July 26, 2004
(Updated) Perez Family Sues City, Sery, Macomber
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
As most people expected would happen eventually, the family of James Jahar Perez has filed a lawsuit against the City of Portland and the two officers involved in his shooting death, Jason Sery and Sean Macomber:
Sery and Macomber were cleared of wrongdoing in the killing, though they are named as co-defendants in the lawsuit. Perez family attorney, Elden Rosenthal hopes the civil suit will prevent more shootings in the future.
Elden Rosenthal: "To my knowledge, no Portland police officer has ever been fired for unreasonably shooting and killing a Portland citizen. It is the pessimism about the ability of the system to deal with this problem that has driven this lawsuit."
There's more on the lawsuit from a KGW report:
The lawsuit, filed in state court, claims Perez’s civil rights were violated. It argues police stopped Perez based on his race and type of car he was driving. It also alleges that the bureau is at fault for not training its officer properly.
We tried to find an email address for Rosenthal, to get onto whatever media list there might be for lawsuit development, but all we've found is a telephone number for his law firm, so we'll see if we can get any response via that route.
Update
There of course is an Oregonian story on this today, which adds some non-comment comments from City officials. For what it's worth, since part of this lawsuit is about Police Bureau training, we want to link to an old item about Officer Sean Macomber.
Comments (1)
brett on 27 Jul 2004
Email is elden@rosenthal-greene.com, according to the bar book.