PORTLAND — The Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office on Wednesday withdrew an outstanding warrant for a man whose violent arrest last summer in the courthouse has raised questions of alleged police brutality.
Chris Owen, the chief deputy district attorney, issued a statement saying he has initiated a “vigorous review” of the July 6 altercation.
The allegations were detailed by Joel Manley, a now-retired Clackamas County sheriff’s deputy who recently notified the county of his plans to sue for harassment and retaliation.
He said he was the target of two internal affairs inquiries and isolated by coworkers after he refused to participate in an off-color photo shoot at the courthouse last fall.
Manley, in his tort claim notice filed last month, said a fellow deputy asked to be placed in a courtroom with the defendant so he could beat the man.
The DA’s office said the sheriff did not open an internal inquiry into the claim until Tuesday — the same day Manley’s allegations were reported by The Oregonian/OregonLive.
Owen said the incident should have been reported “immediately in writing up the chain of command” at the Sheriff’s Office and the DA also should have been alerted.
The Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday did not respond to an email seeking comment.
The case involves criminal defendant Ronald Strasser, 59, who was in court on a trespassing case before Circuit Judge Jeffrey Jones.
Police reports and court records show that Deputy Dan O’Keeffe was in the courtroom providing security that day. Though he showed up for the hearing, Strasser did not acknowledge his identity when the clerk called his name, prompting the judge to issue an arrest warrant, according to the police report.
At that point, O’Keeffe went to arrest Strasser, who quickly ended up on the ground.
According to O’Keeffe’s report, he asked Strasser to put his hands behind his back. Strasser said “excuse me,” according to O’Keeffe, and pulled away, prompting the deputy to pull the man’s hair and drive him to the floor to gain control.
O’Keeffe said the man resisted by keeping his hands near or under his body. The deputy said he then delivered “10-12 knee strikes” to Strasser’s side and back.
“Strasser kept screaming” to the judge “that I was hurting him,” O’Keeffe wrote in the report.
Other deputies entered the courtroom and helped arrest Strasser on accusations of resisting arrest, interfering with a police officer and contempt of court. He was then booked into the Clackamas County Jail, where he was held for 56 days.
He did not show up at his next court date, triggering an arrest warrant.
Prosecutors have now withdrawn that warrant and are reviewing the entire case in light of Manley’s allegations.
Manley said Stasser’s encounter with O’Keeffe came a few weeks after O’Keeffe asked his supervisor, Sgt. Corey Smith, to be assigned to a courtroom where Strasser’s case would be heard so he could assault him. Strasser is known to deputies at the courthouse, Manley said.
At the time, Manley said he was in the sheriff’s courthouse office watching monitors of surveillance footage when Strasser appeared on one of the screens.
“I just want a reason to beat the crap out of him,” Manley recalled O’Keeffe saying that day. “He’s going to give it to me.”
Manley recalled that Smith said OK.
Manley said O’Keeffe bragged about the altercation later that day.
Manley said he did not immediately report the interaction to supervisors.
“You develop a sense of fear working (at the Sheriff’s Office) because you have to be silent,” he said. “If you speak out, they will isolate you and be hostile toward you.”
Smith and O’Keeffe did not respond to emails seeking comment.
The judge said it’s inappropriate for him to comment on a pending case. Jones said he was unaware that a deputy had asked to be assigned to his courtroom.
Strasser, according to court records, has a long criminal history that includes accusations of resisting arrest, robbery, kidnapping, assault, contempt of court, disorderly conduct, failing to appear in court and criminal trespassing. He is listed as a transient in court records but told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he rents a room in Southeast Portland.
O’Keeffe noted in his report that he’s had past dealings with Strasser, whose behavior he described as aggressive and intimidating.
Manley, who worked at the Sheriff’s Office for 19 years before retiring in March, said the agency typically develops plans to deal with difficult people. He said two or three deputies would be assigned to the courtroom in such a situation.
He said in Strasser’s case, O’Keeffe was the lone deputy.
Strasser, who prefers not to be called by his surname, said when his name was called in court, he acknowledged that he was there “on behalf of Mr. Strasser.” He said he was standing and “trying to engage Jeffrey Jones in some talk and he is ignoring me.”
He said O’Keeffe came to his left side and told him he was under arrest.
“I said well, what is the meaning of this? And tried to get Jeffrey Jones’ attention again and the next thing I knew, I was waking up on the floor and I had this man on top of me whaling the tar out of me.”
Julian Tavera was seated behind Strasser that day in court. Tavera, who said he lives in Forest Grove and is a friend of Strasser’s, said the encounter lasted a minute “but it seemed like forever.”
The deputy, he said, jumped on his friend “and beat the hell out of him.”
“The guy grabbed him, put him face down and then held him down a certain way so he couldn’t move his arms,” he said. “They were pretty rough on him.”
O’Keeffe is a veteran deputy who figured into the death of Deputy Bill Bowman at a training exercise at Camp Rilea in 2000. Bowman, 35, was shot in the head while playing a robber as he leaned out the upstairs window of a two-story house, according to police records.
The accident occurred after O’Keeffe, who was having trouble loading his rifle with a magazine full of blanks, used a magazine containing live rounds to test his weapon and lost track of the magazine. Deputy Kevin Vail then unknowingly loaded that magazine into his gun and fatally shot Bowman.
