Michael Fesser (photo, top left) was employed by A&B Towing of Portland, Oregon, owned by Eric Benson (photo, below right), from 2004 to 2017. He managed their car auctions for most of that time.
Fesser was a victim of workplace racism. When he complained to his boss, Benson asked his fishing buddy, Terry Timeus (photo, below left), for a favor.
Timeus was police chief of West Linn, Oregon, a Portland suburb (see city’s profile here). The “favor” was to head off a race discrimination lawsuit by arresting Fesser on false, trumped-up charges.
The police report accused Fesser of stealing from his employer, threatening his boss and co-workers, and claimed he had a history of violence (see story here). None of this was true.
Text messages between a West Linn detective, Tony Reeves (photo, middle right), and Benson contained “racial epithets and slurs, derogatory and offensive language, references to numerous witnesses about them being ‘dirty,’ insecurity about the investigation, and a strong motive to fabricate these allegations to avoid civil liability in a racial discrimination lawsuit,” according to a D.A.’s investigation (see story here).
After the plot was uncovered, A&B Towing paid Fesser $415,000, and the city of West Linn paid him $600,000 (see story here). Timeus retired after being accused of drunk driving (see story here).
The police chief who succeeded him, Terry Kruger (photo, bottom left), another Benson pal, would be fired for defending the corrupt case against Fesser and calling Reeves a victim (see story here). On March 10, 2022, nearly 5 years after the events, Reeves was finally charged with a misdemeanor for his role in the plot (see story here).
Corrupt behavior was a habit with these guys. In 2014, three years before the Fesser case, three West Linn police officers accused Timeus, Reeves, and Mike Stradley, the police lieutenant who wrote the fake report on Fesser, of similar misconduct involving false arrests and lying (see story here).
These four cops left a stinking trail of corruption, their final act being to go after a black man for complaining about racism in his workplace. The settlements undoubtedly were paid by insurance companies. They got to retire on police pensions. None of them will go to jail.
What’s wrong with that picture?