‘Hush’ Episode 3 extra: A deal with prosecutors

Oregon State Police Detective Terry Crawford arrived at a chaotic scene outside a little house penned between railroad tracks and a highway on the border of the Willamette Valley cities of Keizer and Salem.

It was the morning of Aug. 2, 1996. By the time Crawford arrived, Salem Police officers had a man named Angel Hernandez in handcuffs — but he wasn’t under arrest.

“We advised Angel Hernandez that he was not in custody,” Crawford wrote in a police report. “Angel’s first statement to us when we walked in was, ‘Which officer did this?’”

Inside the home, Angel’s father was dead on the kitchen floor.

In that question to police, Angel was referring to Salem Det. Kenneth Gilbert and Officer John Manitsas. Just a few minutes earlier, the officers had shot his father, 63-year-old Salvador Hernandez, five times, killing him.

That morning, Gilbert and Manitsas were a part of coordinated sting operation conducted by the Salem Area Interagency Narcotics Team (SAINT) across the Salem-Keizer area, an effort that resulted in several arrests. Officers entered the Hernandez home to serve a drug warrant for 35-year-old Alfredo Palsensia Gonzales, who had been staying with the family.

Within two seconds of entering the home, according to witnesses and police reports, Gilbert and Manitsas had killed Salvador Hernandez.

Gilbert told Oregon State Police investigators that Hernandez “lunged” at officers with a 10-inch knife and ignored commands to get on the ground. But Hernandez’s family and the farm owners he worked for would later confirm he was hard of hearing. People in the kitchen that morning said Hernandez may have had a knife out because he was making breakfast and needed to cut meat — but none saw him with the knife in his hand.

Hernandez’s killing sparked protests in Salem and allegations that local police officers disproportionately targeted communities of color in the city, according to newspaper accounts from the Statesman Journal and the Oregonian. The protests would eventually lead to the formation of a citizen’s oversight board for the Salem police.

Records obtained by OPB reveal that several of the same figures involved in investigating Harriet Thompson’s 1998 homicide were at the shooting scene.

Salem Detective Craig Stoelk took pictures at the Hernandez shooting. His partner on the Thompson investigation, Detective Mike Quakenbush, helped interview witnesses to the killing. Salem Detective Judy Rhine helped examine the scene, just as she would do two years later in Thompson’s apartment. Officer Manitsas would be the first officer to find Thompson’s body after her landlord called 911.

The overlap in these two cases illustrates how small police departments often rely on the same officers to work major incidents and process crime scenes.

But a closer examination of records on Hernandez’s shooting also shows how prosecutors in the Marion County District Attorney’s Office placed absolute trust in the Salem Police Department’s officers.

Just before noon on Aug. 2, 1996, as police continued to investigate the Hernandez shooting, Assistant District Attorney Walt Beglau told Crawford and other Oregon State Police investigators that the two officers who killed Hernandez just hours earlier would return to the scene so they could prepare for the statements they would give investigators.

Crawford pushed back.

“We informed Mr. Beglau that we didn’t believe that this was correct,” he wrote in his police report.

Police officers are typically prohibited from returning to the scene of an officer-involved shooting as a way to remove any potential for evidence tampering. But Beglau rebuffed Crawford, saying he had a deal with the Salem police officers union.

“He indicated that due to an agreement between the association representing the police and the Marion County District Attorney’s office, that the officers would be allowed to return to the scene.”

Crawford relented and allowed Mantisas, Gilbert and their attorneys to enter the shooting scene, though he noted in his report he watched both men to make sure they did not remove or add anything to the scene.

Days later, Manitsas and Gilbert were cleared of any wrongdoing by an all-white grand jury. As outcry continued in Salem, Beglau harshly criticized protesters during a courthouse news conference. According to the Statesman-Journal, Beglau called criticism of the police “shameful.”

Efforts to create more citizen oversight of the police would continue in Salem, despite resistance from powerful leaders.

Years after the Hernandez shooting, in 2001, an advisory board had drafted rules for a citizen’s review board and the current Salem Police chief was on board with its implementation. But one powerful voice remained opposed to it: Stoelk.

By 2001, Stoelk was the president of the local police union. “Philosophically, I do not dispute a citizen’s review board if it truly builds trust,” Stoelk was quoted by the Statesman-Journal. “(But) what I heard coming out of this group is an attempt to appease the minority community.”

Stoelk held firm to this stance, rejecting the need for the board’s racial makeup to reflect that of Salem’s citizenry. When reached by OPB, Stoelk — now retired — declined an interview request to discuss his work on the Johnson case and as police union president. “I’ll just come off sounding like a malcontent,” he said.

Though it’s decades past, Salvador Hernandez’s killing remains fresh for his family. Speaking to OPB in March, Hernandez’s son, Heriberto Hernandez, said he still hopes some day the Salem Police Department will acknowledge his father did not need to die in 1996.

“The only thing I want is justice for us,” he said. “because they do the wrong thing and they’re not going to give my dad back.”

Listen to all episodes of the “Hush” podcast here.