By Maxine Bernstein, The Oregonian
On Christmas Eve, police thought they’d finally caught up with Shane Eric Clements, a suspect in a string of armed robberies of taverns and motels throughout Portland.
But he managed to foil a stakeout, elude police who stopped him and outrun officers to disappear into neighborhood yards. When police spotted him inside a stolen car at a mobile home park, they quickly pinned the car with two police vehicles, and three officers surrounded him.
But just as quickly, Clements ignored commands to surrender and tried to ram his way out. To stop Clements, the officers fired 24 shots into the stolen car. The 25-year-old Clements was shot in the head, neck and back and was found dead, slumped across the front seat of the car. He had no gun. A Multnomah County grand jury found no criminal wrongdoing by the officers and praised police for a job well-done.
But criminal investigation records show that the primary officers did not communicate or coordinate their individual strategies to catch Clements in a rapidly evolving situation, and that their split-second decisions could have endangered one another as they fired from opposite sides of the moving car.
The Portland Police Bureau is examining the tactics used by the officers to determine whether they followed police policy, procedures and training. The internal administrative review is one of the first since outside experts in August called for improvements in Portland police shooting inquiries.
Based on detectives’ lines of questioning in the criminal investigation, the internal review will likely examine why the officer who first confronted Clements in the stolen car walked up to his vehicle without recognizing it was the suspect’s car or without coordinating a high-risk stop with other officers. And it will examine the decisions of the three officers who fired into a moving car in a crowded senior citizens’ mobile home park at night.
“The review looks at everything,” Chief Derrick Foxworth said. “You look at officer communication, coordination, supervisory issues, issues of command and control, and whether the equipment that was used performed adequately.”
The initial shot came from robbery Sgt. John Cordell, who fired through the driver’s window as the stolen vehicle began a quick U-turn in his direction. Cordell fired a single shot, then halted because he was concerned about hitting other officers.
“I remember firing one and thinking, ‘I just can’t do two because of the crossfire,’ ” Cordell told investigators.
Two East Precinct officers said they began firing when they heard the first shot because they thought they were in a gunfight with Clements. They said they continued to fire because Clements was backing the stolen Honda toward them and they feared he was going to run them down.
The following account of the shooting and circumstances leading up to it comes from police investigative reports and detectives’ interviews with officers involved and other eyewitnesses.
A wanted man For two weeks, Portland robbery detectives were looking for Clements.
They offered reward money to his relatives, friends and former girlfriends to get information, and they posted Clements’ photo at all Portland police precincts.
Police suspected he might be the so-called “Motel Robber,” who held up local motels at gunpoint and removed cash from the front desk, or the “Camo Man,” a masked gunman who held up city taverns dressed in camouflaged clothing. They also suspected he robbed a Portland woman on Dec. 15, taking her purse at gunpoint while she waited for a bus.
About 4 p.m. on Christmas Eve, robbery Sgt. John Cordell addressed East Precinct’s roll call, alerting officers to be on the lookout for Clements. He was a heavy methamphetamine user who was stealing not only from strangers, but also his own family and friends. He was considered armed and dangerous, police said.
“We were informed at roll call that this guy would be out there and that if we ran into him, it would probably end up being a deadly situation so to be on guard for that,” East Precinct Officer Stacy Dunn recalled, according to investigators’ reports.
Later that night, Cordell, a 25-year veteran, was off duty at a Christmas party when robbery Detective Jim McCausland called with a tip that Clements was expected to show up at a Southeast Portland home at 9:30 p.m.
Cordell called East Precinct and asked a sergeant to have officers surround the home in the 2300 block of Southeast 170th Avenue. Cordell drove back to Portland in a robbery detectives’ van and joined the surveillance of the house.
Aware that Clements frequently changed cars and may have stashed a stolen car nearby, police checked the area for suspicious vehicles. An officer spotted a stolen gray Honda Accord parked the wrong way on the east side of the main road into the American Mobile Lodge, a 123-unit mobile home park for senior citizens at 16901 S.E. Division St.
An officer slashed all four tires with a knife in case Clements returned to it.
Meanwhile, an arrest team of officers set up south of the home on Southeast 170th Avenue, about a block from the mobile home park. Officers expected to cut off Clements before he made it south to busy Southeast Division Street.
Tip pays off McCausland’s tip was on the money.
Police watched Clements walk up to the home a short time after 9:30 p.m. and, with another man, load items from the garage into a Mitsubishi Montero. Clements got into the passenger seat, and the car took off. But it headed north on Southeast 170th, surprising police who were expecting it to go south.
Officers followed the car as it turned onto Stephens Street, then tried to pull it over at 162nd Avenue. Clements ran from the car, and at least six officers ran after him. One threw a flashlight at Clements, striking him in the back.
Police lost Clements as he ran between residents’ yards.
Meanwhile, Cordell stayed with the stolen Honda Accord at the mobile home park, watching from the unmarked robbery detectives’ van parked 100 yards north of it. As patrol cars fanned out to search the area, Clements walked by Cordell’s van.
“I’ve got Clements walking southbound past my position towards the stolen car,” Cordell radioed to officers. “I need some cars over here.”
East Precinct Officer Paul Kennard, with trainee Officer Stacy Dunn riding with him, was driving past the mobile home park when he heard Cordell’s radio transmission.
Kennard turned around, drove into the mobile home park and pulled up to the 2003 Honda Accord, stopping about 12 feet away.
“I don’t remember the description of the vehicle, and I wish I’d had,” he told detectives later. He said he just stopped in front of the first car he saw.
“I didn’t want to drive by it if it was the guy, and be the guy who screwed, you know, the mission up.”
Kennard jumped out of his car and shone his light on the vehicle, which was facing him. He realized he was staring at Clements, who was behind the wheel.
Detectives later asked Kennard why he decided to get out of the car and confront Clements.
“The first car I see in the driveway I stopped it,” Kennard. “I mean, in my mind . . . it wasn’t moving, but I stopped to check it out because I wanted to make sure it wasn’t the car that I needed to be dealing with.”
But it was. Kennard drew his .45-caliber handgun and walked to the passenger side of the Honda. He kicked the passenger side twice while yelling at Clements, “Get your hands up!”
Clements started the car and put it in gear.
By then, Officer Melissa Gray had pulled into the park behind Kennard’s car. She got out and ran beside Kennard, with her 9 mm handgun drawn. She saw Clements dig beneath the seat for something and heard Kennard yell, “He’s going for something.”
Officers converge on scene Gray said she thought Clements was reaching for a gun. Gray ran behind the Honda, thinking she’d “be the hero” by busting out the driver’s side window with her baton and then firing an electrical Taser shot at Clements to stop him.
But by the time she reached the back of the Honda, she realized it was a “dumb idea” because Kennard could be hit in the crossfire, she told detectives later.
Cordell, in the robbery van north of the Honda, lost sight of the stolen car because he was blinded by the headlights of Kennard’s patrol car. So he drove south and stopped about 30 feet from the Honda. He saw Kennard shouting commands at Clements.
Cordell drove his van forward and rammed the back of the Honda so Clements couldn’t back up.
Detective Cheryl Kanzler later asked him, “Did you transmit your intentions on the air?”
“No, I did not,” Cordell said. He also said he did not know what the uniformed officer was doing at the time he rammed Clements’ car.
The collision sent the Honda southeast, up onto a grassy area.
By then, Beaverton Officer Daniel Coulson, who is assigned to the TriMet police division, heard the radio transmissions and drove into the mobile home park. He got out of his car and hopped into Kennard’s still-running patrol car. Coulson drove north and struck the Honda’s front end, with the patrol car’s right front bumper, to box him in.
At that point, Clements threw his car into reverse and cranked his wheel to make what officers described as a violent half-turn, or J-turn.
Kennard said he backed up because he felt he was in danger.
Cordell, after bumping Clements’ car, got out of his van to arrest Clements at gunpoint. But once he got out of the van, Cordell said, Clements came “flying backwards at me.”
“It was one very fast, violent maneuver, and there’s no doubt in my mind, his intention was to run over anybody that got in his way,” Cordell told investigators. “He came back at me with enough violence that, at that point, I had resolved, I’m going to have to shoot this guy.”
Officers start firing The Honda whipped backward, right past the front of Cordell’s van. About 10 feet from the Honda, Cordell fired one shot with his 9 mm gun through the driver’s window. After one shot, he stopped, concerned that the other officers might be in the backdrop.
Kennard and Gray, who were west of the Honda, heard its engine revving and saw it back up, swinging its rear toward them. They heard Cordell’s gunshot but didn’t know where it came from.
“Shots were fired, and I don’t know where they’re coming from, and then the car is heading towards me backwards, and I thought I’m in a gunfight,” Kennard told detectives.
Gray said she began “shuffling back as quick as I can and I see that he’s coming at me with no regards of stopping.”
She heard four shots to the left of her but was unsure who fired them. She said she expected Clements to start shooting at them, and she fired repeated shots through his back window to stop him from running her down.
The Honda headed north, and Cordell continued to shoot into the car. He said he fired downward into the vehicle so bullets wouldn’t hit surrounding mobile homes or anyone standing nearby. He emptied his 9 mm Glock, firing through the rear window toward the driver.
“It was clear to me that this man had to be stopped right here,” Cordell said.
Coulson, who had rammed Clements’ Honda, said the patrol car stalled, so he got out and heard the gunshots. He couldn’t tell who was shooting.
The stolen Honda lurched northbound and then came to a halt. Cordell reloaded his gun and yelled to the other officers to check if they were injured.
According to investigators, Cordell fired 11 shots, while Kennard fired seven and Gray fired six. Some of the shots were fired as the car was backing up and some while it was going north.
Later, Cordell said he recognized the danger of bullets flying in the cramped mobile home court and that was why he tried to fire down into the stolen Honda.
“My concern is that during this incident, rounds may have overpenetrated the stolen car or, for that matter, bounced off the stolen car and caused injuries to officers,” he told detectives.
“My concern was that the fields of fire and dealing with bullets flying around in this mobile home court was a bad situation. Not to mention, if he were to use that vehicle and try and drive between the trailers. There’s no doubt in my mind he would’ve run right through a trailer if he had to.”