Portland’s police chief, Larry O’Dea, resigned Monday amid criminal and internal investigations into whether he was forthright after accidentally shooting his friend during a camping trip on the other side of the state.
(FOX)- Mayor Charlie Hales announced the move at a news conference that had to be shifted to his office because of hecklers.
Hales said he’s been disappointed by the “trial by media” and asked everyone to await the outcome of the twin investigations before passing judgment.
“If the investigations determine that some of what has been printed about Chief O’Dea’s conduct turns out to be not true, I would ask you to be as energetic in clearing his name as you have been in smearing him,” Hales said.
O’Dea, 54, had been chief for little more than a year when he went on the April trip to sparsely populated Harney County in southeast Oregon. He shot his friend, Robert Dempsey, in the lower back with a .22 caliber rifle. The friend was taken to a Boise hospital, but not seriously hurt.
O’Dea didn’t identify himself as Portland’s police chief when deputies spoke with him, and he said it appeared Dempsey shot himself in a mishap.
A deputy who interviewed O’Dea at the scene wrote in a report that he smelled of alcohol. O’Dea denied being intoxicated, and his attorney, Derek Ashton, reiterated that contention in a statement to the media on Sunday.
“Larry O’Dea did not have alcohol on his breath nor was he impaired or intoxicated,” Ashton said. “He did not purposely point his gun at any person and did not knowingly discharge a firearm in the direction of his lifelong friend.”