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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2016
Staffer sues Rosenblum, key employees for racial profiling
Civil rights
director
files claim
By PARIS ACHEN
Capital Bureau
The Oregon Department
of Justice’s civil rights direc-
tor is suing Attorney Gen-
eral Ellen Rosenblum and
other department employees
for subjecting him to racial
profiling.
In a federal lawsuit filed
Wednesday, Erious Johnson
alleges special agents identi-
fied him as a “threat to police”
based on a threat assessment
performed with a software
program that examined social
media postings.
In addition to Rosenblum,
the suit names as defendants
Deputy Attorney General
Frederick Boss, Chief Coun-
sel Darin Tweedt, Special
Agent in Charge David Kirby
and Special Agent James
Williams.
The lawsuit claims that
in September 2015 Wil-
liams used a software pro-
gram called Digital Stake-
out to search terms, including
the Twitter hashtag, “#black-
livesmatter,” in the Salem
area. That search produced
an image of Johnson and
prompted Williams to down-
load Johnson’s entire Twit-
ter account, according to the
lawsuit.
A post on Johnson’s
account containing lyrics to
a rap song by Public Enemy
and an image of the group’s
logo led Williams to believe
Johnson presented a threat to
police, the lawsuit states.
Williams shared his con-
cerns with Kirby, who was his
supervisor. Kirby consulted
Tweedt, who recommended
a written assessment. Boss
approved the written assess-
ment. After Williams pre-
pared the assessment, he sub-
mitted it to the department’s
counsel for review.
Johnson alleges that inves-
tigators never attempted to
contact him or independently
verify information, which
Pamplin Media Group
The civil rights director of the Oregon Department of Justice has sued Attorney General Ellen
Rosenblum and other members of the department for subjecting him to racial profiling.
was a violation of department
policy. He didn’t learn of the
assessment until about two
weeks after Boss and Rosen-
blum received the report.
According to the suit, Wil-
liams had no reasonable sus-
picion of a crime, and was not
involved in a criminal investi-
gation when he performed the
original assessment.
Johnson claims the defen-
More Pacific Coast hatchery
salmon could receive protections
Genetically
similar to their
wild cousins
By KEITH RIDLER
Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho — Federal
authorities want to add more
hatchery-raised fish to the
28 Pacific Coast salmon and
steelhead stocks listed under
the Endangered Species Act.
The National Marine Fish-
eries Service in a document
made public last week said
23 hatchery programs could
produce fish genetically sim-
ilar to their wild but strug-
gling cousins and should have
the option of receiving federal
protections.
The agency recently com-
pleted a five-year review
required for listed species and
plans no changes to the threat-
ened or endangered status for
the salmon and steelhead pop-
ulations found in California,
Oregon, Washington state and
Idaho.
The review included 330
hatchery programs. About
half of those are already
involved in boosting listed
salmon and steelhead popu-
lations. Other hatchery pro-
grams are intended to pro-
duce large numbers of fish for
anglers.
The document proposes
eliminating five of the hatch-
ery programs from Endan-
gered Species Act listings,
meaning there’s a net increase
of 18 programs.
The 23 proposed pro-
grams are mostly in Oregon
and Washington, but there are
some in Idaho and one in Cal-
ifornia that involves the Liv-
ingston Stone National Fish
Hatchery and its efforts with
winter-run Chinook salmon in
the Sacramento River.
Scientists say the net
increase of 18 programs is
part of a trend among fisher-
ies managers of using locally
adapted fish with the goal of
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BOISE, Idaho — Fed-
eral officials say changes in
how dams on the Snake and
Columbia rivers are operated
are needed to improve migra-
tory conditions for protected
runs of Snake River Chinook
salmon and steelhead.
A proposed recovery
plan released Thursday by
the National Marine Fisher-
ies Service also says habitat
needs to be improved in trib-
utaries where fish spawn and
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in the Columbia River estu-
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Officials say the Snake
River and its tributaries in
Idaho, Oregon and Wash-
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ported more than half of
the Columbia River basin’s
summer steelhead and
more than 40 percent of the
spring and summer Chinook
salmon.
But in the 1990s the runs
were listed as threatened
under the Endangered Spe-
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it’s important for all of us to
read the notice and under-
stand it fully.”
Conservation groups, in
general, are concerned that an
overreliance on hatchery fish
could cause further declines in
wild fish runs and additional
degradation to the watersheds
wild fish need to survive.
The watersheds them-
selves include dams needed
to produce energy, control
floods and provide irrigation.
Other activities such as tim-
ber harvest and road construc-
tion can also cause problems
for migrating salmon, Jones
said, and the hatcheries are
intended to mitigate for those
losses.
Salmon and steelhead runs
are a fraction of what they
were before modern settle-
ment. Of the salmon and steel-
head that now return, experts
say, about 70 to 90 percent
originated in hatcheries.
Public comments on the
federal proposal are being
taken through Dec. 20.
W A NTED
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Saturday th
October 29
producing fish more able to
survive in the wild.
“There’s been considerable
research on this and we gener-
ally understand that hatchery
fish do not survive in the wild
as well as wild fish,” said Rob
Jones of the National Marine
Fisheries Service. “But we
have gotten much better at
understanding how to narrow
that gap and produce hatchery
fish that have a better and bet-
ter chance at surviving in the
wild.”
Several watchdog envi-
ronmental groups involved
with salmon and steelhead
and watershed ecosystems
declined to immediately com-
ment, citing the complexity of
the federal proposal.
But Sara LaBorde, execu-
tive vice president of the Wild
Salmon Center, gave an initial
assessment.
“It seems like some of this
language is housekeeping and
some of it may have long term
policy implications,” she said
in a statement. “At this point,
dants violated his First, Fourth
and Fourteenth Amendment
rights. He seeks unspecified
compensatory and punitive
damages and attorney’s fees.
The Attorney Gener-
al’s Office issued a state-
ment Wednesday noting that
Rosenblum has replaced staff
members involved in the digi-
tal search of Johnson’s tweets
and taken steps to help pre-
vent racial profiling. She fired
Williams last summer and
demoted Tweedt in January.
Kirby left his post in May to
become operations integrity
director of Privateer Holdings
in Seattle, according to his
LinkedIn page.
Department
of
Jus-
tice employees also will be
required to undergo cultural
competency and implicit
bias training, beginning
next month, said Kristina
Edmundson, a department
spokeswoman.
The attorney general still
considers Johnson “a val-
ued member of her inner cir-
cle staff, as he serves as her
outreach director to diverse
communities throughout the
state,” Edmundson said.
The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO
Media Group and Pamplin
Media Group.
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