A city employee intends to sue Eugene and Lane County over an incident with Eugene police that he alleges occurred because he is black.
Cortez Jordan’s lawyer, Kevin Lafky, filed notices of the lawsuits Friday, which stem from an incident last September when a Eugene police officer and an off-duty Lane County sheriff’s deputy stopped Jordan while he was walking along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard with four friends.
Officer Wayne Dorman searched Jordan, while his four friends, who are white, were not searched. Dorman later said he suspected Jordan was carrying a weapon because of his physical demeanor.
The Lane County District Attorney’s office launched a two-month investigation that upheld the legality of the search and concluded Jordan’s complaint of racial profiling
was unjustified.
Jordan’s aunt, Marilyn Mays,
president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, left her position as the city’s diversity coordinator in January and announced her plans to move out of town, citing the city’s handling of her nephew’s complaint and the difficulties combating racism in the city as reasons for leaving.
The notices allege police violated Jordan’s civil rights and caused him emotional distress. Lafky told The Register-Guard he will begin negotiations with the city about the complaints in the coming weeks.
“It will be up to the city to decide if it wants to proceed with meaningful negotiations,” Lafky said. “If negotiations are not successful, the next step is a lawsuit.”
Ward 3 City Councilor David Kelly, a member of the Eugene Human Rights Commission, said the HRC has not been formally involved with Jordan’s case but is following the
situation closely.
“A great many of the HRC
commissioners, myself included, were concerned and indeed devastated about the treatment that Mr. Jordan received, but the commission has not taken any specific position,” Kelly said.
The Eugene Police Commission is currently examining complaint process models and different methods for citizen oversight and is expected to have recommendations for policy and procedural changes by September, according to the commission’s Main Tasks and Tentative Timeline. They are examining these models in the hope of enabling the city to deal more effectively with complaints made about police.
In 1998, Eugene voted against a ballot measure that would have established an independent external police review board. The idea has since gained more support as Mayor Kitty Piercy touted the formation of such a board during her Jan. 3 State of the City address.
Kelly said the HRC is closely following the work of various community groups like Communities United for Better Policing, which was formed in late 2004 to work with the Eugene Police Department to examine concerns and create action items to address any perceived problems.
The group consists of nine former members of Eugene’s Racial Profiling Task Force who resigned in protest following Jordan’s allegations, including Police Chief Robert Lehner, Eugene Police Department analyst Linda Phelps and other community members.
The Eugene Police Commission contracted with the Police Assessment Resource Center to research and analyze different complaint models after the City Council allotted $65,000 for the task in July.
The center’s report, which outlined 30 possible oversight mechanisms, was released Feb. 2, and since then two community meetings have been held to verse the public on the findings.
The Eugene Police Commission has two committees that will meet numerous times in March and April to give the public opportunities to discuss the complaint process and make suggestions for improvements.

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