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City Pays Racist Sergeant $100K to Go Away; Cop Helps Hotel Racially Profile Patron In PPR #76, we reported briefly on Portland Police Sergeant Gregg Lewis being fired for making an inappropriate comment shortly after the police shooting death of African American teen Quanice Hayes in 2017 (PPR #71). It turns out Lewis told a "joke" during a police roll call in response to community criticisms of the killing: "if you come across a black person, just shoot them." Although his horrifying call to do harm to people based on race initially led to Lewis being fired, the Portland Police Association pushed back, noting Lewis had no disciplinary history and the Discipline Guide only allows for him to be put on unpaid leave for three weeks. Calculating they would lose at arbitration and pay out even more money, City Council voted 4-1 on February 6 to give Lewis over $100,000 in back pay (for his time off past three weeks) with an agreement he cannot work for the PPB any more. Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who is African American, refused on principle to vote for the settlement, saying they should have gone to arbitration anyway. The other Commissioners voiced their unease, but for pragmatic reasons voted yes. This discussion shows that the arbitration process, which frequently ends up in officers' favor and is binding, and the Discipline Guide both need to be changed. Profiled Guest Focuses on Hotel More than Rude Officer
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May, 2019
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Portland Copwatch Portland Copwatch is a grassroots, volunteer organization promoting police accountability through citizen action.
People's Police Report
#77 Table of Contents
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In another incident, Jermaine
Massey, a man from Kent, WA, was staying at the DoubleTree Portland hotel and made a phone
call in the lobby on December 22. A security guard confronted him and, although Massey showed
his room key card, then worked with a manager to call police who trespassed Massey out. A video
shows the responding officer was rude, but under the law he did not do anything wrong by helping
remove Massey from the hotel. The two employees were later fired (Oregonian, December
30). When Portland Copwatch raised concerns about the officer's demeanor, Chief Outlaw
acknowledged there are different ways he could have approached the situation in terms of
procedural justice, saying sometimes community members' bias leads police into situations that
amplify that bias. Massey's lawyers at Kafoury and McDougal are focusing their concerns on the
hotel's owners, the Hilton chain.