The two young men will talk to investigators probing Eugene police conduct in the incident
In America: Two Chinese college students mistaken for trespassers have agreed to speak with investigators probing whether Eugene police officers wrongfully confronted them inside their apartment in September and shocked one of them with a Taser stun gun.
The male students — who are learning English at the University of Oregon — initially misunderstood the investigation’s purpose, their attorney and the city police auditor said Wednesday.
“I know at one point they felt like they were under investigation,” Police Auditor Mark Gissiner said. “We’re doing everything we can to assure them that isn’t the case.”
Their attorney, Ilona Kol-eszar, said “it has taken a lot of work to assure them they haven’t done anything wrong.”
Gissiner would not say when exactly the foreign students would be interviewed, but said he expected all witnesses in the case to give statements by Nov. 16. The investigation “will move pretty quickly once we get everyone interviewed,” he said. A court-certified interpreter has been asked to attend the students’ interviews with investigators, Gissiner said.
While scheduling difficulties factored into why Gissiner and a police department internal affairs investigator have not yet spoken with the students, cultural differences also played a role in the delay.
“Cultural issues were definitely part of it,” Koleszar said. “They had a lot of concerns, probably because of differences in how something like this is handled” in the United States as opposed to China.
At least three Eugene police officers were called to the students’ West 11th Avenue apartment on Sept. 22 after a woman reported seeing men inside whom she presumed to be trespassers.
The property’s landlord said officers called him, and he told them that he believed the unit should have been vacant. The landlord, Timothy Breen, said he met officers at the complex and stood outside while police confronted two men inside.
Breen said that when officers emerged from the townhouse with the two young men in custody, he recognized them as UO students from China who were the unit’s rightful occupants.
Until that point, Breen was under the impression that the students had picked up keys earlier that day to begin renting a different unit in the complex.
In declining to provide basic details of the case — including why officer Judd Warden felt it necessary to shock one of the students with a Taser — police have cited state laws that allow government to keep personnel investigations secret.
Warden last week asked police Chief Pete Kerns to publicly identify him as the officer who fired the stun gun.
Acting police Lt. Doug Mozan said previously that “an inability to communicate” with police led to the students being detained. They were released at the scene after Breen identified them. Publicity surrounding the case has caught the students by surprise, Koleszar said.
“I understand the community’s interest in this, but they’ve had people coming to their house (to ask about the incident) and it has kind of freaked them out,” she said.
Still, Koleszar said she would have filed a misconduct complaint about the incident, had police officials not brought it to Gissiner’s attention first.
She added that in her opinion, Warden’s use of the Taser was unwarranted. “If this is justified, then I think there will never be a situation where it’s not justified,” she said.
Following the investigation’s completion, Kerns will decide whether Warden wrongly used the Taser and whether he should be disciplined for it.
born: www.registerguard.com
