148 DAYS: That’s how long ago Officer Brian Hunzeker resigned from his role as president of the Portland Police Association due to what the union described as a “serious, isolated mistake related to the [Portland] Police Bureau’s investigation into the alleged hit-and-run by Commissioner [Jo Ann] Hardesty.”
We still don’t know what he did. The mayor’s office says it doesn’t know what he did. Hunzeker has been on paid administrative leave since May 27.
159 DAYS: That’s how long it’s been since the Police Bureau opened an internal affairs investigation into the leak of information that wrongly implicated Commissioner Hardesty in the March 3 hit-and-run. It has released no results of its inquiry.
147 DAYS: That’s how long it’s been since the city signed a contract with an outside investigative firm to probe the leak.
13 DAYS: That’s how long it’s been since the Bureau of Emergency Communications, which oversees the 911 call center, concluded its inquiry into the actions of emergency operators and dispatchers. The inquiry, whose results were released to WW after it inquired last week, found that none of BOEC’s employees leaked to the press. But the bureau disciplined three employees, suspending two, for gossiping about Hardesty with other public safety officials. On July 14, BOEC sent a discipline letter to an unnamed employee who has worked for the bureau since August 2016 and whose job title is emergency communications senior dispatcher.
The discipline letter says the employee received a message from a co-worker on March 4 through BOEC’s computer-aided dispatch system. The message informed the employee about the allegation against Hardesty.
“You then referred to this information as ‘juicy juicy’ and immediately passed the information to [redacted] with whom you are friends,” the discipline letter reads. “Here again, you referred to the information as ‘juicy.’ When [redacted] cautioned that it may not be true, you replied, ‘Don’t be a grinch...in my head its true.’”