Former Police Chief Larry O'Dea Faces a Criminal Charge for Shooting His Friend

Six months after he mistakenly shot a friend, ex Portland Police Chief Larry O'Dea has been charged with a crime.

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The Oregon Department of Justice revealed today that it had brought a count of negligently wounding another, a class-B misdemeanor, to a grand jury in Harney County. That jury has formally indicted the former chief. O'Dea could face up to six months in jail if convicted, though that almost certainly won't happen. He'd also be legally ineligible for a hunting license for a decade.

The indictment closes the door on one of the investigations that kicked in after O'Dea shot his friend, Robert Dempsey, during a Harney County camping trip on April 21.

Police reports from the incident suggested O'Dea may have been intoxicated at the time of the incident, and hadn't been forthright with police. But if state investigators turned up evidence of those things, they didn't convert them into criminal charges.

Kristina Edmundson, a spokesperson for the Oregon DOJ, declined to say whether the office had put other potential charges before the grand jury. The DOJ, not the Harney County District Attorney's Office, will handle the prosecution.

Now that the criminal investigation is over, the city's Independent Police Review (IPR) will finish up its own investigation into the internal process that seemed to give O'Dea special treatment not afforded to other officers involved in off-duty shootings.

O'Dea told his boss, Mayor Charlie Hales, of the shooting almost immediately. But no one bothered to mention to IPR that the shooting occurred, contravening city policy. Instead, the public (and most of the police bureau) didn't learn of the incident until late May, after Willamette Week caught wind of it.

"I trusted that the appropriate internal and criminal investigations were taking place," Hales said in a statement recently, after the US Department of Justice took him to task over the O'Dea incident. "City ordinances and policies govern all internal investigations of Police Bureau members. My role as Police Commissioner is intentionally separate from the investigative process."

Hales' spokesperson Brian Worley said this evening the mayor was in a compliance hearing over a city settlement with the US DOJ, and didn't have comment.

Another wrinkle: Though O'Dea readily copped to having fired the errant shot, no one called investigators in Harney County, who'd been under the impression—with help from O'Dea—that Dempsey mistakenly shot himself while shooting at ground squirrels.

The scandal eventually resulted in O'Dea retiring earlier than expected, an event that led Hales to scold media for its reporting (outlets were reporting from formal police reports, a common and long-held journalistic practice). Hales also said O'Dea would be at least partly cleared of wrongdoing when the investigation was over. Now he faces a criminal charge.

The indictment is short and sweet, not revealing much of what the DOJ turned up in the last five months. Former acting Chief Donna Henderson, PPB spokesperson Sgt. Pete Simpson, and formal Internal Affairs head Captain Derek Rodriques were all called to testify before the grand jury.

Here's a snapshot of the super-short indictment.