PORTLAND — Portland’s mayor placed Police Chief Michael Marshman and his assistant, Lt. Michael Leasure, on paid administrative leave late Friday after an internal bureau matter prompted an investigation of the chief.
Constantin Severe, director of the Independent Police Review Division, said the head of police internal affairs informed him late Thursday afternoon about a matter involving the chief.
“Based on the information, we knew we had to do an investigation,” Severe said.
Severe said the allegations don’t have anything to do with a civilian, describing them as “an internal bureau matter.”
Severe and the city auditor alerted Mayor Ted Wheeler by the end of the day Thursday. The city’s Independent Police Review Division handles all internal investigations of police supervisors.
The chief and his executive assistant were put on paid leave around 5 p.m. Friday.
“It is the mayor’s hope that the investigation will be expedited and that this matter will be resolved quickly,” according to a press release from the mayor’s spokesman Michael Cox.
“Both Chief Marshman and Lieutenant Leasure have the right to due process and are assumed to be innocent of any wrongdoing while the investigation is underway.”
The mayor’s office did not divulge what the investigation was about.
Assistant Chief Chris Davis, who was recently named to the chief’s office after serving as Central Precinct commander, has been appointed to serve as acting chief.
Marshman has led the bureau since late June, when former Mayor Charlie Hales named him to fill the top cop’s job after the resignation and retirement of Larry O’Dea, who was under criminal investigation at the time for an off-duty shooting of a friend. When he was sworn in, Marshman pledged to work to restore public trust in the police bureau.
Leasure had been the subject of an internal police investigation about 1 1/2 years ago stemming from allegations that he had made disparaging and inappropriate remarks about women in the bureau’s personnel division when he worked as a sergeant there. Some of the complaints were sustained, but it’s unclear if he faced any discipline. Since then, he was promoted to lieutenant.
On Thursday, the Police Bureau put up Leasure’s photo on its Facebook page, along with a picture of him from his college days playing basketball for Gonzaga University when he played for the team in the 1999 NCAA tournament against Stanford University.
Since he was elected as mayor, Wheeler has said he intends to conduct a national search for police chief and confirmed that’s his intent during his state of the city address to Portland’s City Club Friday.
