UPDATE, 2:10pm: Robert King returned the Mercury’s voicemail. “What I said yesterday,” King says, “was that Leo has never been involved in a shooting while he’s been on the SERT (Special Emergency Response Team) team. Leo’s been on the team for 8 years and has never been involved in a shooting. But somehow that got changed to ‘he’s never been involved in a shooting.’” King says he’s talked to Tom Hallman—the Oregonian reporter involved, and that Hallman has agreed to print a clarification or correction as soon as possible.

ORIGINAL POST, 12:36pm:Police Union Boss Robert King may have misrepresented the shooting history of Officer Leo Besner—the cop involved in the 2005 shooting of Ray Gwerder, which was settled by the city yesterday for $500,000—to Portland’s paper of record, the Oregonian.

There’s an article in today’s Oregonian about Gwerder’s shooting by Besner in 2005. In an interview with the Oregonian’s reporter Tom Hallman, King is quoted as saying:

“He’s demonstrated restraint and professionalism…He’d never been involved in a shooting before, and shot because he believed it was necessary to defend life.”

However, Dan Handelman of Portland Copwatch cites an Associated Press article from August 19, 1999, saying:

“At first, police say they were unsure whether Richard Lynn Smith was killed by an officer or whether he killed himself. Officer Leo Besner was involved in the shooting and has been placed on paid administrative leave, a routine step taken as police continue their investigation.”

It’s King’s job to defend officers from public criticism in incidents like this, but to outright misrepresent an officer’s history to the paper of record is not consistent with the Robert King I have encountered as a reporter, in the past. I can only assume it was a mistake. Handelman says he has faxed a copy of the AP article, (a scan of the Nexis version of which, you can view here, and a word document of the text you can Download here) to the Police Association.

“I feel it’s disturbing, at the least, that Robert King either doesn’t know, or misrepresented Besner’s history to the Oregonian,” says Handelman. “And that the Oregonian did not check him on it. I also think it would be a lot easier for reporters and the public to know these officers’ histories if the Independent Police Review would publish the names of the officers and the shooting victims in the PARC reports on police shootings and deaths.” [The IPR currently keeps those names secret].KING: Left, at city council in October 2006…

King is yet to return a voicemail asking for clarification of his comments. Let’s hope the Oregonian prints a retraction/correction directly, showing how seriously they take the error they have made.

Previous complaints against Besner have included tasering a man who was attempting to restrain a woman who had been threatening people with a knife in 2002; pepper-spraying an anti-war protestor standing on a sidewalk with a sign in March 2003; and slamming a 15-year-old, who had been standing on the sidewalk reading a newspaper, into a wall in April 2003. Besner’s 13-year tenure on the Portland Police is known to have already left city taxpayers with settlement tabs totaling about $1 million for the cases in which he has been involved.

“Until the community feels like individual officers who engage in this type of abuse will be held accountable for their actions,” said Alejandro Queral of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center in a statement yesterday, “lawsuits like these will continue to plague the police bureau and cost the city millions of dollars.”

Queral is calling on Rosie Sizer and Tom Potter to “fully and impartially evaluate the fitness of Officer Besner to continue serving our community as a sworn officer,” because “there appears to be a significant pattern of abuse by Officer Besner that cannot be overlooked.” Meanwhile, the city has drafted this emergency ordinance, which will be voted on without discussion next Wednesday, November 14:
HISTORY: Written by the victors…