2005-07-08 OREGON, TUALATIN - An investigation regarding alleged sexual misconduct put three Tualatin police officers and a state trooper on indefinite paid administrative leave.
The allegations involve a 17-year old female Explorer.
The investigation began in May with information that developed regarding a female explorer who worked in the Tualatin Police Department. The alleged incidents occurred about five years ago.
The Explorer program is an opportunity for young men and women, ages 16-to-20 years old to receive training and education in the administration of justice.
Names of the alleged officers, all men ranging in age from 28 to 39, will not be released unless they are formally charged, police said. All have been with the Tualatin police for at least six years.
The trooper has been with the Oregon State Police for more than seven years.
The Washington County District Attorney's Office is coordinating an independant investigation that will involve detectives from Washington County, Hillsboro and Oregon State Police.
While the investigation is underway, the Explorer program has been suspended.
"I just want to make sure, if we continue an Explorer program, that the parents of these youth and the youth themselves will know that this is a safe place for them to learn," said Tualatin Police Chief Kent Barker.
Whispers about sexual misconduct by Tualatin officers should have been brought forward by colleagues years before
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Standing in front of the Tualatin police station is a statue called "Tualatin Protector," depicting a police officer with two small children. On Sunday, The Oregonian's Luciana Lopez detailed how law enforcement officers in the community mocked that statue in some deplorable ways.
Lopez looked into the story of a state trooper and the three Tualatin police officers who resigned last year after investigators found the men had sexual contact with a teenage girl in the city Police Department's Explorer post. That episode was shocking enough, but what Lopez found was just as disturbing: More than a dozen of the department's 36 police officers had heard about the abuse at some point since it began in 1999, but none spoke out. Tualatin is far from the first police agency to stumble badly over such a culture of silence. It's a harmful byproduct of law enforcement's time-honored code of blind loyalty.
"The silence held for years," with officers gossiping among themselves about the abuse but with no one blowing the whistle, Lopez wrote. In February 2004, the whispers about the girl and one male officer finally reached a conscientious records technician, Lori Marsh, who instantly did the right thing. She went straight to the victim, who had by then turned 20, and then took the young woman's subsequent admission to her supervisor.
If only everyone in the Tualatin department had been as courageous and clear-thinking as Marsh. Instead, the alarm she raised resulted in a feeble internal inquiry against the lone male officer, who was merely admonished not to do any more ride-alongs with female Explorers.
The abuse stayed a poorly contained secret within the Tualatin department until July 2005. By then, word of it had spread to Hillsboro police. They fired off a letter to Tualatin Chief Kent Barker and notified the Oregon Department of Human Services, as required by law in abuse cases.
Then all hell broke loose. The officers who had been sexually involved with the girl, who would not cooperate with prosecutors, ended their careers in law enforcement. Numerous other officers, including Chief Barker, received suspensions or other discipline. And now the city is negotiating a $1 million settlement demand from the victim.
Lopez's story suggests all hell should have broken loose years before. And if it had, a young Explorer would have been spared at least some of the abuse she endured.
Tualatin is far from the first police agency to stumble badly over such a culture of silence. It's a harmful byproduct of law enforcement's time-honored code of loyalty, which in Tualatin's case became distorted into blind loyalty.
To his credit, Barker has set up a new program of ethics and professional-responsibility workshops for Tualatin officers. It will be successful if it instills among the ranks an understanding of how a culture of silence weakens discipline, leads to misconduct and erodes public confidence -- not just in police work, but in any organization.
For its failure to embrace that understanding, a small Oregon city must now strive with great vigor to restore credibility to the lofty promise of "Tualatin's Protector."