The EPD allowed a culture ‘permitting defendant Magaña
and other police officers with like inclination,
to assault female residents of Eugene with impunity,’
one woman alleged in her lawsuit.
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City Response
described him as an “excellent officer”
and “role model for young officers.” A
captain wrote that Magaña was “a credit to
all police officers.”
A March consultant report by the Police
Executive Research Forum and the
International City Management Association
(PERF/ICMA) said the police had faulty
supervision, leadership, and internal affairs
investigations. “Lack of Eugene Police
Department leadership and supervision
combined with flawed selection and IA
processes created an environment where
Magaña and Lara could thrive and go unde-
tected,” the consultants reported.
PERF/ICMA noted that Magaña was
hired despite a previous burglary arrest
that should have disqualified him. The
consultants found it “hard to imagine” that
Magaña and Lara “were able to engage in
such serious misconduct for so long and
go undetected ... There clearly was a fail-
ure of supervision.”
The city has responded to the
lawsuits in court filings by deny-
ing any liability.
A big concern of the city
appears to be that the civil law-
suits will reveal yet more damaging and
embarrassing wrongdoing by the EPD.
The city had federal judge Thomas
Coffin sign six-page protective orders in
many of the cases. The orders required that
documents that the city decides are too
embarrassing for the public to see must
remain confidential.
The documents “if available to the pub-
lic, would likely cause annoyance or
embarrassment,” the city attorney wrote.
“Disclosure of such documents to the pub-
lic would likely have an adverse impact on
the morale of the Eugene Police
Department officers which would adverse-
ly affect Eugene Police Department opera-
tions.”
An addendum to the secrecy order cov-
ers “some of Mr. Lankford’s confidential
evaluations and opinions concerning the
quality of some of the investigations he
reviewed,” but that he and the city did not
make public. Disclosing the negative
information from the audits would hurt
officer “morale” and “would inhibit the
city from requesting an outside auditor
from providing complete and uninhibited
opinions to the city concerning the opera-
tions reviewed,” the city argued.
The city’s arguments for throwing out
the lawsuits revolve around legal techni-
Court documents filed by the city refer to documents handed
over to the plaintiffs during discovery ‘consisting of addi-
tional records of a sex-related complaint involving a Eugene
police officer which complaint was sustained.’
The consultants reported that “prob-
lems with incomplete and timely investi-
gations, illogical findings and conclusions,
and inadequate managerial review have
resulted in a lack of confidence in the
police department’s ability to properly
administer the complaint process.”
ICMA/PERF also faulted the city for
failing to conduct an internal investigation
of how EPD failed with Magaña and Lara.
The city refused to investigate, saying it
would instead see if the lawsuits revealed
any additional information.
The ICMA/PERF criticism echoed crit-
icism last year by a consultant hired to
audit EPD’s handling of complaints. “I
cannot see how the department’s IA
[Internal Affairs] process can be
depended on — by the department or
by the community — without more
active and detailed internal review,”
Howell Lankford reported. Two years
before, Lankford had criticized the depart-
ment’s dismissal of a sexual harassment
complaint against Magaña.
calities, especially that the women failed
to meet a statutory deadline of a maximum
of 270 days for notifying the city of their
lawsuits.
But in one case Coffin rejected the
city’s motion to dismiss on those grounds.
The judge noted that the woman had
argued that she
couldn’t file her
lawsuit
until
Magaña was
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