In March 2014, a young white man walks around Beaverton's Veterans Memorial Park with a gun.

In October 2014, a young black man bikes around Beaverton's police station with a video camera.

Both Matthew Cale (with the gun) and Matthew "Deme" Cooper (with the camera) intended to provoke police attention. Neither, at that moment, was doing anything illegal, but one of them would end up pepper sprayed, Tasered and arrested.

Why that happened is worth a closer look.

* * *

About once a month, Matthew Cale, 25, and a friend perform their own Second Amendment education campaign in Washington County.

They go to a public place carrying a rifle or shotgun and record the inevitable interaction with police. One video shows cops reacting as Cale and his friend hang out at a Beaverton veterans memorial.

In Beaverton, you are required to have a concealed handgun license to carry loaded guns, so when approached by officers, they hold up their IDs.

"Thanks for your cooperation, guys," one officer says. "You guys are definitely within your rights to do what you're doing. It's just that people don't know that and they start freaking out."

"I appreciate what you guys do. It's not easy being law enforcement," Cale says.

The cops leave. The entire interaction lasts about two-and-a-half minutes.

What you don't see in the video, Cale says, is the other patrol cars and officers surrounding the park.

"There's a lot of anxiety, because a lot of them [have their weapons] drawn," he said. "Going into those situations and knowing what the outcome could be, you have to keep a cool and level head."

* * *

Deme Cooper, now 21, visited the Beaverton Police Department six times in the fall of 2014. He took photos and video around the department and its gated parking area at night. Each time, officers came out to speak with him.

Cooper put video of the first encounter on his YouTube channel. In the video, Cooper does not explain why he is filming - "I'm not going to answer questions," he tells the officer repeatedly - although he later told The Oregonian/OregonLive it's about accountability.

"I do filming in Portland, Gresham some times, Chicago when I moved out there," he said. "I try to work towards holding police officers accountable because I see all these stories about black teenagers like me getting shot up by police officers."

Whether you agree with him or not, I understand that argument. But just filming the building? What are you trying to hold them accountable for, exactly?

Cooper says he wanted to film police making arrests. But he couldn't find Beaverton police radio activity on online, so he wasn't sure where to start.

OK. That isn't illegal.

It is suspicious, though, and Cooper's actions unnerved department employees enough that when he returned Oct. 24, 2014, he was served trespass papers banning him from the property.

This time, Cooper wasn't filming, but an officer was.

"You're excluding me from public property, which, by far, that sounds stupid," Cooper says on the video. He refuses to take the paperwork.

He asks why he's being kicked off the property, and the officer starts to explain, but changes his mind. "Because you ... well it's all contained in the letter. You could take the letter."

"You could read it to me," Cooper says.

The officer tells Cooper several times to "educate yourself" by taking the paperwork. And Cooper, while not physically aggressive, offers an angry, profanity-laced response.

When an officer tries to put the trespass notice in Cooper's backpack, Cooper backs away, saying, "I am leaving. You [expletive] watch yourself next time, you piece of [expletive.]"

He left, but about an hour later, Cooper was spotted using a laptop at either the edge of police department property or on an adjacent property. He had been issued a trespass notice from both properties, though Cooper said he didn't know that at the time.

Cooper said he was in the process of looking online to find the police department's property line when officers placed him under arrest. By police reports and Cooper's own account, he resisted - not by fighting but by refusing to comply with orders. Officers first pepper sprayed and then Tasered Cooper as they brought him to the ground.

Interestingly, the arrest, pepper spraying and electro-shock weren't recorded by anyone.

"I guess I'll say timing" is the reason the earlier confrontation was recorded but this one wasn't, Police Chief Geoff Spalding said. "My understanding is this happened so quickly."

Cooper's bail was $50,000, which he couldn't afford. He spent about two weeks locked up and on advice of his court-appointed attorney, eventually pleaded guilty to resisting arrest.

* * *

Why did these scenarios play out so differently? Well, two things stand out.

First, Cale remains calm while Cooper gets angry. Did the cops treat Cooper worse because he gave them attitude? It certainly didn't help. If officers had simply told him where the property line was, the situation may have never risen to the level of a forceful arrest.

The second difference is race.

There's a thing called implicit bias - it's the bias you don't even know you have - and it may be part of the reason black Americans are three times more likely than whites to experience use of force during police encounters. Closer to home, a 2015 audit found black inmates represent 27 percent of the Multnomah County jail population, but are involved in 40 percent of its use-of-force incidents.

Beaverton's most recent Racial/Bias Based Policing Annual Report doesn't have use of force statistics, but it does show that in 2014, African Americans made up 3 percent of the city's population, but 6 percent of city police traffic stops.

I raised those numbers with Spalding, but instead of addressing implicit bias, he focused on flaws in the report. Cops often don't know the race of the person they are pulling over, he said, and they also pull over many commuters who aren't city residents.

I'm always intrigued when opposites on the political spectrum find common ground, and here's a place where the Patriot movement and Black Lives Matter meet: police accountability.

"Why didn't they help (Cooper)? They are trained to do that," Cale said. Officers "escalated the situation by not answering the questions. They could have easily told him where the property line was."

Even if Cooper cursed at officers, Cale said, "that's a First Amendment right."

This case shows at least one officer bias: give a cop attitude, don't expect great service. But aren't police supposed to be above that? They're not waitresses, store clerks or referees. Sure, Cooper was messing with the cops. But were the cops messing with him in return?

That's a conversation worth having, as is whether our police treat potentially volatile incidents differently based on the color of a person's skin.

An unarmed black teen filming the police was pepper sprayed, Tasered and arrested. If we aren't willing to examine why this happened, the next time things could end much worse.

-- Samantha Swindler

@editorswindler / 503-294-4031

sswindler@oregonian.com