Brian Greenway, former chief of St. Helens police department, as shown in this undated supplied photo. An damning investigative report commissioned by the city says Greenway had exhibited unprofessional behavior including berating officers while on the job.
Courtesy of St Helens Police Department
The St. Helens Police Department released a damning investigative report into the city’s former police chief, Brian Greenway, on Thursday.
The investigation comes after the department received multiple reports of alleged misconduct from current and former employees concerning Greenway, who had been on paid administrative leave since October.
Jim Band, an investigator hired by the city, said he found evidence that Greenway had exhibited unprofessional behavior as head of the department, including berating officers, falsifying training records and sending pornographic images to his employees.
Greenway announced his retirement on Jan. 22 amid the investigation.
According to the report, Greenway also limited how much his officers were allowed to assist other police departments, creating tensions with other law enforcement agencies in Columbia County.
“At a time when SHPD dealt with staffing issues and had trouble covering the city, it is difficult to understand how this policy benefited the St. Helens community,” Band wrote. “This policy affected the safety of law enforcement officers in other communities and as well as the safety of officers in St. Helens.”
‘Chief Greenway seemed to have lost sight of his position’
The release of the report and its numerous findings were first reported by the Oregonian/Oregon Live on Thursday morning; SHPD then released the full report to other news outlets that afternoon.
Band also said text messages show that Greenway had encouraged members of the St. Helens Police Association to take a no-confidence vote into city leaders in an effort to have them removed from their positions.
“Chief Greenway seemed to have lost sight of his position,” Band wrote. “The different statements and behaviors shared through interviews showed that Greenway seemed more preoccupied with some sort of personal vendettas against former Mayor Rick Scholl and City Administrator John Walsh than with the community expectation of his job as chief.”
The massive 108-page report details a culture in which Greenway allegedly abused his position to interfere in St. Helens City affairs, often operating outside the scope of a small-town police chief. Department employees told Band they weren’t in a position to speak out about his behavior.
“Nobody was speaking up for what they felt was right, or what they felt we needed, because they felt if they were saying anything that they would just get smashed,” an SHPD employee told the investigator. “When you do something like that, it just absolutely destroys morale.”
The names of witnesses that Band interviewed were redacted from the report, which was finalized on Jan. 22.
Greenway had served as the St. Helens police chief since 2018 before being placed on leave. According to the report, he declined investigator’s request for an interview.
Longtime St. Helens Police officer Joe Hogue has been acting chief since the fall. He’s overseen his department’s recent investigation into a sexual abuse scandal at St. Helens High School.