The Investigation of Pepe Chavez et al: How Presidential Task Force #NW-OR-001 Challenged Conventional Drug Investigation Methods

Chavez.

1: The Note

September 1982

Iwas bored—enough of the two-bit buy-bust drug cases. And now, more wearing, I had been writing procedure memos for Robert Tobin, Drugs and Vice Division captain, for months now. My job was becoming more stifling by the day. In the office, day after day, I peeled stacks of paper from the in basket. The drab walls of my second-floor office at Southwest Second Avenue and Oak Street’s Portland Police Bureau (PPB) were closing in. Three months prior, the dutiful captain had ordered a revision of the division’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)—a colossal how-to volume covering every topic from pencils to guns. The good captain had built the SOP guidebook with forty-two topics of procedural items, a supplement to our all-purpose, all-encompassing four-inch-thick Portland Police Bureau Manual of Rules and Procedures.

I couldn’t complain, though. This is what I asked for. This is the assignment I chose—chose above all others. Narcotics investigation! Missions of intrigue and mystery! An underworld of danger lurking around every corner!

So where was it? Where was this intrigue? It certainly wasn’t in the pages of the captain’s book of Standard Operating Procedures.

Careful what you wish for.

On October 31, 1982, I took the note and walked out of Captain Tobin’s office—a dilapidated ten-by-ten box-like room in an ever-crumbling brick building on the edge of Portland’s likewise ever-crumbling Old Town. I had no idea then that the scribbles on that note—2 Hispanics, $32,000, several $9,500 bank drafts, several banks, and to Lima Peru—would take me to the edge of sanity. Little did I know that the information contained in the note would lead me into a large-scale interagency smuggling investigation that would span several years. During those years, my abilities and my training would play out in my work. This would be one of the most defining seasons of my career. Over the coming years, my work would be tested, second-guessed, and misjudged beyond my expectations.

The note had come to Tobin through the back door from the neighboring police department of Milwaukie, Oregon. It was obvious he was pleased. The exchange of information, a sign of trust between the agencies. A departure from the cold shoulder we had been getting from other departments since the disturbing 1981 SID Scandal. To the captain it was confirmation that his newly reorganized Drugs and Vice Division—formally the Special Investigations Division (SID) was back on its feet.

For me, the note represented something different—finally, some police work. I was hungry.

Take a look at this, Sergeant Tercek, Tobin said, handing me the note. It might be something we’re interested in, and it looks like a good source. And, more importantly, somebody trusts us now. It has been a while. Let’s do a good job on this one.

I thought his presentation a bit officious. But none of that mattered to me. I had a mission.

2: My Road to Police Work

Seems like I’ve always been on a mission. Always looking for meaning. A place to make my statement. It probably came from Dad and Mom. In retrospect, my career choice might seem like natural progression: Father is career cop. Son immerses himself in police culture, observing his father’s challenges. Son becomes cop and pursues his father’s challenge and more.

But it didn’t happen that way. Well, not exactly that way.

Early Years

Dad’s job title was jailer. I remember his integrity and honesty. His assignments varied. He was a booking officer, courtroom bailiff, commissary manager, and (most notably) manager of the Trustee Annex, an expansion wing of the old city jail at Southwest Second Avenue and Oak Street. It housed minimum-security prisoners who had been convicted and sentenced (usually of municipal misdemeanor offenses), but were granted limited, supervised freedom to work off their time. Dad’s assignment was to manage daily operations of the Annex—a job that no one else wanted. Most often, he was accountable for fifty to one hundred inmates. They were society’s castoffs: skid-roaders and winos. The Annex was often the only home they knew their entire adult life. Dad was responsible for their housing, food, living conditions, employment, and transportation.

I remember Dad ferrying the prisoners to job sites around town in the Trustee Wagon, a dirty, old white International van that smelled of disinfectant. When Mom would take us to visit Dad at work, we would see the inmates in the Trustee Wagon through the small side window. I remember their faces, their unsightly looks of embarrassment in response to the children staring at them. It was a symbol of what life should not be. It was also a symbol of how crime does not pay. For most of the trustees, time in the Annex offered rare, sober moments and a cleaner, sanitary environment. Thirty days was the average jail sentence. During these days, each trustee was given a health screening. Maladies were diagnosed by the screening nurse, and treatments were provided if necessary. The Annex could give the trustee back a bit of human dignity that the alcohol had taken away. Sadly, most of them didn’t stay sober for long. After another binge, they’d be back in the Annex.

Occasionally, Dad paid some of the sober ex-trustees to do odd jobs around our own house—a source of contention with Mom. She was fearful of them and didn’t want us to be exposed to them. She knew most were destined to end up in jail again, and she didn’t want her children around the bums when they acted out. Still, Dad gave them jobs. And he made an impact on their lives.

Mom hated it when the trustees would call our home. I remember one call, though, when she didn’t get upset. This time it was from one of the bum’s bankers. The banker told Dad that one of the more frequent trustees had recently died and that he had named Dad in his will. The bank requested Dad’s presence at the reading of the will. The money didn’t amount to much, but what respect! That was my dad. His values forever rest in my soul.

I think of my mom as bright and beautiful. She was my mentor when homework became difficult, boring, or tedious. Mom has always been aggressive—with a distant restlessness about her—and full of energy. Growing up, my siblings and I often heard the term elegant in reference to her stately appearance; the word certainly wasn’t used in reference to her aggressive drive to get things done. All six of us had to pitch in: the girls had the dishes; the boys had the yard and the basement cleaning. Of course, each of us had to keep our beds made and our rooms—there was one for the girls and one for the boys—clean. Mom was disciplined. When she said, Get it done. Now! we got it done.

In 1967, I was a high school senior who dreamed of a college scholarship award and a professional career as a baseball player. However, an injury forced me to set those thoughts aside. I graduated from high school, discouraged and with no scholarship and no plans to continue my education. I knew my parents could not afford college tuition, which made it easy for me to decide to do nothing. That fall, Mom and Dad encouraged me to get out of bed and do something, anything. I decided to register at the University of Portland—no thought given to how I would fund my tuition. I was, already, a solid believer in Dad’s philosophy of life: Don’t worry about it. It will be okay.

On registration day, I stood in the registration line—with a hundred other prospective students—not even close to understanding what I wanted to study or what classes I should take. Then, a surprise. Joe Etzel, the varsity baseball coach (and a sports legend in Oregon who had recently moved from high school coaching to college athletics) entered the registration area. Coach Etzel walked right up to me. You coming out tomorrow, Ray? he asked.

His greeting surprised me. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since my freshman year in high school, when he had coached my high school’s varsity baseball team. I hadn’t even considered going out to the baseball season opening. Well, I hadn’t planned on it, but— I said in a bit of stutter. Coach Etzel interrupted before I could finish. I’ll see you at one o’clock, he said, and he walked out.

I made the team and played well that fall season. My batting average was high for a freshman, and Coach Etzel awarded me with a half-ride scholarship for the year. And, later, full tuition for the next three years. The experience gave me cause and direction.

At the end of my third year at UP, 1970—my youth nearing its progressive end and small bits of maturity beginning to show—I married Karol. We had met during my first baseball season, three years before. She was still in high school then, attending a small, all-female school in the center of Portland. I stole her heart—this college baseball stud. On the surface, she’s the sweetheart of the party, a free spirit, a knockout at four-feet-eleven-inches tall, all of ninety-eight pounds, and perpetually playing a song of energy and light. Underneath it all though, she is a scrapper, type-A personality, unendingly certain of her resolve, and dogged about where she wants to go, and when.

Her type-A tendencies worked for us in the early days of our marriage. It seemed my youth had not really ended yet. I did not have a career in mind or even a steady part-time job. It looked like I would need three more semesters to finish my college degree. My athletic eligibility and my scholarship would run out in two. I had not proven myself good enough to go any further with a career in baseball. Money was tight, and part-time work at the corner Plaid Pantry convenience store wasn’t enough to make ends meet.

Then Juliana Kathleen arrived. Funny how a child makes a man grow up. The hospital delivery bills cost seven hundred dollars. Our new apartment required a two-hundred-dollar deposit and one hundred thirty-five dollars per month. We had two cars, a 1961 Chevy Bel Air and a 1962 Plymouth Valiant. Car insurance was three hundred forty dollars a year. So, I went to work on several job fronts, including changing tires at my father-in-law’s tire shop.

For a while, I stayed with the school plan. But I couldn’t study. So, I escaped back into my youth. I played pool and drank beer—too much beer—with fraternity brothers. I skipped class and instead played in every intramural school activity that came along. I was not making it, and I was scared. The military draft was out there. My Selective Service college deferment would expire in six months. I lay awake at night, wondering how my new family would survive if I was drafted.

Then, Mom mentioned the police exam. She had heard Dad talk of a police hiring increase projected for the next year and watched for the announcement. Dad didn’t give it much thought, though. He made it clear that he didn’t feel good about any of his kids pursuing a career in police work. I didn’t feel very good about police work myself, but by this time life had significantly eroded—my scrapper-sweetheart was all over me, and my opportunities seemed limited.

In January of 1971, I found myself weighing my options. I guess it was little Juli’s smile that eventually forced me to want some control over her future and mine. I thought of my mother and father. What did they do when ends did not meet? The answer came to me quickly, in the urgent voice of my mother: Hell, damn, spit! Do something—anything. Do something!

I left school after my athletic eligibility expired, hoping to return to complete my degree sometime down the road. (I did, finishing my bachelor’s degree in 1977.) By the end of the month, I had taken the first phase entry examination for the Oregon National Guard to fulfill my duty to my country, and another entry examination for a police officer position with the Portland Police Bureau. Thus began my career in law enforcement.

Street Cop

During my first year with the Portland Police Bureau I worked as a street cop in Portland. It was a rude awakening into reality. Within my first month, there was an attempted murder, a shooting over drugs at Fred’s Place, a rowdy nightclub in Portland’s ghetto, The Avenue. I, and my fellow arresting officers, experienced the indignation of a good thrashing by a four-feet-nine-inch petite monster of a lady-doper (the shooter and attempted murderer), high on a speedball combination of heroin and cocaine. Further indignation came when I discovered that the criminal justice system did not always fit my vision of an ideal world. There would be much more to learn on The Avenue.

I grew up in the area. However, police work on The Avenue showed me a side I’d never seen—a dark side, a world of drug abuse. There were drug crimes, thefts, robberies, and murders. In-progress felony crimes and arrests in numbers far greater than I imagined. There were riots. Mobs out of control, police work in chaos.

In fact, far more chaos than other districts in Portland. As part of my training, I spent four months at North Precinct, which included The Avenue, before transferring to five other precincts and divisions. Upon completion of my training, I requested a return to The Avenue for four more years of excitement.

We were all young there at North Precinct. Young and adventurous. The Avenue entertained cops. It was at first every cop’s playground. But North Precinct quickly compelled maturity in that field of play. Life and death experiences and spur-of-the-moment decision-making. North was about outstanding officers like Michael Guinn and Neil Van Horn, cops I admired and strived to follow. Guinn and Van Horn knew every local doper, dealer, prostitute, and pimp in North Precinct. These cops were streetwise, reliable, and fundamentally thorough. I partnered with Guinn and Van Horn for about a year on The Avenue. Our partnerships at North would later evolve into a full career of collaboration and friendship.

First Performance Challenge

After five-plus years working as a street cop, I was rewarded with a transfer to the Tactical Support Division on November 17, 1977. Two members of the division suggested I apply for an open position on the Special Emergency Response Team (SERT). My new assignment, SERT—and some Intelligence Unit investigations (both SERT and the Intelligence Unit being functional elements of the Tactical Support Division)—would give me an opportunity to develop and expand my career.

The Portland Police Bureau modeled its SERT unit after the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT). In fact, LAPD SWAT members trained the original PPB SERT members in Los Angeles in 1974. SERT was, arguably, the bureau’s most elite tactical squad. There was universal agreement that if you got there, you had to have a performance record somewhere in the range of excellence. As a second-generation SERT, I was proud to be there.

SERT training was rigorous—well above the norm for most Portland police officers—temporary duty training, annually, at the coastal US Army base, in Camp Rilea, and monthly training at the Portland area base in Camp Withycombe, plus weekly physical training. All to promote efficiencies in teamwork, planning and strategy, tactical assaults, search and rescue, firearms, chemical weapons, and legal issues.

When we weren’t in SERT training, we were all on intelligence assignments or mobile and fixed surveillances. Special Services and Tactics (SST) served all law enforcement in the region. This specialized surveillance was a third function of SERT team. The work was exciting. More murders, robberies, even hostage situations. There were overtime and overnight surveillances for anything from child kidnappers to terror-bombers. And there were more felony in-progress crimes and arrests, throughout the City of Portland and the surrounding area. We lived and breathed the SERT assignment.

Promotion and Transfer to the Drugs and Vice Division

In September 1981, I accepted promotion to the rank of sergeant—a first-line supervisory rank in the PPB. I was on top of the world. And after just a short stint as a precinct supervisor I received another reward, a call from one of the bureau’s premier lieutenants.

Lieutenant Bowles, then the operations lieutenant, a role that made him second in command, in the Drugs and Vice Division (DVD), telephoned me during the graveyard shift at Central Precinct. I was excited, to be sure. I knew Bowles, having worked for him before as an investigator in the Intelligence Unit, but I was nervous taking the call. Lieutenants of his stature did not routinely have telephone conversations with lowly probationary precinct sergeants. After the usual introductory telephone niceties, he asked me to accept a transfer to special assignment in the Drugs and Vice Division. He asked me!

Bowles told me that he wanted me to transfer to his command, to supervise the day shift in the division. He was expanding operations, forming an operational unit on the day shift, and he needed a sergeant. He said the formal position announcement would be open to all qualified bureau sergeants for application tomorrow, and he wanted me to apply as soon as possible.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! I knew I was qualified, but I was still in the probationary year at my first assignment in Central Precinct’s Patrol Branch. I had never worked in the narcotics unit. I had to think.

The lieutenant agreed that there would be career risk—to take on such an assignment so soon—but he said my background was well suited for the job. He added that he remembered how I challenged the investigative tasks. He said he had looked at the roster of about eighty bureau sergeants and didn’t find anyone with better qualifications. He added that he had spoken with my lieutenant and that she also believed that I would do well in DVD. He said to think it over and let him know in the next day or so.

I was thrilled! I couldn’t wait to talk about it. I had to shop it around! I quietly mulled it over for a while—anxious to tell someone but not sure whom. Then I calmed a little. It occurred to me that what I needed was information, not validation. Struggling to conceal the prima donna expression on my face (and a strong desire to hear all the compliments I could collect), I surveyed the room.

Sergeant John Luciano was in the office, a space shared by three sergeants, at the time. John, who was senior sergeant on the shift, had once served time in the old Vice Division during the early seventies. His role was similar to the one that I would assume, but a conversation with him would be a risk. John Luciano was his own man, a bit burned-out and cynical.

Hey, John, you got a minute?

Sure, what’s up?

Nervous still, I dragged him quickly into the darkness of the empty captain’s office, next door.

I need some advice from the experts, I said. I got a call from Reggie Bowles. He asked me to put in for a new DVD slot that’s coming up. What do you think?

I knew John would not commit himself without some prodding. He didn’t talk much substance anymore, always stayed fairly private. In recent years, he had especially avoided job talk and rarely commented on the politics of the bureau. That didn’t matter to me. I had heard the stories. If anyone knew the narcotics world—he did. I needed to get into his head.

Hey, put in for it. You gotta do what’s best for you, he said. And he turned and started to walk away but stopped when I touched his arm, not satisfied with his response.

John, I know they gave you a tough time—toward the end up there—but I gotta know, would you go back again, if they ask you?

His expression changed. You gotta be shittin’ me. I had enough. I couldn’t do it again. No one should really do it. It’s not good—for anyone.

Not exactly the perspective I wanted to hear, too much candor, but I pursued him.

Well, now wait a minute. How can you tell me to go, when you wouldn’t even do it?

It was then that he finally let me in. Luciano told me that initially it had been a good assignment. The appointment was full of challenges and excitement. But, he said, no one could prepare for the politics, the frustration, and the scapegoating that occurred there, in that world. Anyone who has not been there does not understand. Look, he said, No one leaves narcotics or Vice Division without a black mark—some tarnish that will never disappear from your badge. It changes you. You will come out different from when you went in. I guarantee it. I’m not saying, don’t do it—well, maybe I am.

Deep inside I thought, they all say that. I have more background now than he did when he took his appointment. I had been around the bureau—ten years experience, had already been exposed to the politics, the frustration within the bureau. I moved on without any big deal. I’m going for it anyway! It’s a career opportunity!

Yet, there were things to consider. Those rumors that constantly flew around the bureau about personality changes, informant relationships, political controversy, and scapegoating by superiors the moment things didn’t go well. In fact, as I thought about what Sergeant Luciano had said, it was true: I could not name a previous drug or vice unit sergeant who had left the division with his reputation intact. It was also true that not many officers who left the division had yet been promoted further to management positions. What was I thinking? What was different about me that gave me any confidence to weather this assignment better than my predecessors did? I needed to do some soul searching.

Even much of the patrol officer’s work is in a gutter of primal existence. Patrol officers breathe the stench and touch the filth of the gutter during their daily tours. And then they return home to their other world. Sometimes with great negative effect, other times, not. The good ones, I guess, stay true to themselves, never sway from their core values.

Narcotics work, on the other hand—according to Sergeant Luciano—must have an even greater effect. Did I have what it takes to be a good narc?

Narcs, by nature, love the game. And so do the sewer rats the narcs work with every day. In this world, the sewer rats were the liars, cheats, and cons. The work was playing the game every day, but rarely winning. Never clearing the sewer, only collecting more and more sewage. The game is what drives both of them—the narcs and the rats. It can have an insidious, infectious nature. John Luciano said it could become you, change you, and taint you. And that it could take a long time to get over it, to get past the taint.

But what of it? There’s a difference between the narcs and the sewer rats. The rats don’t care about the rules of the game. And, to them, life has no value. Values and rules; there is a difference. Though it took awhile, John Luciano did get over it. He’s fine, I thought. I will be fine, too.

Still, I thought, what of my family? How will this assignment affect them? If I take this job, what if—?

In the ’70s and ’80s, most families were one-income families. Inflation was wild during the late ’70s. Costs were high, money was tight, and I was our only source. On the one hand, I could use this assignment—it meant higher pay, and it could even be career building if I played it right. At the same time, with this job, balancing work and family time would be more difficult.

We’d had two more children after Juli, and Karol was already carrying the weight of the kids’ active lives. She had just barely tolerated my last four macho SERT years. Only her new passion, soccer, both playing and coaching, covered the ache of my absence at our early family activities. I suspected that Karol was bored—now that the kids were all in school—but I had hopes that she would just get over it. Unfortunately, marriages are not that simple. Taking on this new assignment would mean scaling back my time on one side or the other. This new job would be no help to a marriage.

I was almost thirty-two years old, going on twelve years of marriage. Juli was eleven now, Christi, seven, and Ryan was five. My two daughters were star student athletes. They had always been high achievers in school and were placing their mark on their brand new world. Our son was in kindergarten. He was a delightful kid, but with a downside. He had an insatiable appetite for knowledge—was already reading the newspaper—but he also obviously had an unorthodox method of learning. He had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder.

And Karol, a wife, a mom—maybe wondering every night whether her husband would come home. Maybe wondering when it would be her time. With the kids in school, shouldn’t she be getting her time to achieve her own as-yet-unfulfilled career desires? What of family needs like that? Was I planning to engross myself more in my career for the benefit of my family or to their detriment? No matter, I thought. I want it so much; I can balance all of it. I thought of Dad’s experiences.

We are all a product of our experiences. We are made of the values of the generation behind us, destined to influence the generation ahead of us. I learned my professional values from my father. I watched him work through positive and negative experiences of his generation—the joy and the frustration. He felt them both, took advantage of the joy and worked through the frustration. During one trying time, he told me his theory about the trials of life. He said most men were gifted at birth with the ability to handle crises, but since life does not come in neat little packages, we all needed to learn to cope with frustration. Do the best you can, he would say.

In the spring of 1982, a week after receiving a call from Lieutenant Bowles, I realized I couldn’t ever speak for those lost narcs of the previous generations. I swore, however, that I would not repeat their mistakes. I could not predict the future of my marriage or my children. I could continue to work at it, though. Dad had made it work for him before me—job and marriage—with honesty and integrity. I accepted that assignment.

The DVD offices were in the same building as the Patrol Division’s Central Precinct, one floor up. Only a little-traveled stairwell and short hallway separated the two offices. Yet nothing but telephone wire and paper ever seemed to bridge the gap between the divisions—different missions, different chains of command, and different bureaucracies. The mysteries of the second floor stayed on the second floor. Indeed, I had not even used this cobwebbed stairwell since my assignment to Central Precinct, nine months earlier.

I pushed the button next to the security door. It unlocked when the buzzer sounded, and the desk clerk released the electric door lock. The door swung out and struck the wall as I pulled, expecting something heavier and more reliable than the thinly metal-plated hollow core that slipped from my hand. The crash sounded my arrival into the entryway with a bang.

I meekly greeted the receptionist—who was now silently staring at me. Uh, I’m Sergeant Tercek. Where’s Lieutenant Bowles’ office?

Down the hallway, there. She pointed and returned her eyes to her desk—a momentary smile of amusement passing on her face at this greenhorn in front of her.

The office of DVD had mystery, cloak and dagger, daring deeds, and years of dirt. It had remained generally unchanged. Three chiefs had reorganized the office since 1970, but it had not changed, I thought, not since the office was built at the turn of the century. Only the layers of institutional yellow paint had changed. The maze of cubicles and the paint-brushed plywood panels of these dark cubbyholes had not strayed from their original stations. Nor had the steel cabinets that guarded the secrets moved from their bolted pads. The linoleum floor had—I guessed—seventy layers of dirt film and a cover of wax overlay for every year of its existence.

And then, a feeling of claustrophobia hit me. I felt suddenly cramped. My ego had secretly expected more. This is the place of honor to which I was aspiring? Its spartan look didn’t square with the importance of the assignment. I had a fleeting thought to turn around and leave, but I resisted.

The first hallway was dimly lit, but some daylight passed into the corridor at the end. Passively, I followed the light into the entrance of the lieutenant’s office, a small partitioned space in a corner of the cramped division. His office was neat, efficiently organized, and a bit warmer than the hallway. A six-foot window illuminated the bookcase and several wall-mounted frames of seascapes and landscapes, which softened the tension of the otherwise bureaucratic color scheme. The bookcase, a varnished wood-frame relic, was filled with law enforcement technical manuals and journals of specialized skills and training.

Bowles was sitting at a steel desk in the left front corner, his back to the open door. Come in, sit down, Sergeant. How are you chaps doing down there at Central Precinct? Coffee? He poured a cup from the pot on the bookshelf.

Suddenly, I didn’t feel cramped. My anxiety eased almost immediately; he exuded charm and comfort.

Just fine, lieutenant. No coffee, I said, as I chose the designated chair, positioned at a small table in the center of the room.

Well, he paused, introspectively, a Bowles trademark. Are you ready for a challenge?

I started to jump in, but he continued, Ray, I know you’ve heard a lot about our problems, but you haven’t heard about our successes.

He rattled off a few of the more exciting cases, and, much like he had during that first phone call, he had me hooked—again. Reggie told me that though the problems weren’t over, things were on the upswing. He had divided the division of twenty officers into two shifts. On the afternoon shift, a drug enforcement detail and a vice enforcement detail; on the morning shift, one administrative detail. He said, moreover, that he had recently received approval to establish an additional enforcement detail on the morning shift. His long-term plans included even more expansion—whenever the expected Multnomah County consolidations were finalized. He explained that although there still were lingering inter-agency problems in our law enforcement community—consequences of the recent scandal—that DVD was on the mend, and the officers’ hard work was now finally being recognized in the region at large. Then, another reflective pause.

If all goes as I have planned, Sergeant Tercek, well, you will report to Captain Tobin in July.

Drugs and Vice Division

Captain Robert M. Tobin had risen fast in the organization, with three promotions in the last ten years. He had been promoted to the rank of captain six months earlier and sent to the previously troubled Drugs and Vice Division, formerly Special Investigations Division (SID), to continue the reform that had been initiated by his predecessor, Ron Still, who had gone on to become chief of the police.

Tobin knew this latest assignment was both a reward for good work and an anchor attached at the shoulder. No other manager had dared to ask for this assignment, fearing the intense scrutiny and other consequences of the preceding years. But Tobin understood that the stage was set for some management stardom. He could be in the right place at the right time.

He was eager, willing, and qualified. In the management world, he was yet an unknown entity, somewhat standard and uncontroversial. He was his executive’s all-around first choice, under-the-radar status quo. His background was quiet, type-B—dulled by years of robotic assignments, dominions where black-and-white rules limited discretionary authority and enabled willing automatons. For the police bureau, the Tobin appointment meant minimum potential for embarrassing problems—minimum potential that the recent scandal years would be repeated. But for the City of Portland, it would ultimately mean less drug enforcement. During post-scandal years, an acceptable trade-off.

The scandal years had ruined the career of some of Captain Tobin’s predecessors—and he knew it. He would be more cautious. He became known for his thorough, cover-your-ass approach to management. In traditional manner, he stifled creativity and ingenuity with more rules, regulations, and high-requirement levels for authorization of operations. In his first few years, he would double the size of the division’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) Manual. An SOP for every activity, a request form to authorize it, and an after action report to justify it all.

Some say Captain Tobin’s objective was to minimize his personal exposure to the inherent unsavory burdens that the investigations of DVD would produce. To others, it was his discomfort with the lack of structure and the freewheeling nature of plain-clothes investigation. His new DVD would have more structure and stricter limitations on division operations. Whatever it was, whether witting or unwitting, Tobin stifled enforcement activity. His approach would preserve his reputation and improve potential for even more upward mobility, but it would have consequences for the organization.

3: Drugs and Vice Division Operations

DVD was proud of its comeback. The Oregon Narcotics Enforcement Association (an association of investigators from agencies throughout the state) voted the Portland Police Bureau’s drug unit the best in the state in 1981. The next year was a record statistical year in terms of search warrants served and arrests made. Indeed, the bureau was quickly reestablishing its credibility and respect in drug enforcement, and division morale was at a peak.

It was not always so. In December, 1979, Case # 79-90173, a PPB narcotics officer planted dope and stole liquor from the subject of a search warrant—a known two-bit doper who had been a thorn in the side of law enforcement for many years. The officers arrested and later convicted the subject of the search warrants. He received three years probation. In January 1980, Case # 80-4729, another PPB narcotics officer planted dope on the subject of an investigation—also a known two-bit doper who had eluded justice. The officer arrested and convicted the doper. He received five years probation.

In March 1980, more corruption. Case # 80-17682, four PPB narcotics officers searched the residence of a two-bit narcotics dealer. It was a dirty search warrant, based on a fictitious informant and falsified information. The officers stole $10,000 from the residence; they arrested and convicted the dealer. The defendant received five years probation and a fine.

The echelons of law enforcement discovered the corruption in May of 1980 after sixteen citizen complaints about five dirty PPB narcotics officers. And so began a secret investigation into the Special Investigations Division. I was a member of that secret team of investigators and prosecutors. After a year, investigators found one hundred five tainted cases in which persons were falsely arrested for narcotics crimes. They found evidence of improper documentation, poor accountability, and more.1 The official report from the investigation describes the corruption in detail:

Theft of SID Evidence Funds

SID officers commonly received narcotics from informants who had been requested to purchase drugs from suspected dealers. The purpose of such buys was to establish the reliability of the confidential informant. The informant is provided with city funds by the officer to make such purchases. The SID officer receiving drugs under these circumstances was responsible for having them marked and placed in the property room or destroyed. However...officers on occasion withheld a portion of the narcotics received. The ‘excess’ retained would be used at a later time by the officer to obtain city evidence funds unlawfully. This was accomplished by falsifying a voucher with the informant’s name indicating that latter had been paid a dollar figure for his services in making a ‘reliability’ buy. The ‘excess’ drugs withheld earlier would be presented as evidence of this new buy. The officer in turn would receive from SID evidence funds an amount equal to that he stated on the new voucher. The officer receiving the additional funds simply pocketed the money. No new reliability buy requiring payment to an informant had actually occurred…

Planting of Narcotics

...Drugs would be planted on a suspect when a search failed to produce the variety of narcotics police generally associate with the individual.

The narcotics used for such plantings came from earlier seizures in which officers had failed to destroy or mark as evidence the entire quantity seized...

Unlawful Search Warrant Affidavits

...On occasion information attributed to a confidential reliable informant in a sworn affidavit came from a tip from someone else. The false information in the affidavit would provide the basis for a judge to authorize service of a search warrant. It would not have been issued had the true source of the facts been known.

And what of the five corrupt officers? Confidential informants refused to talk. The police officers, likewise. And right or wrong, investigators and prosecutors decided to consider immunity for the renegade officers.2

Immunity From Criminal Prosecution

...Most officers suspected of wrongdoing had obtained legal counsel. The attorneys involved would not allow their clients to make incriminating statements without some assurance of immunity for criminal conduct. If the task force were to pursue criminal prosecution three obstacles would have to be overcome. First, allegations of criminal conduct would have to be proved by testimony of confidential informants. Previously the task force had assured these sources that their identity would not be disclosed. This assurance had been made to the informants by the police bureau. Secondly, assuming an informant would be willing to reveal his identity and testify in court, the witness’s credibility would be subject to attack. Most jurors would view the world of a typical narcotics informant with suspicion...that would present the most difficulty for the prosecution in a criminal trial.... It would be difficult to prove that an anonymous informant listed on an affidavit for a search warrant was nonexistent based on the accounting procedures employed