A confidential report released this week in the wake of the wrongful arrest scandal tied to former West Linn Police Chief Terry Timeus accuses Timeus of making racist, sexist, anti-Semitic and homophobic statements and sleeping with an informant when he worked as a Lake Oswego police officer.

The report -- filled with allegations of unprofessional conduct by Timeus -- was delivered to West Linn City Hall on Feb. 12, 2008, three years after West Linn hired Timeus as its chief without a background check. Timeus retired from West Linn in October 2017 amid allegations that he drove drunk while off duty.

The report’s release is the latest development in a burgeoning controversy stemming from the West Linn police investigation of a black Portland man ordered by Timeus to help a fishing buddy in 2017. The case has unleashed a torrent of unsavory dealings tied to police involved in the arrest, including Timeus, and has spurred a federal civil rights investigation of West Linn’s handling of the case and at least four other related investigations.

West Linn had kept the 100-page report, written in 2008 by a retired police chief from a neighboring county, under wraps until the city’s lawyer made it public late Wednesday.

It lists 17 allegations, first reported by The Portland Tribune, that were raised by a former Lake Oswego officer who had worked with Timeus when Timeus also was an officer in Lake Oswego.

The report describes Timeus dating a woman who had become an informant for the Regional Organized Crime and Narcotics Task Force and his "gay-bashing'' of a hotel clerk with whom he was haggling over the price of a hotel room in Portland where he had taken the informant.

Ex-Lake Oswego Officer Eric Losness complained that Timeus asked him on the job if he knew what the term “NILO’’ stood for and he said Timeus told him it was an acronym for “(Racial slur) in Lake Oswego.’’

Officers who were questioned when the city ordered an investigation into the allegations said they heard the term “MILO’’ used in the past for “Mexican in Lake Oswego,’’ the report says. Timeus told the investigator that he never used the term “NILO’’ but he had heard other Lake Oswego officers use it many years earlier.

In another incident, when police were called to a report of a cross burning on the lawn of a Jewish family’s home in Lake Oswego, Timeus raised suspicion that the victim might have had done it herself to get attention, according to the report. Timeus admitted he voiced that concern but said it wasn’t intended to be anti-Semitic.

Other allegations included that Timeus made grossly inappropriate remarks about homosexuality, including statements about “subordinate officers needing to perform oral sex on him to get on his good side’’ and told Losness that he was getting turned on when he saw Losness eating a banana in front of him. Losness also claimed Timeus made derogatory remarks about Timeus’ own lesbian sister, which Timeus denied doing.

Timeus admitted having dated a woman who became an informant while he was a member of the Regional Organized Crime Network. A supervisor described moving Timeus off the special team back to his regular Lake Oswego police assignment because he had become "too comfortable'' and his work had become “sloppy,’’ the report says.

Former Lake Oswego police Officer Eric Losness had submitted to West Linn City Hall a package of allegations against Terry Timeus, once he became chief of West Linn. West Linn had a former McMinnville police chief investigate.

Timeus also admitted to having an intimate relationship with a Lake Oswego community service officer while he was a captain in the Lake Oswego department and was counseled by the city’s human resources director about it.

In 2004, when a Lake Oswego officer pulled over a car containing two women in a traffic stop and the two women began to perform sexual acts on one another, the primary officer called a second officer to the scene to watch and tried to contact Timeus so he, too, could watch, the report says.

Timeus wasn’t able to respond but later told the two officers that if something like that ever happened again and they didn’t summon him, he’d terminate them, according to the report.

The investigator, former McMinnville Police Chief Rod Brown, confirmed that encounter occurred and Timeus didn’t dispute his statement, saying he undoubtedly made it in jest, the report says.

Kim mann, a former Lake Oswego police union leader who later joined the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office and was interviewed in the investigation, confirmed that Timeus had told him about an incident he had at a Portland hotel where Timeus had taken the woman informant.

According to Klusmann, Timeus told him that he got into a dispute with the hotel clerk over getting charged for double versus single occupancy, had made unflattering remarks about the clerk and flashed his police badge at the clerk.

Timeus described the clerk to Klusmann as being “obviously - outwardly gay,” the report says.

When Portland police were called in, a lesbian officer who responded also was targeted with derogatory comments from Timeus and made a complaint about Timeus to Lake Oswego police, Klusmann told the investigator.

Timeus maintained that Klusmann’s account was "overblown'' and that the hotel clerk and Portland officer had overreacted.

"Klusmann said he was surprised that Timeus was not terminated from Lake Oswego over this incident,'' the report says. Klusmann said he viewed Timeus "as being very lucky in retaining his job.''

Kim Klusmann, by then a lieutenant in the Clackamas County Sheriff's office, confirmed for the investigator that Terry Timeus, while a Lake Oswego officer, had taken an informant to a hotel room in Portland and got into a dispute with a clerk, where he made homophobic comments to the clerk. Klusmann had previously worked for Lake Oswego police.

In response to an allegation that Timeus watched pornographic tapes in front of suspects after the evidence was seized during a search warrant, Timeus said it was a Portland Police Bureau search warrant and that Portland police officers had viewed the tape in the presence of suspects, according to the report. Timeus did admit to looking at a photo at work of an ex-wife who was in a wet T-shirt contest, according to the report.

Losness, who made the complaints, said Timeus had bragged to him that when he was a member of the Regional Organized Crime Network in the early 1990s there were prostitutes and drugs provided aboard a party yacht in Portland.

The investigator sustained two of the 17 allegations:

-- That Timeus had abused his supervisory authority at Lake Oswego by not seeking discipline of the officers who had delayed a DUII arrest to essentially view a live sex show between the two women in the stopped car and for Timeus asking them to call him quicker the next time so he could watch as well.

-- That Timeus made sexually inappropriate and gay-bashing remarks as a Lake Oswego officer and viewed sexually inappropriate images at work.

"The consequence of such behavior, had it been corrected at the time, would have most likely been in the range of verbal counseling to a verbal or written reprimand,'' Brown wrote in his conclusion. "Repeated offenses would have resulted in increasing levels of discipline, but short of that there would most likely have been nothing injurious to Timeus’ career advancement.''

Dan Duncan, who was Lake Oswego police from 2003 through 2010, was one of two people who wouldn’t answer the investigator’s questions, saying he didn’t want to say anything about any current or past Lake Oswego officers, concerned it could be used against him by the man who initially filed the complaints against Timeus.

Timeus was hired by Lake Oswego police in January 1986 and was promoted to sergeant in 1994, lieutenant in 1998 and captain in 2004, before he resigned in 2005 and was hired by West Linn police.

In the May 12, 2008 memo, city attorney Tim Ramis recommended the West Linn city manager reinforce to Chief Terry Timeus the city’s high expectations as chief and that it’s important he recognizes his behavior should be a model to the police department. He should be informed that his past actions would not be appropriate in his current position as West Linn’s chief, Ramis wrote.

West Linn’s city attorney sent City Council members a memo in 2008, summarizing the allegations but kept the investigative report confidential, even from the mayor and council.

In a May 12, 2008 memo, West Linn city attorney Tim Ramis informed then-city manager Chris Jordan of the completion of the investigation into Timeus and noted that none of the allegations involved actions by Timeus while at West Linn and that all occurred more than three years earlier.

Ramis, who still works as the city’s attorney, recommended that Jordan reinforce the city’s high expectations of Timeus as chief, that it’s important Timeus recognized his behavior should be a model to the police department and that his past actions wouldn’t be appropriate in his current position.

Ramis also suggested that the police department could emphasize appropriate workplace behavior with training, focusing on “avoiding behavior that offends individuals because of gender or sexual orientation.’’

Timeus received more than $123,000 in a separation agreement when he retired in the fall of 2017. He had been hired as West Linn’s police chief by city manager Jordan, who had previously worked in Lake Oswego.

In 2009, the Lake Oswego Review newspaper sought a copy of the investigative summary shared with the City Council, but the city denied the public request. The Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office, in turn, denied the Review’s appeal, saying the document was in the city attorney’s law firm office, which claimed attorney-client privilege.

Still, the District Attorney’s Office found that arrangement questionable.

“Independent of the merits of this case or the legal analysis of the public records issues, the manner in which this matter was handled has the appearance of being designed to prevent public disclosure of the document contrary to public policy which favors public access to government records,’’ Senior Deputy District Attorney David F. Paul wrote in response in February 2009.

Senior Deputy District Attorney David F. Paul wrote, "...the manner in which this matter was handled has the appearance of being designed to prevent public disclosure of the document contrary to public policy which favors public access to government records.''

Teri Cummings, current president of the West Linn City Council, referenced the report at a council meeting Tuesday night and obtained it for the first time Wednesday night.

She said if she had known the details of the investigation she would have “absolutely not’’ allowed Timeus to remain as head of West Linn’s police department. She said when she questioned Jordan, the city manager at the time, why another law enforcement officer had conducted the 2008 investigation of Timeus, she said Jordan screamed at her.

Attorney Paul Buchanan, who filed the federal racial discrimination and wrongful arrest suit against West Linn police, including Timeus, on behalf of Michael Fesser of Portland, said he was disturbed to learn of the confidential report on Timeus.

West Linn police arrested Fesser in February 2017 on a theft charge after Fesser had complained to his boss of workplace harassment because of his race. Fesser’s boss, the owner of a Southeast Portland towing company, was Timeus’ friend. Theft charges against Fesser were later dismissed. West Linn settled a federal lawsuit filed by Fesser for $600,000 last week.

"This was not provided to us in the litigation,'' Buchanan said. "It is concerning to me that this material was not disclosed.''

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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