FBI review may settle suspicions

BACKSTORY: Claims of cop-involved death revive a pivotal corruption case

By Nick Budnick

The Portland Tribune, Feb 27, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (19 Reader comments)

JIM CLARK / P0RTLAND TRIBUNE

District Attorney Michael Schrunk, along with current Police Chief Rosie Sizer, has asked the FBI to review the investigation of a 25-year-old police corruption case after an informant and others raised suspicion of an officer-involved death.

Scott Deppe long ago made peace with his starring role in the biggest police scandal in modern Portland history.

It was a quarter of a century ago and, he said, he has gone on to lead a productive life as a father, auto dealer and mortgage broker.

Another cop in his unit who also resigned in disgrace – they were nicknamed “Starsky and Hutch” – now is with Frito-Lay’s manufacturing plant in Vancouver, Wash., and not too long ago was named Oregon Safety Director of the Year by the Oregon Trucking Association.

Still another former colleague owns one of the biggest commercial roofing companies in Seattle.

“We all changed our lives,” Deppe said.

Some 25 years ago, Deppe’s unit of the Portland Police Bureau was caught planting drugs, fabricating evidence and pocketing money from drug dealers as well as the public till.

What bothers Deppe now is the recent insinuation that behind the scandal was a larger one that authorities missed, one that may involve at least one body. Deppe agrees that the investigation of the scandal was a coverup – just not the one people are suggesting.

The real scandal, he said, is that he and four fellow cops were made an example of, while investigators turned a blind eye toward other officers’ wrongdoing. “They didn’t want to know” about other cops, he said. “They told us that.”

Welcome to a time when the line blurred between Portland cops and crooks. If ever fully detailed, it would bare the inner workings of the city, said investigative author Carlton Smith, calling it the “Rosetta stone of Portland politics and police.”

At the very least, the story of the Special Investigations Division is a cautionary tale of what happens when police and informants get too cozy. It’s also one that, though largely forgotten by the public, has had a lasting effect.

From the scandal’s wreckage rose three Portland police chiefs, a Multnomah County sheriff and a district attorney, Michael Schrunk, who has served for 26 years.

It’s newsworthy now because Schrunk and current Police Chief Rosie Sizer recently asked the FBI to review the investigation their agencies conducted a quarter-century ago.

The unusual request was sparked by new suspicion from a Schrunk predecessor, Des Connall, that the 1981 death of an investigator who researched SID wrongdoing may have been a police-involved murder.

Not only that, but an ex-con informant for Deppe’s unit reportedly has offered to lead authorities to a body he claims to have helped dispose of for a cop.

So, did Schrunk miss something?

It’s a question that nags Smith, who reported on the scandal for Willamette Week 25 years ago, was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist while at The Seattle Times, and has written about 20 true-crime books.

“This thing has bugged me for years,” he said. “Something about it just didn’t seem right.”

The case also sticks in the mind of federal Judge Robert E. Jones, who once tried to write a book about it. The scandal “had the makings of a great novel – or a movie,” he said, adding, “I was totally shocked. … The good guys turned out to be bad guys.”

Trouble brews to flash point

In the Portland of the late 1970s, two groups fought for dominance. One comprised motorcycle clubs like the Outsiders and the Gypsy Jokers.

The other group was the Portland Police Bureau, led by the narcotics officers in the Special Investigations Division – who believed the bikers were opening up a major amphetamine shipping point in Portland.

The two camps brawled, sometimes with clubs. At one point, the bikers reportedly had “contracts” out on all the SID cops.

“Half the time we were afraid to go home,” Deppe recalled. “We didn’t know who was following us.”

The animosity was mutual, Deppe said, and after they killed one of his colleagues, he felt homicidal urges toward the bikers. “If I got the chance I would (have),” he said. “But as far as following through – no.”

Mayor Tom Potter, then a police lieutenant, described the time as “kind of like the Wild West.”

Inside the bureau, it was wild, too. Erv McGeachy recalled that when he was a vice cop in 1979, he investigated a fellow cop and some local politicians – he won’t say who.

His fellow officers discouraged him, McGeachy said, and at one point a sergeant came up behind him and put a finger to McGeachy’s head to simulate a handgun, saying “bang.” When his superiors learned of McGeachy’s probe, he said, they transferred him.

Records show that when investigators later asked McGeachy about SID misconduct, he referred the investigators to a book called “Prince of the City,” about a massive police corruption scandal in New York City.

To the average member of the public, these internal dynamics were largely invisible. The Special Investigations Division was considered “the elite,” recalled retired officer C.W. Jensen.

In December 1979, SID cops raided the Outsiders Motorcycle Club in St. Johns. A biker killed one officer, David Crowther.

Prosecutors increasingly heard reports of cops stealing money and planting drugs – including on two informants of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

Over the course of the subsequent investigation, five officers resigned: Neil Gearheart, William “Lenny” Dugan, Frank O’Donnell, Jim Sweatman and Deppe, who later was convicted of using forged prescriptions to obtain narcotics.

Deppe admitted that he and Crowther had brought drugs with them to the St. Johns club, to plant on the bikers. Gearheart admitted he had fabricated the information justifying the search warrant.

In return for specifying which cases were tainted, Schrunk’s office agreed not to prosecute Deppe’s colleagues.

With their cooperation, 59 convictions were overturned and 35 pending cases dismissed based on admissions of stealing dope, stealing money, planting drugs on people to make convictions, and committing perjury on affidavits and in trial.

In one case, four officers admitted splitting $10,000 – about $27,000 in today’s dollars.

The newly elected Schrunk realized he’d inherited quite a problem.

“There were people who knew (about the corruption) and wouldn’t talk,” he recalled. “And there were the people who should have known – and didn’t know.”

Now the FBI’s involved

Schrunk and Sizer recently asked the FBI to review the original investigation based on recent columns by Portland Tribune columnist Phil Stanford, regarding Connall’s suspicion of a potential police-involved death.

Connall has asked Schrunk to investigate the December 1981 death of his top investigator, Earl Son, who’d spent eight years as a homicide detective with the sheriff’s office.

Son turned up dead of a gunshot wound shortly after telling people he felt he’d proven that at least one police officer was involved in two deaths.

The 70-year-old Son recently had undergone treatment for prostate cancer. The death was ruled an apparent suicide, but Connall now wonders whether it was murder.

Schrunk and Sizer are not strangers to the context of Connall’s suspicions.

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