Portland internal affairs found a 2022 police shooting out of policy. Top brass dismissed the finding

Two years ago, a small group of Portland police officers closed in on what they believed to be an armed robber’s getaway car. It was just after midnight and the sedan was parked outside of a church.

As officers approached and hit their lights, two people scattered. Officer Chris Sathoff aimed his AR-15 rifle and fired three rounds in roughly one second, records show. One struck 30-year-old Immanueal Clark in the lower back. He died at the hospital Nov. 21, 2022 — two days later.

Police eventually learned they had spotted the wrong car. There was no tie to an armed robbery. And, according to command staff, Clark was unarmed.

A grand jury cleared Sathoff of criminal wrongdoing. An Internal Affairs investigator nonetheless said the officer failed to follow the bureau’s policy for using deadly force.

“This review concluded Officer Sathoff violated bureau directives when he shot three times, hitting Mr. [Clark] once,” Investigator Stacey Rovinelli wrote in the 41-page report. “Each application of deadly force was out of policy.”

According to people familiar with the bureau’s internal reviews, it is extremely rare for an investigator to find an instance of deadly force “out of policy.” If command staff agree, officers face discipline or even termination.

“I’ve never heard of an officer’s use of deadly force being deemed out of policy,” said Dan Thenell, general counsel with the Oregon Fraternal Order of Police. His firm represents more than 100 police unions across the Pacific Northwest, but not Portland’s. “I’ve never heard of it happening.”

Portland’s top brass ultimately dismissed the investigator’s findings, however, according to hundreds of pages of documents OPB obtained from the internal affairs investigation.

The records include emails, interview transcripts and memos that offer a view into the institution’s debate over whether to discipline the officer at the center of the shooting. (Police documents refer to the man killed as “Clark Johnson”, but attorneys for his estate say his last name is Clark.)

Officials with the Portland Police Bureau didn’t answer specific questions about the shooting, or their internal investigation, citing pending litigation. Bureau spokesman, Sgt. Kevin Allen, also did not respond to questions about whether Sathoff received any discipline or training after the incident.

Portland Police Chief Bob Day said in a statement that “any loss of life in our city is a tragedy” but defended the Bureau’s use of force policy as “a national model for other law enforcement agencies to aspire to.”

Rovinelli also declined to comment. Her findings, though, will likely play a major role in a lawsuit filed by Clark’s estate.

“What message does that send to every cop on the force — who goes out of their way to deescalate a situation, who spends 20 years on the street and never shoots anybody, who does the things that we want them to do — to say shooting someone in the back who is running away is consistent with our policies?” said Jesse Merrithew, one of the attorneys involved in the civil case.

Portland voters amended the city charter in 2020, overhauling how incidents like these are investigated, but those changes have been delayed until 2025.

RELATED: Ballot proposal would undo Portland’s new police accountability system

Internal affairs investigations are a mix of detective work and a high-stakes human resources inquiry. They attempt to answer whether an officer on the job broke the rules and are often the first of several steps before an internal review is closed.

Rovinelli’s investigation included interviewing officers on the scene and reviewing grand jury testimony, notes and surveillance footage. She also interviewed one of the bureau’s experts on rifle training.

“Officer Sathoff fired three rounds in a second or less,” Rovinelli wrote in her findings. “This goes against his training of not to shoot a volley of shots but rather to assess between each trigger pull.”

Others in the bureau disagreed. They argued Rovinelli misinterpreted the legal standards that govern the use of deadly force, such as whether Sathoff was “objectively reasonable” in pulling the trigger and whether Clark posed an “immediate” threat.

Police Chief Day and Mayor Ted Wheeler — the city’s police commissioner — ultimately sided with those who said Sathoff abided by bureau standards. They signed the final documents this past summer, records show.

Night of Clark’s shooting

Clark’s death began with a mistaken identity.

Shortly after midnight on Nov. 19, 2022, a 911 caller reported he had been robbed at gunpoint in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant in Southeast Portland.

The caller told dispatchers the robber was wearing a ski mask, a black hoodie and carrying a handgun. He took the caller’s money and hopped in a getaway car with others inside. The caller said the suspects were all men and “definitely white.”

Dispatchers relayed that to officers who then began searching for a sedan fleeing the area.

Minutes later, records show Sgt. Michael Francis spotted a sedan speeding on Southeast Cesar Chavez Boulevard. Police air support directed officers to a vehicle parked in the lot of Reedwood Friends Church across the street from Reed College.

Five officers arrived at the church, records show. When police vehicles lit up their lights, two men bolted from the car, including Clark. A man and a woman remained behind.

Sathoff, who was assigned to operate the rifle at the scene, fired three shots at Clark, who is Black. He said Clark’s black jacket matched the description of the armed robber’s black hoodie.

In grand jury testimony and during the internal affairs investigation, Sathoff defended his shots by saying Clark had been “digging in his pockets” as he ran. He said he thought Clark could have a gun and could open fire.

In the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Clark’s estate, attorneys alleged police set up a high-risk felony stop even though the best evidence they had for the stop was that the car was speeding.

“All of the attempted robbery suspects were white men,” the civil lawsuit notes. “Clark made no threats to the police prior to or while he was running away.”

The only footage of the incident was captured by the police plane circling in the sky. The Portland Police Bureau only equipped body-worn cameras this past summer.

Prosecutors noted that Clark had outstanding arrest warrants for possessing a stolen vehicle and fleeing a police officer. The vehicle he was driving had been reported stolen. “It was determined that none of those facts were known to Officer Sathoff at the time of the shooting,” according to a memo from the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office that summarized the facts of the case.

The lawsuit doesn’t ask for a specific dollar amount. Police in both Oregon and Washington have recently agreed to pay multimillion-dollar settlements in some deadly force cases.

What is an ‘immediate’ threat?

Bureau policy states an officer is allowed to use deadly force when they “reasonably believe” there is an “immediate threat of death or serious physical injury” to themselves or others.

Investigator Rovinelli, who began her review the night of the shooting and completed it nearly a year later, acknowledged Sathoff was in a “high-stress encounter” and had to make “split-second decisions.”

Records show she pressed Sathoff across two interviews, almost a year apart, to explain his fears. He told Rovinelli that he and other officers all believed the car was linked to the armed robbery and that Clark appeared to be considering engaging with officers.

“You pointed out that he looked to you like he was slowing down,” Rovinelli asked Sathoff during an interview on Oct. 18, 2023. “What if he was slowing down to give up and not engage?”

Sathoff, who started his law enforcement career in 2018, said Clark’s hands were still near his waistband. He explained that he felt justified in pulling the trigger, and said that part of shooting is to “change behavior.”

“Did you give him enough chance between each shot to do that, to actually — to give up?” Rovinelli replied.

“Again, we shoot to change behavior and he wasn’t changing his behavior between each shot,” Sathoff told the investigator. “He was not giving up. He was not putting his hands in the air. He showed no indication that he was going to stop digging in his pocket for whatever that object is, and I believed at the time it was a firearm.”

Sathoff fired his three shots in “one second or less,” records show.

“He did not stop doing what he did until after my last shot,” Sathoff said. “And that’s when I saw him fall forward.”

In her final report submitted Oct. 26, 2023, Rovinelli wrote the stop lacked probable cause to link Clark to the armed robbery. And that neither Sathoff nor any other officer involved gave compelling reasons why they felt endangered in the first place.

“None of them, including Officer Sathoff, were able to articulate they saw anything in Mr. [Clark’s] hands, pocket or waistband,” Rovinelli wrote.

She said it was “unreasonable” for Sathoff to think Clark would stop running, turn and “engage them in a gun fight.”

Command staff disagreed.

Under bureau policy, the commander of the involved officer gets the first review of an internal affairs report.

Acting Cmdr. Jacob Clark — who at the time was Sathoff’s commander — said Sathoff’s concerns were justified, and that all five officers at the stop believed they were approaching an armed robbery suspect.

“With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, this deadly force encounter ended with an unarmed man shot and killed by Officer Sathoff while being a suspect in a crime he did not commit,” Acting Cmdr. Clark wrote. “I have tremendous respect for Investigator Rovinelli, but I disagree with some of the arguments she presented in her recommended finding.”

Another officer, Israel Holsti, echoed Sathoff’s concerns to investigators. Then a 14-year veteran of the bureau, Holsti acknowledged he didn’t see a gun, but said Clark was “grabbing for, like, a handle.”

Holsti told Rovinelli he began to draw his gun when Sathoff fired.

“I was in the process of drawing my firearm because I believed this person was ready to pull out a weapon to use against us and that’s when I heard the shots fired,” Holsti said.

The fact that Holsti had similar concerns as Sathoff — even if he didn’t shoot — proved that it was reasonable to use deadly force, Acting Cmdr. Clark wrote in a memo.

He also disputed Rovinelli’s implication that Sathoff and other officers needed to see a gun in order to open fire. The policy, Acting Cmdr. Clark noted, reads that “nothing… requires a member to expose themselves to possible physical injury before applying reasonable force.”

Sgt. Aaron Schmautz, who leads the bureau’s rank-and-file union, argued Rovinelli’s interpretation relies too much on hindsight.

“She had a hard job to do,” Schmautz said. “I disagree that the proper standard was used, as outlined in her finding.”

He echoed Clark’s assertion that another officer reaching for his gun helped Sathoff’s case. Schmautz said officials ultimately came to the right decision in “finding Officer Sathoff followed policy and training.”

The records show how divisive the shooting became before the decision was finalized.

The debate centered on the interpretation of a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decision surrounding an officer’s use of force. Namely, what is considered “reasonable” and, in this case, if Clark posed a “potential threat” or an “immediate threat.”

Ross Caldwell, director of the Independent Police Review Board, said the aerial footage showed Clark appeared to be running away as quickly as possible.

“In this incident, the evidence demonstrates a potential threat but not an immediate threat as required (by policy),” Caldwell wrote in a Feb. 9, 2024 memo.

The review board, which convened three months later in May, was split on the issue, records show. The seven-member board included four Portland Police Bureau members, a representative from Caldwell’s office, and two community members.

Records do not show who voted, but the final tally showed four votes for “in policy” and three for “out of policy.”

Ultimately, records show, the final recommendation fell to then-Deputy Chief Michael Frome.

“This case, to me, boils down to the issue of ‘what is an immediate threat’ in analyzing this shooting,” Frome wrote on June 10. The deputy chief concurred with Sathoff’s acting commander: a reasonable officer on the scene would have pulled the trigger.

The internal review officially closed on Aug. 14 after Mayor Wheeler and Chief Day signed off on the findings.