A federal judge has dismissed a civil-rights and wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Michael Reinoehl, a self-proclaimed anti-fascist activist and a homicide suspect who was killed by Washington police and federal agents.
Reinoehl, 48, was wanted for the Aug. 29, 2020, shooting death of Aaron Danielson, who was part of a pro-Trump caravan that had responded to violent protests in Portland sparked by the murder that spring of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
The family alleged the officers were negligent when they killed Reinoehl, saying they rushed to arrest him without a plan, used excessive force and violated his civil rights.
However, in a detailed 50-page opinion issued last month by U.S. District Judge David Estudillo, the court concluded the agents did have a plan, and while it was not ideal, it was adequate enough to defeat the family’s negligence claim.
“This court’s role is not to decide if the … plan was a good plan, or a complete or thorough one,” Estudillo concluded. “That is the kind of second-guessing” the law does not allow.
The deaths of Danielson and Reinoehl fueled political controversy at the time, with President Donald Trump, then in his first term, calling Reinoehl’s shooting appropriate “retribution.”
In 2020, Danielson’s death was caught on camera, and the suspect was identified as Reinoehl, a veteran of Portland summer protests who cited military experience in interviews. Police in Portland learned he had left Oregon and fled with his family to a home in Lacey after receiving threats.
Multnomah County officials issued a warrant for his arrest on Sept. 3 and contacted the U.S. Marshal’s Office in Washington, which assigned the case to its Violent Offender Task Force based in Pierce County. The federal task force officers included Pierce County sheriff’s deputies James Oleole and Craig Gocha, Lakewood police Officer Michael Merrill and state corrections officer Jacob Whitehurst. It was overseen by Supervising Deputy U.S. Marshal Craig McCluskey and team leader Ryan Kimmel.
They came up with a “hasty” plan for the arrest and, in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles, set up surveillance around the suspect’s home.
According to court documents and police reports, Reinoehl exited the house carrying a backpack the officers believed may have contained a rifle and walked toward his car.
The task force officers later said their radios were not working properly because they were using a Pierce County frequency in Lacey, which is in Thurston County. Regardless, two of the task force officers — Merrill and Oleole — moved to arrest Reinoehl, springing the arrest trap early.
They drove up to pin Reinoehl’s car against the curb and Reinoehl reacted, the officers said, by “reaching for something,” although neither officer said he had a clear view of the suspect’s hands. Four members of the task force responded by opening fire. A total of 37 rounds were fired, all by officers.
Reinoehl had a handgun in the pocket of his pants, according to police, but it was not fired and did not have a round in the chamber. Reinoehl’s backpack contained a disassembled assault-style rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, according to reports.
Thurston County prosecutors had also found the shooting legally justified but were critical of actions leading to it. Estudillo underscored those conclusions.
State prosecutors “raised serious concerns” about the foreseeable communications problems and the federal task force’s failure to notify the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office of the operation, which could have resulted “in officer-on-officer fire” and which posed the risk of gunfire hitting neighbors and bystanders. One child was struck by debris and bullets hit cars and houses.
Reinoehl’s family sued in July 2023, alleging the officers were primed to use violence during the arrest and were in a hurry to force a confrontation during the arrest.
“The actions of the officers, before, during, and after the shooting, show that they either had no plan to arrest the man without injury, made no effort to follow such a plan, or planned to use deadly force from the start,” according to the lawsuit.
The family also said the officers failed to properly identify themselves and that Reinoehl could easily have mistaken them for “the armed and violent far-right extremists who Reinoehl feared had recently shot up his home (while his children were inside) and made true threats against his life,” the lawsuit alleged.
In his opinion, Estudillo concluded federal task force officers — including state police deputized into it — were acting as federal agents and can’t be sued under the civil-rights statute cited by the family.
Moreover, Estudillo found that given the time frame under which the agents were operating, the hastily concocted arrest plan was sufficient.
“At this stage of the litigation, after fulsome discovery, it is clear that there was some plan to arrest Reinoehl and some command structure,” the judge concluded. “To be clear, this is not meant as an endorsement of the (task force’s) planning for or execution of this operation.”
