James Cleavenger, the former University of Oregon public safety officer who prevailed in a $1 million whistleblower case against the school, this week filed paperwork to run for Lane County district attorney.

Cleavenger, 41, will run against the incumbent district attorney, Patty Perlow, 56. Perlow has been with the office for 30 years. She was chief deputy district attorney before the governor appointed her to the top job in 2015. She was elected the following year.

In 2015, an eight-person federal jury sided with Cleavenger, who said the UO police chief and a lieutenant retaliated against him for speaking out about department bias and ineptitude. Top university officials, including the No. 2 in-house lawyer, were in on the decision to punish him.

The school ultimately agreed to pay out $1 million to end Cleavenger’s legal claims. The cash award was less than the $755,000 jury verdict plus $500,000 in attorney fees that he won in federal court, but his lawyer said it meant he was assured of getting the money instead of dealing with a prolonged appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Cleavenger said he has homes in Oakridge and Eugene. He is a full-time police officer for the Oakridge Police Department. He said he works part-time as a lawyer on civil cases. From 2013 through 2017, he was a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Michael McShane. He’s worked for other small city police departments, such as Junction City and Coburg.

From 2010 until 2013, he worked as a public safety officer at UO.

He said the DA’s race will be “pretty political” given what he said was Perlow’s support for the former UO police chief during his lawsuit.

“I have felt that the animosity has continued” as he moved on to Oakridge, he said.

Cleavenger accused Perlow of “failing to do her job” by not prosecuting cases investigated by smaller police agencies.

“I have worked in law enforcement in Junction City, Coburg and now Oakridge,” he said, “and it’s always been a complaint of the small communities” that the office in general focuses on Eugene at the expense of the rest of the county.

“The community is frustrated because they keep seeing us arrest people and they are let go the next day," he said. “They come back to the community and commit the same crimes.

“They are not doing their jobs and I am willing to do it,” he said.

Perlow said she was not district attorney during Cleavenger’s case against the university. She said late last year, before the election was an issue, she raised concerns with Oakridge city leaders about the quality of police investigations, including Cleavenger’s work.

“He was involved in the majority of the cases that we were bringing to their attention,” she said.

Cleavenger defended his police work and accused Perlow of continuing a “personal attack” that began during his lawsuit. He suspects Perlow wants to eliminate the Oakridge Police Department and replace it with the Lane County Sheriff’s Office.

Given his entry into the race, Perlow said she has declared a conflict of interest in prosecuting his cases and has referred them to the Oregon Department of Justice.

Perlow said she supports local police agencies by offering resources and training but acknowledged that smaller agencies “oftentimes have a harder time investigating cases.”

“But we do prosecute a lot of cases out of all 11 agencies” in Lane County, she said.

-- Noelle Crombie; ncrombie@oregonian.com; 503-276-7184; @noellecrombie

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