Portland Police Officers Who Hospitalized College Student Have Controversial History

The family of Daniel Collins, who was cited while hospitalized at Oregon Health and Sciences University Dec. 24, confirmed identities of the two officers to the Skanner News on Tuesday afternoon.

Collins is doing well and preparing to head back to college in Arizona in the next few weeks.

His cousin, Sir Millage, who is severely autistic, was hospitalized in December of 2006 after being repeatedly Tased and beaten for not following officers' commands. Family members said Tuesday a lawsuit against the city and the Police Bureau in that case is still working its way through the courts.

Portland police spokeswoman Kelli Sheffer said Tuesday that many officers were called to the scene of the Barracuda Club Dec. 24. "There were a number of people there and they were all involved in a very big fight," she said.

On Monday Collins told The Skanner News that he and friends were leaving the club after an altercation had ended, and that near the door a group of officers blocked the exit and charged at them, knocking them all to the ground and pinning Collins beneath the others.

The student's family says that although Collins does not drink or smoke, had no weapons and had nothing to do with the fight, he was repeatedly Tased and beaten.

Collins and his grandmother, Pastor Mary Overstreet Smith, said that paramedics on the scene thought he was dead, but that he was stabilized and revived at OHSU.

Larry Collins, Daniel's father, said Delenikos left his police department business card with the 21-year-old, who was ticketed while in his hospital bed for resisting arrest and interfering in an arrest. He said Shaw indicated he was "out of cards."

Delenikos – who appeared in the television show "Cops: Chases and Takedowns Special Edition" in 2008 – and Shaw have been involved in several high-profile incidents and lawsuits, including:

--Shaw was one of three officers who shot and killed Vernon Allen, a homeless African American man, May 19, 2005, in downtown Portland.

--The Willamette Week reported in 2008 that Delenikos and Shaw hospitalized a loan officer after she objected to their arrest of an employee, whom she argued was "the wrong man." In her lawsuit against the city of Portland and the officers, Margarita Beutel claims that they picked her up and slammed her head-first into a concrete wall, giving her a concussion, broken nose, "permanent scarring, physical injury and emotional trauma." A followup story in the weekly indicates the police report says Beutel was drunk, disorderly and abusive at a traffic stop, and that the employee -- who was with her during the stop – was eventually let go when they realized their error.

--A Portland Tribune investigative report on patterns in use of force incidents published four years ago found that Shaw sent more people to the hospital than any other officer in the roughly two-year period between fall, 2004, and October 2006.

--Shaw made headlines in the Oregonian and the Portland Tribune when he strapped a gorilla suit to the grille of his squad car in 2003 and parked it next to a nightclub during a hip hop show – where young people took it as a racist insult and sent the media cellphone photos of it.

--In 2007 a federal court dismissed the conviction of Bennie Demetrius Washington after his arrest for being a felon in possession of a firearm, ruling that Shaw, the arresting officer, pulled Washington from his car and searched him without probable cause; Washington then filed a Civil Rights lawsuit against the city and the officers in 2008.

--Delenikos in 2009 published a letter to the editor on Oregonlive in support of the officers involved in the death of James Chasse, writing, "When people run from the police, we have reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred. That legally allows us to stop that person."

--After Keaton Dupree Otis was fatally shot, Officers Shaw and Delenikos were assigned to "taking control of the person," according to the police report; they cuffed his body and "placed the person on his side in the post-shooting position." Neither fired a weapon during the incident, nor were they part of the group of officers who surrounded the vehicle.

Family members of Collins, who had no previous arrest record and holds an A average in his college studies, said Tuesday they have retained the services of attorney Emily Simon.









ORIGINAL STORY Filed Dec. 27.

A 21-year-old Portland native – home for the holidays from an Arizona college where he's an A student in sports medicine – says he was Tasered three times Dec. 24, rendered unconscious by Portland police, and revived after paramedics rushed him to Oregon Health and Sciences University.

Daniel Collins, the grandson of Pastor Mary Overstreet Smith, maintains that he was an innocent bystander trying to exit the Barracuda Club when four police officers took him and several friends to the ground, beat him and later cited him at the hospital for resisting arrest and interfering with an arrest.

Portland police had not returned requests for comment before press time.

A young man who before this had no arrest record, Collins must now appear in court before he is due back at the Glendale Community College for classes on Jan. 11.

Founder of the Powerhouse Church of God in Christ and past winner of the "Woman of the Year" award from the Oregon Commission for Women for her charity work in North Portland and for Hurricane Katrina evacuees, Pastor Smith's voice still shakes when she describes what happened late on Christmas Eve.

"All I could think about was—here we go again," she told The Skanner News. "Exactly four years from the time they Tased my great-grandson."

Smith founded the Sir J Millage Drop-In Center for Change, a day center for autistic youth, after her disabled great-grandson was Tasered repeatedly by Portland police officers in December of 2006 because he would not respond to their commands.

In that incident, a severely autistic 15-year-old, Sir Millage, had wandered away from home in the middle of the night and was wandering into traffic on the Broadway Bridge without a shirt on.

Officers tried to stop the nearly 6-foot tall, 250-pound teen, but he was too disabled to speak or understand their commands. Saying they feared he would attack them, Officers Andrew Griggs and Michael Chapman Tased Millage and beat him with a baton.

While police accounts say the teen was Tasered half a dozen times, the family says emergency room records showed more than a dozen Taser rounds were used.

Pastor Smith had maintained a special medical alert with the Portland police that included a description of Sir Millage and his disabilities, just to guard against such an outcome; she brought a $3 million lawsuit against the city and the officers in 2007.

Now she says the family is horrified by what happened to Collins – who is very close to Millage because they've grown up together and are the same age.

"Actually they thought he was dead because when I picked him up he still had his EKG things on him," Pastor Smith said. "I'm really glad it wasn't a fatality like they thought it was."

Smith, who says she is retaining an attorney to look into the citations, and Collins maintain there was a disturbance at the club but Collins was completely uninvolved.

"I just think it was like totally unnecessary," he says.

"Somebody called and said they saw somebody lying on a stretcher that looked like him, but it took me about two hours to find out exactly where he was," Pastor Smith said. "I got up there and he came out, he was all beaten and bruised up, and he sat down in the car, and he said 'Grandma, I wasn't in a fight.'

"He said, 'The police did all this, and now I know how Sir felt,'" Pastor Smith said.

"He said, 'Grandma, when that Taser first hit my neck, I felt like I was going to be electrocuted -- like they were going to kill me," she said.

"This is uncalled for. He's a student, he's never even had a traffic ticket, he's just a really good boy."