PORTLAND, Ore. — The family of a Portland man who died in the hospital after being shot by police last November has notified the city that they intend to file a lawsuit, saying that he was wrongly identified as an armed robbery suspect. The Oregon Justice Resource Center, which is representing the family of Immanueal Clark-Johnson, shared the tort claim notice on Monday.
According to Portland Police Bureau statements shortly after the Nov. 19, 2022 shooting, Clark-Johnson was the suspect in an armed robbery that happened earlier that evening. PPB said that officers responded to a report of an armed robbery on Southeast Powell Boulevard near 50th Avenue and Foster Road. A suspect vehicle description was sent out to the responding officers.
A short time later, an officer spotted a vehicle matching the description of the suspect vehicle, and police alleged in a statement that the driver was driving recklessly.
The car came to a stop in a parking lot in the 2900 block of Southeast Steele Street near Reed College, where officers attempted to contact the driver, according to PPB. At 12:41 a.m., PPB said that officers opened fire, hitting Clark-Johnson. Clark-Johnson, then 30 years old, died five days after the shooting.
At the time, PPB was withholding the names of officers who opened fire during police shootings, citing concerns about doxing. It was a year in which PPB saw the highest number of police shootings since it began recording that data more than a decade earlier, in 2010.
In early December, the agency released the names of nine officers who fired their weapons during confrontations with suspects. The officer who shot Clark-Johnson was identified as Christopher Sathoff, a 4-year veteran of the agency. A grand jury later determined that Sathoff's use of force was not criminal under Oregon law.
But according to the Oregon Justice Resource Center, Clark-Johnson was not responsible for the armed robbery that precipitated the shooting, nor was his vehicle the one that police had been looking for.
Clark said he wants to see changes within the Portland Police Bureau. "No more Thanksgivings for Manny but I really want is the policies with the police you don’t use an AR 15 for a traffic stop," said Clark.
On Tuesday afternoon, for the first time we heard from a family member of Clark-Johnson who went by Manny. His uncle, Stanley Clark said his nephew was going through a tough time leading up to the night he was shot. Clark didn't said that Manny was going through some things with his life, but was in the process of getting his life back on track.
Testimony from the grand jury proceedings supports this conclusion. The PPB officer who first responded to the armed robbery call said that when he arrived at the shooting scene, he could tell that it was not the vehicle seen on surveillance footage from the business.
After following a vehicle that they thought was the correct one that night, police staged nearby where Clark-Johnson and his three passengers had stopped in the parking lot of Redwood Friends Church, OJRC said. Five officers approached the vehicle — Clark-Johnson and one of the passengers ran away, while the other two stayed. Then Officer Sathoff opened fire with his AR-15.
"Officer Sathoff claims he saw Mr. Clark-Johnson reach into his pocket, which Officer Sathoff believed could contain a weapon," the attorneys said in their tort claim notice. "Officer Sathoff never saw a weapon or any other object in Mr. Clark-Johnson’s pocket. Officer Sathoff later testified to a Grand Jury that he feared Mr. Clark-Johnson would retrieve a gun from his pocket, run behind other vehicles in the parking lot, turn back toward officers, and shoot at officers."
Clark-Johnson was hit once in the back but did not die right away. According to the OJRC, he didn't receive medical care with anything approaching urgency either.
"For several minutes, Mr. Clark-Johnson lay bleeding and in pain, begging officers to help him," the attorneys said. "Instead, officers attempted to make Mr. Clark-Johnson crawl toward them, despite the severe wound to his back and torso. After eventually believing Mr. Clark-Johnson was too injured to crawl, officers approached Mr. Clark-Johnson and provided first aid. Medical personnel also did not arrive until approximately 25 minutes after Mr. Clark-Johnson was shot."
While investigators testified during the grand jury proceedings that a gun was recovered somewhere at the scene, it was not within Clark-Johnson's reach. And the OJRC said that police confirmed that no one in Clark-Johnson's car that night had been involved in the armed robbery.
"Mr. Clark-Johnson posed no threat to police, yet lost his life at 30 because of Officer Sathoff’s unfounded assumptions about Mr. Clark-Johnson’s guilt and dangerousness," the attorneys said.
The OJRC said that Clark-Johnson's family intends to pursue claims for negligence, assault, battery, violations under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, and a Monell claim against Portland for a "pattern and practice of shooting and killing persons."
"Given the weight of evidence against the City of Portland and Officer Sathoff, Mr. Clark-Johnson’s family will succeed on these claims," the OJRC concluded. "It is in the City’s best interest, and in the best interests of the community, to resolve this matter as quickly and contritely as possible. As a City that espouses to be interested in justice, it is time to act on that interest."