Skip to main contentOn the night of Sept. 4, 1999, two Portland police officers knocked on the door of 24-year-old Merrick Bonneau's home on Northeast Hancock Street and placed him under arrest. "You've got the wrong guy!" Bonneau yelled, as officers subdued him, bruising and gashing his face and inflicting long-term damage to his neck.
In fact, it turns out that the police were looking for Bonneau's half-brother, Mitch, but they charged Merrick with resisting arrest anyway.
A Multnomah County jury unanimously found Merrick innocent, and City Council has authorized an $80,000 settlement. But the director of the city's brand-new cop-watchdog committee, Richard Rosenthal, has decided the case does not merit review, prompting some members of his citizens committee to call for revamping the way Rosenthal declines cases.
"We're still defining the rules, and this case that you've raised will be one of the cases we use to define them," committee member Hank Miggins told WW.
Citizens who feel their complaints about police misconduct have been deep-sixed by the bureau's Internal Affairs unit may appeal to the Independent Police Review office. If the IPR's director, Rosenthal, thinks the appeal has merit, he can schedule a hearing before a citizens review committee, which can order the police to redo the probe.
Following his trial, Bonneau lodged a formal complaint with the bureau. On Jan. 29, 2002, Internal Affairs Lt. Steve Bechard wrote back, saying that the only way the police could have behaved better would have been to respond with more cops so "the struggle could have been minimized."
When Bonneau appealed to IPR, however, Rosenthal declined even to schedule a hearing, saying Internal Affairs got it right.
It's true that officers may use force when detaining an uncooperative suspect. But Rosenthal's response seemed to ignore a few things. The police were originally looking for Mitch Bonneau, who is white, 6 feet 1 inch, 200 pounds, clean-shaven and much-tattooed; Merrick is dark-skinned, 5 feet 9 inches, 150 pounds and bearded.
Not only that, but the police report claimed, improbably, that Merrick falsely identified himself as his half-brother. Also, Bechard claimed that Mitch's truck was parked outside. At trial, however, officers admitted they did not see the truck. Police claimed Merrick had a kitchen knife in hand when they grabbed him. However, no knife was booked into evidence--which, if there was a knife, would violate the bureau's own rules. Also contrary to the bureau's rules, officers did not list witnesses to the incident. Instead, when neighbors protested at the way police were pig-piling on Bonneau, they said officers told them to mind their own business.
Copwatch's Dan Handelman, a frequent critic of IPR, says the Bonneau case shows that Rosenthal is shutting the citizens out of citizen review. Of the 20 appeals filed with IPR since Jan. 1, only two have been granted hearings. That's a sharp decline from earlier appeals, when almost half reached a hearing.
Rosenthal's boss, City Auditor Gary Blackmer, says it's too soon to say whether the drop means anything. But he contends that a hearing amounts to a "public flogging" of officers and is the least important of IPR's core duties. He says IPR is making strides in examining complaints and bureau policies, as well as establishing a mediation process for unhappy citizens. "All of that, to me, is the place where we can have the most impact," he told WW.
WWeek 2015