A citizen panel Wednesday night voted 7 to 0 to sustain a complaint that a Portland police sergeant violated the bureau’s policy on truthfulness by lying about the law to get a protester to stop filming him and other officers.

The Citizen Review Committee’s vote directly challenges the “not sustained’’ ruling by the sergeant’s supervisor, Traffic Capt. Stephanie Lourenco, and the bureau’s Police Review Board.

The committee’s challenge will now go to the police chief for consideration. Officers found to have been untruthful in the past routinely have been fired.

Committee members said they were perplexed by the captain’s reasoning for her finding, even though Sgt. Erin Smith acknowledged he misrepresented the law to get protester Benjamin Kerensa to stop videotaping him during a Nov. 30, 2016 demonstration in front of fuel storage facilities in Northwest Portland over the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Smith admitted to falsely telling Kerensa that he didn't have the right to film officers and threatened Kerensa that he could be arrested if he didn’t stop.

The citizen committee a year ago had found Smith violated the bureau’s directive on professional conduct by misrepresenting the law to Kerensa and improperly threatening to arrest Kerensa who was lawfully filming officers.

Police Chief Danielle Outlaw agreed with those findings. But she also sent the case back to internal affairs for further investigation, asking investigators to consider whether Kerensa also violated the bureau’s policy on truthfulness.

Following the latest internal affairs investigation that included another interview with the sergeant, Lourenco said she could not sustain the untruthfulness allegation but recommended a debriefing with the sergeant.

She found Smith’s deception was permitted under an exception in the policy, which says it’s ok to not be truthful when “necessary to protect the physical safety’’ of an officer or another bureau member.

Lourenco referenced Smith’s latest interview in which he said he used deception to distract Kerensa, de-escalate the encounter and get him to back away from another officer who was issuing a citation to him.

The sergeant “made a very quick decision to try to get compliance without escalating the situation,’’ Lourenco said.

Committee member Andrea Chiller said she just “didn’t buy’’ the sergeant’s or captain’s explanation.

A lot of what the sergeant said “undercuts his own credibility,’’ she said.

Chiller said she wondered how lying to someone can be construed as a de-escalation technique. “Why would someone calm down if they think the officer is lying to them?’’ she asked.

Chiller suggested the sergeant’s safety explanation was an “after-the-fact’’ excuse.

Committee vice-chair Candace Avalos agreed. “ How is lying about your right to film going to make the officer more safe?’’ she asked.

The police captain attempted to explain her reasoning further, but it only continued to baffle committee members.

“I don’t think anyone is disagreeing that this behavior by the sergeant was inappropriate,’’ Lourenco said. But Lourenco said she said the bureau’s policy has an exception, allowing deception “when necessary’’ to protect one’s or another’s physical safety.

“Necessary doesn’t exclude all other possibilities,’’ the captain said. “Every officer is going to have a different threshold. What’s the safety risk that allows me to lie? That’s not spelled out in this policy.’’

Committee member Daniel Schwartz countered that the video evidence captured of the 2016 encounter involving Kerensa showed there was no perceptible threat to an officer.

“I don’t believe a reasonable person can look at the video evidence and conclude that the exception applied,’’ Schwartz said. He said he was thankful Kerensa knew his rights.

Kerensa said it sounded like the traffic captain was making excuses for the sergeant. “I had the constitutional right to film the police,’’ he said. “There’s no circumstances where an officer should be allowed to infringe on First Amendment rights.’’

The citizen committee’s challenge will now go to the police chief, who can agree with its finding or not, and then determine what level of discipline Smith will face for his actions. The committee also recommended the police bureau re-examine its policy on truthfulness and make sure any exceptions are narrowly construed.

Committee members commended Outlaw for taking another look and directing internal affairs to consider the additional violation.

“That’s a positive,’’ Collier said.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

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