Former Portland, Ore., police chief is indicted for allegedly shooting friend on camping trip

Reporting from Seattle  —  Forced to resign after he allegedly shot a friend while reaching for a beer, the former police chief of Portland, Ore., is now facing criminal charges and potential jail time for his role in the ill-fated camping trip.

A Harney County, Ore., grand jury indicted Larry O’Dea on Tuesday on one misdemeanor count of negligently wounding another. On April 21, the indictment states, O’Dea, 53, “did unlawfully, and by failing to use ordinary care under the circumstances, wound Robert Dempsey with a bullet from a firearm.”

O’Dea and Dempsey, 54, were on a hunting and camping trip in southeast Oregon with five other friends, mostly law enforcement officers. At the time of the shooting, the campers were sitting in a semicircle of lawn chairs, drinking beer and shooting at sage rats running along a dirt bank, according to a Harney County Sheriff’s Office investigator.

There was “a steady amount of gunfire,” one witness said, when Dempsey, seated in one of the chairs, suddenly began “yelling profanities,” saying he’d been shot. He was airlifted to a hospital in Boise, Idaho, where he was treated and later released.

O’Dea — glassy-eyed and shaking, authorities said — told the investigator that Dempsey had shot himself. The police chief called it a case of “negligent discharge.”

But an Oregon Fish and Wildlife follow-up investigation quoted Dempsey — who was shot in the back — as saying O’Dea later personally admitted to shooting him. The chief had gone to a nearby beverage cooler, and while reaching for a beer, reportedly fired his .22-caliber rifle by accident.

O’Dea, who’d been chief for just a year, was placed on paid administrative leave and then resigned in June amid furor over the alleged cover-up. He receives an annual pension of $170,800.

The former chief’s lawyer, Derek Ashton, said at the time that O’Dea was not “impaired or intoxicated” at the time of the shooting. ”He did not purposely point his gun at any person and did not knowingly discharge a firearm in the direction of his lifelong friend.”

An investigation of the shooting by state police and the Oregon Justice Department looked into why none of O’Dea’s assistant chiefs called for an internal investigation and why Mayor Charlie Hales — who early on learned what happened from O’Dea — initially kept them secret. It wasn’t until May that the public learned of the shooting from a report in Willamette Week.

So far, the Harney County indictment — which carries a potential six-month jail sentence and a $2,500 fine if O’Dea is found guilty — has been the only result of the investigations.

Hales did appoint a captain to take O’Dea’s place rather than any of the four higher-ranking assistant chiefs, whose lack of action was called into question.

Portland Police Bureau spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said an internal investigation into the matter is ongoing.

Anderson is a special correspondent.

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