Why are the Medford Police so afraid of the truth?

The Medford Police’s annual report always contains the number of complaints filed against the department each year.

Except when it doesn’t.

In 2015, Kevin Curtin, president of Real Property Group, Inc., filed 340 complaints against Community Service Officer Scott Niezen of the Medford Police Department. Despite extensive, indeed, exhaustive documentation of the complaints’ validity, to this date, the police have failed to include the number of complaints RPG’s president filed in any of its annual reports and have never explained why they dismissed them.

Keep in mind, the police even include complaints it considers “unfounded” in all its counts – so the question is, why did the Medford police suddenly decide Curtin never filed the complaints?

We’ll probably never know, but RPG and Curtin nonetheless want the State of Oregon to find out why Medford covered up well documented reports of an officer’s misconduct. Earlier this year, Curtin and RPG filed a complaint with the Oregon Dept. of Justice, asking it to investigate the Medford Police Department on charges of police misconduct and corruption. Not only did the department’s behavior cost RPG thousands of dollars in legal fees, the department’s reckless and tragicomically stupid pursuit of unfounded property code citations played a direct hand in smearing Curtin’s reputation, he says.

Great Scott!

Again, and again, Niezen, an officer charged with code enforcement, displayed a stunning lack of common courtesy as well as property code knowledge in his efforts to embarrass RPG and Curtin. A cursory read of his citations is a mental walk through a minefield of malice and mendacity, given many are vague, unsubstantiated or characterized by outright falsehoods.

Curtin also says he’s given notice to Medford he plans to sue the city for its failure to sustain the various complaints he’s lodged against the police.

“The 340 complaints were not included in any of the annual reports from 2015 to 2017,” Curtin says, pointing to the reports.

Indeed, the reports for the years in question state the following number of complaints for these three years as such: 31 in 2017; 37 in 2016; and 63 in 2015.

“By not including these complaints in the annual reports, the Medford Police Department knowingly and willfully presented false information to intentionally mislead the public,” Curtin told the justice dept. “It is a material fact that a minimum of 340 complaints were filed against a member of the Medford Police Department in 2015 and the department lied about it in their reports.

“It is also a material fact that multiple members of the police department, including the chief of police, were aware of the 340 complaints,” Curtin continues. “There is no excuse for these complaints to have been left out of the annual reports.”

Complaints? What complaints?

Even if you give the Medford police the benefit of the doubt in this matter, its annual reports still come up short. For example, one might surmise that RPG’s complaints were still “under investigation,” a category introduced by the police in 2016.

“They list two complaints as being ‘under investigation at the end of 2016.’” Curtin says. “This is not accurate. Throughout 2015, 2016 and 2017, Medford Police Sgt. Don Lane was investigating 340 complaints filed against Niezen.”

Although the complaints against Niezen had substantial evidence to sustain them, on March 2, 2017, two years after RPG filed the complaints, the entire 340 complaints were disposed with a single “unfounded” by Sgt. Don Lane, Curtin says, noting he has detailed records, including correspondence from Medford police, to substantiate his DOJ complaint.

Curtin also notes RPG filed complaints against Lane for an apparent cover up and violating Medford Police policy by not fully investigating each complaint, but those complaints were also dismissed by the police.

340 minus 1?

When asked questions about Medford police and their complaints policy, the city responded that “multiple complaints raised about a single transaction or situation, or originating from a single complainant, may be addressed via a single letter.  It is Medford Police Department policy that each complaint shall receive a disposition, but that does not require a separate piece of paper for each such complaint … If you filed a complaint containing 10 allegations, a single piece of paper explaining that the 10 allegations were determined to be unfounded would constitute the disposition of each of those allegations.”

Curtin doesn’t dispute that RPG’s complaints could have been addressed in a single letter. However, the letter he got back from Sgt. Lane nonetheless still violates Medford’s own policies. He quotes Lane’s letter to prove his point. Dated March 2, 2017, the letter mentions a whopping one complaint out of 340, and then doesn’t even specify which complaint was being addressed.

“I have thoroughly reviewed the complaint,” Lane wrote. “As a result of this investigation, I have concluded the following: The complaint filed in regards to Community Service Officer Niezen’s actions and investigation into your property at 2762 Crater Lake Avenue is unfounded.”

“Which one of the 340 complaints is unfounded?” Curtin wrote back in response.

To date, he’s received no reply to his query.

Curtin’s conclusion about the Medford police is sobering, to say the least.

“The Medford Police Department cannot be trusted,” he says. “They do not report data consistently, share accurate information, and resist providing any information at all – all while boasting transparency.”

Curtin opines that Medford may be playing down complaints because its police department already has suffered from enough bad press. In 2017, for example, the FBI ranked Medford Oregon’s most crime ridden city.

Niezen and Lane did not reply to requests for comment on this story.