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by Courtney Vaughn

Dustin Ferreira wasn’t looking for a fight.

Ferreira recently accepted a $400,000 legal settlement with the city of Portland and the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) over a bodily injury lawsuit stemming from brushes with police during and after racial justice protests in 2020 and 2021.

He’s one of more than 260 people who filed either a lawsuit or formal complaint over PPB’s policing of the 2020 protests. To date, the city has paid out roughly $3.3 million in settlement money to protesters–most with bodily injury claims.

Like hundreds of others who took to the streets, Ferreira felt compelled to protest police brutality and misconduct, even if the events that rocked the nation happened thousands of miles away. Before long, Ferreira says despite remaining peaceful, he was subject to the same excessive force and misconduct that led him to the front lines.

“The night of September 2020 changed my life forever,” Ferreira tells the Mercury. Ferreira was born with osteogenesis imperfecta and uses a wheelchair. His lawsuit against the city describes two isolated events, the first of which alleges his wheelchair was kicked by a police sergeant who also shoved him from behind. When Ferreira noted the excessive force, the officer then held a can of pepper spray, gesturing as if threatening to use it on Ferreira.  

Relying on video evidence from the scene, Ferreira’s lawsuit says he was targeted for arrest just minutes later, and forcefully grabbed by the arm. Footage shows the sergeant’s use of force lifted Ferreira from his chair, causing him and the chair to spin around as one of the wheels left the ground.

In April the following year, Ferreira claims he was taunted by two officers as he left his apartment. When Ferreira approached, Officer Sydne Wheeler reportedly referred to him as “Antifa” and suggested he had communist ties, while kicking his left leg and wheelchair.

“After that, Officer Wheeler told Mr. Ferreira to go f**k himself,” Ferreira’s lawsuit states.

“We live by an unwritten code in America in which we entrust the police with [unprecedented] power and responsibility,” Ferreira says. “And when they break that code, and folks like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor lose their lives, it’s our responsibility as community members to hold the police accountable.”

Protesters in Portland repeatedly found themselves subject to tear gas, projectiles, and physical force, but Ferreira was particularly vulnerable to injury. He claims he was “targeted all summer” with violence and false arrest by Portland officers. “And in my case,” Ferreira says, “they did it because my severe brittle bone disability allowed them to get away with it.”

By many accounts, PPB hasn’t gotten away with it.

For nearly a decade, the Police Bureau has been under watch by the US Department of Justice, after federal investigators found a pattern of police using excessive or deadly force against people with disabilities and mental illness. 

The city’s payouts to protesters are just one piece of a larger puzzle Portland needs to solve to reduce its legal liability. A day after approving Ferreira’s settlement on November 20, Portland City Council was briefed on its progress and unaddressed issues in its ongoing settlement with the DOJ. Under the federal agreement, PPB is subject to additional oversight, including regular reporting requirements about its use of force, training, and policies.

Following the prolonged racial justice protests in 2020, the DOJ raised “serious concerns” about PPB’s compliance with the settlement agreement. In a 2021 blistering letter to the city, the Justice Department cited the police bureau’s crowd control methods, use of force, and its justification for use of force during protests as primary areas of concern. The memo also called attention to PPB’s reporting and self-assessment, suggesting the bureau had no real mechanism to ensure officers adhered to policy, and no meaningful accountability for officer misconduct.

“Instead, PPB focuses primarily on external factors beyond its control while over-relying on training and software to address the few faults it is willing to own,” the DOJ letter stated.

After admonishing the bureau for sloppy and incomplete reporting, the DOJ and the city of Portland commissioned a third-party firm, Independent Monitor LLC, to evaluate PPB’s handling of the repeated events. In 2023, the firm delivered a phase one analysis detailing a protest response that often ran afoul of best practices.

A phase two report presented to the City Council on November 21 reflected PPB’s progress on several benchmarks, while also outlining areas for improvement.

“I can tell you that overall, our impressions were quite positive,” Nick Mitchell of Independent Monitor told the Council. “We have concluded that the city took meaningful, but in some cases preliminary, steps to implement the recommendations.”

Among the key recommendations and observations: The Independent Monitor report urged PPB to reduce its reliance on riot control agents (like chemical irritants) to control crowds during protests.

“PPB relied too heavily on crowd dispersals with CS gas during the protests and riots of 2020 instead of targeted crowd interventions,” the report states.

Protesters hold signs outside a police building in July 2020. The latest assessment of Portland Police Bureau’s response to the 2020 protests noted PPB relied too heavily on chemical irritants like CS gas and pepper spray to disperse crowds. mathieu Lewis-rolland

Consultants also recommended PPB “strengthen and clarify” the bureau’s use of force directives; require incident commanders and operation section chiefs to be present during major public order events, and bolster the Bureau’s mutual aid network with surrounding law enforcement agencies.

“The city is reliant upon mutual aid relationships, as are most large cities in America in times of emergency, including when public disorder falls within a city,” Mitchell said. And there was a nearly complete fracturing of those relationships in 2020.”

Mitchell said a robust mutual aid network among law enforcement is “absolutely essential” to ensure the city’s capacity to respond to large or chaotic public demonstrations. 

Other recommendations, like developing a new public order team to respond to large protests and riots, have already been implemented, albeit not in the way consultants would’ve preferred.

“Keeping the name RRT (Rapid Response Team)- resurrecting that name may have been a missed opportunity to emphasize to the public that there’s a new approach to public order policing,” Mitchell told the Council, noting past “baggage and community concern” surrounding the former Rapid Response Team. 

Mitchell’s team also noted “insufficient internal scrutiny” of the former riot control squad. 

Under new policies, RRT members receive 96 hours of training on crowd control management each year.

In his last briefing about the protest response that, in some ways, defined his leadership tenure, Mayor Ted Wheeler noted that the city had riot response squads in place years before the murder of George Floyd, but in 2020, the dynamics were different. 

“What changed with the dynamic of George Floyd was the Police Bureau— which is the bureau responsible for maintaining public safety and maintaining public and private assets—became the focal point of those protests, and that creates an entirely different and far more complex layer that has to be managed…” Wheeler said.

The DOJ has since eased its grip on the Police Bureau, agreeing to cede oversight duties to an independent firm, indefinitely. Earlier this year, the city hired MPS and Associates to monitor its compliance with the federal settlement agreement.

In an added layer of independent, civilian oversight, Portland’s incoming City Council will help implement the new police accountability board, and will be responsible for appointing a nominating committee to help select new board members.