POLICING POLICE
EXTERNAL REVIEW AND OPENNESS STILL STRUGGLING
AFTER COP SEX SCANDALS. BY BY ALAN
ALAN PITTMAN
PITTMAN
R
oger Magaña used his police power to
harass, sexually abuse, sodomize, kid-
nap, coerce and/or rape a dozen
women for nearly a decade without the
Eugene Police Department stopping
him.
Magaña was sentenced July 13 to 94 years
in prison. Juan Lara plead guilty to a smaller
sex crime spree while he was a cop and got
five years.
The police say they’ll do a better job of
catching bad cops. But even Police Chief
Robert Lehner acknowledges that the public
may not believe the police can police itself in-
ternally. “It is right that it cuts to the core of the
trust in this community,” he says of the abuse
of power by the two officers.
The lack of trust in police has lead to calls
for external police oversight and a less secre-
tive disciplinary process, but resistance to re-
form is deeply entrenched.
INTERNAL EXTERNAL
“There will be some outside involvement”
in the department’s review of what it did
wrong with the hiring, training and supervision
of the two convicted officers and whether any
other officers were involved, Lehner says.
Lehner hasn’t decided exactly how that exter-
nal component of his internal investigation
will work, he says.
Tim Laue chairs the Eugene Police
Commission, a citizen body appointed by the
mayor to advise the EPD on policy. “I don’t
think it could be credible” to just do the inves-
tigation internally, he says. “There should be
external components to it.”
Laue notes that in the past the police have
hired consultants from the Police Executive
Research Forum (PERF) and International
Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) to con-
duct reviews. The state police were also called
in to examine the June 1, 1997 incident when
10 JULY 22, 2004
police used clouds of pepper spray and tear gas
against tree sitters and protesters.
But Lauren Regan, a local attorney with
seven years experience handling police com-
plaints, says the external reviews of the June 1
incident by hired consultants or fellow law en-
forcement officers showed no real independ-
ence and were “a total whitewash.”
The IACP, for example, found that police
pepper spraying tree sitters, including one in
the groin, was “reasonable.” The consultant
did not talk to any spray victims or view video-
tapes of the incident before it reached that con-
clusion.
Oregon ACLU Director Dave Fidanque
says police should make sure they give any
outside consultant a charge to investigate with
full independence. “People are justifiably con-
cerned.”
EXTERNAL REVIEW BOARD
After the June 1 pepper spray incident, citi-
zens pressed for an external review board to
provide independent oversight of police
power. The council referred a charter amend-
ment to the November 1998 ballot that would
complaints will be heard.”
Lehner says he won’t stand in the way of
creating a citizen oversight board. “I could not
imagine that the city of Eugene would come up
with a [citizen oversight] model that I could
not wholeheartedly support.”
But while there appears to be broad support
for some kind of external review board, the
real fight may be over how much actual teeth
and independence to give external review.
Asked about his position on external re-
view, Lehner says he agrees with an article op-
posing external review boards that have the
power to overrule internal police disciplinary
decisions.
Lehner says he wouldn’t oppose the review
board model that passed in 1998. That model
was purely advisory with the police free to ig-
nore its recommendations and much of the dis-
ciplinary information held secret from the pub-
lic.
Lehner says a review board with much in-
dependent investigator power would be “re-
ally, really expensive.”
A decade ago, Lehner was an assistant po-
lice chief in Tucson, Ariz., when he joined his
chief and police union in opposing the creation
‘THEY PRETTY SOON BECAME GROUPIES,’
— SAYS COUNCILOR BETTY TAYLOR OF THE POLICE COMMISISION
have created an external review board with
some investigative capability to review com-
plaints and give the EPD advice on officer dis-
cipline. The measure failed by less than 1 per-
cent.
After the Magaña and Lara cases, Fidanque
says the city should consider an external re-
view board again. “There clearly needs to be
more of a role for civilian oversight.”
Mayor elect Kitty Piercy agrees that the
city needs to create an external citizen review
board “so people can feel safe and that their
of a stronger citizen review board to replace an
advisory committee criticized as “cheerlead-
ers” for police, the Tucson Citizen reported.
‘FAN CLUB’
Eugene already has a weak civilian over-
sight system. In 1998, the city council passed
an ordinance creating a citizen Police
Commission. The commission advises EPD on
policy matters, but does not review police
complaints.
Lehner praises the commission as a “very
dedicated group,” but the Police Commission
has disappointed reform advocates.
“They pretty soon became groupies,” says
Councilor Betty Taylor of the Police
Commission. Members of the group are ap-
pointed by Mayor Jim Torrey, who has a his-
tory of strongly siding with police against citi-
zen complaints. Torrey’s appointments have
made the group a police “fan club,” Taylor
says.
“They are quite sympathetic to law en-
forcement,” Regan agrees, adding that the
commission hasn’t done much by way of re-
form that she can see.
Although supposedly independent, the
commission has never disagreed with the EPD
by recommending a policy change that the po-
lice oppose. Often the commission recom-
mends policy changes only after the police
have already made them or agreed to them.
Six years after its creation, the Police
Commission is only now taking up the long
burning issue of reforming internal police re-
view of complaints and then only at the urging
of Chief Lehner in the wake of the officer sex
scandals. The commission plans to begin its re-
view more than a year after the Magaña and
Lara abuse first came to light and take more
than a year more to complete its report.
Commissioner Laue defends his group.
“We’ve done a pretty credible job,” Laue says.
“It’s a diverse group.”
Commission member and City Councilor
Bonny Bettman says the commission is an “ef-
fective body.” The group successfully recom-
mended that EPD ban hooding suspects, for
example, she says. But Bettman acknowl-
edges, “there have been small incremental
changes that have improved the police depart-
ment, but they’ve been small.”
It’s not clear whether the police commis-
sion will come back with a report next
September recommending a stronger or a