By Maxine Bernstein, The Oregonian
Multnomah County, Oregon District Attorney Michael Schrunk announced Tuesday he will hold an inquest into Sunday’s fatal police shooting of an unarmed motorist to quickly put the facts of the case before the public.
“This is sufficiently unique enough that this calls for special procedures,” Schrunk said. “We’re dealing with an awkward procedure to get sunlight on what happened. We’re trying not to single out any one person, but we want sunlight.”
Schrunk’s announcement of Portland’s first such inquest in nearly two decades came as police disclosed new details about Sunday’s shooting. A senior police official said that North Precinct Officer Jason Sery fired on 28-year-old James Jahar Perez because he thought the motorist had a gun.
The incident, police said, lasted less than a minute from the traffic stop to the shooting.
“Officer Sery subjectively believed that Mr. Perez was armed,” Assistant Chief James Ferraris said.
A search of the car found no weapon on Perez or in the vehicle. Ferraris also said a “white chunky” controlled substance had been found on Perez during his autopsy.
Schrunk acted after calls for an inquest from two state lawmakers and Mayor Vera Katz. Portland Police Chief Derrick Foxworth said he supported the move, which will give an extraordinarily detailed look at the investigation.
“We’ve pledged to be open and transparent,” Foxworth said. “We have nothing to hide.”
An investigation of a police shooting routinely goes before a grand jury. In the case of Kendra James, who was shot and killed by police on May 5, a grand jury found no criminal wrongdoing by the officers. The Portland Police Bureau then released its approximately 600-paged investigative file on the case and held a forum with community leaders, which was widely criticized as ineffective.
An inquest will go much further, eliciting testimony from witnesses and forensic evidence, and the mayor has called for this inquest to be broadcast live on radio and TV.
An inquest, set up under Oregon state statute, is an informal proceeding intended to publicly review the facts of a death. A six-member jury listens to witnesses and considers evidence under the supervision of the district attorney. The jury returns only findings of fact, not of guilt.
The inquest jury is asked to determine who died, when the death occurred, and the cause and manner of death. The findings of an inquest are not admissible in a civil or criminal proceeding or a grand jury.
Schrunk said he found the community forum held after the shooting death of James ineffective and recognized there was a need to find a better method to respond to community concerns. He also said he considered the fact that Perez’s shooting comes within 10 months of the Kendra James shooting.
An inquest will likely be scheduled at the county courthouse in two to three weeks. Schrunk said he has not decided whether he will lead it or assign a senior deputy district attorney to do so. The shooting case will then be presented to a Multnomah County grand jury to determine if there was criminal wrongdoing.
Schrunk, who in the past has criticized inquests for creating a circuslike atmosphere, said Tuesday he did not want to falsely heighten community expectations and tempered his support for an inquest with his own reservations about the process. He called it an “awkward procedure” that will require a strong focus to ensure it does not become a “witch hunt.”
The news drew a rebuke from the police union and mixed reviews from community members.
Robert King, president of the Portland Police Association, defended Sery’s actions as appropriate and said officers are discouraged and disturbed by the call for an inquest.
“I think the chief, the mayor and now the DA are acting predictably,” King said. “I think officers see the public inquest as pandering and struggle to know how anything positive will come out of it.”
State Sen. Avel Gordly, D-Portland, who had met with Schrunk on Monday to demand an inquest, said she was pleased it’s going forward.
“What’s happened is exactly what needs to happen,” Gordly said.
Yet Gordly said the Police Bureau also needs to focus on revamping its officer training to avoid shootings. “We need to ask, ‘What is it that leads officers to think the way out of a situation is to draw a gun and shoot and kill a person?’ ” Gordly said.
During her weekly “Vera and the Voters” discussion, broadcast on the OregonLive Web site Tuesday, Katz said the shooting raises so many questions that the public can’t be shut out.
“A person was shot. There was no weapon. It occurred very quickly, on the heels of the Kendra James shooting -- less than a year,” Katz said.
The Rev. Renee Ward, who volunteers with the Portland Police Bureau’s Crisis Response Team, said the inquest is not enough.
“I’m not satisfied. There’s no power behind an inquest,” Ward said. “It’s like giving someone a driver’s license but no car to drive with.”
The furor over the shooting spurred Foxworth to meet with Perez’s family again Tuesday, and community leaders in North and Northeast Portland. It also has led to a separate FBI investigation, following a request by Foxworth and the African American Chamber of Commerce of Oregon.
“Obviously there are some problems in the police department that need to be corrected. This can’t lead to simply another community meeting get-together, another study, another kumbaya,” said Roy Jay, president of the chamber of commerce. “There are people in outrage, in shock from Beaverton to Gresham. They quickly realize this can happen in their neighborhood, to their families.”
With the two officers’ interviews completed, police and the union president Tuesday revealed other new details about the shooting.
The police union president said that Sery fired his gun because he thought Perez was reaching for a weapon in the car at some point during the vehicle stop in North Portland.
Sery shot Perez three times in the torso with his 9 mm handgun as his partner struggled to get him out of the car for not producing a driver’s license, police said. Perez died from a chest wound, an autopsy found.
Ferraris said Sery’s partner, Officer Sean Macomber, fired two Taser shots at Perez after Sery’s gunshots. One of the electric probes struck Perez in the forearm; the other hit the car seat. Police could not explain why the Taser was fired after the gunshots.
Police also said there was no indication that either Sery or Macomber, who pulled Perez over, knew his identity before the shooting occurred.
After an inquest and a grand jury hearing, the Police Bureau will conduct its own administrative review to determine if the shooting fell within bureau policy. Katz wants to include citizens on a use of a force review board. Foxworth said the bureau is working to include citizens but does not know if that will be possible by the time the bureau examines the Perez shooting.
The last two inquests in Multnomah County were held in 1985 and 1975. In most recent inquest, the jury ruled 5-1 that police were criminally negligent in killing Lloyd D. “Tony” Stevenson, a 31-year-old security guard. The inquest jury found that Stevenson died on April 20, 1985, because of the application of a carotid-artery hold applied by Officer Gary Barbour.
A grand jury reviewing the case afterward did not find the police action criminal, but the bureau ultimately banned the use of the carotid_artery hold.
In 1975, an inquest jury found the police shooting of Rickie Charles Johnson, 17, justifiable. A police officer posing as a cab driver shot and killed Johnson during an armed robbery of a North Portland house.
Oregonian Staff Writers Noelle Crombie and Joseph Rose contributed to this story.