Penny Harrington Destroyed more than the Blue Ceiling at Portland Police Bureau; she weakened the Entire Department!
Opinion Piece
Will the real Penny please stand up?
By Don DuPay
Edited by Theresa Griffin Kennedy
People may wonder why I would bother to write about disgraced former Police Chief Mrs. Penny Harrington since her death a few weeks ago. My decision to offer a more realistic portrayal is based solely on the whitewashed articles and essays I’ve read recently, some of which attempt to canonize a seriously flawed woman who was never a hero.
In the Foreword of Penny’s self-serving and deceptive book, Triumph of Spirit, retired PPB Chief Charles Moose writes, “Her success, style, knowledge, and spirit have improved policing in America. Remember it was never about her; it was about policing.” I knew Penny when she was first signed on with PPB back when she was a star struck kid in her 20s, and I can say it was always about her and feminism and never about policing. Penny was what we referred to back in the day as a Fender Lizard or what cops of today might call a Badge Bunny. She was enamored of policemen and police culture.
I knew Penny when she worked alongside me when I was a street cop working the mean Albina and St. John’s ghetto back in the 1960s. She came on in 1964, three years after I did, but unlike me she never worked a day of her career as a real cop. She never tackled a fleeing suspect, or arrested a violent drunk rapist, or wrestled with a hopped-up drug addict or tried to talk with a man who had no face after having his face blown off with a shotgun.
First off, let’s get one thing clear. Penny was not a super cop; she was not respected among the people she worked with and as someone who never worked the streets of Portland, meaning she never wrestled with a criminal or resister using physical force, she was simply not respected. Being able to fight, or engage in physical violence is a component, in fact a true requirement of police work. It is a necessity and because Penny never worked the streets, other officers, men mostly but later on also women, did not respect her.
Their attitude was, ‘If she doesn’t know how to fight or subdue a resister, and has no experience on the streets, how can she tell me what I’m doing is right or wrong?’
From 1961 when I was appointed to the police bureau until September of 1967 when I was promoted to detective, my work area was Albina, St. Johns and all of North Portland. I was a North precinct uniformed street cop. To those individuals not familiar with Portland, North Portland was the rough part of town, populated by a combination of hard-working African Americans and white people, with a concentration of Longshoreman workers in St. Johns where the industrial docks were located.
Unofficially, much of the illegal economy in the area, particularly Albina, was fueled by alcohol sales, heroin sales and of course prostitution — mostly underage black girls. It was a daytime population of working people and a nighttime population looking for the fast life, hunting for heroin, hookers, and booze in the all night Afterhours Clubs, which opened up after the legit bars closed.
I worked nights!
On an average of about twice a month, my work would involve removing a small child from a home after the parents were arrested for some form of criminal activity, abuse or neglect. This also involved rescuing a child abandoned in the back seat of a car while one or the other parent was inside a bar drinking to their hearts content while their toddler wept and shivered alone in the backseat of un unlocked car. I did this more times than I can remember.
On these occasions, I would have to ask radio to send a woman officer from the (WPD) the Women’s Protective Division, to take custody of the child. The WPD consisted of twelve female officers, technically they were police officers, but in reality they were defacto social workers. The women as officers were allowed to carry a gun, but in my experience with them they rarely did and they were never included in training at the firing range with the men.
In 1964 I became aware that there was a new hire in the women’s division. One shift I was arresting a woman on a warrant. The woman was the only adult in the home, which was unkempt and unsafe for a child. The infant was in a dirty diaper in a crib, crying. I called for the (WPD) to take the baby into protective custody. Two women arrived, an older experienced female officer and the newly hired young woman I’d never seen before.
I was introduced to her by the older woman as I handed the young woman the crying baby. Her name was Penny Orazetti. She had short bleached blond hair, wore lipstick and a full makeup and seemed pleasant enough. I recall she smiled easily and seemed happy, almost ecstatic to be on scene, which I thought was strange. I could only guess she was thrilled to be out of the office.
Officers with the Women’s Protective Division were not allowed to patrol the city and basically remained in their office at Headquarters until needed on a call involving a woman who had been raped, or an abused or neglected child. I could understand any frustration on Penny’s part, obvious by her excited demeanor. It was clear she was happy to be outside and in the field. The older woman seemed to be in a hurry to get the call over with and return to the comfort of the office and get out of the biting cold. Such was the nature of police work for the women’s division at that time in 1964.
Over the next three years until I was promoted to detective in November of 1967 I had probably seven or eight other occasions to interact with Officer Penny Orazetti. She always acted in a professional manner and did her job. After November 1967 as a detective, I no longer had official dealings with the (WPD) but I often saw Penny as we passed in the hallways of Central Precinct, which is now referred to as the old Police Headquarters building on SW Oak Street. We would generally say hello and chat for a minute. This precinct was also the location of the detective division, located on the second floor, as well as the Women’s Protective Division and the Juvenile Division, which were both located on the first floor.
By 1969 Orazetti had completed five years service with the Portland Police Bureau and was eligible to take a promotional exam. However, with only twelve women officers’ promotional opportunities were slim to none. My partner in the detective division was John Wayne Wesson. His wife was Patricia Wesson. Patricia was the WPD Sergeant and not about to retire anytime soon.
WPD Officer Penny Orazetti saw no way up. She was 27-years-old.
Penny’s next move was to go and see the Chief of Police David Johnson and demand to be allowed to take the promotional exam for detective. Upon her visit with Chief Johnson, he informed her that promotional exams for detective and sergeant were limited to patrol…men.
I can only imagine Penny’s frustration at knowing she was to remain in the Women’s Protective Division. It was clear she was infatuated with police work, policemen and the entire police culture.
Orazetti responded by filing a lawsuit under the 1964 Civil Rights Act claiming that she was being denied her rights to equal employment because she was a woman and not a man. Her suit prevailed and the Portland Police Bureau was changed forever.
Now women officers would have equal opportunity for promotion with men which meant ultimately women would be allowed to wear the blue uniform and patrol the streets the same as any other male police officer.
In 1969 Captain Leo Miller was trying to form a police union which eventually became the Portland Police Association, (PPA) to protect police officers rights and lobby for better pay. There was a time when officers made $105 a week. Leo and I both knew how frustrating that low pay could be, because that is what we were paid, $105 a week. You could barely pay your bills and you were supposed to put your life on the line for the privilege.
I knew Leo Miller personally; he was my boss, a captain when I worked the Traffic Division in 1963 and a friend and mentor as well. Leo was a clean cut, by-the-book kind of cop and with his ever present flattop crew cut; he exuded confidence, ability and the good nature of a man who was born to be a police officer.
Miller saw Orazetti as an up-and-coming influence and solicited her assistance in creating the union which was certified in 1969. Orazetti agreed to help as long as her agenda of women’s rights and feminism would be included. Their association continued and they became close. In Penny’s book, she shares her strong attraction for Leo: “I became in awe of this man. He was obviously bright, even driven, and the energy just flew off of him. He was about 5'10 or 5'11, with muscular arms, brown hair, and a crew cut. I remember how immediately drawn I was into his brown yes and his smile — a lively smile that matched his vibrant personality.”
Though they were both married at the time, Penny stated in her book, that her friend Charlotte told her to “Go for it” and so she did. She began an illicit affair with a married man. “Boy, did the guilt hit!” Penny writes in her book of her affair with Leo. Her solution was not to resolve her marital issues with her husband, Richard Orazetti, but to immediately divorce him and encourage Leo to divorce his wife. Later Leo moved in with “a longtime friend” who was a “detective on the force.” I know who the detective was, as I had worked Burglary with him. It was Detective Gene Yocum that Leo had been rooming with.
Miller didn’t seem happy though, I came to find out later, and in July of 1975, he finally committed suicide with pills, after a failed first attempt several weeks earlier. After that first attempt, he was not committed to a hospital for observation, as he should have been. I heard his stomach was pumped and he was allowed to go home, why I will never know.
Penny remembered the day Leo killed himself in her book, sharing bizarre details that could only have been upsetting to Leo’s former wife and his daughter: “He placed himself in front of a mirror he had set up like an altar. I don’t know what else to call it. That’s just what it looked like. On the mirror was a picture of me wearing a mini-skirted dress with long sleeves that he loved. It had been taken at Chief McNamara’s retirement party. I held a drink in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. It was his favorite picture of me. He used to say, “That’s my woman — a miniskirt, a drink and a cigarette. What more can I ask for?” He had placed some other things out on the table, all having to do with me, things that I’d given him. On the table, he left a note and an envelope with my name on it. The note said, “My work was my life. I choose not to seek a second career.”
Parts of these memories may be true, but it also reads like fabrication. I can’t help but wonder if this photograph of Penny in a mini dress, with a smoke and a drink in her hands actually existed, why didn’t she include it in her book? As it’s obvious she liked to promote herself as a glamour girl type, as well as a cop.
And why the focus on the objects placed on the “altar” Leo supposedly created, as “…all having to do with me” along with a note to her? Why you may wonder? Because these details support her idea that she’s a legend, at least in her own mind. The kind of gorgeous seductress men can’t resist. These parts of her book are in my opinion just more of her self-serving fiction writing to make her out to be something more than she was. I never found Penny attractive. To me she was matronly.
The year before Leo killed himself, I had an emotional breakdown at my home in Gresham. I was 38 and had textbook Cop Burnout. I was exhausted and the heartbreak and chaos I had been internalizing for over 13 years finally got to me. I came home one day and began to weep at the kitchen table. I wept for hours and could not stop. My wife at the time called the precinct unsure of what to do. It was Leo who came to my home, talked with me and then drove me to the hospital where I got help.
Later, in 1975, I had no idea Leo was so seriously depressed. Had I known, I would have reached out to him. And I never heard about his first suicide attempt until after his second and successful attempt ended his life. I remember feeling livid nothing was done to help Leo the first time. I spent seven days in a hospital but Leo was allowed to go home after his stomach was pumped and then kill himself several weeks later.
The Rap Sheet, a police union newspaper, interviewed Penny shortly after Leo’s suicide and her excuses for what he did were total bullshit. She came across as vapid, naïve and self-serving. She blamed his suicide on not being promoted to police chief in the way he wanted, with all the authority he had wanted — because of office politics. That is not why men kill themselves. They kill themselves because they have become hopeless, because they have no joy in their lives, they have lost all hope and because they are consumed with self-loathing. Leo, I came to find out had a serious drinking problem, like so many of us did at the time. He had hidden for years that he was a drinker and was also likely obsessive compulsive from things I heard from other people. He was gaining a reputation for being unstable, and as one friend told me, “Leo was half crazy.”
Penny had also pressured him to let his hair grow long, which was not something Leo would normally have done. In the photo above his hair doesn't look too bad but there is another photo of him from the Rap Sheet that looks completely unlike the Leo I knew. It made him look like one of the Beatles. He was a crew cut kind of guy and I believe Penny changed his self-image by not accepting him for who he was and by pressuring him to grow his hair long so he would look more hip. When you don’t like what you see in the mirror, things like depression and alcoholism become worse.
After the death of Miller, Penny returned to work as a sergeant and was assigned to North Precinct where she received little support and continued to be plagued by the complaint which always followed her — she was not fit for command because she had never worked the street.
How can a street sergeant, who never worked the streets, tell officers how to work or what to do?
The extent of Penny’s unsuitability for police work became evident when she was promoted to Sergeant in 1975 and given a new uniform. She didn’t know how to properly secure her gun belt. On page 109 of her book she shares the embarrassing truth.
“After roll call, one of the guys I knew from my Academy days came and tapped me on the shoulder. “Sarge, I need to talk to you in this room over here, come here.” We walked into an empty room, and he said, “I don’t know how to tell you this. I didn't want to say it in from of the guys, but, you got your ammunition pouch on upside down.” He helped me unbuckle my belt and put everything on the right way. “Now, lets not let that happen again,” he quipped. Outside I walked to where all the men were getting into their cars to go out on patrol. “Now what do I do?” I thought. “I guess I’ll get in my car and go out and do something.” Leo had explained to me that sergeants ride alone, responsible for covering major calls and assisting all the “men” in our assigned areas. I decided to drive around and wait to see what would happen.”
This passage shows Penny knew nothing about how to be a police officer. She didn't know how to put on her ammunition pouch and she didn’t know what to do, as in patrolling the city and responding to calls for help, because she had never done that. Because she had never been “coached” or worked the streets.
And here she is promoted to sergeant? When she’s never even worked the streets as a cop? The tone of the other officer, a patrolman, in what he said to her is illuminating. He tells her to “come here…” He says, “Now, lets not let that happen again,” as if he’s speaking to a child. That is not the way a patrolman speaks to a sergeant, if the sergeant is competent. That is how a coach speaks to a rookie who has never once been on the street.
The section in her book, Triumph of Spirit that she devotes to this time in her life is revealing in another important way, as it illustrates her thoughtless dishonesty.
She lies about her weight.
In her book Penny states that when dressed in her new Sergeants uniform in 1975, she weighed “about 120 pounds.” She goes into elaborate detail about how she had gotten the “smallest” mans’ uniform and had to have it altered, beating the heads of the reader about how dainty she is on page 107. “My waist was too small to accommodate all the equipment — holster and gun, handcuff case, mace holder, extra ammunition pouches and a portable radio. It wasn’t only heavy; sitting with all that stuff around my small waist was pretty uncomfortable!”
She shares that she is five foot 7 as well. When I look at the photo in question, I see a tallish, rather matronly woman with heavy hips who weighs between 145–150 pounds. If she had weighed 120 pounds at five feet seven inches, she would have been a rail and the gun belt would have fallen off. She makes this statement in her book of weighing 120 pounds because of ego.
When you are a cop, you can “eyeball” people and you get pretty good at determining weight and height for both men and women. There is no way, the woman in that photograph weighed 120 pounds. Penny lied about her weight when any experienced cop could easily tell her statement was a lie.
There is a sense of respect a street cop feels for another officer when he knows his buddy has also worked the streets. This applies to women officers as well. Penny had never worked the streets so what did she know about what went on or how to handle difficult suspects? When she was supervising other police officers and they knew she had no experience, (and the story about the ammunition pouch did get around) they automatically felt an unspoken contempt for her.
The success of her first lawsuit led her to attack other inequities she saw in the police bureau such as lower pay scales for women officers, which I agree was a positive move. But she also decided to eliminate the height requirement which I believe was a terrible move. What authority can an officer project when he or she is smaller and shorter than a suspect? Penny saw the height requirement as inherently discriminatory against shorter applicants for police work. In my opinion, the height requirement was not discriminatory but it was a specific requirement that existed for valid reasons.
Traditional thinking was that a police officer should be at least as tall as, or taller than most people he deals with. Pragmatically, in my opinion, police work is a man’s job and a big man’s job at that. I know that is an unpopular opinion in today’s world, but when you’re dealing with a melee at a tavern for example, and you’ve got fifteen grown men, if you have an equal number of men and women divided up, who do you think will prevail? The group of all men or the group of men plus women? Likely as not, it will be the group of all men.
Men are simply better at physical violence than women and this was always my experience. A police officer should never be so short that he has to look up at the person he is arresting. This is the simple psychology Penny and the courts which supported her either ignored or probably never fully understood in the first place.
Not understanding this reality is common among people who never worked as a street cop.
What some people considered “courageous” behavior, namely Penny’s obsession with filing repeated lawsuits to get what she wanted, others saw as wrong and abusive.
Looking back at her career, we see that in a three-year period between 1975 and 1978, Penny filed a total of 42 complaints against police bureau policies and procedures that had been effective and in place for decades. This number breaks down to 14 complaints a year for three years! With 12 months in a year, Penny was filing a complaint at least once or twice a month.
The reality is that that was excessive and frivolous and she became known as a nuisance. Penny became a distraction in the bureau. Her ability to file endless lawsuits and complaints demonstrated female gender privilege quite well as she was not terminated for creating a hostile work environment for all her fellow officers, both men and women who wanted to make Portland a safer place rather than constantly litigating over often petty details. I surmise any male officer exhibiting the same conduct as Penny Orazetti would have been fired and invited to leave town before sunset. The brass would not have tolerated that kind of abuse from a male patrolman or sergeant.
Penny used lawsuits as revenge when she couldn’t get what she wanted, even suing to be promoted to Detective. And as a person with no experience as a street cop, what gave her the right to do that? I contend she had no right and that is why very few of the other officers with PPB ever respected her.
Penny knew of the other officers contempt and it rankled her.
Police bureau policy {310.20} prohibits creating a “hostile work environment” which was certainly the result of 42 complaints filed by Penny Orazetti in a three-year period.
The law suits she successfully filed, gave her the opportunity to take promotional exams as she became eligible and that was the main motive for them. Penny wanted to move up in the brass. An intelligent woman, she always scored at the top of the eligibility list. She was number one on the Sergeants list and was the first to be promoted.
Later, Penny was number one on the Lieutenants list but was passed over, the first person ever to be passed over on a promotional list in the history of PPB. She claims supervisors were mad at her for suing to become a detective and for basically suing each time she wanted to advance through the ranks. She was probably correct — but was still eventually promoted to Lieutenant. It seems to me that other officers were promoted due to their merit and test results, but Penny was promoted because she was a good test taker and because she was good at threatening yet another lawsuit to get her way.
In 1980 Penny scored number one on the captains list and was promoted to police Captain and assigned to command East Precinct — a police commander who had no experience arresting criminals and had never learned from working the streets.
At East she continued to get complaints spoken mostly behind her back, for never having worked the street. It was a constant grumble among the officers. A small number of women officers admired Penny Orazetti because of some of the things she had done, like fight for equal for pay, but may women officers resented her because, again, she had never worked the streets and would never be able to relate to all that that entailed.
There is an old adage in police work: “Good cops don’t make good test takers, and good test takers don’t make good cops.” In my time on the bureau this phenomenon was called “The Paul Fontana Effect.” Paul was an ineffective officer I observed for several years while we were both patrolman in the 1960s.
We butted heads on more than one occasion. It was usually when he would ignore calls or wait to show up only after backup had arrived. Fontana was short, at five feet eight, thin and soft. He had questionable courage but was good at taking tests and because of that; he later became a Captain, albeit an ineffective Captain.
In 1984 businessman and popular barkeep and owner of the Goose Hollow Inn, Bud Clark, was elected mayor by defeating conservative hardliner Frank Ivancie. Bud could be seen on his bicycle all around town, handing out colorful “Bud Clark is Serious!” pins and chatting with people.
To his credit, Bud Clark’s first move as mayor was to discuss firing police Chief Ron Still, and that rumor traveled all through the bureau. Bud viewed Ron Still as hopelessly corrupt and was quoted as saying: “I wanted to fire Ron Still. I wanted to fire the whole department and start over, because how do you change a culture?”
That is not exactly what happened, though, according to Penny, as she wrote in her book on page 177. “In September, the chief called a staff meeting that all the command staff — deputy chiefs and captains — were expected to attend. He hadn’t called a staff meeting in two and a half years, so we were pretty shocked and eager to know what was up. The twelve of us took seats around the conference table and waited. Chief Still walked into the room and announced he was retiring. He turned and walked right out of the room, leaving us there to gawk at each other in amazement. We were totally blind-sided. I think that even his deputy chiefs were caught by surprise.
Ron Still, seeing that the Ivancie years were over, with their abuses of citizens civil rights and questionable arrests, knew that his time was up. He would rather resign, than endure the humiliation of being fired by new Mayor Bud Clark. I can only imagine, knowing Ron as I did, that he was furious the day he walked into that conference room and announced he was retiring. His fun was over.
Two months later, in November, 1985, according to Penny’s book, a news report expressed that Clark had stated to the Oregonian Newspaper that “We had some slight philosophical differences…” This must have been Bud’s way of being polite. The differences were more than just slight. Bud was a good man with good intentions, and Ron Still was a well-known career criminal masquerading as a police chief.
From my perspective, Ron Still was the most corrupt chief of police since Jim Purcell Jr. My views here are unique as I worked for both men in the 1960s and 1970s. Both Ron Still and Jim Purcell Jr. were career criminals, liars and thieves. But many people liked them. They were members of the quintessential Good Ole Boys Club. I offer more information on Patrolman Ron Still in my complex and historically accurate essay The Black and Blue Retort Report.
Mayor Bud Clark then made national news when he later appointed Captain Penny Harrington chief of police. Captain Orazetti had married Patrolman Bruce Gary Harrington in 1982. Because Clark felt that “…she is the most qualified candidate” he thought she would be a good choice. But Clark had meant well but may not have known very much about Harrington’s troubled history with PPB or how she had bulldozed her way to the top with lawsuits and threats. If But had known more about Penny, he might not have chosen her as chief.
At the time, to the outside world, it seemed that the progressive city of Portland had elected a progressive thinking mayor and that progressive mayor, Bud Clark, had just promoted the first woman Chief of Police in the country. All was not as it seemed, however. The criticism and the questions continued unabated, following Penny everywhere she went. Would men follow her orders? Would they respect her? Would they want to work with her cooperatively?
Later that year, in a nationally televised interview on NBC’s Today Show, with journalist and TV personality, Jane Pauley, Harrington shares in her book on page 185 that she was asked by Pauley if Bud Clark had appointed her “just as a stunt.” It seemed no one could quite take Harrington seriously.
In other interviews Harrington complains repeatedly that she is always asked if she slept her way to the top. This was a constant rumor and I heard it from many sources. I recently asked a similar question from one of my anonymous sources. Anonymous source #2 had an interesting perspective. “How did she get to the top?” I asked this man. “Lawsuits and blowjobs!” was his blunt answer. Having left the bureau in 1978, I could only take his word for it. This source went on to say: “That’s the locker room reason. Most felt it was the legal stuff that intimated the brass.”
As a new Chief of Police, Harrington immediately faced serious challenges. She wanted to clean house, as so many new leaders often do. She dismantled the narcotics unit which had operated under Ron Still and scattered the men who worked that unit, putting them back to work on the street as regular patrolmen with no specialty unit and a slight pay cut. For some reason the police union was not happy with the way she handled those transfers. The dismantling of the narcotics unit was the end, from my perspective, of the rogue officers that operated under Ron Still, with Portland as their wide-open oyster. This may also have been a way for Penny to get even with specific officers who had ever crossed her or harassed her years before.
In 1985 Tony Lloyd Stevenson, an ex-Marine and part time security guard was involved in an altercation at a convenience store on NE Wiedler Street, near Lloyd Center. Police were called by store personnel. In the moments that followed Stevenson was restrained by one officer using the carotid hold, Officer Gary Barbour, with his partner Bruce Pantley. Stevenson did not recover consciousness and died at the scene. Chief Harrington then immediately suspended the use of the carotid hold or “choke hold” as it was commonly called because of Stevenson’s death. His death is the only known death on record by Portland police due to the carotid hold.
The carotid hold was a tool used by police officers for decades to subdue combative individuals on their way to jail. The reaction from the police union was immediate and decisive. The union protested with a vote of “No Confidence” which Mayor Bud Clark ignored. He remained supportive of his appointee and her decision to banish the carotid hold, the safe uses of which neither of them would ever understand, having no background in police work.
What many didn’t know is that the carotid hold had been pushed by Harrington after being appointed at the expense of another hold she didn’t like. I have learned that another popular hold used in the 1970’s was called the Hair Hold. I don’t remember any such hold being mentioned specifically during training when I was on, and it’s possible I used it myself unwittingly, but recruits in the 70s were taught this maneuver. It was a simple hold that helped officers control a combative individual. By reaching around and grabbing a large handful of hair from the back of the head, if they could, the officer could gain the upper hand and gain compliance with a suspect. It was harmless and useful but Harrington, (who again had never worked the streets) thought it looked unseemly and unnecessarily violent. She “didn’t like the way it looked” source # 3 has stated. It was ugly. It looked too much like what it was — violence. And Penny couldn’t handle it.
So Harrington began pushing the carotid hold instead. During a training session one longtime patrolman asked the instructor what would happen if someone died as a result of the carotid hold. The coach wanted to know why he would ask such a question. The patrolman explained that in LA, the LAPD had experienced a death from a chokehold recently. “Will Harrington have our back if something happens?” he asked his instructor. He was told that yes, Harrington would have his and everyone else’s back. So, the officers were told not to use the Hair Hold and to focus on the Carotid Hold instead.
In Penny’s book, she states on page 202, that “The Portland Police had been using the hold for about ten years without incident.”
Dead wrong, Penny.
I chuckled to myself when I read such an uninformed statement. I myself, began using the carotid hold in 1961 and my coach, Fred Brock who came on in 1951 had used it for all or most of his career police career with PPB. The reality is that the carotid hold had probably been in use with PPB officers since the 1930s or 1940s. When Penny made her 1985 statement that it had only been in use for ten years she was grossly uninformed. I can assure anyone reading this that the carotid hold was being used by me and others well before 1975. So, again, another area where Penny is just flat-out WRONG.
After Stevenson died, Harrington did not have the backs of the two officers involved. Source #3 put it succinctly when he said: “Pantley and Barbour were thrown to the wolves!” meaning the media and everyone else who could would judge them as killer cops who were corrupt and irredeemable. Even after PPB officers had been promised backing, following the training where Penny pushed the carotid hold over the hair hold, they were abandoned and made out to be rogue cops who had acted on their own rather than simply following the training they had received.
Source # 3 has also stated that Stevenson had a “weakened Aorta” due to recreational cocaine use. This information was given to this retired police officer by the medical examiner. Perhaps this is why after only 5 seconds of throat restraint, the 6 foot four, 240 pound 31-year-old Stevenson lost consciousness and died. Stevenson was known by police, who knew where he worked and what his habits were, to be a recreational cocaine user and in 1985, who wasn’t using cocaine? It was very common. What we can all agree on is that necessary aid was not provided after Stevenson lost consciousness.
Concerning the use of the carotid hold, during the six years I worked as a street cop in Albina and St. Johns, officers, myself included, used this technique often. The unspoken understanding was officers could eliminate a large percentage of dangerous wrestling matches with non-compliant arrestees on their way to jail by using this method.
In short, we were not paid to wrestle for prolonged periods of time and risk injury to ourselves and those under arrest. Not one person in the six years I used the Carotid Hold ever died from the use of the hold while in my or any other officers’ custody.
Stevenson is the only person in the history of the Portland Police Bureau to succumb to this technique and the reasons for that are still unclear, although I think the “weakened Aorta” theory is very possible. At the time Harrington made that stupid decision, to ban the hold, the police officers revolted. They were angry and frustrated at losing this necessary tool, (from a commander who had never worked the street) and the vote of no confidence was the result. In the vernacular of the street this was a piss poor trade of by an unqualified commander who couldn’t handle the ugliness of violence.
Harrington’s ruling paved the way for police use of Tasers in Portland, which killed 49 people in 2018. Tasers were involved in 1005 deaths since 2000, nationwide, when they began to be used regularly as a “less than lethal” means of gaining compliance of combative and violent suspects.
Penny Harrington’s next problem came when District Attorney Mike Shrunk contacted her and informed her that her husband, Officer Bruce Gary Harrington, was under investigation for tipping off a cocaine dealer about an impending police raid. The dealer was a man named Bobby Lee, who owned Rickashaw Charlie’s, a Chinese restaurant, often frequented by the Harrington’s. That is the kind of thing a drug dealer does, they warn their suppliers to protect their product.
Under no circumstances would an honest cop do what Bruce Harrington did.
I find it impossible to believe that Harrington had no knowledge of her husband’s criminal activity. Husbands and wives know what the other is doing; and she wasn’t an apron-wearing, dinner-cooking kind of wife. She was a cop. In her book she offers all kind of excuses as to why Schrunk was the bad guy and her husband was completely innocent. It does not ring true. She sounds in her book, like any garden variety wife defending her man, even if and when she knows he’s guilty.
A “Special Mayoral Commission” spent two months investigating both of the Harrington’s. “Gary” was cleared of any criminal wrong doing, but was determined to be guilty of “associating with criminals.” I am wondering how you associate with criminals without being involved in criminal activity?
At the commission hearing, among those who testified against Penny, was former Chief of police Ron Still. Penny had this to say about Still in her book on page 241: “He testified against me, that my reorganization of the police bureau, especially the narcotics division, was stupid — that I was incompetent.” As much as I disliked Ron Still, and still do, his opinion of Penny Harrington was identical to my own. She was stupid and incompetent. We all knew it.
The Commission’s report also focused on Penny Harrington’s leadership style and its effectiveness. The report stated: “She lost the confidence of her command and is unlikely to ever regain the confidence of a working majority of the Bureau or other law enforcement agencies” The Special Mayoral Commission recommended her removal as chief of police. This also was prophetic. She had never had any support among real police officers or departments.
The report did not recommend her termination though. This means Harrington could have remained employed by PPB as a Police Captain, collected her pay check, stayed with the bureau and retired and eventually collected her pension. Mayor Clark’s response to the commission’s report was: “Her assistant chiefs, they rebelled against her…you can’t run an army that way.”
Harrington’s response to the extreme humiliation of being demoted due to corruption, was to resign from the bureau saying she had been “forced out.” This is a lie. In other parts of her book she claims she was fired. Not true.
However, on page 246 of her book, Penny states: “Clark and I talked more, and he offered me the job of “assistant chief.” At least then, he rationalized, I could protect my pension. I said “no.” How could I possibly go back to the department under such circumstances? My command had been torn apart by lies and schemes. I needed to be exonerated totally and fully supported by the mayor.”
Penny said no because she would have been a laughing stock at the bureau and in the entire city, and she couldn’t handle the department knowing she and her husband had been linked to drug dealing at Rickashaw Charlie's. She made her bed, due to ego. But in doing so she forfeited her pension and was unable to collect unemployment. She sold her house and moved into an apartment while looking for other work. When money was running low, she moved into a camper to save expenses.
Penny contradicts herself all through her book, in more than a few areas. In one section, on page 253, she makes another statement, writing: “Clark reneged on all the promises he made regarding my pension, period. I was out of work without any money coming in. I had resigned based on his promises, and now after twenty-three years I had walked away with nothing, not even a pension. The city’s response was simple, that’s just the way it is.”
What Penny forgot is that to get a pension she would have had to continue working for two more years, to make it to the 25-year-mark. Clark had warned her of this and had tried to get her to accept the job of Assistant Chief, still a respectable position but she had declined. She turned it down because she couldn’t face the humiliation f people in the bureau knowing she and her hubby had been crooked, to say the least.
Anonymous source # 4 has shared that eventually Penny did get a pension. “One thing she DID get was a retirement. She was off when the ‘new plan’ started and you had to work two years under the new system to qualify. She had not worked the required two years. She went before the board and asked for the new pension, anyway. Tom Potter who was Chief wanted to give it to her to make her ‘go away’. So she got the new system which paid her more than the one she was qualified for. Her husband Bruce went off on a stress disability from all the problems he caused by talking to his cocaine dealing pal (who ended up in prison). A few years later the pension board made him come back from southern California (they were divorced by then) and return to work. Bruce has since remarried and recently became a Trumpster and moved to Idaho.”
Harrington was unable to find another job for two years. In the Marshal report she claims it was because the police bureau had destroyed her chances for another job. I suspect she was unemployed and unemployable because she was unable to provide credible references regarding her character from her former employer, PPB or any PPB associates. Also hanging over Harrington’s head was the proverbial white cloud of cocaine. People with a drug background are difficult to employ, especially if they used to be police chiefs.
Most amusing, in Penny’s book is yet another lie she unwittingly shares with the reader. While being interviewed for a high confidence position with the California Bar Association, for the job of Director of Investigations, Penny writes on page 257: “About a third of the way into my story, the interviewer stopped me to my surprise and delight, he understood the situation very well. I got fired because the union hated me and the mayor didn’t have the political savvy to deal with the situation. In a nutshell, it was clear that was sacrificed on the altar of expediency.”
How can one be fired, when one resigns? This error in Penny’s book is not only revealing about her casual propensity to lie, but it also indicates a careless writer. People can’t be fired if they choose, against good advice, (Clark) to resign, instead. This is just another example of Penny blaming everyone else but herself for her own failures. She was not forced out, she chose to leave and it was not due to leaders wanting “expediency” but rather because she and her husband were cavorting with criminals and known drug dealers.
In one fell swoop Harrington lost her position, (she resigned) and any kind of employment, her reputation, and lost the respect of the entire law enforcement community in Oregon and no doubt Washington as well. I surmise she also lost the respect of many women who had once looked up to her as a leader in the women’s movement.
I can imagine the frustration of Bud Clark who had the good intelligence to want to fire the corrupt Ron Still only to have to remove his prize appointee, Penny Harrington for corruption as well, hiding as she was under that white cloud of cocaine.
When Clark informed her of his decision to remove her as chief, she resigned from the bureau instead. Again, ego. Harrington would never have been able to tolerate the knowledge that everyone knew she and her husband were corrupt and had dealings with drug dealers. The snickers, the stares would have been too much for her, so she ran instead of face the music. Clark’s final response was: “Well, tits up!” a remark he later apologized for as being inappropriate.
I have always held Penny Harrington responsible for destroying certain aspects of the Portland police bureau, the agency I worked for, for 17 years, by removing the height requirement and eliminating the carotid hold, two valuable tools police needed to do their jobs. But then how would she understand how effective and important those two things were, having no experience as a real police officer?
In her naïve attempt at making police work more gender neutral she did a great deal of harm and the policy changes PPB made were copied nationwide in many other departments. Without the carotid hold officers were forced to manhandle (wrestle) violators and injuries to officers were often the result.
From my personal experience of six years working as a street cop in Albina and St. Johns I used the carotid hold more times than I can remember. I used the move hundreds of times, literally hundreds of times, on men mostly. My point here is I was never injured in a resisting arrest situation and neither were the drunks, or criminals who resisted. The fact that Harrington, who never worked the street, made decisions effecting hundreds of experienced officers careers, policy changes that they knew were wrong, decisions which worked to their detriment, lead to her eventual downfall. She left the bureau instead of simply being demoted, as Jim Purcell had once done in the late 1950s.
She chose to resign.
When I recently heard of Penny Harrington’s death my honest and immediate reaction was the thought: The wicked witch is dead. I immediately contacted my friend, Anonymous source #1 and informed him of her death. He already knew. He had actually worked for Harrington at East precinct. His reaction was the same when he emailed me back and wrote: “The wicked witch is dead.” I believe this is another legacy of Penny Harrington.
Source # 1: “Penny was the only person that didn’t get along with me and my partner in the entire bureau. There’s no grieving from me on that loss. (Harrington’s death). I have nine commendations and a couple ribbon awards, all of which she refused to fully sign. Just a small initial on the corner and all presented to me behind a closed door with a look of disgust.”
DD: “Why wouldn’t she sign it? Was she unfriendly to you when she gave it to you?”
Source # 1: “Oh, yes. It was because she was ordered to let me and my partner be the only 2nd night two-man car and we kicked butt. But it made her stats look bad as some months we did more arrests than the entire night crew — the old Sleeping Beauties that lived in their districts and slept most of the shift.”
DD: “So you knew Sleeping Beauties, too?”
Source # 1: “Yes, and I despised them. There were several that complained having to get out of bed when we called for cover.”
DD: “What is your opinion on women in police work?”
Source # 1: “I’ve got several female retired cops who are friends and they hated Penny, even though she set the mark for them in the bureau. I know you don’t like women for cops and me as well, for battle situations. But there were many who were good. Many times where I saw a female and her voice calm bad guys down, so we didn’t have to go to battle.”
DD: “What are you thoughts on right now?”
Source # 1: “You must know that in the 80s if we had, say, five shootings over a weekend, not a single guy would have a weekend off for a month! Or until it was ceased. It just amazes me. There were sixteen this weekend!”
Penny Harrington had a son named Brian Orazetti. He graduated from Beaverton high in 1985, the same year his mother was appointed Chief of Police. Brian had a brother named Ricardo. Penny kept the fact that she had children secret. No one in the bureau knew she was a mother. Brian Orazetti died of brain cancer in 2015. If he was born in the late 1960s, as she came on with PPB in 1964, I wonder who raised her children. She never spoke of being a mother to anyone at the Bureau. Why? Other women did who worked in the Women’s Protective Division, so why didn’t Penny?
While doing research for this opinion piece, I found a cheap copy of Penny’s 1999 tell-all “trash bio” as my wife Theresa calls it, Triumph of Spirit. It was purchased from Thriftbooks for less than ten dollars. I was surprised to find it was a signed, inscribed copy. The inscription was telling. Penny cared more about her own ambition and personal advancement than police work, or the safety of the Portland community. To her police work was just a club that she wanted admission to no matter the cost.
Forgive me Dear Reader if I have pulled aside the curtain of adoration and adulation which normally happens when talking of the deceased whom people often canonize simply because they’re dead. But I knew Penny Orazetti Harrington and she was anything but a hero. She was anything but a cop, and she was anything but a police chief.
When you consider the fact that Penny bulldozed her way up the command structure, not by virtue of the quality of her work, or character or courage fighting crime out on the cold rainy streets of Portland, but by endless lawsuits and threats of lawsuits, and when you consider she didn’t comprehend the uses and necessity of violence or force, a component of any police officers job, she succeeded in only one way. She forced destructive policy changes on a police department to its detriment and that department has been paying the price ever since.
Over 1,000 people have died nationwide due to Tasers, and in Portland only one death occurred due to the Carotid Hold, which resulted in the hold being banned… by a woman who had never been a police officer. We now have male police officers who are so short; they can’t properly straddle their motorcycles, (as I once witnessed happen one sunny afternoon in downtown Portland a few years ago). Nor can they handle a resisting male criminal, without help from backup officers.
Penny was not a hero. She was a flawed woman who wanted power more than anything. She wanted power at the expense of police work. She wanted power to her own detriment. And she was willing to bulldoze and bully her way to the top by manipulating the legal system and individuals to get there, even to the point of threatening her way into a Pension she was not entitled to and did not earn. In damaging the Portland Police Bureau, Penny destroyed herself. That is her truest legacy.
In the end Penny ended up selling the kind of rocks that wouldn’t get her into trouble. In a New Age shop (Ruby Dragon Metaphysical Shop) in sunny California, selling candles, trinkets, “healing crystals” and other New Age paraphernalia (that doesn’t prevent cancer or do anything other than look pretty) Penny found her true calling.
It is unfortunate however that her ill-fated time at the Portland Police Bureau had to come first.
References:
1.) Anonymous Source # 1. Personal Interview 2021.
2.) Anonymous Source #2. Personal Interview 2021.
3.) Anonymous Source # 3. Personal Interview 2021.
4.) Anonymous Source # 4. Personal Interview 2021.
6.) Police Pioneer Penny Harrington’s Unfinished Business | The Marshall Project