Only after being prodded more than ten years later did Oregon State Police begin an inquiry into a well-known instance of homophobic harassment by supervisors and members of its crowd control unit.
According to documents obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive, the investigation started when a different trooper, who was disciplined for making a different homophobic comment in June 2019, questioned why supervisors had never been disciplined for more worrisome behavior years prior.
This year, the news outlet requested a copy of the investigation. Since there had been no discipline as a result of the investigation, state police rejected the request for public documents. Following an appeal by The Oregonian/OregonLive, the state Department of Justice mandated the records’ release.
According to Deputy Attorney General Lisa M. Udland, the disclosure ban does not apply in situations where disclosure is necessary for the public interest or when the agency decides that withholding information would damage the public’s trust in the agency.
This is the most recent instance of unequal treatment by state police that The Oregonian/OregonLive has uncovered, and the investigation was only started after a trooper who was disciplined made identical misbehavior claims that had previously gone unanswered.
In this instance, a state police professional standards inquiry discovered that following a training day at Camp Rilea in 2005 or 2006, supervisors and state police Mobile Response Team personnel conducted a fake trial.
According to the investigative report, they targeted a fellow trooper because he was interested in American Idol and because he had a flowery cover on his bunk bed.
According to the article, those involved set up a fictitious courthouse and prosecuted the trooper, charging him with male homosexuality, which is a highly derogatory and disgusting slang term.
According to investigators, another trooper hid male pornographic pictures in the targeted team member’s pants pocket during the trial. The pictures were subsequently taken out and used against him as evidence during the trial.
Only in July 2019—shortly after Trooper Peter Arnautov was placed on leave and was being investigated for his own remark—did the trial claims come to light. During a break in firearms training, he once told other police, “I hate gays,” which led to his eventual termination.
The union attorney for Arnautov contested his dismissal in both a mitigation hearing prior to his firing and an arbitration session following it, citing superiors who were never reprimanded for arguably worse behavior.
Former and present members of the Mobile Response Team kept the mock trial a secret for a long time; some still call it the “famous trial” in private.
According to state police, on July 31, 2019, the police union filed the first complaint against the agency over the trial. Without conducting a thorough investigation, the agency’s professional standards division ended the Mobile Response Team probe by October 1, 2019, citing a lack of reliable data to proceed.
Late that month, however, state police union members handed along a list of possible witnesses who had not yet been questioned. In addition to the three individuals already interrogated, the professional standards section restarted the inquiry and spoke with nine more.
In support of keeping the inquiry confidential earlier this year, Senior Assistant Attorney General Sylvia Crammond claimed that the mock trial had occurred a long time ago, was not a part of a pattern, and that state police leaders were unaware of it until the 2019 complaint.
However, she strongly denounced any manifestations of prejudice against any protected group.
According to Crammond, this position is evidenced by the agency’s investigation of the incident, even though several years had gone by and the majority of the participants had already quit their jobs.
Getting too far
The trooper who was put on trial stated that he thought his coworkers were criticizing him for not spending more time with the team, but he informed investigators that what happened wasn’t in good taste in the way they expressed it.
After a day of training, he had been watching American Idol. When he returned to his sleeping accommodations the next day, team mates informed authorities that his flower-print bedding was gone and his bunk was roped off with crime scene tape.
He had a search warrant requiring him to appear in court hanging on his locker.
The investigative report stated that then-Sgt. Jeff Lanz was the prosecution and Michael Peterson, the team’s commander and lieutenant at the time, was the judge.
According to the targeted trooper, Peterson and Lanz planned the trial in a state police training classroom.
A fictitious bailiff searched the trooper using an unidentifiable electronic equipment that mimicked a search wand. The investigation found that the pornographic photographs were hidden in a pocket of his cargo pants during the search.
When questioned about his personal life, the recently divorced trooper informed investigators that Lanz had used the trooper’s divorce as more evidence against him.
The trooper was sentenced to jump into a pond at the coastal camp after Peterson found him guilty of using the derogatory insult to imply that he was gay. The investigation also found that Peterson punished Lanz for intruding too much into the trooper’s private life by ordering him to jump in the pond.
According to the investigation, the trooper on trial claimed he was angry at Arnautov for bringing up the issue so long after the event, but he had no animosity toward Lanz or Peterson and did not wish to lodge a complaint.
Since Peterson had retired years before the investigation began and Lanz was no longer employed by state police, the government concluded the case in the spring of 2020.
When he was accused of official wrongdoing and entered a guilty plea in 2014, Lanz, who had been captain of the state police professional standards division, ultimately resigned. He had been routinely filling up his family car at a commercial gas station that state police cars use. He received a year of probation and a three-day prison sentence.
Its crowd control unit, the Oregon State Police Mobile Response Team, practiced at Camp Rilea on the Oregon coast. After training in a classroom of a building on the grounds known as “The Starship,” the simulated trial was conducted at night, according to the study.Oregon State
RECOUNTED SLUR FROM MILITARY WORK
Eric Judah, who was a sergeant at the time but retired as a captain at the end of September 2021, was identified in the investigative report as the source of the homophobic insult used throughout the trial.
Mark Banks, a former head of the state police union, was one of the Mobile Response Team members who recognized Judah as the origin of the moniker. According to the report, Banks claimed that in order to be examined as a witness in the investigation, he had to email the professional standards captain twice.
According to the report, Judah initially told investigators he didn’t remember the trial but that he would have been at Camp Rilea and part of the crowd control squad at the time.
Upon being recognized by others as the original user of the phrase, Judah admitted to investigators in a follow-up interview that he had described to fellow members of the crowd control team how one of his sergeants used the slur during his time in the Marine Corps.
According to the report, Judah stated, “I am aware that some of them repeated that because of the story and some people thought it was funny.”
However, according to the report, Judah said that he had told the military account independently of the trial.
On the morning of the trial, Banks informed investigators that Judah had used the homophobic word when sharing the military anecdote. After training, the simulated trial took place at night.
In his report, Lt. Andrew McCool, the main investigator, pointed out that Judah had not personally coined the phrase, had no firsthand knowledge of the trial, and had not recommended its use during the trial.
McCool came to the conclusion Judah did not plan the trial and was not present.
Judah admitted to investigators that he remembered someone on the squad being scolded for watching American Idol, but he clarified it was all he could recall.
Others explained their roles in the trial to investigators.
Chris Schinnerer, a relatively new member of the Mobile Response Team at the time, claimed that while off duty, he and another trooper, Jeff Smith, purchased pornography that was used in the trial from an adult store. He stated that he was uncertain whether or not they were instructed to purchase the porn.
I was really conflicted about it. I used to watch American Idol. Will I face harassment or exclusion if I voice that opinion? Schinnerer told investigators.
Schinnerer said Trooper Scott Vaughn was the mock bailiff, screening people as they entered, and Peterson was among those verbally harassing the trooper for having watched American Idol.
Trooper Jeremy Gunter said he was the defense lawyer at the mock trial and that both he and the targeted trooper had to do pushups when they lost.
Now-Maj. Michael Turner, who oversees the state police Gaming and Business Services Bureau, was a member of the Mobile Response Team then and attended the trial, according to the report.
Turner told investigators he wasn t certain who was present for the trial and couldn t recall with certainty if any were the team supervisors.
In the end, McCool closed the investigation in March 2020, according to the report.
He claimed to have discovered instances of improper behavior in the workplace, such as remarks, deeds, or behaviors by a person or group that embarrass, humiliate, threaten, disparage, degrade, or show disrespect for a coworker, manager, subordinate, volunteer, client, contractor, or guest.
But he determined none of the witness recollections provided enough information to penalize anyone involved.
The 15-year-plus time period that had elapsed since the incident proved problematic when it came to the ability of our employees to recall any specifics with any level of certainty, he wrote.
He also noted that the main instigators Peterson and Lanz were gone.
Had the offending employees continued to be employed with OSP, McCool wrote, it s likely they would have been found to have violated state police policy of maintaining a professional workplace.
Arnautov, the trooper fighting his discipline for making a homophobic comment in 2019, had been unaware of the mock trial until he shared with other troopers that it was Judah, the captain in his chain of command, who had taken his badge and gun and put him on paid leave.Other troopers chuckled and told him how ironic that was considering Judah had shared a homophobic slur that ended up being used as the central charge in the Mobile Crisis Team s mock trial years earlier.
At the end of September 2020, an arbitrator in Arnautov s firing case refused to overturn his termination, apparently unaware of what the internal investigation uncovered about the mock trial.
The MRT training hazing incident allegedly occurred 15 years ago and is currently under investigation, the arbitrator wrote. Accordingly, the facts of that incident have not yet been fully determined, and it should not be viewed as a comparator.
— Maxine Bernstein writes about criminal justice and federal courts. Reach her at 503-221-8212,[email protected], follow her on X@maxoregonian, or onLinkedIn.
Your support is essential to our journalism. Sign up for OregonLive.com now.
Stories by
Maxine Bernstein
-
Lawyer for St. Helens High choir teacher accused of sex abuse presses for hearing to disqualify judge
-
Federal judge finds city of Corvallis retaliated against city councilor for exercising free speech
-
St. Helens High choir teacher s release hearing postponed after his defense lawyer raises concern about judge
-
Woman who concealed drugs in bra during visits to federal prison in Oregon gets her own prison term
-
Convicted murderer Mark Wilson walks out of prison after just over 35 years behind bars in notorious central Oregon killings
