LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - 9/28/06

from The Oregonian

Deputy saved son's life
I'd like to share another story involving a depressed young man, too much alcohol, a suicide attempt, a mother's frantic 9-1-1 call and Washington County Sheriff's Deputy Mikhail Gerba.

Early this summer, it was Gerba who responded to our home after my frantic 9-1-1 call. It was Gerba who stayed with our family for three hours, patiently, calmly and compassionately working to find and help our suicidal son. It was Gerba who offered to postpone his vacation, drive to Tillamook in the middle of the night and safely deliver our son to a hospital near our home.

I fully realize that, had a few details been different, I could be the grieving mother, and my heart and prayers go out to the family and friends of Lukus Glenn. But I also want the public to know that Deputy Gerba is the same man whose professionalism, compassion and perseverance helped to save my son's life.

ANNE MARIE OWEN

Beaverton

Heed Portland's police chief on mental health

from The Oregonian


SUMMARY: The death of James Philip Chasse Jr. in police custody demands a public inquest,
and a new preventative strategy

To some, it may have sounded like an excuse. The recent death of James Philip Chasse Jr., a 42-year-old mentally ill Portlander, while in police custody put Police Chief Rosie Sizer on the defensive, after all. She's at another disadvantage, too: She's not yet able to share all the facts surrounding Chasse's death.

Still, the chief was right Monday to remind us about the larger context surrounding this death: our broken mental health care system. Constantly dealing with the mentally ill is part of the "burden . . . police officers carry with them each and every

day . . . to an extent unprecedented in my 21-year tenure in the Police Bureau," Sizer said.

But that's not an excuse, and Sizer wasn't wielding it that way.

Sizer has promised to make the police investigation into Chasse's death public as soon as possible. That's good, but as we've argued for years, any death at police hands or in police custody also demands a public inquest. Both Chasse's death in custody and another recent death in the area --the police shooting of Lukus Glenn, 18, of Tigard --underscore why a public inquest is always essential.

For the public, both of these deaths instinctively fall into the category of: "This shouldn't have happened." Both Glenn's and Chasse's families deserve a full public airing of the facts. And only a public inquest can elucidate the circumstances sufficiently to rebuild a foundation of public trust and confidence in the law enforcement agencies involved.

But invaluable as public inquests would be in these cases, Oregon needs a more proactive strategy for dealing with the mentally ill (Chasse) and those in crisis (Glenn). These two recent deaths strongly suggest that it's time to consider mandating intensive training in crisis intervention and in dealing with the mentally ill for patrol officers.

True, some get a few hours of training now, and some agencies provide more intensive training on a voluntary basis. (With 188 officers certified in crisis intervention, Portland is one of the leaders in this field.) It's also important to emphasize that no training program can eliminate such tragic deaths. At times, events spin out of control and police must act to protect themselves and the public.

But teaching police smarter, safer, low-key approaches to dealing with the mentally ill and people in crisis could save lives. And police careers, too. "The officers were devastated" by Chasse's death, the chief said Tuesday. "This is not the outcome they desired or expected."

Although it would be expensive to train all officers intensively to intervene with the mentally ill, Portland and other police agencies need to start calculating the cost, making the pitch and pushing for such intensive training, not just for new officers, but for police bureau veterans, too.

Police shouldn't shoulder so much of the burden of dealing with the mentally ill and those in crisis, but, as Sizer acknowledged this week, they often do. As long as they make up the front line in dealing with people in these situations, it would be better for everyone --the officers, and the community --if police really knew what to do.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - 9/27/2006

from The Oregonian


Roiling over police shootings
As I read the articles and letters surrounding the shooting death of Lukus Glenn, a few things occurred to me.

Glenn's GPA, polite demeanor and football skills are irrelevant. His mom called 9-1-1 to report that her son was "out of control" and "threatening to kill everybody." She also informed a dispatcher that her son was "threatening to kill himself . . .." These were the facts the police officers were faced with.

One letter writer mentioned the use of tranquilizer darts, as are used on lions and grizzly bears. Would you prefer a gun or tranquilizer dart if you were being charged by a lion or bear, say, at 20 feet? Would you feel confident the dart would have its desired effect?

It is important not to confuse speculation with facts. It is easy for us to react emotionally with our two cents. But the fact is, in this case, police were given only four minutes and limited yet critical information.

Ultimately, he was shot as he approached the front door of his home with a knife --the same front door that was protecting his mom and her family, [after he had] threatened to kill them.

DENNIS J. ORTEGA

Tualatin

The recent killings of citizens by the Portland and Washington County police can, at best, only be labeled as gross incompetence, and flat-out outrageous.

The excessive blunt trauma to James Philip Chasse Jr., who was severely mentally ill, has provoked strong protests from eyewitnesses. The shooting of 18-year-old Lukus Glenn, who was drunk and suicidal but armed with only with a small pocket knife, was totally unnecessary and demonstrates abysmal police training in handling mentally disturbed individuals.

Only luck prevented the wounding or death of Glenn's 72-year-old grandmother from police bullets that penetrated the family's house.

I have been watching numerous "Animal Planet" shows in which Steve Irwin and his staff were able to totally control massive, ferocious, man-eating crocodiles, armed only with ropes and netting. I strongly suggest that all police squad cars be equipped with ropes and nets for these type of confrontations.

ALAN B. LACHMAN, M.D.

Beaverton

In the Sunday Opinion section, a retired Portland police officer, Jim Bellah, wrote, "I seriously doubt anyone who is being critical [of the Lukus Glenn slaying] has ever had to face that kind of situation."

I have faced that kind of situation several times, and I am very thankful that I did not kill the person who was wielding the knife. I can sleep at night. An officer who has taken the step to end another person's life is hardly an expert on other possible options.

As a police officer for many years during the turbulent 1960s and '70s in a major metropolitan area, I faced and dealt with drunks with knives, and not-so-drunks with guns. I do not feel that makes me an expert, either, but I do believe that three officers facing a drunk teenager with a three-inch knife could have disarmed him without killing him, without getting cut themselves, and most surely not risking death.

Glenn is dead because two officers chose to shoot him and end his young life. There has to be a better way.

RAY O'DRISCOLL

Colton

Crisis intervention training is too critical to be voluntary. It must be part of a police officer's regular training. Legislators, taxpayers, the powers that be --all must see that each officer is provided crisis intervention training.

JEAN MITCHELL

Northeast Portland

Questions "go on and on" about the Lukus Glenn case (Sunday front page) because The Oregonian keeps raising questions, on and on.

The officers involved had to make a snap judgment that may have saved the lives of the other family members. Had they not fired and further violence ensued, would not the officers have faced questions about why they had not stopped Glenn?

We should all support the officers who did absolutely the best they could in this tragedy. Let the questions --and columnists --be stilled and allow everyone to grieve.

DAVID A. FLOREA

Donald

The standoff lasted 4 minutes, but the questions go on and on

from The Oregonian, by Kate Taylor and Dana Tims


SUMMARY: The police shooting of Lukus Glenn, 18, has both loved ones and authorities trying to find answers
On Lukus Glenn's last day, he and his mother argued about the job he had just quit, but made up later with playful text messages.

He was polite at dinner with his girlfriend and her parents, but brooding at a football game, talking with friends how his high school football career had soured.

When he took his girlfriend home at 12:30 a.m., he kissed her hand and told her he trusted her enough to tell her that, now and then, he felt so low he thought of killing himself.

Hours later, the 18-year-old former football star at Tigard High School was dead, shot during a standoff with police in front of his Tigard-area home Sept. 16.

It was a brief, violent convergence of forces --a drunken, suicidal teen with a knife and police who stake their lives on the procedures they follow. When domestic-violence situations escalate to the point that police face knives and guns, they are trained to stop the threat and protect innocent bystanders.

But across the Portland area, police increasingly are adopting a new model of crisis intervention that has shown remarkable success at defusing violent encounters. The Memphis model emphasizes "active listening" to the pain released by a person in mental crisis and recognizes that such episodes probably involve severe depression and psychic breaks with reality.

There is no way to know whether that approach would have made a difference in the case of Lukus Glenn. What began as a yelling match with three officers escalated into the fatal shooting in just four minutes.

No simple explanation satisfies. Questions linger. As do stories of a loving, and loved, teenager with problems and three police officers who grew up dreaming of public service, stepping into a tragic nightmare.

Remembering

a soulful friend

In the past week, family and friends have mourned the beautiful, as well as the troubled, sides of Luke Glenn.

He was his dad's fishing and Yahtzee partner. He was the one who called his mother "Skerniffles" --a pet name he made up --and text-messaged her sometimes 30 times a day to make jokes or tell her what he was doing or what kind of food he wanted in the pantry, his parents said.

Sitting on the living room couch where she's spent most of her time since her son was shot, Hope Glenn said she'd been his soccer coach for years, beginning when he was 5, and that he still watched many of the soccer games she coached.

He was funny and unpredictable in a lovable way, said Tony Morales and David Lucas --the two close friends who witnessed the shooting. He puppy-tackled friends, and he could lighten up any situation with one of his jokes, but he was also a great listener, Morales said.

To his girlfriend, 17-year-old Beth Salzberg, he was soulful and supportive, she said.

"You know how it is when you're a girl --there's times you don't feel like you look good, you feel bloaty. . . . He would be like, 'There is only one way for you to look, and that is perfect,' " she said. "He made me feel like a million bucks. He was a good, good person. I miss so much about him."

Yet nobody who was truly close to Glenn denied that he struggled. He liked vodka mixed with energy drinks, and he drank a lot of what he called "Sparks," friends said.

"He really did drink a lot --he did it less around me," Salzberg said. "When I talked to my friends about it, they still said, 'He's a keeper.' "

Sometimes, he also cut into his arms with a knife, or got a friend to cut him, while he pointed out to whoever was around that he could withstand pain, friends and relatives said.

He'd argued plenty with his mother in the past year, and once she called the police to her home after he ran away. He returned before police arrived, she said.

His depression, friends and family say, began with the departure of a beloved coach who supported him and was essential to his record-breaking performance as a kicker in his junior year.

Back then, he was featured in an August 2005 community newspaper article, with a picture of him running across a sunlit field after a great kick. He's quoted as dreaming about being a kicker for Arizona State University.

But he left the team last fall and had brooded about it ever since. He never got the football scholarship he'd dreamed of, his mother said, and as many of his friends went off to college this year, "he felt like a failure."

Still, she thought he was leaving the problem behind as he learned more about the world outside football, at least until she saw him through the window of her house, blood-streaked with a knife at his throat.

She picked up the phone at 3:05 a.m. Sept. 16 and dialed 9-1-1.

Six minutes later, Washington County sheriff's Deputy Mikhail Gerba, 27, arrived at a chaotic scene, followed quickly by Deputy Timothy Mateski, 26, and Tigard police Officer Andrew Pastore, 29.

Altar boy grows

into police officer

Growing up in Portland, Gerba dreamed of being a police officer. In high school, he enjoyed nothing more than going on "ride-alongs" with local cops.

"From the start, that's all he wanted to do," said his grandmother, Wynema Gerba. "He always said it was the best way he could help people."

His mother, Diana, named him Mikhail to underscore her love of ballet, associating it with Russia's grand tradition of dance.

Before his family moved to Wilsonville in the early 1990s, he served as an acolyte, or altar server, at St. Peter & Paul Episcopal Church in Southeast Portland, his grandmother said. "The move meant he couldn't hold that position in that church any longer," she said. "He was so brokenhearted that he cried."

After high school, his eyes already set on a career in law enforcement, Gerba took criminal justice classes at Clackamas Community College's Wilsonville campus. Classmates there remember him as a standout student with a winning sense of humor.

"He was very excited about his future," said one classmate, who asked that her name not be used. "I never had any doubt that he was getting into law enforcement for the very best of reasons."

Little information on the two deputies' careers is available. Washington County law enforcement officials, citing the ongoing investigation into Glenn's death, have declined to release information detailing any commendations or demerits.

Others, familiar with the plights of police who have had to use deadly force on the job, say the pair's path back to patrol will be arduous.

If their actions in Glenn's death are upheld after review, the officers must undergo counseling as well as simulation training proving they can again pull the trigger in the line of duty.

"These are frequently career-ending events for police who take someone's life," said Don Rosen, director of residency training in OHSU's psychiatry department. "It's important to note that the tragedy for the family is also a tragedy for the officers."

Standoff spirals

out of control

Only 10 minutes elapsed between the time Hope Glenn called 9-1-1 for help and when her son lay dead.

She told a dispatcher that her son was threatening to kill himself and everyone in the house. That included her, her mother and Brad Glenn, the young man's father.

Her son was outside smashing her car's windows with a shovel, cutting his hands in the process. Two friends were trying to calm him down.

"You kill me or I kill me," Luke Glenn shouted as Gerba, Mateski and Pastore approached.

The officers yelled repeatedly at Glenn to drop the knife, a plastic-handled weapon with a serrated, hooked, 3-inch blade.

He bellowed back that they would have to kill him.

"Don't let them shoot him," Hope Glenn pleaded with the dispatcher. "Please don't let them shoot him."

Pastore had access to a Taser and beanbags --both nonlethal weapons. With Luke Glenn apparently retreating toward the house, where the family members he'd threatened to kill were standing inside, Pastore opted for the beanbags --considered a higher level of force than a Taser. He fired several rounds from his 12-gauge shotgun, striking the young man.

The impacts sent Glenn reeling against the garage, but he remained on his feet. He swiveled toward the house, his left side facing the officers. Less than two seconds later, the emergency dispatcher could hear the crackle of repeated gunfire, then nothing.

"Hope?" the 9-1-1 operator asks.

There was no reply.

"Hope?"

Assessing actions

and alternatives

The investigation into Glenn's death is just beginning.

Rob Bletko, Washington County's chief deputy district attorney, won't have reports for at least a week and will take another week before determining whether to present the case to a grand jury.

Already Glenn's death is raising questions about the amount of crisis intervention training that law enforcement officers receive.

In Oregon, few police departments have had formal training in crisis intervention for longer than five years. Such training is almost always voluntary.

Washington County, like a growing number of jurisdictions, employs the increasingly popular Memphis model, adopted by police in Memphis, Tenn., after a controversial shooting.

Washington County's new hires all undergo an initial four-hour training session, said Deputy Jason Leinenbach, the department's mental health liaison. Annual 24-hour classes updating the training are voluntary. Countywide, more than 100 deputies and officers have taken the classes, he said.

Clark County, by comparison, offers a 40-hour annual crisis intervention class. Sgt. Kathy McNicholas, the county's crisis intervention trainer, said instances in which force has been used against out-of-control people have declined markedly in the five years the county has used the program.

Washington County officials said neither Gerba nor Mateski had taken the department's voluntary course on crisis intervention.

Leinenbach declined to speculate whether officers who had taken the 24-hour class would have responded to the Glenn incident any differently from those who hadn't. But he added, "I'd hope they would do things differently, but I can't say they necessarily would. Even if you start out doing things differently, you might end up with the same outcome in the end."

With police nationwide encountering a growing number of mentally ill people on the streets, much more training can only help, said Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force Science Institute at Minnesota State University at Mankato.

"We offer a 90-hour class, which we consider just the bare bones of what's really needed," Lewinski said. "Most departments don't even come close to that level."

Making sense

of tragedy

There's nowhere for Hope Glenn to look in her home without seeing her son. Her living room is full of pictures: infant Luke in the tub with his dad, 5-year-old Luke in his first soccer uniform. Luke, smiling in a field with his puppy Brandon, now a large, friendly golden retriever.

She doesn't know where to begin again, she says.

"That was my only son," she says. "I don't know what to do with myself."

"I don't know why it happened," she says in the low whisper that has replaced her usually vibrant voice. "Maybe something will change because of this. Maybe something will start to make more sense."

OBITUARIES - 9/24/2006

Lukus David 'Luke' Glenn
from The Oregonian

A memorial service will be at noon Saturday, Sept. 30, 2006, in the Deb Fennell Auditorium of Tigard High School for Lukus David "Luke" Glenn, who died Sept. 16 when he was shot by police. He was 18.

Mr. Glenn was born April 22, 1988, in Portland. He graduated from Tigard High School, where he was an all-conference kicker for the football team. He liked soccer and played for several leagues.

Survivors include his parents, Brad and Hope; and grandparents, Delores Larson and Mike Glenn.

Arrangements by Young's.

Deputies rarely drew guns, fired twice in 2005

from The Oregonian, by Wendy Owen


Washington County sheriff's deputies pulled their guns 404 times last year and fired twice, wounding a man in one case and hitting a car while shooting at a suspect in another.
On average, officers pulled their guns more than once a day. With 5,190 arrests in 2005, however, that means deputies drew their firearms in about 8 percent of those cases, according to a Washington County Sheriff's Office use of force analysis.

"The odds of displaying a gun are remote," sheriff's Sgt. John Black said.

When it is pulled, however, a firearm typically resolves the situation without being used, he said.

The exception over the past five years, according to The Oregonian archives, appears to be cases involving suicidal people. Deputies have shot and killed four people, including Lukus Glenn, since 2002, and nearly all were determined to be suicidal.

In 2002, a Washington County sheriff's deputy shot and killed a 38-year-old man in Hillsboro after a two-hour standoff. Daniel L. Flannigan was distraught over a breakup with his girlfriend and threatened to kill her and himself. Police found him outside her apartment with a gun that later turned out to be a pellet gun. When he walked toward officers, a sniper shot him.

In 2003, a Beaverton police officer and a Washington County sergeant each fired on and killed a 37-year-old gunman who had fired more than 30 times during a standoff with police after they were called to the address because of a suicidal man.

The officers were members of the county Tactical Negotiations Team.

In 2004, a Cedar Mill man was shot and killed in a similar scenario, although it was not officially determined to be a suicidal incident.

Neighbors called police after hearing explosions and seeing Warren D. Sercombe, 46, breaking windows in front of his home. Deputies saw a handgun on the roof of his car and ordered him to lie on the ground. Instead, he reached for the gun and a corporal shot him. Officers later found explosive cord in his waistband and boot.

Last year ended with no officer-involved shooting deaths in Washington County.

How the shooting unfolded

from The Oregonian


When police arrived at the Glenn home Sept. 16, it was dark and the side door was only about 10 feet from the garage where Lukus Glenn, already blooded from smashing car windows, stood. Experts say such close proximity contributed to the incident. Police are trained to keep at least 20 to 25 feet between themselves and an armed person.
Hope Glenn called police at 3:05 a.m. requesting help calming her drunken 18-year-old son, Lukus, who she told dispatchers was "out of control." About 10 minutes elapsed between her call to police and the shooting. Based on the police, 9-1-1 tapes and witness accounts, here's what happened in the last eight minutes.

1) 3:07 a.m. Hope Glenn, who's looking out a door window, tells the dispatcher her son is "bleeding pretty bad" after smashing windows with his hands. She says his two friends, David Lucas and Tony Morales, are trying to calm him.

3:10 a.m. Hope Glenn says her son, holding a knife to his throat, says he's not going down without killing someone.

2) 3:11 a.m. Two deputies from the Washington County Sheriff's Office, Mikhail Gerba and Timothy Mateski, arrive at the home and take up positions in the yard. Tigard Officer Andrew Pastore arrives, equipped with a nonlethal beanbag weapon.

3:13 a.m. Lukus Glenn stands at the corner of the garage. Hope Glenn says "They're telling him to drop the knife or they're going to shoot him."

3) 3:15 a.m. Pastore fires several beanbag rounds at Lukus Glenn, who slumps against the garage but otherwise appears unaffected.

4) Lukus Glenn moves toward the door of the home, 10 feet away, where the family is inside.

5) Gerba and Mateski fire their guns, and Lukus Glenn collapses at the doorstep. Hope Glenn tells the dispatcher, "They shot him." The dispatcher calls Hope Glenn's name over and over, but there is no answer.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - 9/24/06

from The Oregonian

The Lukus Glenn shooting: Did he have to die?

Use training instead

I graduated from the Portland Police Academy and the Oregon Police Academy and retired after 25 years as a police administrator. I'm writing about young Lukus Glenn.

As a deputy sheriff, I responded to a call of a man holding a shotgun on his family. Upon arrival, I found just that. His wife and five children were hysterical. I was able to get his attention on me and away from his family.

I could have shot him immediately before he turned on me. But it was likely that a bullet might strike the family. I used my training instead to talk the man into surrendering his shotgun.

Today, that man is a teacher and still married to the same woman. He could have easily shot me, but he didn't. I could have shot him, but I didn't.

I'm not saying the Washington County deputies shouldn't have shot Glenn; what I am saying is that it's every police officer's call. But given the particulars of that incident, I would not have fired upon a young lad who, when faced with yelling police, tried his best to return to the safety of his mother, while armed with nothing but a simple pocket knife.

JAMES TAYLOR

Southeast Portland

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - 9/21/06

from The Oregonian


There are questions surrounding the death of Lukus Glenn.
I saw, firsthand, what police can do when they are well trained to handle a crisis. A woman who lived across the hall from me in Minneapolis attacked her husband with an 8-inch butcher knife. Three armed officers arrived. She stood there, not 25 feet but two feet from them. They talked to her, calmly.

Finally, after five tense minutes, she whirled and fled toward the back of the room, and one quickly tackled her. None of those men, who were within inches of a large knife, even once touched their guns or a Taser.

The cops in Garden Home used loud commands on a scared, drunk boy. I think a calm attitude might have made all the difference. Crisis training should include communication training to defuse, not aggravate such situations.

BRINN C. HEMMINGSON

Southeast Portland

It seems rather bizarre that a middle-aged nurse can single-handedly wrestle a claw hammer away from an intruder and strangle him to death, but three cops needed to shoot and kill a teenager [armed] with a three-inch knife.

Of course we will hear that "you had to be there." Apparently several people were, and I hope that this sort of stupidity on the part of those sworn to protect us is not blown off and therefore legally sanctioned.

DAN W. PETERSON

Northeast Portland

I have been deeply saddened by the senseless death of Lukus Glenn by Washington County sheriff's deputies. As a mental health professional and board member of the Clark County chapter of NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill), I know how often families are faced with these terrifying emergencies and how quickly they can escalate out of control. All persons involved are vulnerable to serious injury and death.

In Vancouver, the city police department operates an intensive week-long crisis intervention training twice each year. It is highly lauded as an effective preventative to scenarios that seem to be playing out frequently across the river.

I urge police administrators in Oregon to implement something similar. I am convinced Vancouver's crisis intervention training program saves lives.

MICHELE WOLLERT

Vancouver

For once I'd like to see someone come to the defense of an officer involved in a shooting. Imagine working a job where you could be shot over a speeding ticket. Imagine a job where you know going into it that some day you might have to choose in a split second to take someone's life in order to spare someone else's or your own.

How many of us can say we'd make the perfect decision every time? I can't, and it's unreasonable to put that expectation on our police officers.

Give them the benefit of the doubt before criticizing them. After all, these are the same people we call in our times of greatest need, and these are the people who come running to help because it is their job to protect and serve.

JUSTIN FARRELL

North Portland

Most people are naive as to what constitutes reasonable and necessary force used by police officers. I am a retired criminology professor and 27-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department.

One citizen wrote that the suspect was "armed only with a knife" (Letters, Sept. 19). Interestingly, one of the most horrific knifings I ever witnessed was at the hands of a 19-year-old male using a two-inch pocket knife.

Many people believe that police officers can simply shoot the knife or gun from the hand of a perpetrator, ending the threat. Other than luck, this only happens in the movies.

Police officers receive many hours of training on the use of force and many more hours dedicated to the use of deadly force. Police officers do not, however, receive training on how to be gallantly killed. This then begs the question: What were the obligations or choices of the suspect when ordered to drop the knife? Did the suspect have a right or duty to ignore or resist the officers? Or did the suspect's conduct dictate the actions of the officers?

If the type of weapon or its size is still a barrier of justification for you, just remember what kind of weapon the terrorists used to take over the 9/11 flights.

STEPHEN E. BROWN

Roseburg

Helping cops deal with all the chaos

from The Oregonian, by Steve Duin


In 1987, the city of Memphis was rocked by a police shooting as tragic and pointless as the death early Saturday morning of 18-year-old Lukus Glenn.
The 27-year-old victim had a knife. He was cutting himself and threatening family members. He was also mentally ill, and the Memphis police, ill-equipped to deal with that population, shot him more than enough times to end his life.

"The outcry," Major Sam Cochran of the Memphis Police told National Public Radio last year, "was so intense, it spilled over into the political arena." The mayor got involved. A task force was formed.

And said Officer Paul Ware of the Portland Police Bureau --the University of Tennessee Psychiatric Hospital stepped up with suggestions on how the police could better deal with the mentally ill in crisis situations. For the safety of everyone involved.

The suggestions were so on target that police-inflicted injuries to mental health patients in Memphis dropped 40 percent in less than four years.

In a front-page story Wednesday, several law enforcement types suggested the fatal shooting of Lukus Glenn by two Washington County sheriff's deputies was "by the book."

A 1987 book, perhaps. An updated manual based on the Memphis model is making the rounds, said Angela Kimball of the Association for Oregon Community Health Programs, and a number of police bureaus and county sheriffs long ago memorized the chapter on crisis intervention.

That includes the Portland Police Bureau, where Ware coordinates the training program. You may remember Ware. In January 2005 --on National Alliance for the Mentally Ill Day, as a matter of fact --Ware confronted a knife-wielding man in the state Senate chamber and spent 45 minutes talking the guy down off the proverbial ledge.

Ware has set up a voluntary 40-hour program in crisis intervention; he estimates one-quarter of the city's patrol officers have undergone training in mental disorders, personality disorders (including schizophrenia and bipolar disorder), suicide prevention, hostage negotiations and post-traumatic stress disorder.

That program is embraced, said defense attorney Laura Graser, by all the major players in law enforcement and mental health because it reduces the incidents that "cause everyone pain, including the police officers."

By all accounts, Glenn was simply drunk, depressed and angry early Saturday when he set out on the rampage that forced his mother, Hope, to call 9-1-1. But as Graser says, "I don't know if it matters whether it was genetics, alcohol, methamphetamines, poor nurturing . . .: He was acting crazy. When that 9-1-1 call came in, it could have dispatched someone with the training to deal with the mentally ill."

The Washington County Sheriff's Office also has voluntary crisis intervention training for its deputies, but spokesman Dave Thompson said the two officers who responded Saturday --Deputies Mikhail Gerba and Timothy Mateski --have not taken the course.

Ware said there's no guarantee, however, that additional training --which mandates "the most effective and compassionate response possible" --would have saved Glenn's life.

"I try to slow down the situation. I try to contain the person. I try to talk to them about what the problem is," Ware said, but it would have been difficult to have a quiet, calm conversation with Glenn while honoring the "21-foot-rule," the margin of safety officers maintain when confronting someone with a knife.

"Crisis intervention training increases the odds of me having a successful intervention," Ware said, "but I can't control human behavior. I don't know the Jedi mind trick. People put that burden on us. People have seen too much Hollywood hype."

Letters to the Editor

from The Oregonian

Police reacted properly
I am appalled at the condemnation of the Washington County sheriff's deputies who shot Lukus Glenn (Letters, Sept. 19). Based on The Oregonian's reporting, I can fault these two officers only for not shooting sooner and thereby letting Glenn get closer to the house (resulting in the trajectory of the bullets penetrating the house).

Ideas suggested such as "shoot at the legs" and "(b)ring out the Tasers" indicate a warehouse of ignorance by the writers.

The effective killing range of a knife is about 21 feet. The legs are extremely hard to hit if the target is moving, especially with the adrenaline factor going, and a hit in the legs is less likely to stop the target.

Rules of engagement are always to shoot for the torso. If a situation such as this ever occurs at my house, the conduct exhibited by these two officers is exactly what I would want.

LYNDON GRAHAM, Hillsboro

+++

Reading all the criticism in Tuesday's issue about the shooting of the young man from Tigard reminds me that law enforcement is probably the only career that a person can enter in which, even after hundreds of hours of training, the public knows more about how to do your job than you do.

LARRY A. WARD, Gresham

+++

A great kid under the influence of a drug --alcohol --acting out his frustrations. But wait, he's only 18! Why was he drunk to begin with? Where were the parents? Where's the accountability from the place he got his booze?

Lukus Glenn made a choice to be drunk. The police reacted in an appropriate manner considering the threat they faced and the resources they had available.

MARK KOBERSTEIN, Boring

+++

Regarding Steve Duin's column, "The last turn in the life of Lukus Glenn" (Sept. 19), have you ever spent an evening with Damon Coates or his wife and children?

I am an "ex-hippie" from the 1960s, a mother of four children ranging from 18 to 25 years, an educator with extensive experience with youth, and I do not own a gun. My heart goes out to those involved in the latest tragedy.

However, after having met Coates and his family, I would ask you: "After the crippling injuries of Damon Coates, what police officer could be expected to answer a domestic violence call involving a troubled teen?"

JEANNE KENDRICK KING, Southwest Portland

Police shooting: 'by the book'

from The Oregonian, by Dana Tims


SUMMARY: Deadly force Experts say officers responded as they were trained to the knife-wielding teen
The shooting death of an 18-year-old man unfolded with Washington County sheriff's deputies following current training procedures, authorities say.

Though tragic, the officers' response was by the book, say law enforcement officers in Oregon and across the nation.

Anyone wielding a knife and standing within 25 feet of a police officer, as Lukus Glenn of the Tigard area was, is considered an imminent threat, according to uniformly accepted training principles.

An assailant can cover that distance in just over one second and sink a knife into an officer's chest before the officer can even draw a gun, police experts say.

"It appears to have been very much by the book," said Geoffrey Alpert, chairman and professor in the department of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina. "In this case, the use of deadly force to save people inside that house seems to have been reasonable."

But the Glenn shooting early Saturday has also raised questions anew whether current police training for use of deadly force is sufficient.

State Sen. Avel Gordly, whose bill addressing use of deadly force by law enforcement officers died in the last legislative session, said the training book may not be enough. She agreed that Glenn's death was a tragedy, but emphasized that increased training for police officers could help prevent such instances in the future.

"It's all about the training," Gordly said. "And the point is that barbers and hairdressers receive more training than our police officers."

Threat level

Police are trained to assess levels of threat and react based on that assessment, said Bob Charpentier, an Oregon State Police trooper assigned to the training section. Standard training says that you respond to a threat level with a level deemed one step higher on a seven-step "force matrix."

The first, or lowest step, is an officer's presence. It involves just showing up at a scene. The seventh entails use of deadly force against an assailant who is deemed imminently liable to kill or seriously injure either the officer or one or more bystanders.

In between are use of verbal commands; hands-on manipulation, such as grabbing an elbow to escort an assailant; use of chemical agents, such as pepper spray; empty-hand strikes, such as hooks or straight punches; and use of impacts weapons, including beanbags or Tasers.

In Glenn's case, deputies initially used loud verbal commands, telling him to drop the knife he was holding. When he refused, they shot him with non-lethal beanbags.When he then turned and started back into his house, where family members were looking on, deputies opened fire, hitting him multiple times and killing him.

Representatives of police agencies throughout the metro area were emphatic about not wanting to comment specifically about Glenn's death. But they spoke openly about their respective departments' training regimens, which for the most part come straight from textbooks taught nationwide on how and when force can be used by officers.

"The person representing the threat has the advantage because they dictate the amount of force to be used," said Lt. Jason Gates, public information officer for the Portland Police Bureau. "If that threat becomes imminent to the police officer or someone else, we have the obligation to neutralize that threat as best we can."

Unlike confrontational situations so often portrayed in movies or on television, police never try to shoot a weapon out of an assailant's hand or aim for an extremity, Charpentier said.

"In high-stress situations, the first thing to go out the window are the fine motor reflexes," he said. "That's why you have instances where many, many shots are fired and not a single one ends up hitting the target.

"We don't shoot to wound the person, and we don't shoot to kill the person," Charpentier continued. "We shoot to stop the threat. And the best way to do that is to shoot the center mass."

The aftermath

Sgt. Craig Hogman, who works in the Clark County Sheriff's Office, knows only too well the stress of a high-stakes confrontation. Fleeing bank robbers shot at his pursuing patrol car multiple times in 1997. After they crashed their vehicle and continued firing, deputies ended up killing two of the suspects and later captured the other.

Hogman said he never felt nervous or afraid during the confrontation itself. He credited long hours of training with preparing him for the ordeal. Only later, he said, did the enormity of the experience begin to take its toll.

"Until you've been out there, you just can't fathom the number of decisions you have to make in a split second," Hogman said.

Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University in Boston, was among the thousands of people who listened to the 9-1-1 call made by Lukus Glenn's mother to emergency dispatchers. It was clear, he said, that Glenn had committed "suicide by cop."

The challenge ahead, for police, will be persuading investigators that the knife Glenn possessed presented an imminent danger to family members in the house.

"If he had refused to lower a handgun or a rifle, there would have been little, if any, controversy as to proper police tactics," Levin said. "A review board will have to determine whether the pocket knife carried by the assailant was a realistic threat to the police or whether one of the officers reacted reflexively to his magnified perception of imminent danger."

Whether more training could have helped avoid the death appears likely to be debated.

As a legislator, Gordly helped institute increases in the amount of training all new Oregon law enforcement officers get, particularly as it relates to mental health issues.

But even with those increases, she said, the 16 weeks of academy training Oregon's law enforcement recruits will get starting in January --up from the current standard of 10 weeks --will still lag far behind the national average of 21 weeks.

"We need to focus on the amount and quality of training our officers are getting," she said. "These situations are going to happen, we know that. The more options we provide to law enforcement professionals, the more tools they'll have in the tool box."

Photo shows knife Lukus Glenn was holding during confrontation with police

from KATU.com

Police have released a photo of the knife that 18-year-old Lukus Glenn was holding during a confrontation with officers that ended with his death.

The incident happened around 3 a.m. Saturday at a home on Southwest 80th and Birch in Washington County.

According to police, Lukus Glenn, a former Tigard High School football player who graduated last spring, was armed with the knife and was acting in an irrational manner.

The knife had a blade that was about three inches long.

On Monday, police released the 911 call from the teenager's mother, Hope Glenn.

"He just keeps threatening to kill everybody," she is heard saying during the 911 call. "He's just not in the right head. He says when the cops get here, he's going to stab himself in the neck."

According to Sgt. David Thompson with the Washington County Sheriff's Office, four deputies fired non-lethal beanbag rounds at Glenn, but he refused to disarm. They then fired at him with real ammunition, killing him.

Since the shooting, concern has grown in the community about whether the deputies who fired on Glenn were right in doing so.

In the 911 call, Glenn's mother tells the operator several times that she is scared that the officers will shoot her son. Thompson has said that the officers believed their lives were in danger.

Glenn was a star kicker on the football team at Tigard High School and was active in soccer and track as well. Grief counselors were on hand at the school on Monday to help students deal with the news of his death.

Tape details mom's panic in crisis

from The Oregonian, by Kate Taylor


sSUMMARY: Police shooting Hope Glenn tells the dispatcher Lukus is threatening the family and smashing windows
TIGARD -- In the transcript of a 9-1-1 call released Monday evening, the mother of an 18-year-old shot dead by Washington County sheriff's deputies Saturday begs for a quick response because her son is threatening family members and smashing windows at the Garden Home residence.

"He's busting all our house windows. If I shut the door he's already busted our front door," Hope Glenn said of her son, Lukus Glenn. "He just keeps threatening to kill

everybody. . . . He's just not in the right head. . . . He says when the cops get here he's gonna stab himself in the neck."

A review of the tape also indicated that the youth was "out of control" and "was not going down without killing someone," a sheriff's spokesman said. The call ends with police firing their weapons at Lukus Glenn and a dispatcher repeatedly calling the mother's name.

The Washington County sheriff's office also revealed the names of the two officers involved in the shooting --Deputy Mikhail Gerba, 27, and Deputy Timothy Mateski, 26. Both were placed on routine leave while the case is being investigate by the Washington County Major Crimes Team, composed of different police agencies.

They also disclosed that Tigard police Officer Andrew Pastore, 29, came to the scene because he was equipped with a less-than-lethal beanbag shotgun. Several beanbag rounds hit Glenn but appeared to have little or no effect, officials said.

Pastore also was placed on routine leave after the shooting.

But other details surrounding the shooting were not available, including whether Gerba or Mateski carried Tasers or whether results from the autopsy on Glenn were available.

Washington County Sheriff Rob Gordon on Monday recounted the facts of the shooting as he understood them: The Garden Home youth would not drop the knife, he ran toward a house, and officers shot him to protect the people inside.

On Monday, Hope Glenn sat on her porch in the middle of a makeshift memorial of delivered flowers and food baskets.

Crying continually, she said police arrived on her lawn shouting threats before they frightened and then shot Lukus Glenn in the early hours of Saturday morning. There, between hugs from friends and well-wishers, she said that her son only ever spoke of hurting himself.

Sheriff's spokesmen on Monday tried to answer the questions raised by Saturday's shooting: Was deadly force needed, and how do police officers make the decision to shoot?

Sheriff's Lt. John Black said officers, in general, approach a threat considering "intent, means and opportunity."

In other words, an officer considers what the threatening person is willing to do, what sort of weapon they have and what ability they have to employ the threat. The officer weighs all those factors before he shoots.

"It's deceptively simple," Black said. "All you have to ask (when considering the situation) is, 'Could a reasonable officer have believed a person posed a lethal threat?' That is the line behind a justified use of lethal force."

Sheriff's spokesman Dave Thompson said Washington County officers --like officers in many police departments --receive a few hours of training focused solely on defusing situations.

However, during the 10 weeks of police academy and months of other training it takes to become a police officer, police-in-training are taught again and again to take the least harmful actions possible when trying to bring a dangerous situation under control, he said.

"It's not like we throw an officer out there and say, 'Here's a gun and badge, go out there,' " Thompson said.

Those awaiting a complete investigation include his distraught mother.

"They just shot and killed him. They killed my only son," she said. "He couldn't ever take it when people shouted at him, and they were shouting 'We're going to kill you, you understand that? We're going to kill you so you better drop the knife.' "

Glenn's friend, 19-year-old David Daniel Lucas, witnessed the shooting and said Monday that he couldn't understand why the police had shot his friend.

"The officers were there, they only heard him threatening himself," Lucas said. "No one ever told the cops he was going to hurt anyone but himself."

On Monday, Gordon promised a full investigation into the case.

"I am personally very saddened by this event," Gordon said. "I have two young sons who mean the world to me and I would be devastated if I lost them. I try to also imagine them as being one of the deputies responding to this event --and the emotional turmoil they would be in had they had to make this very difficult decision in just a few seconds of their life. I'd hope the people they serve would give them the benefit of an open mind until the facts are in."

The last turn in the life of Lukus Glenn

from The Oregonian, by Steve Duin


Two irrational forces collided in Lukus Glenn's front yard early Saturday morning.
Glenn, an 18-year-old with an attitude, was drunk on alcohol and anger.

The sheriff's deputies from Washington County, armed with an attitude all their own, were high on adrenaline and low on patience. They also had an overwhelming advantage in firepower, leading to the inevitable funeral service and a few nagging questions about the self-described "conservator of the peace in Washington County."

For the sheriff's office, "nagging" is the word. There are three distinct stages in this kind of police shooting --the incident, the community reaction and the grand jury's official stamp of approval --and this intermediate stage, fraught with shock and disbelief, is the only one that's not controlled by the guys with the badge and the guns.

Society long ago decided cops get the benefit of the doubt when they face a threat with their finger on the trigger. That decision empowers the police at the scene and requires that DAs and grand juries hold them blameless. Only in this anguished middle ground is the need for deadly force met with any degree of skepticism.

Washington County Sheriff Rob Gordon said in a statement Monday that his deputies were dispatched to Garden Home to confront a knife-wielding suspect "who was suicidal and out of control."

They ordered Glenn to drop the knife. He didn't.

A Tigard cop hit him with three rounds from a beanbag shotgun. Glenn didn't fall. Instead, he swiveled back toward his house, the night's last fatal turn. That's all the deputies needed to cut loose. To protect Glenn's family, Gordon said, "the deputies both shot the suspect."

And sent several bullets roaring into the house, and past the family members they were trying to "protect."

Said Gordon, "I always caution folks to hold their final opinion on issues such as this until all the facts are fully known." I respect that. Like the Glenn family and several other witnesses on the scene, I simply wish the two deputies had showed similar restraint.

Even those who will memorialize Lukus Glenn this week agree he was drunk and depressed when he returned home at 2 a.m. Saturday and his parents refused to allow him to take his Yamaha dirt bike out on the road. No one but the Washington County sheriff's office, however, is arguing that he ever threatened anyone but himself.

The knife Glenn held to his throat? David Lucas, 19, who arrived at the Glenn house before the deputies did and, along with several others, tried to calm his friend down, said it was a hookah knife, used to widen the holes in the tin foil through which the hookah hoses are inserted.

"That's the knife I gave him for Christmas," Lucas said. "I was working at Big 5 and they had a six-pack of knives for sale. It's a three-inch knife with a plastic handle."

The sheriff's deputies, everyone agrees, were frantically screaming at Glenn to drop that knife. "They're saying they tried to negotiate with him, which they did at no time," Lucas said. Although the deputies were supposedly trained in crisis management, neither stepped back or tried to calm Glenn down.

"They just continued to yell at him. Over and over," Lucas said. "He was getting frustrated because they wouldn't talk to him. He asked Tony (Morales) to tell them to stop yelling."

David Lucas will concede this: "Luke had a problem. When someone told him he couldn't do something, it would make him want to do it more."

After a Tigard officer, who arrived as backup, rocked Glenn with the beanbag rounds, Lucas said, the county deputies opened fire almost immediately: "It wasn't like they shot him with a beanbag and waited for him to surrender. It happened all at once."

Just what provoked the fatal shots? The sheriff's office initially said Glenn "started for the front door of the residence." Lucas said, "He took a step . . . and looked like he was going to take a second step toward the house."

But Gordon's Monday statement said Glenn "started running" toward the house. "He had made threats, was armed, and was totally out of control. You don't have to search too deeply in media archives to find events where innocent family members are hurt or killed in these type of actions."

I suppose that's true. But the deputies had reason to believe a significant barricade separated Glenn from those innocent family members. According to Lucas, when the deputies arrived, Glenn's parents were in the doorway to the house. "The cops told them to go inside and lock the doors," Lucas said.

"The doors were locked. Or they should have been locked."

That brings me to the last of my nagging questions. Sheriff's deputies were told Glenn was suicidal and out of control, yet expected him to respond rationally when confronted by two screaming strangers with guns drawn.

Stranded in his front yard, Glenn was a threat to no one but himself, yet was shot and killed when he staggered away from several beanbag rounds and toward the home he might have perceived as sanctuary.

On Sheriff Rob Gordon's advice, I'm reluctant to reach any conclusions before the facts are "fully known." But I have to ask:

The next time a local teen-ager becomes unhinged and picks up a knife, what rational parent will dial 9-1-1? After the death of Lukus Glenn, what mother or father would expect help to arrive with the sheriff's deputies of Washington County?

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - 9/19/06

from The Oregonian


Police shooting: Nonlethal tactics needed
We were aghast to learn of the killing this weekend of Tigard-area teen Lukus Glenn by Washington County sheriff's deputies ("Police kill 18-year-old near Tigard," Sept. 17, and "Mom: 9-1-1 call was to help son," Sept. 18).

Something went terribly wrong here. Having raised three children, we know that there are occasions when teens may be out of control and defiant, especially if alcohol is involved. Glenn's parents did exactly the right thing when their son appeared to be out of control and self-destructive: They asked for help.

They expected that their son might have to be arrested for the night, sober up and face the consequences of extreme behavior. The last thing they expected, we're sure, was that law enforcement officers would escalate the situation even further.

If Glenn had been a wild animal cornered in the neighborhood, chances are he would have been tranquilized and transported unconscious back to a friendly habitat. Why couldn't that have happened for Glenn?

We weren't there, and we don't know the exact circumstances as events played out, but we suggest a different type of training for the officers is needed. Defiance is not sufficient reason to take a life.

Bring out the Tasers, stall, negotiate, do something else --anything rather than escalate to final justice so quickly.

Our sympathies go out to the parents who raised a promising young man who just needed a little help and some extra discipline getting through the adolescent growing pains. He deserved a better outcome, and so did they.

DENNIS and CHARLENE DOYLE

Redland

The Oregonian reports another police killing of an apparently disturbed person, this time a teenager armed only with a knife. The families of Fouad Kaady and now Lukus Glenn are reeling from a shoot-first, protect-later policy.

When will our police be trained to disarm first without firing multiple rounds to ensure a kill? Why not train police to shoot at the legs of aggressive and disturbed persons who are not armed with guns?

As reported, Lukus Glenn may have been seeking "suicide by cop," but we should train our police to protect our citizens first. Police should use guns only as a last resort, and even then, first to disable suspects --not to slaughter them in a hail of bullets.

PETER KLAEBE

Lake Oswego

As a resident of Washington County, I am shocked by the insensitivity and utter lack of competence these so-called "peace officers" failed to demonstrate. This cry for help from a depressed, confused teenager was answered with a ruthless barrage of gunfire, resulting in a senseless loss of life.

I may not be a crisis tactician, but I believe this tragedy could have easily been avoided with just the slightest bit of common sense and empathy on the part of the police.

ROBERT O'HEARN

Northwest Portland

Extreme police reactions such as in [the fatal shootings of] Lukus Glenn and Fouad Kaady in Sandy will result in the public's loss of trust and confidence in law enforcement. The people will learn to avoid the police for help and resolve the situation on their own. Results, where people take matters into their own hands, also are troublesome.

Sadly, this is life in the bitter and paranoid America.

BRYAN J. DORR

Milwaukie

EDITORIAL - Did Lukus Glenn have to die?

from The Oregonian


None of us on the outside knows enough to understand why Washington County sheriff's deputies killed 18-year-old Lukus Glenn outside his house early Saturday morning.
By his family's account, Glenn was drunk, despondent and destructive, smashing car windows outside their Garden Home area house. He brandished a knife, which he held against his own throat.

In hopes of getting him calmed down, his mother called 9-1-1, which sent two deputies and a Tigard Police officer to the house.

The sheriff's office said later Saturday that the deputies ordered Glenn to drop the knife, but he refused. The official account said the officers fired bean-bag rounds at him, but Glenn was unfazed. And when he turned to re-enter his house, they shot and killed him. Their bullets penetrated the bedroom of Glenn's grandmother, but missed her.

Law officers usually are the first to enter volatile scenes, in an effort to keep the public safe. When things go well, they subdue disturbed people with no violence, and then the professional caregivers step in. But in this case, they shot and Glenn died without getting the professional help he clearly needed.

Did it have to end this way? Did the officers have other choices? How much did they know about Glenn before they arrived? How had their training prepared them for the scene?

And would anybody have been hurt if his mother hadn't called 9-1-1?

Transcript of 9-1-1 call from mother of teen fatally shot by police

from KGW.com

9-1-1 call from Hope Glenn to Washington County Dispatch on 9/16/06 at 0305 hours. The following is a partial transcript transcribed by the Washington County Sheriff's Office.

DISPATCH: 911 what’s your emergency?

HOPE GLENN: I need the cops to my house immediately, I have a son that is out of control busting out windows and has a knife and is threatening us. He’s busting out car windows. He’s trying to get keys to a car, he’s drunk.

DISPATCH: What kind of a knife is it?

HOPE GLENN: It’s just a pocket knife, I think.

(Background noise: obscenities)

DISPATCH: Can you guys get away from him?

HOPE GLENN: Yeah, but he’s wrecking everything here. We’re just trying to talk to him…He’s threatening to kill himself if the cops come here. He’s already bleeding pretty bad…He’s been busting out all the windows with his hands. He’s just really, really intoxicated…His two friends are here trying to talk sense into him but he’s not listening. He says he’s not leaving until the cops shoot him and kill him…He busted out all our car windows. He’s angry because we won’t give him keys…

DISPATCH: Can you lock the door so he stays outside?

HOPE GLENN: Well he’s busting all our house windows. If I shut the door he’s already busted our front door... He just keeps threatening to kill everybody…he’s just not in the right head... He says when the cops get here he’s gonna stab himself in the neck.

DISPATCHER: We’ll have the paramedics come as well.

HOPE GLENN: He said he’s not going down without killing someone. We’re gonna watch him die tonight.

DISPATCHER: Does he have a history of suicide?

HOPE GLENN: No….he attempted it once before I think. You know he was really depressed

HOPE GLENN: Shut the door. Shut the door. Don’t let him in.

HOPE GLENN: He’s walking towards us. He says he’s killing himself right now…as soon as the cops get here.

HOPE GLENN: He says he’s gonna run at the cop with the knife. He wants the cop to shoot him.

(Deputy issuing commands: Sherriff’s Office get on the ground now.)

HOPE GLENN: Put it down. Put it down. I don’t wanna see you die.

HOPE GLENN: Don’t let them shoot him. Please don’t let them shoot him.

(Sounds of deputies ordering Lukus to drop the knife)

HOPE GLENN: They’re gonna kill, they’re gonna shoot him.

DISPATCHER: What’s going on now?

HOPE GLENN: They’re telling him to drop the knife or they’re going to shoot him.

Lukus: You kill me or I kill me.

HOPE GLENN: He’s saying he kills himself or they kill him. He just wants to die tonight.

HOPE GLENN: I can’t shut the door he busted it.

DISPATCHER: Can you move to another part of the house where you’re safe?

HOPE GLENN: I’m safe right now I think. Unless he comes running in here.

HOPE GLENN: He’s so drunk.

(Sound of gunfire)

HOPE GLENN: They shot him…..they killed him.

Approximately four minutes elapsed between when the deputies arrived and the first bean bag round was fired. Deputies were issuing repeated commands to Glenn during this four minute period to drop the knife.

Mom: 9-1-1 call was to help son

from The Oregonian, by Maxine Bernstein


SUMMARY: Garden Home The Glenn family says deputies who shot and killed an 18-year-old also endangered his grandmother
Hope Glenn was frustrated because she, her husband and her son's friends couldn't seem to calm her drunken, agitated 18-year-old son early Saturday. So she called 9-1-1 at 3:05 a.m. for help.

She told a dispatcher her teenage son, Lukus, was suicidal, standing outside their house in the Garden Home area of unincorporated Washington County with a knife to his throat.

"When I called 9-1-1, I called to save my son, to get some professional help," she said in an interview Sunday. "Maybe I'm naive."

Minutes after Washington County sheriff's deputies and a Tigard police officer arrived and Glenn's son, Lukus, refused to drop his knife, officers fired bean-bag rounds at him. When Glenn turned toward the house, two deputies fired several gunshots. Relatives said the teenager collapsed by a doorstep. He died at the scene.

The sheriff's office did not say how many times or where Glenn was shot, but said the deputies fired because they were concerned he might harm family inside.

The teenager's parents and relatives Sunday said in interviews the deputies' gunfire ripped through the house and into the teenager's 72-year-old grandmother's room, barely missing her.

"I could have lost my son and my mom," Hope Glenn said. She pointed out two bullet holes in the front door and two inside the grandmother's room as she numbly recounted Saturday's events.

Lukus Glenn graduated this year from Tigard High School, where he excelled as a kicker on the football team. He had gone to dinner with a girlfriend Friday night and to a Wilson High School football game, his mother said. Later, he went to a party. A friend dropped him off at home about 2 a.m. Saturday because Glenn told his friends he was too drunk to drive.

His parents had been sleeping, but Hope Glenn heard him come in. She went downstairs to check on him and could tell he was drunk. She asked where his car was. He told her he "wasn't that stupid," she recalled.

The teenager had been down on his luck in recent months, disappointed about a long-term romantic relationship that had gone sour and unsure about his future as he saw fellow Tigard graduates heading to college. He had been working half-days at a Oregon Liquor Control Commission warehouse loading pallets but quit, his mother said. He hoped to start at Portland State University in the winter --a former Tigard High coach led its football team.

Without his car, Lukus Glenn tried to get into a shed to his off-road motorcycle, despite his mom's protestations that he shouldn't be driving any vehicle. She woke her husband, Brad Glenn, and they went outside. She described their son as distraught. His dad told him to go to bed or start walking, Hope Glenn said.

Lukus Glenn walked off for a while but came back, kicking the front door, his family said. His parents opened it and the teenager went inside and grabbed a wood-carving knife, his mother said.

"I told him, 'Luke, stop, calm down.' He said, 'No, I'm leaving.' "

So his mother called her son's friend, Tony Morales. "Luke's on the street with a knife. You need to find him," she told him. "He might kill himself."

Morales, 22, said he found Glenn sitting in the yard next to the Glenn home. Morales stayed with him about 20 minutes.

"He was just sitting there, kind of depressed," Morales said. "I've never seen him like that. It was weird, because earlier in the night he was in a good mood, talking about getting a job with his uncle and getting a house together with us."

At one point, Glenn jumped over his neighbor's fence and ran back into his parents' driveway. "That's when he started yelling he wanted his keys," Morales said. "He yelled, 'Who has my keys?' "

By then, another friend had driven Lukus' car to the Glenns' house. His parents heard windows smashing. Their son punched out a back window of one of their cars, then grabbed a shovel and knocked out a window on another.

Glenn dropped the shovel, Morales said, and pulled out a knife. "Me and his dad tried to jump toward him and stop him," Morales said, but Glenn moved away and threatened to hurt himself.

"He was not trying to hurt us," Morales said. "I told him, 'I'll back away, but please put the knife down.' "

When Hope Glenn saw her son put a knife to his throat and refuse to move it, she called 9-1-1. "I said, 'Don't shoot him, he's suicidal.' "

Morales said he saw three officers run into the front yard, guns drawn. They told Morales to drop to the ground and told Brad Glenn to go inside. Glenn's grandmother was at her door and they screamed at her to get inside, Hope Glenn and Morales said.

Morales said the officers yelled at Lukus Glenn to drop the knife. Glenn had the knife in his right hand and kept telling the officers to "stop screaming, stop yelling," Morales said.

Hope Glenn watched from her windows and said she pleaded on the phone with an emergency dispatcher, "Don't let them shoot him. He's my only son."

Another officer fired several bean-bag rounds, which didn't knock Lukus Glenn down.

"He just kind of looked at them," Morales said.

Glenn grabbed both sides of his baggy pants and turned toward the house, gasping, his mother said.

Then four to five gunshots followed.

"I remember seeing him falling as I was screaming his name," Morales said.

The Glenns watched their son fall on the front step outside his grandmother's room. Hope Glenn was screaming and had to be treated later for chest pains.

The two deputies are on routine leave while the case is investigated. Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Bob Day said all deputies are trained in crisis intervention techniques. After Lukus Glenn refused to drop the knife, the deputies felt they had no choice but to shoot him before he went inside his home, a prepared sheriff's statement said.

The family, still reeling from his death, isn't convinced.

Sunday afternoon, wearing a Tigard football sweatshirt, Hope Glenn said, "I wish I just wouldn't have called."

A friend by her side quickly told her she shouldn't think like that.

"The police just agitated him," Glenn continued.

Now Glenn is in a daze about what she must do next, what preparations she needs to make for a funeral. An autopsy, she said, was to be done Sunday.

"We don't even know how to start," she said.

Police kill 18-year-old near Tigard

from The Oregonian, by Laura Oppenheimer and Peter Sleeth

SUMMARY: Shooting Officials say the former football star had a knife and defied officers
TIGARD --Police officers shot and killed an 18-year-old former Tigard High School football star outside his home early Saturday after he allegedly threatened them with a knife, Washington County sheriff's officials said.

Sheriff's deputies and a Tigard police officer responded to a call at 3 a.m. of a man with a knife behaving erratically in the 9200 block of Southwest 80th Avenue.

Lukus David Glenn, who had allegedly been smashing car windows with a shovel, was waving a knife when police arrived. He would not drop it when officers confronted him, said Sgt. David Thompson, a sheriff's spokesman. At times, Glenn held the weapon to his own throat.

Officers fired beanbag rounds at Glenn, but he continued to threaten police and his own safety, Thompson said. "He was making some suicidal statements."

Glenn headed toward the house, ignoring officers' orders to stop, authorities said. Police knew that other people were in the house and feared for their safety, according to a news release. "Deputies felt they had no other choice but to shoot Mr. Glenn before he entered the residence," the release said. Two deputies fired at Glenn, striking him multiple times, officials said.

The officers were not identified. They were placed on paid administrative leave while the shooting is investigated, which is standard police procedure, Thompson said.

Glenn's mother, Hope Glenn, said Saturday afternoon that she called 9-1-1 because her son was so upset that she was afraid he might hurt himself. She said she didn't think officers needed to shoot.

"He was my only son," she said, too distraught to talk at length.

The initial call was recorded as a disturbance involving a weapon, police said. Witnesses told police Glenn was making statements such as "If you call the police, I'm gonna die tonight" and "Somebody's gonna die tonight."

Other young people were at the scene, but police did not say how many or their relationship to Glenn.

The Washington County major crimes team is investigating.

Hope Glenn said her son had been depressed recently but was generally a funny, happy teen. He was always cracking a joke, she said.

Glenn, an all-conference kicker for Tigard's football team, graduated a few months ago. He was also a good runner and soccer player who frequently invited friends to the family's house in the quiet Garden Home neighborhood near Washington Square Mall.

Crystal Satter, who lives across the street from the Glenns, said she couldn't imagine Friday night's commotion was coming from their house when it woke her up. She counts the Glenns among her favorite neighbors.

"Get on the ground now!" Satter heard officers yell several times. Eventually, one of them said, "Get on the ground now, or I'll shoot!"

Satter lay in bed thinking, "Please don't let this happen. Please don't let this happen." Then she heard the shots.

It wasn't until daylight, when a detective stopped by, that she learned it was Luke Glenn who'd been killed. She spent Saturday writing in her journal and mentally replaying memories of the Glenns.

Shortly after Satter moved in 15 years ago, Hope and Brad Glenn brought young Luke by to trick-or-treat, each holding one of his hands. Brad Glenn once confided he'd gotten into trouble a time or two as a kid; he'd do everything he could to keep his son healthy and happy.

As far as Satter could see, that's exactly what the family did.

The Glenns converted their side yard to a soccer field, where Luke and his friends played. They built a treehouse and staged paintball games. Every Fourth of July, the family hosted a big party. On nice weekends, they loaded their boat into a trailer and headed out of town to water-ski.

"These people dedicated 100 percent of the last 18 years to raising this young man," Satter said.

Hope Glenn described her son as "just a good kid." She said Luke had to work hard at school but did well. He was always surrounded by friends. And, though he'd been a little down recently, he'd decided to enroll at Portland State University this winter. He hoped to play football under an assistant coach who used to lead the Tigard Tigers.

Pam Henslee, the high school principal, said counselors will be available this week to help students and staff. She'll also work with Glenn's family if they want to remember him in a special way.

"His teachers spoke highly of him," Henslee said. "They just said he was a nice kid."