Below is a roughly chronological account through the media of what happened to Marcus Lagozzino, a SW Portland man with mental health issues who was shot by a Portland police officer on December 27, 2010.
From KOIN.com, December 27, 2010
From KGW.com. December 27, 2010
From KATU.com, December 27, 2010
Police identify man shot Monday night in SW Portland, report he is in critical condition
From the Oregonian, December 28, 2010
Portland police have identified the 34-year-old man shot Monday night by an officer as Marcus Lagozzino. Lagozzino is in critical condition at OHSU Hospital.
The police released this account:
Detectives are continuing to investigate the circumstances of the shooting. Investigators have learned that prior to the shooting, Lagozzino had an argument with his parents and assaulted his 61-year-old mother and his 60-year-old father then went outside the house and began breaking windows and armed himself with a machete with a 22 inch blade. At 5:15 p.m., Lagozzino’s mother called 9-1-1.
At 5:21 p.m., the first officers arrived in the area and as additional officers arrived, they began to formulate a plan to safely approach the residence and make contact with Lagozzino. As the call taker stayed on the line with Lagozzino’s mother, officers began their approach to the residence.
As officers neared the house, Lagozzino saw the police and while still armed with the machete, began rapidly advancing towards the officers in a threatening manner. Officers gave Lagozzino multiple verbal commands and deployed less lethal bean bags and a Taser. At 5:38 p.m., officers broadcast that shots had been fired. The time from the first contact with Lagozzino to the time shots were fired was less than one minute.
Medical personnel arrived approximately five minutes later and transported Lagozzino to an area hospital with a gunshot wound. Lagozzino remains in the hospital in critical condition.
At this point in the investigation, detectives have interviewed seven police officers and a number of civilian witnesses to the shooting but consider this an ongoing investigation as additional interviews need to be conducted.
The involved officers names will not be released until Thursday afternoon.
READ – Police shoot man in SW Portland who was pacing with a machete, December 27, 2010
UPDATE #3: Officer-Involved Shooting Investigation in SW Portland December 28, 2010 10:55
The subject involved in last night’s officer-involved shooting has been identified as 34-year-old Marcus Lagozzino. Lagozzino is in critical condition at an area hospital.
Detectives are continuing to investigate the circumstances of the shooting. Investigators have learned that prior to the shooting, Lagozzino had an argument with his parents and assaulted his 61-year-old mother and his 60-year-old father then went outside the residence and began breaking windows and armed himself with a machete with a 22″ blade. At 5:15 p.m., Lagozzino’s mother called 9-1-1.
At 5:21 p.m., the first officers arrived in the area and as additional officers arrived onscene, they began to formulate a plan to safely approach the residence and make contact with Lagozzino. As the call taker stayed on the line with Lagozzino’s mother, officers began their approach to the residence.
As officers neared the residence, Lagozzino saw the police and while still armed with the machete, began rapidly advancing towards the officers in a threatening manner. Officers gave Lagozzino multiple verbal commands and deployed less lethal bean bags and a Taser. At 5:38 p.m., officers broadcast that shots had been fired. The time from the first contact with Lagozzino to the time shots were fired was less than one minute.
Medical personnel arrived approximately five minutes later and transported Lagozzino to an area hospital with a gunshot wound. Lagozzino remains in the hospital in critical condition.
At this point in the investigation, detectives have interviewed seven police officers and a number of civilian witnesses to the shooting but consider this an ongoing investigation as additional interviews need to be conducted.
The involved officers names will not be released until Thursday afternoon.
###PPB###
###ORIGINAL MESSAGE BELOW###
This evening, Monday December 27, 2010, at approximately 5:15 p.m., Portland Police officers were dispatched to a residence in the 3500 block of Southwest Dakota Street on the report of a disturbance. The caller to 9-1-1 stated that her 34-year-old son was outside the house breaking windows, throwing things at the house and that he was armed with a machete and pacing in front of the residence. The caller also reported that her son has been suicidal in the past and that he might be trying to commit suicide-by-cop and that she believed he would be confrontational with police. The caller reported that she and her husband were hiding inside the house.
Several officers and sergeants arrived and worked to develop a plan to approach the subject safely, who was still outside the residence armed with a machete. As the officers approached the residence, the subject confronted the officers, while still armed with the machete.
Officers gave verbal commands to the subject and deployed less lethal munitions, including bean bag shotgun rounds and a tazer. The armed subject continued to present a threat to the officers and was shot by one officer as a result. The subject was transported to an area hospital and is expected to survive. No officers were injured.
At this point, detectives are in the initial stages of their investigation into the shooting and are working closely with the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office and the East County Major Crimes Team. Traffic is blocked from Southwest 35th Avenue to 37th Avenue along Dakota Street as detectives work to process the scene.
No additional information will be released until at least Tuesday December 28, 2010, in the late morning.
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###ORIGINAL MESSAGE BELOW###
For Media on scene at Southwest 35th Avenue and Southwest Vermont Street: Sgt. Simpson will meet media at that location for an update on this officer involved shooting at 9:00 p.m. this evening.
***Original Message Below***
Portland Police are investigating an officer-involved shooting in the 3500 Block of Southwest Dakota Street.
PIO is onscene and media staging is at Southwest 35th and Vermont.
No additional details at this point.
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Shots fired seconds after Portland police contacted machete-wielding man, from The Oregonian, December 29, 2010
Fifty-six seconds after Portland officers radioed to dispatchers they were “moving up” to a Southwest Portland house where Marcus Lagozzino was reported to be pacing outside with a machete, police shot the 34-year-old man with a Taser, beanbag rounds and bullets, leaving him critically wounded.
Now, Portland detectives are investigating the officer-involved shooting to bring the case before a grand jury, and relatives are struggling to make sense of what occurred.
“This is a family tragedy,” said Marcus Lagozzino’s mother, Marlynn Lagozzino, on Tuesday.
Marlynn Lagozzino had called 9-1-1 at 5:15 p.m. to report a disturbance at her home, on Dakota Street near Southwest 35th Avenue. According to police, she and her husband had an argument with their son Marcus. He had assaulted them and then went outside where he began throwing things and breaking windows. He also was armed with a machete.
By 5:21 p.m., the first Portland officers had arrived and met at Southwest 32nd Avenue and Vermont Street, out of sight of the home, to come up with a plan. The officers were getting updates from a dispatcher who remained on the phone with Marcus’ mother. Marlynn Lagozzino was hiding with her husband, Christopher, inside the home. She told the dispatcher that her son had been suicidal in the past and had talked about “suicide by cop.”
At 5:37:34 p.m., the officers reported they were moving in. They walked up from different directions in an effort to contain the man with the machete, police said. Ten seconds later, officers radioed they were “moving up” closer to the house. Less than a minute from their first contact with Marcus Lagozzino outside the house, gunshots were fired.
Police said that when officers neared the residence on foot, Lagozzino saw them and “began rapidly advancing toward the officers in a threatening manner.” They yelled commands to put down the knife, fired less lethal beanbags and a Taser, and by 5:38:40 p.m., gunshots.
“It’s just incredibly fast,” said Sgt. Pete Simpson, police spokesman. “As soon as he saw the police, he began rapidly advancing on them.”
Police on Tuesday said Marcus Lagozzino is in critical condition. They would not identify the officers who fired the shots, describe the sequence of shots taken, say how many shots were fired, or where Lagozzino was hit.
“You got a situation where all the training is being followed,” Simpson said. “You arrive on scene, develop a plan, dial in all less-lethal resources and decide who’s going to do what. Figure out a safe approach, keep communication open from the house, but ultimately you can’t walk away.”
“You have a family scared to death and a man out front wielding a machete,” Simpson added. “Ultimately, officers have to engage this person. Even in the best scenarios and best intentions, ultimately the suspect can dictate the outcome by their own actions.”
“Suicide by cop”
Criminal justice experts say that when police hear “suicide by cop,” they think of someone intent on provoking an officer into shooting them.
James Drylie, a retired police captain who now serves as executive director of the School of Criminal Justice and Public Administration at Kean University in New Jersey, cited a study that estimates one-third of the roughly 300 justifiable police shootings that occur annually around the nation could be characterized as “suicide by cop.” The study was published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences.
Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI hostage negotiator who wrote a paper on suicide by cop, said the most effective response is to bring in a police hostage negotiator and trained mental health professionals. But as emergency calls unfold, these specialists may not be available right away. He said that police in this case were probably thinking they had a man who was a danger to himself and who could go back into his house and hurt his parents or break into a neighbor’s house to take a hostage.
“The police are thinking, ‘I’ve got to contain this guy. He’s either going to jail or for a mental evaluation. We’re not leaving him in the neighborhood,'” Van Zandt said. “The impetus is on the police to resolve it as safely as possible and as quickly as possible and not give him a chance to escalate the situation.”
Drylie said any good police strategy aims at keeping “time and distance between the officer and the potential threat.”
In the Lagozzino case, no hostage negotiator was called. Simpson said all officers have undergone crisis intervention training and are capable of verbal communication. The bureau has a mobile crisis unit, pairing one Central Precinct officer with a mental health specialist, but the pair work day shift.
“Who knows if that would have changed the situation or not, who knows?” Van Zandt said.
History of mental illness
Jason Renaud, a volunteer with the Mental Health Association of Portland, said all of the people shot by police in the last year — Lagozzino is the sixth person shot by Portland officers in 2010 — have either suffered mental illness or untreated addiction. “It’s incumbent on the police bureau to become a sincere advocate for mental health and addiction treatment. And they need to understand that not everyone will comply with commands. They need a second option other than lethal force,” Renaud said.
Marcus Lagozzino, the oldest of three sons, had a history of mental illness and was living with his parents. He’s had 10 contacts with Portland police as an adult, but all were low-level noncriminal, Simpson said. He was cited and convicted of an alcohol in the park violation in 1997 and had a criminal trespass charge in Sandy from August 2010. Police hadn’t been called to the house since 2004, and that was a vandalism call.
Lagozzino’s interests, according to his Facebook page, include stone carving, camping, cats, cooking, enjoying the outdoors and creating art, and his favorite authors spanned from Carl Sagan and Stephen King to Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe. His favorite quotes: “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law” and “Love is the law, love under will.”
Mayor Sam Adams, who serves as police commissioner, showed up at the scene of the police shooting Monday night; Chief Mike Reese is out of town on vacation.
Tuesday proved another busy day for detectives. While some were continuing to interview officers who were involved or witnesses to the Lagozzino shooting, others were presenting testimony to a grand jury on the Dec. 17 Portland officer-involved fatal shooting of another man.
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Police fired a Taser, beanbag shotgun and an AR-15 rifle at a Southwest Portland man with a machete
From The Oregonian, December 30, 2010
Marcus L. Lagozzino, the Southwest Portland man who was shot by Portland police Monday night when officers say he threatened them with a machete, was hit by at least three rounds from a police AR-15 rifle, police said today.
Officer Bradley Clark, 31, a nearly five-year member of the Police Bureau, fired four shots from an AR-15 rifle at Lagozzino, striking him at least three times.
Another officer fired a single Taser shot, and two other officers fired a total of seven beanbag rounds from a shotgun, police said.
Police did not describe the sequence of shots or where the officers were standing when the shots were fired. Dispatch records show the gunshots were fired within 56 seconds of officers radioing that they were “moving up” to Lagozzino’s home.
Lagozzino, 34, was upgraded from critical to serious condition at OHSU Hospital, hospital spokesman Jim Newman said Thursday.
Officer Jamin Becker, a two-year bureau member, fired the Taser. Officer Ralph Elwood, a 14-year bureau veteran, fired four rounds from a less lethal beanbag shotgun; Officer Scott Foster, a 17-year bureau veteran, fired three beanbag rounds.
The Police Bureau waited three days before releasing the identities of any of the officers involved in Lagozzino’s shooting, veering from its past practice of releasing names of officers involved in shootings within 24 hours of an incident.
Sgt. Pete Simpson, a bureau spokesman, said detectives wanted to wait until all the officers’ interviews were completed.
Also Thursday, a Multnomah County grand jury found no criminal wrongdoing by Portland Officers Jonathan D. Kizzar or Kelly T. Jenson in their Dec. 17 fatal shooting of Darryel Dwayne Ferguson. Police said Ferguson, 45, emerged from a unit of the Ventura Park Plaza Apartments holding a realistic-looking air pistol. Ferguson died of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen.
Kizzar, 29, and Jenson, 30, work out of East Precinct and have been with the bureau for four years.
Portland police detectives have been busy this week. While a team of detectives has been presenting testimony before the grand jury in Ferguson’s shooting, another team continues to investigate Lagozzino’s, which is expected to go before a grand jury next week.
“It’s definitely taxing police resources,” Simpson said.
Police said Monday night’s shooting occurred after Lagozzino’s mother called 9-1-1 about 5:15 p.m. to report a disturbance at their home at 3514 S.W. Dakota St. Marlynn Lagozzino told police her son had assaulted her and his father and was reported to be outside the house pacing with a machete and breaking windows. She told them he had been suicidal in the past and had talked about “suicide by cop.”
Two sergeants and six officers met a few blocks from the home to develop a plan before approaching, as the mother stayed on the phone with an emergency dispatcher while she and her husband hid inside their home.
When officers walked up to the home, they said Marcus Lagozzino rapidly approached them with a machete that had a 22-inch blade.
Sgt. David Michaelson, an 11-year-veteran, was the on-scene supervisor. Sgt. Rick Stainbrook, an 18-year veteran, Officer Curtis Pak, a 10-year-veteran, and Officer Daniel Spiegel, a two-year-bureau member, assisted as cover officers.
The Dec. 17 shooting began with a 9-1-1 call from the apartment building at Southeast Burnside and 122nd Avenue at 2:56 a.m. The caller complained that an argument had escalated to threats.
After talking to the man, police left and returned just after 3:45 a.m. This time, the caller said the same man was armed with a 9 mm handgun and had threatened to shoot him. He said the man with the gun told him last week “not to mess with” his friends.
Kizzar and Johnson went to the door to confront the man with the gun. Within seconds, Simpson said, the officers reported that shots had been fired and that the man had pointed a handgun at the officers. Police recovered a Colt Defender BB air pistol, modeled after the model 1911 .45 caliber handgun used by the military for years.
Another tenant, Shawn Bartmess, counted 16 shell casings littering the hallway.