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| NEWS > 05 November 2005 |
Other related articles:
Police who posed with prisoner
Vancouver police have launched an internal investigation of five of its officers over a controversial photograph of a prisoner at a lockup in the city.
The photo, taken more than a week ago, has not been released, but police say it shows four officers posing with a man they had just arrested.
The suspect is wearing a white prison jumpsuit, is said to look distressed and has an injury to his face that he suffered during his arrest.
Police say one of the officers is holding the man by his head or neck, and all of the officers are smiling.
'Questionable... Read more
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 Article sourced from
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Oregan live.com, Portland, OR,
05 November 2005
This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.
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FBI probe looks at Police Bure
Corruption inquiry Agents examine Portland's oversight of secondhand shops accused of selling stolen items
The FBI is conducting a public corruption investigation into what city officials acknowledge is the Portland Police Bureau's oversight of secondhand stores accused of selling millions of dollars in stolen merchandise.
Since 2001, the FBI has uncovered a massive black market in new stolen goods shuffling through the shops. After hearing concerns from federal authorities about the conduct of two detectives assigned to monitor the stores, Police Chief Derrick Foxworth reassigned the investigators and opened an internal investigation in late September.
Beth Anne Steele, a spokeswoman for the Portland FBI, on Friday confirmed the federal corruption probe but declined to provide details.
It is unclear whether the two detectives are the focus of the FBI inquiry.
Foxworth said Friday that he has been in regular contact with Robert Jordan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon, about the investigation. Last week, he said "serious allegations" had been made against Police Bureau members.
The chief said the Police Bureau has "coordinated our internal investigation around their criminal investigation." He declined to answer further questions.
Foxworth has reassigned William Carter and Steven Swan, the two detectives assigned to monitor the city's dozens of pawn and secondhand stores.
Mayor Tom Potter said Friday that Foxworth told him about the federal corruption investigation a couple of weeks ago, but would not comment on how far the inquiry reaches inside the Police Bureau.
"Like the chief, I hope they're going to do a thorough and fair investigation," Potter said.
Public corruption cases -- listed as the FBI's fourth priority after terrorism, espionage and cybercrime -- target government officials who abuse the public trust. According to the FBI's Web site, law enforcement corruption accounts for more than one-third of corruption investigations.
These types of investigations are of particular interest to Jordan, who has a history of working public corruption cases. In 2000, before taking over the Portland field office, he was chief of the FBI's integrity in government and civil rights unit.
Steele, the FBI spokeswoman, said it was "premature" to assess whether the inquiry would result in charges.
"We are looking at any allegations there may be," she said, "and determining whether or not they are credible."
Internal police documents obtained last week by The Oregonian show that high-ranking police officials were warned by a beat cop and a sergeant about the high volume of illicit goods, new and still in their original packaging, flowing through secondhand stores. Often, the items ended up on eBay. Police did nothing to stop it.
Raid sparks inquiry
The FBI's corruption probe stems from its August raid of 10 secondhand stores, whose owners have been accused in federal court records of trafficking large volumes of stolen merchandise. The crackdown was the third federal raid of the stores.
The FBI has targeted the shops in a series of investigations that began in 2001. In that time, Portland police have not cited a single secondhand shop for peddling stolen goods. The city has nearly 140 such businesses.
The federal investigation into the stores raised questions about the Portland detectives' relationship with shop owners. An affidavit in the case quotes a store owner as saying one of the Portland detectives had tipped her off about the FBI's ongoing investigation. According to the document, a government informant quoted Toni Kotek, co-owner of Cash on the Run, 5939 S.E. 82nd Ave., as saying she and her husband had been "warned" about the investigation by a Portland "pawn detective" who said "the dragons are out." The detective was not named.
According to the affidavit, the informant "learned from Kotek the term 'dragon' was the detective's code word for 'federal law enforcement officers.' "
During a Sept. 29 interview with The Oregonian, Foxworth said he was "very disturbed" that his detectives had not done more to stop the flow of stolen goods through secondhand stores.
Foxworth said he expects officers to conduct at least "some sort of limited inquiry" if they walk into a shop and see boxes of new merchandise being sold in the open.
Goods openly traded
The chief said the city's secondhand ordinance, which does not regulate the trade of new merchandise, is no excuse for not policing suspicious goods coming into the stores.
"We can't just sit here and throw our hands up in the air and say there is nothing we can do," he said. "That's part of being an investigator: to be inquisitive, to investigate, to look further, to look beyond the obvious."
He added: "We have theft by receiving on the books."
Documents filed in federal court show secondhand store operators openly bought and sold new merchandise, with no fear of being stopped by detectives. In taped conversations with undercover FBI informants, store owners bragged about how the shoplifter-to-storefront-to-eBay black market operated unchecked by Portland police.
According to the court record, Kotek said even if a hot KitchenAid mixer came into her store, it would be hard to prove where it came from. She said it wouldn't matter if Fred Meyer filed a report documenting the loss of 20 KitchenAid mixers this month, because they don't keep track of serial numbers. The mixers retail for about $400.
The undercover informant told Kotek that he was worried about the detectives knowing about his wholesale business. Don't worry, Kotek assured him.
"They already know and there's nothing they can do about it," she said. "It's amazing. Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Unless they have physically on videotape that the person went in and stole that item, and brought it to me and sold it to me, they can't. There's nothing they can do."
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