Jail worker investigated

Web postings brag about beating man

By Nick Budnick

The Portland Tribune, Sep 7, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (64 Reader comments)

BOARDS.CITYOFHEROES.COM

In posts on an Internet message board, a Multnomah County Corrections official bragged about crushing an inmate’s eye socket and about how enjoyable it is to Taser people.

Multnomah County sheriff’s office investigators are scrutinizing a corrections officer at the downtown jail for Internet postings made from his work computer in which he gloats about how fun it is to Taser people and brags about having crushed one inmate’s eye socket.

David B. Thompson, 30, recently wrote on an Internet message board that one of the more pleasurable parts of his job is when he gets to use his Taser, thus exposing people to the agonizing sensation of 50,000 volts of electricity pulsing through their bodies.

“Seeing someone get TASER’d is second only to being the guy pulling the trigger,” Thompson wrote on an Internet message board Aug. 25. “That is money. Puts a smile on your face.”

Asked by the Portland Tribune to review the posts and comment, Sheriff Bernie Giusto launched an internal investigation of Thompson that will examine, among other things, whether he lied while accusing an inmate of assaulting him as a way to justify having injured the inmate.

Giusto called the posts reprehensible and unfortunate. “I don’t want my profession represented like that,” he said, while vowing a full probe. “There’s simply no place for it.”

The posts in question appeared under the name “Trafalgar” on a message board for players of a subscriber-only, Internet role-playing game called City of Heroes.

In the game, players create characters and choose from an array of superpowers with which to fight villains. The Tribune was tipped off to the posts by a game player from Portland.

According to the Web site, Trafalgar posted 1,738 times on the message board since January of this year. Trafalgar boasted several times that he was posting his messages from his work computer.

“Going home from work,” he wrote last week. “See you (expletive) after mah weekend. (Yeah I only do this at work).”

In another post, while discussing having unwittingly viewed a pornographic gag video supplied to him by another player, he wrote: “You know what is really f’d up, I’m a cop and this is in the office. The other guys laughed hysterically.”

On Aug. 30, within hours of being supplied a Web address for the posts by the Tribune, sheriff’s officials confirmed that Thompson’s MCSO Internet account had been used to access the City of Heroes message board on the days in which Trafalgar made the posts in question.

Among other things, the investigation will determine whether Thompson complied with the agency’s policy on Internet usage. If he is responsible for every Trafalgar post, then it would suggest that the four-day-per-week employee cranked out approximately 13 posts per shift.

In one recent 24-hour period, he posted a total of 64 times across 13 different conversational threads. The time he spent posting does not include time he actually spent playing the video game at work.

Even without the official confirmation that the Trafalgar posts were coming from Thompson’s account, it would have been easy to deduce the game player’s identity.

In various posts he describes himself as being from the “City of Roses,” of working in a maximum security jail in Oregon, of being a Taser trainer with 10 years on the job, and of having a wife who is a teacher.

Thompson is a 10-year sheriff’s office employee stationed at the Multnomah County Detention Center, the only maximum security county jail in Oregon. He is a Taser trainer for the agency, and his wife teaches for the Hillsboro School District.

When contacted by the Tribune at work and asked about the Trafalgar posts on the City of Heroes site, Thompson at first responded by saying twice, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Then, before hanging up the phone, he said, “I’m familiar with that game, but I’m not going to talk to you about it or anything else.”

Post references incident

In his City of Heroes posts, Trafalgar did not sound like a superhero — especially during a discussion last week of the use of force in real-life law enforcement.

The discussion took place with a fellow player who identified himself as an ex-cop and another who said he is a former store security guard.

For instance, having described himself as a Taser trainer, Trafalgar wrote that “Big mouth skank = perfect TASER candidate.”

When another player remarked that Trafalgar is lucky to be able to Taser people, he responded, “Yes I am. My job is sweet sometimes.”

He does not paint a flattering portrait of law enforcement. For instance, he expressed bewilderment why someone would “back talk” an officer who “has a bunch of buddies who wanna beat someone down so they have a story to tell.”

He described Portland as a place where citizens usually march to protest police brutality, but “we had a hosedragger lay a monkeystomping on some cat on camera and nobody said anything.”

Trafalgar’s post appeared to allude to a recent incident caught on a security camera in which a Portland firefighter kicked a man at a residential hotel.

Responding to the “camera” comment by Trafalgar, a self-described ex-cop in North Carolina boasted of having “taken down” a “brother that was hyped up on PCP” with six other officers. “No cameras around tho,” he wrote, adding a smiley face to punctuate the comment.

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