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The crime spree began with a $17,000 heist from a Sandy Boulevard jewelry store, police say.
It ended two weeks and seven robberies later after a car chase through Lloyd District streets.
Police arrested two men and charged 32-year-old Tah’rim Brown with three of the robberies. He was indicted in September.
Now, WW has obtained a search warrant showing Brown is a suspect in at least eight different robberies over a two-week period beginning Aug. 20. His attorney declined to comment.
One was at Hollywood Liquor on Aug 26, which was hit by armed robbers in three separate incidents over the summer. Liquor shop owners told the state licensing agency in September that they feared for their employes’ safety amid record levels of crime at their businesses.
The suspect’s apprehension was news to Dan Miner, the store’s owner. “I’m relieved to see that at least one criminal is being held to account,” he tells WW. But he was disappointed the cops hadn’t told him.
A perusal of the search warrant shows how police connected the dots.
In the Aug. 20 jewelry store heist, a man in a hoodie pulls a gun and walks out with $2,000 in cash and $15,000 in jewelry. An employee of a nearby bank snaps photos of the robber fleeing in style as he hops in a purple 1990s Ford Econoline van.
Six days later, a man in a red wig and a floral bucket hat waves a handgun at The Refinery, a marijuana dispensary on Northeast Broadway at 11:30 am. He gets away with $600 and two jars of pot in a brown backpack. A neighbor’s Ring doorbell captures the same Econoline van parked on a residential street and peeling away after the robbery.
That night, a man wearing a white cap and what appears to be the same backpack steals a $2,000 bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon from Hollywood Liquor and flees in a Nissan Armada.
Two days later, The Refinery is robbed again, this time violently. The robber pistol-whips one of the employees in the back of the head. Another employee recognizes the robber from the incident earlier in the week—he is wearing the same pair of shoes and the same backpack.
Another two days pass, and the Nissan Armada is spotted peeling out again after a robbery at another dispensary, La Mota on Sandy Boulevard. This time, the robber is wearing a black bucket hat.
Two hours later, Detective Brett Hawkinson heads back to the office from La Mota when he hears officers over the radio responding to another robbery at North by Northeast Liquor, 5 miles west down Northeast Prescott Street. After a struggle with the shop’s employees, the robber makes it out with three bottles of Hennessy.
Hawkinson speeds over and confirms with the shop’s owner that the getaway vehicle is a Nissan SUV.
On the morning of Sept. 1, a man in a “dark bucket hat” steals around $400 from a 7-Eleven in the Powellhurst Gilbert neighborhood of Southeast Portland.
The next day, an “incident involving a similar set of circumstances,” according to a police report, occurs in the same neighborhood, this time at Dotty’s on Division Street. A man pulls a gun, threatens to shoot “everyone here,” and limps out with $653.
Three minutes later, officers try to pull over a Nissan Armada with no plates after it fails to signal a turn. When officer’s flash their lights, the driver speeds away. With the help of the Portland Police Bureau’s Cessna aircraft and a spike strip, officers stop the SUV near Lloyd Center.
“I didn’t do anything. I don’t have gun residue,” Brown allegedly tells the arresting officers. He has $653 in his pocket. Officers later review Dotty’s security footage and confirm the Armada was the getaway car. Brown, they note, walks with a limp.
Officers recovered a white cap, a red wig, a black Airsoft pistol, and a reversible black and floral bucket hat from the Nissan Armada.
Police get a search warrant to obtain DNA from Brown and compare it to DNA from the seized items. Office Torrey Steed wrote, ”I have probably cause to believe that Brown is responsible for the…eight robbery cases,” in the application for the warrant.
WW was unable to determine whether the samples matched. The Police Bureau did not respond to a request for comment.
