disappointment that the Silverton Police Officers Association issued a statement declaring Gonzalez's actions were justified (Oregonian, July 12--Mike Schrunk, take note!). The Oregonian actually gave more ink to this than many Portland area shootings, with articles appearing on July 2, 3, 5, 8, 9 and 12. The story took a strange turn when Gonzalez was arrested for sexual abuse of a minor acquaintance on July 13. Gonzalez, a former Marine and cage fighter (we're not making this up), who was teased as a youth for his mixed Latino and Native American heritage, was held without bail (Oregonian, July 15). He resigned on August 1, days after being cleared by a grand jury in the shooting. As a side note, Silverton Officer Bob Gathercoal shot at burglary suspects in April, but it was not investigated as an officer-involved shooting because neither they nor their truck were hit (Oregonian, July 9). This is exactly the kind of incident we believe should be mandatory to investigate; if the officer was not justified in using his weapon and someone had been hit, imagine the consequences. In eastern Oregon, Pendleton Officer Erik Palmer shot Deveron Shreiner, 38, in the head as Shreiner stood in the doorway of a tanning salon with a semi-automatic weapon on June 26 (Oregonian, June 27). A Umatilla Grand Jury found no criminal wrongdoing (Associated Press, July 5). Across the river in Vancouver, WA, Clark County Sheriff's deputies, Camas and Washougal police shot and wounded Rocky Brown, 38, as he was driving his SUV early morning July 5. Apparently Brown did not pull over after leaving the scene of a disturbance. He let passengers out, was confronted by police, who shot at him, and Brown drove back to where the passengers were talking to other police, who also shot at him. Roughly 40 shots were fired, making Brown's relatively minor injuries a lucky fluke (Oregonian, July 6 and 12). |
September, 2008
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People's Police Report
#45 Table of Contents
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