Portland Grand Jury Declines to Charge Officers After Man Dies in Prone Restraint During Mental Health Crisis

PORTLAND, Ore. — A Multnomah County Grand Jury declined to charge three Portland police officers for the death of 52-year-old Damon Lamarr Johnson after being held in a prone position for four minutes.

Responding to reports from security officers that Johnson was having a mental health crisis at Argyle Gardens, the low-income housing complex where Johnson lived, on June 27, PPB Officers J.P. Duque Valencia, Travis Wortman, and Jason Epton restrained Johnson on the night of June 27. The security officers reported that Johnson had hung knives from his window earlier in the day, sprayed shaving cream in the hall, and flooded his unit with water.

Body camera footage of the incident shows officers struggling to put Johnson in handcuffs. After succeeding, he remained in the prone position with one officer sitting on his legs from 10:31 p.m. to 10:33 p.m. Johnson’s screams became faint until about 10:34 p.m., when he appeared to go quiet.

Paramedics arrived at 10:37 and administered CPR after detecting a faint pulse, before taking Johnson to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Multnomah County District Attorney Nathan Vasquez noted that the still-unreleased medical examiner’s report describes the cause and manner of death as “prone restraint cardiac arrest with a contributing cause of acute methamphetamine intoxication.”

After reviewing the facts of the case, the Grand Jury decided criminal charges would not be filed.