Eugene Weekly : 06.30.05

Lawsuits Threatento Eat EPD's Lunch

City seeks to keep 'embarrassing' documents out of public eye.

BY ALAN PITTMAN

The city of Eugene may just want to forget about Roger Magaña, the Eugene police officer convicted last summer of sexually abusing a dozen women over a period of six years while on duty.

"We're getting things done and not just looking in the rearview mirror," City Manager Dennis Taylor told the Eugene City Council last week at a meeting on police reform.

But moving on may be easier said than done. Seven of Magaña's sex abuse victims are suing the city of Eugene for a total of $41 million plus millions more in legal fees for federal civil rights violations. The city is insured for only $4.5 million of liability a year.

While Eugene police have described Magaña as an isolated bad egg in an otherwise excellent department, the lawsuits allege that the EPD's widespread problem of rotten self-policing was to blame for the abuse.

The EPD had a pattern and practice of reckless indifference in failing to supervise officers, and allowed a culture "permitting defendant Magaña and other police officers with like inclination, to assault female residents of Eugene with impunity," one woman, sexually abused six times by Magaña, alleged in her lawsuit.

The lawsuits also hint that other EPD officers may have been involved in sexual abuse beyond Magaña and Juan Lara, another officer convicted last year of sex abuse.

Evidence of faulty complaint handling and supervision gathered from Magaña's criminal trial and from consultant reports could help the women's claims stick in court. Eugene city attorney Jeff Matthews and the victims' various attorneys, Michelle Burrows, Elden Rosenthal and Greg Veralrud, did not return calls requesting comment for this article.

The city has responded in court by trying to hide documents in the lawsuit from the public to avoid "embarrassment" and hurt police "morale." It has denied liability, sought to dismiss lawsuits on technicalities and, in some cases, tried to blame the sex abuse victims themselves for what happened.

But the lawsuits have so far resisted the city's efforts to have them thrown out and are moving forward with depositions and document discovery. Unless there's a settlement, the lawsuits appear headed for trial, perhaps as early as this winter.

'Reckless Indifference'

The women victims demanded documents from the city regarding other Eugene police officers besides Magaña and Lara involved in sex abuse during the last decade. Court documents filed by the city refer to documents handed over to the plaintiffs during discovery "consisting of additional records of a sex-related complaint involving a Eugene police officer which complaint was sustained."

The documents do not name the officer or provide details, but they do appear to confirm that Magaña and Lara were not the first Eugene police officers involved in sex abuse.

The lawsuits faulted the city for failing to supervise Magaña.

EPD "purposefully and knowingly" instituted policies and processes that failed to "properly account for police while on duty," one woman alleged.

Another woman alleged that due to the lack of supervision, officers were "not accountable for their time, or for their whereabouts during their patrol duties." The woman, who alleged Officer Magaña sexually abused her at least 17 times, said the city had a "policy, custom or practice of permitting Eugene police officers to use their position as police officers to extort sexual favors from citizens." The woman also faulted the city for failing to investigate prior misconduct by Magaña before he was hired.

A third woman alleged the city "had an unofficial policy or practice which permitted, allowed or facilitated patrol officers to use coercion threats and sexual assault against female informants." The woman, alleging 156 separate sexual assaults, alleged that "female informants, particularly women with mental illness, homeless women, those with drug and alcohol addictions or those with criminal histories were victimized."

The lawsuits also alleged the city had a pattern of failing to investigate complaints and discipline officers.

"It was the policy or practice for police officers to ignore, fail to report or cover up sexual misconduct, coercion, threats and harassment of witnesses, informants or victims," the suit alleged. "Defendants were permitted the freedom and license to subject numerous women including plaintiff to years of threats, abuse, coercion, sexual assaults, kidnapping and false arrest without fear of punishment or accountability."

"The conduct continued against her will despite her complaints to the Lane County DA's office, the Eugene Mayor's Office and the Eugene Police Department Internal Affairs Division," the lawsuit alleged. The abuse was "well known to other members of the Eugene Police Department, including shift sergeants and management staff," the woman alleged.

Instead of stopping the abuse, the department would illegally tamper with evidence, threaten witnesses and maintain "a culture of secrecy" that was "all designed to create an unofficial policy within the police department to keep outside inquiry and investigation from occurring and to maintain an office which is allowed to carry on unlawful and illegal actions in secret."

Another woman alleged city supervisors had a "dismissive attitude" towards complaints and that the city was "fostering an environment where police officers were afraid to report complaints against fellow" Eugene officers.

A third lawsuit alleged that by maintaining a dismissive attitude toward complaints, the city was "conveying to the police force its tacit approval" of the abusive conduct.

Sticky Allegations

To back up their allegations, the lawsuits can draw from evidence at Magaña's trial and consultant reports on EPD failings.

Magaña was convicted of 42 criminal counts involving 13 women including one rape, 10 charges of sexual abuse, five charges of forced sodomy, four kidnappings, seven charges of coercion, three harassment charges, one burglary and 10 charges of official misconduct.

At least six fellow officers heard sexual complaints against Magaña, but did nothing to stop him, according to trial testimony.

At the trial one frequent victim testified that she complained to two EPD officers and an EPD lieutenant years ago, but they did nothing to stop the abuse.

The EPD also dismissed one complaint of sexual harassment by a woman stopped by Magaña. A female police cadet complained to another officer that Magaña was

sexually harassing her in 1997, but Magaña was not investigated or disciplined. Another officer who later heard sexual harassment complaints against Magaña also did nothing.

Three officers testified that they were concerned that they didn't know where Magaña was while he was on patrol, but did nothing about it, according to trial testimony. Testimony revealed Magaña was apparently largely unsupervised, able to put himself on "special" assignment and able to run up $700 cell phone bill in one month while sexually harassing women over the phone while on duty.

While he was raping, groping and coercing oral sex from women, Magaña received rave reviews from supervisors, according to trial exhibits. A sergeant described him as an "excellent officer" and "role model for young officers." A captain wrote that Magaña was "a credit to all police officers."

A March consultant report by the Police Executive Research Forum and the International City Management Association (PERF/ICMA) said the police had faulty supervision, leadership, and internal affairs investigations. "Lack of Eugene Police Department leadership and supervision combined with flawed selection and IA processes created an environment where Magaña and Lara could thrive and go undetected," the consultants reported.

PERF/ICMA noted that Magaña was hired despite a previous burglary arrest that should have disqualified him. The consultants found it "hard to imagine" that Magaña and Lara "were able to engage in such serious misconduct for so long and go undetected ... There clearly was a failure of supervision."

The consultants reported that "problems with incomplete and timely investigations, illogical findings and conclusions, and inadequate managerial review have resulted in a lack of confidence in the police department's ability to properly administer the complaint process."

ICMA/PERF also faulted the city for failing to conduct an internal investigation of how EPD failed with Magaña and Lara. The city refused to investigate, saying it would instead see if the lawsuits revealed any additional information.

The ICMA/PERF criticism echoed criticism last year by a consultant hired to audit EPD's handling of complaints. "I cannot see how the department's IA [Internal Affairs] process can be depended on — by the department or by the community — without more active and detailed internal review," Howell Lankford reported. Two years before, Lankford had criticized the department's dismissal of a sexual harassment complaint against Magaña.

City Response

The city has responded to the lawsuits in court filings by denying any liability.

A big concern of the city appears to be that the civil lawsuits will reveal yet more damaging and embarrassing wrongdoing by the EPD.

The city had federal judge Thomas Coffin sign six-page protective orders in many of the cases. The orders required that documents that the city decides are too embarrassing for the public to see must remain confidential.

The documents "if available to the public, would likely cause annoyance or embarrassment," the city attorney wrote. "Disclosure of such documents to the public would likely have an adverse impact on the morale of the Eugene Police Department officers which would adversely affect Eugene Police Department operations."

An addendum to the secrecy order covers "some of Mr. Lankford's confidential evaluations and opinions concerning the quality of some of the investigations he reviewed," but that he and the city did not make public. Disclosing the negative information from the audits would hurt officer "morale" and "would inhibit the city from requesting an outside auditor from providing complete and uninhibited opinions to the city concerning the operations reviewed," the city argued.

The city's arguments for throwing out the lawsuits revolve around legal technicalities, especially that the women failed to meet a statutory deadline of a maximum of 270 days for notifying the city of their lawsuits.

But in one case Coffin rejected the city's motion to dismiss on those grounds. The judge noted that the woman had argued that she couldn't file her lawsuit until Magaña was

arrested because she feared he would kill her. One threat was accompanied by "officer Magaña drawing his loaded service weapon, placing it on the [woman's] chest and threatening to kill her if she spoke about the sexual abuse. On one other occasion, these threats were accompanied by officer Magaña drawing his loaded service weapon, placing it on the [woman's] genitals and again threatening to kill her if she spoke about the sexual abuse."

Coffin wrote the death threats "plainly deterred" the woman from meeting the legal filing deadline for her lawsuit. He quoted another legal case as precedent, "to say to one who has been wronged, 'You had a remedy, but because the wrongdoer deterred you from pursuing that remedy under pain of death, the law stripped you of your remedy,' makes a mockery of the law."

Coffin noted that Magaña "was a police officer, a member of the very department which would be called upon to protect plaintiff against his threats if notice were filed."

Many of the women in the other cases make similar arguments that they couldn't meet lawsuit notice deadlines because they feared Magaña, although the judge has not yet ruled on the issue in those cases.

Other technicalities the city has argued include that it is legally immune from prosecution, subject to damage limits, that the women improperly filed their lawsuits using only initials and that Magaña himself was primarily responsible for any damage.

The city has also argued in some of the cases that the victims themselves were partially to blame for the sex abuse.

"Plaintiff's alleged injuries and damages were caused at least in part by her own negligence," the city argued in one case, alleging that she agreed to meet with Magaña, allowed him in her home and failed to report his misconduct.

Another victim's sex abuse was due "at least in part by her own negligence," the city argued, alleging that she continued to go on patrol car rides with the officer, let him into her apartment and failed to report his misconduct to EPD.

In another case, the city argues that at least one of the incidents of alleged sexual abuse was consensual sex.

But one victim says what Magaña and the city did to her was far from consensual. The EPD officer used threats of arrest and shooting her with his police gun to force oral sex and groping at least 17 times, she alleged in her lawsuit. The woman noted that all she got when she complained to police was Magaña putting a gun to her genitals and threatening to "blow her insides out."

"Why the hell didn't they listen to me?" she said at Magaña's trial. "It's absolutely horrendous."