The description, via Oregon Live, of the thief was fairly typical:

Hispanic man, late 30s, 5-feet-4 to 5-feet-6, with a thin build, wearing a cream-colored beanie, black jacket and carrying a black backpack.

Apparently, the use of the word beanie remains in fashion in Portland. It didn’t take long before the police had “one under.”

The person detained: Lisa Haynes, an African American woman in her late 40s who stands 4-foot-10-inches tall.

And no beanie.  Before you jump to unwarranted assumptions about the Portland police, they have an explanation:

[Lt. Vince] Elmore, drawing on his 23-year bureau career, replied that witnesses often get descriptions wrong.

So if an eyewitness’ description is considered sufficiently unreliable that the police feel free to disregard it, then there are two problems. The first is that Elmore now concedes that eyewitnesses are as worthless a source of proof as we’ve long contended, and the second is that they either provide no basis to stop anyone or a basis to stop everyone, regardless of appearance. See how that works?

He added that most people comply and give police their name.

Ah, there’s the rub. People who look nothing like the perp comply anyway, as the police believe they should in order to make their job easier and our world more, well, compliant.  Now your assumption is no longer unwarranted. Jump away.

The cops were looking for a guy who was allegedly rifling through some mailboxes, and came upon Lisa Haynes waiting for a bus.  The connection was immediate:

[Arresting Officer Gregory] Baldwin [who was training a rookie at the time] told internal affairs investigators that they stopped Haynes because she was wearing clothes that matched the thief’s: a black jacket, cream-colored hat with a black backpack. He told her to get off the phone and give him her name.

Hispanic man…black woman…close enough.  It wasn’t about the appearance really, but the expectation that when Baldwin asked for her name, a person minding her own business for whom he possessed no reason other than some pathologically ordinary clothing colors to address, she did not comply.  What? Everybody complies. A refusal creates suspicion, even where none could otherwise be found.

But then Haynes did the unthinkable.

Haynes said she told him she was waiting for a bus. “I didn’t feel comfortable telling him my name because he did not say why he was there,” she said.
She said the officer asked what was in her backpack. She said she called her son on her cellphone and told him she felt threatened by police. Her son asked if she was being arrested, and Haynes said she did not think so.
On her son’s advice, she grabbed her backpack to walk off. That’s when the officers grabbed her hands and struggled to handcuff her. Baldwin screamed profanity at her and placed her in the back of a police car, she said.

Baldwin was not going to have the rookie he was training at the time learn a dangerously bad lesson, that the First Rule of Policing can ever be ignored. When Haynes grabbed her backpack, it was more than any reasonable officer could bear, as Lt. Elmore from internal affairs later agreed. After all, you can’t have unarrested citizens touching their things and walking away from cops, except if you’re on the Supreme Court.

Their lieutenant, Vince Elmore, told the committee he exonerated the officers because they investigated the mail theft appropriately. He called the officers cordial and said “Ms. Haynes had no intention of cooperating with officers.”
When Haynes reached for her backpack, officers were concerned for their safety, Elmore said. They didn’t know if she was reaching for a weapon inside, he said.

There could have been a gun. There could have been a bazooka. There could have been something terribly dangerous in that backpack, and when Haynes put her hands on her own backpack to walk away, there is no way Baldwin, as a trained professional, could let this small woman ignore his commands.

Or, of course, the backpack could contain nothing threatening whatsoever, but what sort of cop is going to take that kind of crazy risk?  Not Baldwin, so according to Internal Affairs, he was fully justified in grabbing, cuffing and tossing Haynes into his cruiser. And so what if a little profanity was uttered? After all, she was a noncompliant threat to his life. Maybe.

But diminutive Ms. Haynes wasn’t taking crap that day, and “appealed” the IA decision to the Citizens Review Committee.

“The most egregious aspect of this case — the fact she was stopped — was not investigated,” said Briana Swift, a student at Lewis & Clark Law School who served as a volunteer advocate for Haynes before the committee.

Well said, and good to see a law student advocating so well for her client.

Committee members differed on what they found disturbing about the case. Some called the initial stop unreasonable, while others thought it was ok, but found the search of Haynes’ backpack and arrest improper. They all voiced disgust with the investigation.

While it might have reflected better on the committee had they recognized that essentially every action, every utterance, from start to finish here, was wrong and a flagrant violation of Ms. Haynes’ rights and the propriety of the officer’s duty, at least they all agreed something was very wrong here.

To add insult to injury, IA pulled old records on Haynes which said she called police officers “satan” in a 2011 encounter, just to show her propensity to be a cop hater. Even the Committee knew better than to buy into that:

“It felt like you were trying to tilt us,” [Committee Member Steven] Yarosh said.

Tilt? That’s one way to put it, I guess. So the committee leveled its firm judgment that this needed further investigation.

Haynes said she’s glad there will be more investigation.
“I want something done so this doesn’t happen to anyone else,” she said.

So all is well in Portland and small women are safe to walk the streets. Unless they don’t comply with the police or grab their backpack and attempt to exercise their right to walk away, in which case it’s about as likely to happen again as Voodoo Donuts is to mix bacon with maple.

H/T Spencer Neal