Portland cop Brian Hunzeker (photo, left), who’s white, was out to get City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who’s black (photo, below right).
Hunzeker, president of Portland’s police union at the time, didn’t like Hardesty’s police reform efforts on the city council. So, when a hit-and-run was reported on March 3, 2021, and Hardesty was initially deemed a suspect, he leaked to the press that she was the fleeing driver.
Cops banged on her door at 1:30 AM to investigate what her lawsuit describes as a bumper scratch. Hardesty, who says her car was parked in her driveway with a dead battery at the time, wasn’t involved in the hit-and-run (see story here).
Hardesty demanded an investigation (story here), which quickly led to Hunzeger’s ouster from his union position (story here), and loss of his police job on March 1, 2022 (story here). (For details of his policy violations, read the Internal Affairs findings here.)
That’s not the end of Hunzeger’s troubles, though. Hardesty is suing the union, Hunzeker, and another cop involved in the media leak (story here).
The lawsuit says, “The reported damage to the vehicle was a one-centimeter circle on the white woman’s bumper possibly caused by the license plate screw from the offending driver’s license plates. The white woman … ‘swore on her life’ that it was Commissioner Hardesty who had committed the crime.”
It’s not hard to imagine where that came from; probably all black people look alike to her. How often have we seen this? It’s called “profiling.” (“The person was black, and you’re black, therefore it must be you.”)
That being the case, the police weren’t necessarily out of line to contact Hardesty to get her side of the story. (But in the middle of the night?) That’s not what Hunzeker got in trouble for.
He violated a police department policy, known to him, against leaking confidential investigative information to the media or public. This is why you have such a policy. It led to public accusations against an innocent person who happens to be a public figure Hunzeger happens to politically dislike.
And now he’s neither a union president nor a police officer. He deserves it.