The ongoing case of concerning a Portland police officer fired after falsely identifying Hardesty is back in the news. The police falsely stated that she was involved in a hit-and-run. Hardesty filed a lawsuit in December seeking a total of about $5 million in damages from the PPA, along with Hunzeker and Ottoman.
According to a March 3, 2022 memo, Ottoman told a friend, Gabriel Johnson, about the hit-and-run call on March 4, 2021. She also took a picture of the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) report and sent it to Johnson.
Recently, Officer Kerri Ottoman was suspended for one day without pay and Officer Ken Le received a letter of reprimand.
Two additional Portland officers were disciplined for leaking information in March 2021 that falsely identified Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty as a hit-and-run suspect, according to documents released by the city of Portland.
The sentencing seems light. For instance, Officer Kerri Ottoman was suspended for one day without pay and Officer Ken Le received a letter of reprimand for violating the bureau’s directive on dissemination of information. Ottoman and Le are the second and third PPB officers to be disciplined for leaking information about the hit-and-run investigation.
Officer Brian Hunzeker, who was fired Feb. 28 after an internal affairs investigation, found that he shared confidential information with the media and that he did it in response to Hardesty’s negative comments about PPB officers. Hunzeker was president of the Portland Police Association (PPA) at the time of the leak.
That was not all. Internal affairs found that Ottoman and Le also responsible for leaking false information about Hardesty and the hit-and-run investigation.
Johnson is affiliated with a conservative political action committee called Coalition to Save Portland. Ottoman said she “was venting” to a friend and didn’t know Johnson was going to share the information during a live stream. He was referring to the morning his communication with Ottoman and Johnson was shared about the hit-and-run investigation during a live stream on Facebook.
Ottoman said she knew Johnson was connected to a conservative media group but that she didn’t take that into consideration when she shared the information with him. She was reportedly upset and surprised when she found out he’d shared the information on a live stream.
Punishment for Ottoman included suspension without pay for one day. The chief said that Ottoman learned from her mistake, accepted responsibility and apologized for her actions.
Le told investigators that he didn’t know at the time that it was a violation of the bureau’s dissemination of information directive to share the information with a BOEC employee. Le received a letter of reprimand.
On March 3, 2021, a victim told dispatch that she had been involved in a hit-and-run incident at Southeast 148th Avenue and East Burnside Street. The victim said she thought the woman who hit her looked like Hardesty.
Hardesty said that her car did not leave the driveway on the day of the hit-and-run, which police later confirmed to be true.
