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POLICE: MAN THEY KILLED IN SHOOTOUT HAD DEATH WISH
September 24, 1997
From all that Portland police have been able to learn, the Southeast resident they shot to death Tuesday evening wanted to die. He had a long history of depression and suicide threats.
In fact, the last time Bill Utton , 65, attacked a police officer, he was taken to a hospital mental health unit, not to jail.
That was in January. Police also dealt with Utton in 1995, said Lt. Cliff Madison, the police bureau spokesman, and found him to be suicidal then.
Tuesday police were called to the Viking Mobile Villa trailer park on Southeast 111th Avenue at 2:10 p.m. after Utton fired a .45-caliber handgun into the floor of his trailer, Madison said.
Utton ‘s wife, who was there with him, left unharmed. He fired six more shots inside the trailer when she left.
Police blocked off nearby streets and evacuated about a dozen mobile homes.
“There was a real danger to other people,” Madison said.
Neighbor Jean Barnes, who said she did not know Utton well, did not hear any of the shooting in the afternoon.
“I didn’t know anything about it until the cop came to the door,” she said. “They took us over to the church” across the street.
Another mobile park neighbor, Lillian Finzel, said she knew something was up when she saw two police cars near Utton ‘s mobile home. Then the evacuation began. “They told us to go over to the church because there might be some shooting.”
More than 60 officers from the East Precinct, the Special Emergency Reaction Team, the hostage negotiating team and the explosives disposal unit surrounded the home. They used a megaphone to try to talk Utton into surrendering. He came out of the trailer several times unarmed but only swore at police before going back inside.
Sporadic shots were heard later in the afternoon.
“We had the hostage negotiation team out the whole time,” Madison said. “He spoke with us, but nothing positive was gained.”
After five hours, communication broke down, and police fired tear gas into the trailer. Five minutes later, Utton fired a handgun at police through a window, hitting vehicles gathered outside. At least two officers fired back at Utton , killing him.
Utton ‘s wife told police her husband had been drinking for three days and was despondent about his failing health.
“He’d been depressed and suicidal,” Madison said Utton ‘s wife told police, “but this was the worst it’s gotten.”
Madison said reports police had written about their previous dealings with Utton said he had diabetes and was deeply depressed.
Detectives will investigate the shooting. Their findings will be presented to the Multnomah County district attorney’s office for review. While the case is under review, the officers involved will be on paid administrative leave.
Police were not releasing the officers’ names.
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OFFICERS FATALLY SHOOT MAN, 65, WHO FIRED AT THEM IN STANDOFF
September 24, 1997
Portland police killed a Southeast Portland man Tuesday evening, ending a five-hour standoff after the man fired shots out his trailer window.
No one else was injured.
Police were called to the Viking Mobile Villa trailer park on Southeast 111th Avenue at 2:10 p.m. when Bill Utton , 65, fired a .45-caliber handgun into the floor of his trailer, said Lt. Cliff Madison, a Portland Police Bureau spokesman.
Utton ‘s wife, who was there with him, left unharmed. He fired six more shots inside the trailer when she left.
Police blocked off nearby streets and evacuated about a dozen mobile homes.
More than 60 officers from the east precinct, the special emergency reaction team, the hostage negotiating team and the explosives disposal unit surrounded the home. They used a megaphone to try to talk Utton into surrendering. He came out of the trailer several times unarmed but only swore at police before going back inside.
Sporadic shots were heard later in the afternoon.
“We had the hostage negotiation team out the whole time,” Madison said. “He spoke with us, but nothing positive was gained.”
After five hours, communication broke down, and police fired tear gas into the trailer. Five minutes later, Utton fired a handgun at police through a window, hitting vehicles gathered outside. At least two officers fired back at Utton , killing him about 7:20 p.m.
Utton ‘s wife told police her husband had been drinking for three days and was despondent about his failing health.
“He’d been depressed and suicidal,” Madison said Utton ‘s wife told police, “but this was the worst it’s gotten.”
It was not the first time Utton had confronted police, Madison said.
“We had a run-in in January with him in which he assaulted a police officer,” he said.
Detectives will investigate the shooting. Their findings will be presented to the Multnomah County district attorney’s office for review. While the case is under review, the officers involved will be on paid administrative leave.
Police were not releasing the officers’ names.
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SICKNESS TORMENTED MAN KILLED BY POLICE
September 25, 1997
Bill Utton sometimes used different words, but they all meant the same thing: He didn’t want his foot cut off. He would rather die.
He was depressed, diabetic and taking a combination of medication and alcohol.
He had suffered three strokes.
And he feared doctors. They had made it clear the diabetes had so damaged his right foot that it must be amputated to save his life.
“That’s why he was mad at the police,” said Laura Riley, the friend who tried to help right through to the final minutes. “He knew they would take him to the hospital, and he didn’t want them to amputate his foot.”
It was yet another mention of going to the doctor that set Utton off on his final tirade Tuesday, one that ended after five hours of negotiations with Utton firing at officers and police shooting him to death. During the long standoff, when Utton would not talk to police on the telephone, he would talk with Riley.
Riley, manager of the Viking Mobile Villa, had tears in her eyes Wednesday and said she might have prevented it all had she taken Utton ‘s gun away when she had the chance earlier Tuesday.
And although she was the one who called the police to the mobile home park at 3441 S.E. 111th Ave., she wishes police had limited their response. Left alone, she believes, Utton would have drunk himself into a stupor, as he had before.
Utton ‘s wife, Velma, was with relatives in Vancouver, Wash., Wednesday, Riley said. She could not be reached for comment.
His stepson, Emmett Gaddis of Madras, said he often heard Utton complain of his constant pain.
“He said when it got to the point where the booze wouldn’t kill his pain, he would blow his brains out,” Gaddis said.
Mike Allen, who had known Utton for more than 10 years, confirmed that Utton would get upset when talking about seeing a doctor.
“I’m sure he wanted the cops to kill him,” he said. “He was at the point where he didn’t want to live anymore.”
Utton had previous run-ins with police. Twice, in January and again later, Utton was taken to the hospital as a possible mental health patient. Once he was hospitalized for two days, the second time for only a couple of hours. Neither stay did him any good, Riley said.
Riley said she was passing by Utton ‘s mobile home, which is directly opposite her own unit, Tuesday when he asked her to come in.
“He was sitting in his chair. He was crying. He had his gun on the chair beside him,” she said. She looked at his right foot and saw that it was in terrible condition, almost rotting off.
“There were tears running down my eyes. I asked him what I could do, and he just said, `Just sit and talk with me.’ I was patting him on the arm,” she said.
She asked Utton to remove the gun, and he put it on a shelf near him.
Velma came in about then, and Riley went home.
“I just got to my gate and — bam! bam!”
She said Utton ‘s wife came running out, saying her husband was shooting at her and through the floor and roof of their home.
When police arrived about 2:10 p.m., Utton fired six more rounds, prompting officers to call in the Special Emergency Reaction Team as well as hostage negotiators. Neighbors were evacuated to a nearby church.
By 7:20 p.m., police shot tear gas into the mobile home to force him out. Five minutes later, Utton started shooting at officers, who were behind a fence in the direction of Powell Boulevard, a block away.
Police said one round went out to the busy street. Others struck the ground and cars near the officers. At least two officers returned fire, killing Utton .
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POLICE-ASSISTED SUICIDE MORE PATIENCE MIGHT HAVE RESULTED IN A DIFFERENT ENDING FOR POLICE AND A MENTALLY DISTURBED 65-YEAR-OLD MAN
Opinion Editorial – September 27, 1997
Police who shot and killed 65-year-old Bill Utton last Tuesday were absolutely right to do so at that point.
What isn’t nearly as clear is whether they ever had to get to that point.
The shooting came at the end of a 5 1/2 -hour standoff in Southeast Portland between Utton , who was holed up in his Southeast Portland mobile home, and the Portland police. Utton started shooting at police after they fired tear gas into his home to force him out of it. Their return fire killed him.
What escapes us is why police commanders decided to force the issue. Did we learn nothing from the federal behavior at Waco? Or the Nathan Thomas shooting here?
You couldn’t exactly say the police were impatient after they waited five hours. But another hour or two, even 24, might have meant a different fate for Utton . It might have meant that two police officers would not have to live with the burden of killing a person who was mentally ill, not criminal.
Hostage negotiators said they were getting nowhere with the man and didn’t see prospects improving. But the manager of the mobile home park said that Utton had drunk himself into a stupor before and might have done so again if he had been left alone.
Police couldn’t do that, of course, since Utton had fired several shots, some of them striking a building across a street. Still, police had evacuated the area.
They knew of Utton ‘s mental health problems; he’d been taken to a hospital by them twice this year already. They also knew that he was terribly depressed and feared police would take him to a hospital where his foot would be amputated because of diabetes damage.
The standoff with Utton did take its toll in police resources. Up to 60 officers were at the scene, and that was not something they could sustain. But couldn’t the number have been reduced and the threat of a single man still contained?
Keeping neighbors evacuated was certainly an inconvenience for them. Some were elderly and required their medications. Inconvenience, though, seems a small price to pay for the chance of saving someone’s life.
We say chance, because Utton might have shot himself. Neighbors said he had threatened to do so. One also said he may have wanted the police to do the job for him.
They ultimately did, and their performance requires a public post-mortem that goes beyond the question of whether police should have returned Utton ‘s fire.
The whole operation should be examined: From the treatment and follow-up, if any, after police took Utton to the hospital earlier this year, to how a mentally ill man got or kept a gun; by leaders of the Crisis Intervention Team, which seeks to help police deal better with the mentally ill people they encounter; and particularly, the command decision to force the issue.
Police-assisted suicide is not something Portland should accept. This was a sad day for Portland, for Utton and for the police who were forced to kill him.
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SHOOTING ISN’T FIRST TIME FOR TWO PORTLAND OFFICERS
September 27, 1997
Two of the three Portland police officers who shot a suicidal man to death Tuesday night have been involved in previous police shootings.
Police released the names of the three officers Friday. They are Sgt. Larry Wooten, 45, Officer Robert King, 33, and Officer Richard Hascall, 39, said Lt. Cliff Madison, a police spokesman. All three are members of the Portland Police Bureau’s Special Emergency Reaction Team.
Bill Utton , 65, bled to death from a gunshot wound to his left leg, said Dr. Larry Lewman, state medical examiner. The fatal shot was a high-velocity rifle round that damaged several major arteries before exiting his left leg and entering his right knee, Lewman said. The rifle shot did more serious damage than a bullet from a handgun would have, and Utton probably bled to death quickly, before emergency personnel could help.
“There was nothing they could do,” Lewman said.
Another rifle round passed through Utton ‘s left hand, fragmented and hit him in the face.
All three officers fired at Utton , but no other shots hit him, Madison said.
Police were called to Utton ‘s Southeast Portland home after he fired seven shots inside his trailer home. After five hours of negotiations, police fired tear gas into the building. Five minutes later, Utton fired a handgun out his window, hitting police vehicles. Police returned fire, killing him.
Wooten, a 19-year police veteran, was involved in two fatal shootings in 1991. In the first, Wooten and other SERT officers shot Michael Lee Henry, 19, on April 13 after he had taken a teller hostage at a bank inside the Gateway Fred Meyer store. Six weeks later, Wooten and other officers shot Leonard Manuel Renfrow, 47, after he drew a gun on police when they raided a Northeast Portland drug house.
King, a seven-year veteran, fatally shot Johnny L. George, 18, in 1992 after George stabbed him in the left shoulder. George was a suspect in a convenience store theft earlier the same evening.
Grand juries ruled that each of the shootings was justified.
Hascall, a 17-year police veteran, has not been involved in previous shootings.
The three officers involved in the Utton shooting remain on administrative leave, a standard practice in shootings.
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PORTLAND’S SERT UNIT RARELY HAS TO SHOOT
Thursday, October 9, 1997
Two weeks ago, a five-hour standoff in Southeast Portland ended in bloodshed as members of the Special Emergency Reaction Team — SERT — shot and killed a despondent man who fired at them first.
Bill Utton was depressed about his failing health and on Sept. 23 fired several shots inside his mobile home at Southeast Powell Court and 111th Street. When police fired tear gas inside the mobile home to try to end the standoff, Utton shot at them. Police said they had no choice, at that point, but to fire back.
Utton ‘s death, scheduled to be scrutinized by a grand jury Wednesday, focused public attention on how police handled one depressed man who wanted to die.
At least one study shows a rise in so-called “suicide by cop,” and experts blame it in part on glamorous Hollywood images of shooting deaths and an increasing public awareness that police will almost certainly shoot and kill anyone who fires at them.
But for Portland’s SERT unit, the Utton shooting was a rare event.
It was the first SERT killing in the city since 1991, when members shot and killed three men in separate incidents. And it was only the fifth time since Portland police established a SERT unit in 1975 that its members had killed
Even though Portland police increasingly are relying on SERT to resolve barricade and hostage situations, SERT usually has been able to avoid resorting to deadly force.
“I think our SERT unit has been put in that situation many times,” said Lt. Cliff Madison, a spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau. “Fortunately, we’ve been able to, in most cases, avoid having to use deadly force on a person, which may be what the person is desiring us to do.”
Madison would reveal few details but said preparedness has made the difference.
“I really think, in their case, it comes down to training. They’ve worked hard to try and come to conclusion without injuries,” he said. “In most cases, they’re successful.”
Anecdotal evidence has hinted at an increase in suicide by cop for several years. A recent study of five years of police shootings in Los Angeles seems to confirm it.
“We think it is increasing,” said Dr. H. Range Hutson, research director at Harvard Medical School, who conducted the study.
Hutson said he could not release details until he presented the study during a national sheriff’s conference in Orlando, Fla., later this month. But he did say the public no longer believes old notions that police officers aim for the gun or leg.
In other words, suicidal people are more likely to know that the best way to assure their death is to have a trained professional do it for them.
“Law enforcement is trained to kill. They do not shoot to wound, and the public knows that,” Hutson said. “There is only one element in the general community that is trained to kill, and that’s a law enforcement officer.”
Pop culture might partially explain the increase in suicide by cop, according to Clinton R. Van Zandt, supervisory special agent for the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va.
“Movies and police dramas on television have contributed to the belief that death by shooting can be a nice, clean, relatively painless process,” Van Zandt wrote in a 1993 issue of The Police Chief.
In Portland, the numbers show that police commanders dramatically have increased the use of SERT in recent years. With an estimated 21 call-outs so far this year, SERT is one deployment away from tying 1996’s record year.
Compare that with 1993, when SERT responded to six call-outs.
“I think we’re seeing a lot more barricaded situations and we’re seeing SERT called out more for suicidal situations,” Madison said.
In the past, commanders were reluctant to call SERT.
“Before, people were concerned because it takes a while to get there and set up,” Madison.
But now, the police see the value of negotiators and officers trained to use tear gas and sometimes a weapon that shoots heavy bean bags before kicking in the door with guns blazing.
Negotiators will try for hours to talk people out of violence. Tear gas and bean bags, which stun the targeted person, often allow police to defuse the situation.
“In any suicide case, we try to come to a friendly conclusion,” Madison said. But “there are going to be times (where) we may not have many options.”
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POLICE IN STANDOFFS MUST STRIKE FINE BALANCE
Thursday, January 29, 1998
As the standoff between police and a man with a gun ground slowly into its 13th hour, a passer-by summed up the unspoken frustration of most neighbors, police and the assembled media:
“Oh, why doesn’t he just shoot himself and get it over with?” the woman asked. She paused. “Oh, I don’t really mean that, but how can one person mess up so many lives?”
A short time later, the news crackled over Gresham Police Lt. Carla Piluso’s radio. “We’re 1061 with the suspect,” said a Special Emergency Reaction Team member, using the numerical code for “suspect in custody.”
Friends said the man, Larry Kay Igo, had celebrated his graduation from an alcohol-recovery program by getting drunk and then despondent. He finally surrendered by walking out of his Gresham apartment with his hands up.
But not before he had fired eight shots into the air at adjacent apartments and a police floodlight. And not before more than 100 neighbors were evacuated from their apartments, and two full shifts of SERT members had donned camouflaged gear and surrounded his apartment.
For 13 hours last week, police closed off usually busy Northeast Glisan Street between 176th and 181st avenues, disrupting bus schedules, personal schedules, meetings and local businesses. Not to mention finely tuned police roll calls and shifts, and the fair chunk of overtime officers will receive for the standoff.
All for a 42-year-old man who had rambled incoherently about God and his problems, while holding off police with a high-powered hunting rifle.
“This has not been a good month for me,” one businessman complained to no one in particular from the Albertson’s parking lot, where police had set up a media command post. “Business was already slow what with the snowstorm last week . . . now this.”
The command post consisted of Piluso’s unmarked car and a swarm of reporters who could be seen searching their pockets whenever a cellular phone went off.
The radio reporters needed constant updates; television needed sound bites and visuals; the print reporters wanted precise time lines of the events as they unfolded.
And all of it — the disruption, the tension, the stale pizza and half-eaten doughnuts, the black face paint and an armored car — for a suspect who wanted to kill police officers or have them kill him.
“Every situation is different,” said Piluso, who worked as a hostage negotiator for five years. “But in every situation the most important thing is officer safety, the safety of the public, and yes, the safety of the subject.”
Time is essential
The essential safety element in all these cases is time — the time it takes to establish a rapport with the person, who often is desperate, confused, under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and armed with a gun.
Add mood swings, bright lights and fatigue and you’ve got the potential for a situation that can swing from violent tragedy to peaceful resolve in an instant.
The former occurred last September when Bill Utton, who was depressed about his failing health, fired several shots inside his mobile home at Southeast Powell Court and 111th Avenue.
Police surrounded his home, and later fired tear gas inside to get him to come out. Instead, he shot at them, whizzing bullets over neighbors and reporters standing across the street.
Police said they had no choice but to shoot Utton. It was the first time a suspect was shot and killed during a Portland SERT operation since 1991, and only the fifth time the SERT team had used deadly force since 1975 when the unit was formed.
Most SERT actions end like they did last week, when Igo, formerly of Mosier, quietly laid down his rifle and walked into the arms of waiting police.
But during the negotiations with police, Igo several times told officers that he had an overwhelming desire to pick up the gun and fire at police.
“That’s where the subject has the most control — he or she can get violent,” Piluso said. “It’s the job of a good negotiator to explain to them why that is not a good option. To do that, you have to establish a rapport — find out where that person needs to be in their head and put them there.”
Piluso said it all boils down to finding out how the person got into the situation, and an acceptable way to get out of it.
“Time is on our side,” Piluso said. “And it’s not only the questions you ask, it’s the answers you give.”
Piluso recalled that during one of her stints as a negotiator, the man refused to talk with a woman. At another, a subject was watching the incident outside on his television and became extremely angry at one of the reporter’s comments.
“It’s tough,” Piluso said. “Sometimes we have to swallow our pride to win back their trust.”