Portland Officer Cleared After Killing Innocent Man, But City May Still Pay His Family Millions
PORTLAND, Ore. — Portland city councilors will vote on Thursday on whether or not to give $3.75 million to a family whose son was wrongfully shot in the back by a police officer on November 19, 2022.
The family of Immanueal Jaquez Clark-Johnson sued the City of Portland and the Police Bureau in the U.S. District Court.
The Policeman Was Cleared of Criminal Wrongdoing
Clark-Johnson was killed by Portland police officer Christopher Sathoff in a mistaken identity shooting. Sathoff was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by a grand jury last year.
Clark-Johnson, who was 30 years old at the time of the shooting, fled on foot from the police who mistakenly believed him to be involved in an armed robbery outside a fast-food restaurant on Powell Boulevard and Southeast 50th Avenue.
Clark-Johnson’s family filed the lawsuit, stating that the police, who only had a general description of the getaway car, surrounded their son’s vehicle, which was parked on Southeast Steele Street, nearly two miles from the site of the robbery.
Their Son and His Three Passengers Did Not Match the Description of the Robbers
The lawsuit further claimed that neither their son nor the other three passengers in his car matched the description given of the robbers, who were all said to be white males. Clark-Johnson was black, and the other occupants of his vehicle were another black man and a white couple.
The family further claimed that the police delayed an ambulance by 26 minutes, which arrived at the scene of the shooting. Clark-John died in the Oregon Health & Science University Hospital two days later.
Sathoff was cleared of wrongdoing, despite the findings of a police internal affairs investigator who found the policeman guilty of violating the City of Portland’s deadly force policy.