Eugene weekly., July 12, 2007, Image 13

BY ALAN PITTMAN
‘Recipe for Disaster’
How EPD failings lead to cop scandal
I
n a report issued last week, a city of
Eugene consultant attempted to answer
the question of how EPD officers Roger
Magaña and Juan Lara could have used their
badges to coerce sex from more than a dozen
women over five years before fellow officers
stopped them.
“The question that begs to be answered,” re-
ported Dr. Gayle Fisher-Stewart, a University
of Maryland criminal justice professor, “is why
did Magaña and Lara do what they did, and
how could those acts go unnoticed?”
Personal flaws “coupled with values and
norms learned as part of the socialization
process of the police organization and lax su-
pervision create a perfect environment where
those who are bent on violating societal
norms can do so without detection,” the con-
sultant reported. The officers “felt free to en-
gage in illegal and sordid activity because the
sub-culture of the organization taught them
that: 1. They would probably not be caught,
and/or; 2. If caught, no one would care,
and/or; 3. If caught, they would not be held
accountable.”
“How could they come to these conclu-
sions?” Fisher-Stewart asked. The consultant
with the International City/County
Management Association (ICMA) offered
the formula: “Deviant Behaviors + Police
Worldview + Lax Supervision = Recipe for
Disaster.”
The deviant officers “should have been
screened out via an effective selection
process,” the consultant wrote. Instead they
“were able to find a favorable growing envi-
ronment in the police worldview,” an “us-
them mentality” of viewing citizens with sus-
picion. “Lax supervision further strengthened
the environment and gave tacit approval to
the officers to continue to engage in their ille-
gal behavior.”
After reviewing EPD documents, the con-
sultant gave the city a grade of ‘B’ for begin-
ning to follow the reform recommendations
of an earlier study by ICMA and the Police
Executive Research Forum (PERF). The con-
sultant gave the city high marks in many
areas but downgraded the city for: threaten-
ing complainants on its web site, an arbitrary
scoring system for police hiring exams, weak
management training, not providing line offi-
cers with crime data, not having internal af-
fairs report direct to the chief, weak perform-
ance evaluations and failing to complete in-
ternal investigations of wrongdoing.
Will the changes the department has writ-
ten down “ensure that incidents such as this
will never happen again? The answer is,
‘No,’ for these are paper documents. It is only
when they are acted upon and infused
throughout the organization culture” that the
possibility of a repeat will lessen, the consult-
ant report stated.
In the wake of the Magaña/Lara scandal,
it’s unclear just how “infused” the EPD is
with reform or whether the “recipe for disas-
ter” at EPD still exists.
Police Chief Robert Lehner has said the
hiring process has been reformed. But EPD
human resources manager Helen Towle pre-
viously said in a sworn deposition, “I think he
[Magaña] would” be hired again today.
Lara “probably would get hired again to-
morrow,” said former Eugene Police Chief
Jim Hill in his deposition.
Lehner has also said the attitude of officers
towards citizen complaints against police has
changed. But the “us-them” worldview at the
EPD appears unchanged. Recent op-eds in
The Register-Guard by police union leaders
mendation by arguing it was “impossible” to
increase supervision by busy lieutenants and
said sergeants couldn’t spare time from their
“not discretionary” administrative duties to
supervise officers.
Attorneys for Magaña’s victims have
blasted the city’s response to the scandal as
“whitewash.” Portland attorney Michelle
Burrows alleged that “During the entire five
years of Magaña’s activities, 23 different offi-
cers, one Chief of Police and the Director of
Human Resources had actual knowledge of
no less than 15 different complaints involving
15 different women who were being either ha-
rassed, raped or sexually abused by Magaña.”
Contrary to reports in The Register-Guard
and from police, not all of Magaña’s many
‘Why did Magaña and Lara do what they did
and how could those acts go unnoticed?’
—Dr. Gayle Fisher-Stewart, consultant
have railed against a “worm infested” pro-
posal by a councilor for an independent inves-
tigation of officers’ failures to stop Magaña
and Lara and have stated that the union repre-
sents police employees, not the citizens who
voted for a new independent police auditor.
The union is pursuing legal action in an appar-
ent attempt to use its labor contract to derail
the auditor process before it has even started.
Chief Lehner, himself a former police
union president, said police supervision has
improved. But Lehner and other city officials
responded to an earlier ICMA/PERF recom-
victims were drug addicts and prostitutes. For
example, one was a college student, another a
relative of a retired Eugene cop, another a
woman just out late searching for her cat, an-
other a young police cadet.
While city officials appear to want to bury
the Magaña/Lara scandal, the ICMA consult-
ant said the department needs the opposite.
“It will take a constant mining of the [EPD]
environment and the culture to reduce the po-
tential for serious incidents that undermine
the public trust.” An EPD scandal could
occur again, she said, “at any moment.” ew
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