Portland police chief steps down amid furor over accidental shooting

The police chief of Portland, Ore., has stepped down amid accusations that he tried to cover up the accidental shooting of a friend during a camping trip.

Larry O’Dea, 53, a 30-year veteran of the Police Department, first told an investigator that the friend, Robert Dempsey, had somehow shot himself in the back during the April trip to southeast Oregon. Dempsey, 54, who had to be airlifted to a hospital in Boise, Idaho, was treated and released.

Though O’Dea had denied any responsibility for the shooting in a statement to a local deputy sheriff, the chief later apologized to Dempsey for shooting him. Dempsey told the deputy, and O’Dea resigned Monday.

The story that emerged was that the chief had been getting a beer from a cooler when his rifle accidentally went off and wounded Dempsey, who was sitting nearby with others in the hunting and camping party. The campers were arrayed in a line of lawn chairs, drinking beer and using their guns to pick off sage rats running along a dirt bank.

Mayor Charlie Hales on Monday named a captain to take over for O’Dea, rather than one of four assistant chiefs, who are under investigation for not taking internal action, according to the Oregonian newspaper.

An investigation of the shooting by state police and the state Justice Department is due to be wrapped up soon, the Oregonian said. Investigators want to know why none of the assistant chiefs called for an internal investigation and why Hales – who learned the details from O’Dea – kept them secret.

O’Dea became the city’s 10th chief to depart in the last three decades. Some lasted hardly a year. Former Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Mark Kroeker, appointed to the Portland job in 1999, stayed until 2003. He resigned under pressure from Portlanders opposed to his hard-nosed policies and conservative beliefs, including his view that homosexuality is a perversion.

When O’Dea took over in January 2015, he promised to lead with integrity and to stay in office longer than some predecessors. “In the past,” he said, “changing chiefs has been like, ‘Off with their heads, out the door, who’s next?’”

Portland is the second major West Coast city recently to change police chiefs amid charges of misconduct. A scandal in Oakland resulted in the ouster of three police chiefs in nine days after an officer’s suicide led to accusations of sexual misconduct in the Police Department. Twenty-eight Oakland and suburban police officers have been implicated in the case involving a teenage sex worker.

Anderson is a special correspondent based in Seattle.

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UPDATES:

9:15 p.m.: This report has been revised throughout for additional details and for clarity.

This article originally published at 4:57p.m.