In the fall of 2005, Fouad Kaady was driving through Estacada, when he accidentally ignited a fire by lighting a cigarette near a gas can beside him. In the process of ripping off his burning clothes while driving, he hit several other vehicles.
He torched the upper half of his body.
A Sandy police officer and a Clackamas County Sheriff’s deputy arrived as Kaady was sitting on a corner, stark naked, bleeding and in shock. According to various reports, the Sandy police officer Tasered Kaady twice because he had no gloves and didn’t want to get blood on himself. Afterwards, Kaady was shot to death for allegedly threatening the officers. Twelve witnesses reported that no threat was made.
When Jerry Atlansky moved to Estacada and heard this story, he was compelled to contact a top trainer for the Oregon State Police to figure out how their policy could allow this. According to the trainer, the policy requires an officer to assist another in the arrest when he or she is repeatedly kicking and/or beating a restrained person. Afterward, the officer can report the incident up through the chain of command.
Not satisfied with this policy, Atlansky decided he had no choice but to create an oversight board.
“The vast majority of cops do a good job. In every occupation there are some people that are unfit. It’s twice as dangerous for the public when officers are poorly trained,” Atlansky said.
In 2006, he founded the Oregon State Police-Independent Citizens Review Board. It is the nation’s only all-volunteer, private citizens’ group dedicated to stamping out police killings all over the nation. Their program was eventually attached to Senate Bill 111 Police Use of Deadly Physical Force, passed in 2007.
The program pledges to save millions of dollars from litigation to better fund law enforcement. It requires law enforcement supervisors and line officers to intervene when an officer exhibits excessive force, arrest the offending officer involved and criminally prosecute him or her if the excessive force causes a person’s death. According to Atlansky, not a single person in law enforcement has implied that their program was unreasonable since it was created.
However, Oregon law enforcement has been slow to enact it. Following Kaady’s killing, Atlansky repeatedly attempted to contact police superiors and Governor Ted Kulongoski for months with no response.
When he contacted the attorney general, he was told, “We can’t do anything. Contact the governor. Best of luck.”
Atlansky wanted to obtain documents from the OSP through the Freedom of Information Act, but when he got a response letter over six months later, he was told they didn’t have what he was looking for. He sent another letter to the governor and attorney general asking for OSP Superintendent Ron Ruecker to step down and took out an ad in the Oregonian to implement Atlansky’s program. Ruecker resigned in December of 2006 without making the ad.
Atlansky can only wonder what would have happened if he had. Since then, there have been a number of controversies, including the 2006 killing of James Chasse Jr. and January killing of Aaron Campbell.
Chasse, a man with a reported mental disability and a limp, was chased down and beaten to death by police officers for reportedly urinating in public. His lung was punctured and his ribs were fractured in 26 places.
Campbell, unarmed, was shot in the back with an AR-15 rifle. Despite clearing the officers of criminal wrongdoing, a grand jury said the death was “needless.”
Currently, the officer who killed Campbell, Ronald Frashour, is waiting to find out if he will be fired. The Portland Police Union is defending him, saying he followed policy.
Atlansky wonders why the policy hasn’t been amended when there are effective, non-lethal alternatives to guns and Tasers. He says the Talon, a device that shoots an unbreakable nylon, high-tensile fiber net with a diameter of 16 feet, at a speed of 15 feet per second, has been on the market for a number of years. The device is produced by Advanced Weapons Technology and is available at www.lawenforcementmall.com. According to a brochure for the device, it can be activated by pressing a trigger and subdue a perpetrator in a fraction of a second. The question is, why don’t more officers use this?
“Some top officials want to put fear in the minds of the public,” Atlansky said.
He suggests solving this problem by using Multnomah County’s Wapato Jail, which hasn’t had a single prisoner in three years, to house all convicted officers. Atlansky believes it will protect these officers from civilian inmates and regulate the current fear-mongering policies.
Atlansky pledges persistence in eradicating killing at the hands of police.
“You can slow us down, but there’s no way in heaven you can stop us,” he said.
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