RUBBISH!

Portland's Top Brass Said It Was OK to Swipe Your Garbage--So We
Grabbed Theirs.

It's past midnight. Over the whump of the wipers and the screech of
the fan belt, we lurch through the side streets of Southeast Portland
in a battered white van, double-checking our toolkit: flashlight,
binoculars, duct tape, scissors, watch caps, rawhide gloves, vinyl
gloves, latex gloves, trash bags, 30-gallon can, tarpaulins, Sharpie,
notebook--notebook?

Well, yes. Technically, this is a journalistic exercise--at least,
that's what we keep telling ourselves. We're upholding our sacred
trust as representatives of the Fourth Estate. Comforting the
afflicted, afflicting the comfortable. Pushing the reportorial
envelope--by liberating the trash of Portland's top brass.

We didn't dream up this idea on our own. We got our inspiration from
the Portland police.

Back in March, the police swiped the trash of fellow officer Gina
Hoesly. They didn't ask permission. They didn't ask for a search
warrant. They just grabbed it. Their sordid haul, which included a
bloody tampon, became the basis for drug charges against her (see
"Gross Violation," below).

The news left a lot of Portlanders--including us--scratching our
heads. Aren't there rules about this sort of thing? Aren't citizens
protected from unreasonable search and seizure by the Fourth Amendment?

The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office doesn't think so.
Prosecutor Mark McDonnell says that once you set your garbage out on
the curb, it becomes public property.

"She placed her garbage can out in the open, open to public view, in
the public right of way," McDonnell told Judge Jean Kerr Maurer
earlier this month. "There were no signs on the garbage, 'Do not open.
Do not trespass.' There was every indication...she had relinquished
her privacy, possessory interest."

Police Chief Mark Kroeker echoed this reasoning. "Most judges have the
opinion that [once] trash is put out...it's trash, and abandoned in
terms of privacy," he told WW.

In fact, it turns out that police officers throughout Oregon have been
rummaging through people's trash for more than three decades. Portland
drug cops conduct "garbage pulls" once or twice per month, says
narcotics Sgt. Eric Schober.

On Dec. 10, Maurer rubbished this practice. Scrutinizing garbage, she
declared, is an invasion of privacy: The police must obtain a search
warrant before they swipe someone's trash.

"Personal and business correspondence, photographs, personal financial
information, political mail, items related to health concerns and
sexual practices are all routinely found in garbage receptacles,"
Maurer wrote. The fact that a person has put these items out for
pick-up, she said, "does not suggest an invitation to others to
examine them."

But local law enforcement officials pooh-poohed the judge's
decision.

"This particular very unique and very by-herself judge took a position
not in concert with the other judges who had given us instruction by
their decisions across the years," said Kroeker.

The District Attorney's Office agreed and vowed to challenge the
ruling.

The question of whether your trash is private might seem academic.
It's not. Your garbage can is like a trap door that opens on to your
most intimate secrets; what you toss away is, in many ways, just as
revealing as what you keep.

And your garbage can is just one of the many places where your privacy
is being pilfered. In the wake of 9/11, the U.S. government has
granted itself far-reaching new powers to spy on you, from email to
bank statements to video cameras (see "Big Brother's in Your Trash
Can," below).

After much debate, we resolved to turn the tables on three of our
esteemed public officials. We embarked on an unauthorized sightseeing
tour of their garbage, to make a point about how invasive a "garbage
pull" really is--and to highlight the government's ongoing erosion of
people's privacy.

We chose District Attorney Mike Schrunk because his office is the most
vocal defender of the proposition that your garbage is up for grabs.
We chose Police Chief Mark Kroeker because he runs the bureau. And we
chose Mayor Vera Katz because, as police commissioner, she gives the
chief his marching orders.

Each, in his or her own way, has endorsed the notion that you abandon
your privacy when you set your trash out on the curb. So we figured
they wouldn't mind too much if we took a peek at theirs.

Boy, were we wrong.

Perched in his office on the 15th floor of the Justice Center, Chief
Kroeker seemed perfectly comfortable with the idea of trash as public
property.

"Things inside your house are to be guarded," he told WW. "Those that
are in the trash are open for trash men and pickers and--and police.
And so it's not a matter of privacy anymore."

Then we spread some highlights from our haul on the table in front of
him.

"This is very cheap," he blurted out, frowning as we pointed out a
receipt with his credit-card number, a summary of his wife's
investments, an email prepping the mayor about his job application to
be police chief of Los Angeles, a well-chewed cigar stub, and a
handwritten note scribbled in pencil on a napkin, so personal it made
us cringe. We also drew his attention to a newsletter from the
conservative political advocacy group Focus on the Family, addressed
to "Mr. & Mrs. Mark Kroeker."

"Are you a member of Focus on the Family?" we asked.

"No," the chief replied.

"Is your wife?"

"You know," he said, with a Clint Eastwood gaze, "it's none of your
business."

As we explained our thinking, the chief, who is usually polite to a
fault, cut us off in midsentence. "OK," he said, suddenly standing up,
"we're done."

Hours later, the chief issued a press release complaining that WW had
gone through "my personal garbage at my home." KATU promptly took to
the airwaves declaring, "Kroeker wants Willamette Week to stay out of
his garbage."

If the chief got overheated, the mayor went nuclear. When we confessed
that we had swiped her recycling, she summoned us to her chambers.

"She wants you to bring the trash--and bring the name of your
attorney," said her press secretary, Sarah Bott.

Actually, we couldn't snatch Katz's garbage, because she keeps it
right next to her house, well away from the sidewalk. To avoid
trespassing, we had to settle for a bin of recycling left out front.

The day after our summons, Wednesday, Dec. 18, we trudged down to City
Hall, stack of newsprint in hand. A gaggle of TV and radio reporters
were waiting to greet us, tipped off by high-octane KXL motor-mouth
Lars Larson.

We filed into the mayor's private conference room. The atmosphere,
chilly to begin with, turned arctic when the mayor marched in. She
speared us each with a wounded glare, then hoisted the bin of
newspaper and stalked out of the room--all without uttering a word.

A few moments later, her office issued a prepared statement. "I
consider Willamette Week's actions in this matter to be potentially
illegal and absolutely unscrupulous and reprehensible," it read. "I
will consider all my legal options in response to their actions."

In contrast, DA Mike Schrunk was almost playful when we owned up to
nosing through his kitchen scraps. "Do I have to pay for this week's
garbage collection?" he joked.

We told Schrunk that we intended to report that his garbage contained
mementos of his military service. "Don't burn me on that," he
implored. "The Marine Corps will shoot me!"

It's worth emphasizing that our junkaeological dig unearthed no whiff
of scandal. Based on their throwaways, the chief, the DA and the mayor
are squeaky-clean, poop-scooping folks whose private lives are beyond
reproach. They emerge from this escapade smelling like--well, coffee
grounds.

But if three moral, upstanding, public-spirited citizens were each
chewing their nails about the secrets we might have stumbled on, how
the hell should the rest of us be feeling?

Haul of Fame

Decked out in watch caps and rubber gloves, we are kneeling in a
freezing garage and cradling our first major discovery--a five-pound
bag of dog poo.

We set it down next to the rest of our haul from District Attorney
Mike Schrunk's trash--the remains of Thanksgiving turkey, the mounting
stack of his granddaughter's diapers, the bag of dryer lint, the tub
of Skippy peanut butter, and the shredded bag of peanut M&Ms.

There is something about poking through someone else's garbage that
makes you feel dirty, and it's not just the stench and the flies.
Scrap by scrap, we are reverse-engineering a grimy portrait of another
human being, reconstituting an identity from his discards, probing
into stuff that is absolutely, positively none of our damn business.

It's one thing to revel in the hallowed tradition of muckraking. It's
another to get down on your hands and knees and nose through wads of
someone else's Kleenex. Is this why our parents sent us to college? So
we could paw through orange peels and ice-cream tubs and half-eaten
loaves of bread?

And yet, there is also something seductive, almost intoxicating, about
being a Dumpster detective. For example, we spot a clothing tag marked
"44/Regular." Then we find half of a torn receipt from Meier & Frank
for $262.99. Then we find the other half, which reads: "MENS SU 3BTN."
String it together, and we deduce that Schrunk plunked down $262.99
for a size-44 three-button suit at Meier & Frank on Saturday, Nov. 16,
at 9:35 am.

We are getting to know Portland's top prosecutor from the inside out.
Here's an empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. There's a pile
of castoff duds from his days as a Marine. Is he going "soft" on terrorism!?

Chinese takeout boxes and junk-food wrappers testify to a busy
lifestyle with little time to cook. A Post-it note even lays bare
someone's arithmetic skills (the addition is solid, but the long
division needs work).

Our haul from Mayor Vera Katz is limited to a stack of newsprint from
her recycling bin--her garbage can was well out of reach--but we
assemble several clues to her intellectual leanings. We find
overwhelming evidence that the Mayor reads The Oregonian, The
Washington Post National Weekly Edition, U.S. Mayor and the Portland
Tribune.

We also stumble across a copy of TV Click in which certain programs
have been circled in municipal red. If we're not mistaken, the mayor
has a special fondness for dog shows, figure skating and The West Wing.

Our inspection of Chief Kroeker's refuse reveals that he is a
scrupulous recycler. He is also a health nut. We find a staggering
profusion of health-food containers: fat-free milk cartons, fat-free
cereal boxes, cans of milk chocolate weight-loss shakes, cans of
Swanson chicken broth ("99% fat free!"), water bottles, a cardboard
box of protein bars, tubs of low-fat cottage cheese, a paper packet of
oatmeal, and an article on "How to Live a Long Healthy Life."

At the same time, we find evidence of rust in the chief's iron
self-discipline: wrappers from See's chocolate bars, an unopened bag
of Doritos, a dozen perfectly edible fun-size Nestle Crunch bars,
three empty Coke cans.

We unearth a crate that once contained 12 bottles of Cook's California
sparkling wine, but find no trace of the bottles themselves. Is the
chief building a pyramid of them on the mantelpiece? We stack the
crate beside a pair of white children's socks, a broken pen, the stub
of an Excalibur 1066 cigar, burnt toast, a freezer bag of date bars,
orange peel, coffee grounds, a cork, an empty film canister (no
weed--we checked), eggshells, Q tips, tissue paper and copious
quantities of goo.

We uncrumple a holiday flier from the Hinson Memorial Baptist Church,
which contains a handwritten note: "Mark. Just want you to know one
Latin from Manhattan Loves You."

Invasion of privacy? This is a frontal assault, a D-Day, a Norman
Conquest of privacy. We know the chief's credit-card number; we know
where he buys his groceries; we know how much toilet tissue he goes
through. We know whose Christmas cards he has pitched, whose wedding
he skipped, whose photo he threw away. We know what newsletters he
gets and how much he's socked away in the stock market. We even know
he's thinking about a new car--and which models he's
considering.

By the time we tag the last item (a lonesome Christmas tree angel),
our noses are running and our gloves are black with gunk. We scrub our
hands when we get home. But we still feel dirty.

What We Found

Police Chief Mark Kroeker

* Empty containers and wrappers: Kodiak Washington pears, Washington
"extra fancy" fancy lady peaches, Oasis Floral Foam bricks ("Worth
Insisting Upon") (2), Kashi Go Lean! cereal, Sunshine fat-free milk,
Kirkland Signature weight-loss shake, fat-free Swanson Chicken Broth,
mandarin oranges, Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Arrowhead water bottle, Cook's
California sparkling-wine box, fried apples, cheese rolls, Bounty
paper towels 15-roll pack, Kirkland facial tissue, 12-pack Dove soap,
Quaker oatmeal, See's candy bars, lady's razors, Dentyne Ice chewing
gum, Vivant zesty vegetable crackers.

* Hershey's Cookies n Creme mini-bars, uneaten (3).

* Several Oregonian issues, still folded.

* Email correspondence between chief and Mayor Katz's staff in which
he preps them on what to tell Los Angeles officials regarding his
application to be chief there.

* Rough draft, internal police memo.

* Various cash-register receipts.

* Half-full bag of fun-size Nestle Crunch bars.

* Slice of burnt toast.

* Photocopy of WW Nov. 13 "Murmurs" item on chief, hand-dated in blue
pen, reporting scuttlebutt that Katz has "taken over the day-to-day
running of the Police Bureau."

* Half-smoked stub of an Excalibur 1066 cigar.

* Paper cups from Starbucks and Torrefazione.

* Pears, lettuce, grapes, bread, eggshells, goo, potato salad, wire
hangers, a 75 watt light bulb, orange peels, coffee grounds, wine
cork, dish rag, film canister, used Q-Tips.

* Half-eaten protein bar, still in wrapper.

* Newsletter from Focus on the Family, a conservative political group.
Insert, addressed to "Mr. & Mrs. Mark Kroeker." Insert asks for "one
last year-end contribution."

* Photos of chief and a bare-chested man moving a large
appliance.

* Creased wedding photo of a prominent Portlander.

* Broken pen.

* Three envelopes from California, hand-addressed, sent on consecutive
days.

* Notice from mortgage company for payment.

* Internet printout of "How to Live a Long Healthy
Life."

* Postcard from friend vacationing in Arizona.

* Post-it with notes about a new car.

* Extremely personal note on dinner napkin, handwritten in
pencil.

* Account summary from Fidelity Investments for the chief's
wife.

Mayor Vera Katz

* Trader Joe's "Happy Holidays" paper bag.

* Several issues of The Oregonian.

* Several issues of The Washington Post National Weekly
Edition.

* A copy of U.S. Mayor (a monthly magazine devoted to
mayors).

* A copy of TV Click. Someone has marked several programs in red, including
Wargame: Iraq, Simulated National Security Council meetings, MSNBC;
Everwood: Ephram tries to revive his mother's Thanksgiving traditions,
KWBP; CSI Miami: A dead man is found hanging from a tree, KOIN; Life with
Bonnie on KATU; The West Wing on KGW; The National Dog Show on KGW; Figure
skating: ISU Cup of Russia, ESPN; Biography: "Audrey Hepburn, the Fairest
Lady," A&E: Figure skating: ICE WARS: USA vs. The World, KOIN.

* Several issues of the Portland Tribune.

* Daily Journal of Commerce from Dec. 3, 2002.

District Attorney Mike Schrunk

* Empty containers and wrappers: Cozy Fleece Baby Blanket, Bee
Cleaners, Nibblets Corn and Butter, Johnnie Walker Black Label, Fred
Meyer unflavored gelatin, Burger King beverage cup and straw, possible
Chinese takeout (lots), Dreyer's Mocha Almond Fudge ice cream, Skippy
peanut butter (creamy), Land's End, Fred Meyer green beans, Campbell's
Chunky New England Clam Chowder with 100-watt bulb inside, Meier &
Frank, Jelly Belly jelly beans, Foster Farms boneless and skinless
Oregon chicken thighs.

* Coffee grounds.

* Used pekoe tea bags, many.

* Used Christmas napkins, used Kleenex, used Q-Tips.

* Remains of Thanksgiving turkey carcass, drumstick
intact.

* Remnants of roast beef.

* Soiled baby diapers.

* Plastic bags containing dog poo, very clean, with some blades of
grass (2).

* Bag of dryer lint.

* Christmas wrapping paper.

* Orange peels, empty Millstone coffee bag, containing two very ripe
but uneaten bananas, two half-eaten loaves of wheat bread.

* Disposable razors.

* Remnants of peanut M&Ms bag.

* Energizer AA batteries (2), wrapped in plastic bag.

* Shopping lists.

* Baseball cap with crustacean emblem: "DON'T BOTHER ME. I'm
CRABBY."

* Baseball cap for Outward Bound.

* Baseball cap with embroidered green fish.

* Military khaki shirts with "SCHRUNK" embroidered on pocket and
collar (4).

* Jacket, olive drab, with fading stencils of "USMC" and
"Schrunk."

* Yellow Post-it note with sample of someone's arithmetic: The
addition is successful (54 + 32 = 86), but the long division of 32
divided by 6 comes up a little bit wide, at 5.4.

Gross Violation

Officer Gina Hoesly has long had less privacy than the average cop,
thanks to the Portland Police Bureau's rumor mill.

Hoesly (below), 34, has dated rock musicians, other cops and Portland
Trail Blazers. She's had breast implants and once posed for a photo on
a website selling motorcycle gear--badpig.com--showing plenty of skin.
In 1996, she won a $20,000 settlement from the bureau in a
sexual-harassment claim based on behavior by her co-workers. But none
of that comes close to the scrutiny she received in March, when fellow
officers rifled through her garbage. The evidence they found led to
her indictment on charges of possessing ecstasy, cocaine and
methamphetamine.

Hoesly, a 13-year police officer who occasionally was an undercover
decoy in police prostitution stings, became the subject of an
investigation early this year, when she told police she'd been
assaulted by her ex-boyfriend, Joshua David Rodriguez. Rodriguez has a
history of drug arrests and convictions, and when officers booked him
on assault charges, they found meth in his pocket.

Subsequently police began investigating Hoesly, hearing rumors from
police informants that she had used drugs. On March 13 at 2:07 am,
narcotics officers Jay Bates and Michael Krantz took her garbage. The
order to do so came from Assistant Chief Andrew Kirkland, who dated
Hoesly in the early '90s.

Searching through her trash back at Central Precinct, they found
traces of cocaine and methamphetamine, as well as drug paraphernalia.
They also found a bloody tampon. They sent a piece of the tampon to
the state crime lab, where forensics experts tested it for drugs, DNA
and, for reasons that remain unclear, semen. The results of those
tests have not been released.

The police didn't seek a search warrant to take Hoesly's trash
because, as the Multnomah County District Attorney's office conceded,
officers didn't at the time have sufficient evidence to convince a
judge to issue a warrant. But once they had drug residue from Hoesly's
trash, officers were able to persuade Judge Dorothy Baker to issue a
search warrant for Hoesly's house. Inside, they found more
paraphernalia and a diary that described apparent drug use. An
indictment was issued in June.

Hoesly, who is currently on medical leave and at the time of her
arrest was in the process of medically retiring, pleaded not guilty
and hired criminal-defense lawyer Stephen Houze. Like a Labrador
smelling leftover turkey, Houze promptly zeroed in on the grabbing of
her garbage. He argued that under Oregon's Constitution, privacy
rights extend to someone's trash--at least until it's picked up by
trash haulers. The used tampon "goes to the heart of just what an
outrageous violation of privacy rights this police search was," Houze
said. "If the police will do this to a police officer, who won't they
do it to?"

Not only that, he said, but if garbage is up for grabs, "There will be
identity thieves lining up out there on every garbage day, knowing
they can [take trash] with impunity."

The Hoesly case is not unprecedented. In 1997, police poked in the
trash of David Peters, a star prosecutor for Multnomah County, and
found cocaine residue, which was used to obtain a search warrant.
Unlike Hoesly, he was not indicted; instead, he was fined and allowed
to enter court diversion to maintain a clean record.

In a hearing on Dec. 10, Judge Jean Kerr Maurer agreed with Houze,
issuing a ruling that said the cops' taking of trash was illegal.
Senior Deputy District Attorney Mark McDonnell immediately said his
office would challenge the ruling. --NB

Big Brother's in Your Trash Can

The government is essentially going through your trash every day, says
Evan Hendricks, publisher of Privacy Times, a Washington, D.C.,
newsletter. "They just don't have to get their hands dirty.

In the past 16 months, thanks to measures contained in the Patriot
Act, the Homeland Security Act and the creation of the Total
Information Awareness office, our government has turned into a bad
Oliver Stone movie--you know, where a cabal of conservative spooks
takes over and suddenly Big Brother is in charge.

No longer do the Feds need to meet the evidentiary standard of
"probable cause" to initiate an investigation or start amassing
information on you. Nor do they need to show any evidence of a link to
terrorism. All they need to do, in short, is say they find you
suspicious. They don't need to tell a judge why.

"This administration really represents a combination of Reaganism and
McCarthyism--though they're not chasing Communists, they're chasing
people that they call 'terrorists,'" says Hendricks, who grew up in
Portland. "They're expanding their power and intimidating people to
sort of go along or be afraid of being accused of being soft on terrorism."

The October 2001 enactment of the USA Patriot Act opened the door to
domestic and Internet surveillance, as well as warrantless, covert
"sneak and peek" searches. Then, on Nov. 19, 2002, Congress approved
the Homeland Security Act, which Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) called the
"most severe weakening of the Freedom of Information Act in its
36-year history."

The HSA also created the Total Information Awareness office, whose
logo, taken from the back of the dollar bill, is of a pyramid with an
eye on top, looking down at the globe. Headed by Iran-Contra
co-conspirator Admiral John Poindexter, the agency will "mine"
commercial databases, including magazine subscriptions and book
purchases, to spy on American citizens. It plans to use this
information to profile likely terrorist supporters; it also wants to
deploy video camera and facial-recognition surveillance systems.

"The Pentagon basically wants to knock down the walls to all
private-sector records and plug into them," says Hendricks. "And trash
is like a microcosm of what you get: the bills people pay, what they
buy at the store, the packages they throw out. The government is
proposing more systematic surveillance of databases that have the same
information."

How do they define who is a likely terrorist supporter? Sorry, but
that's a secret. Attorney General John Ashcroft has given federal
agencies free rein to reject information requests, with the assurance
that his Department of Justice would defend the agencies no matter
what.

Civil-liberties advocates point to the inherent danger in granting the
government such sweeping power. Declassified documents have shown
myriad abuses by law-enforcement agencies involved in domestic spying
in the '60s, '70s and '80s, including in Portland. In 1997, a
Washington, D.C., police official used video surveillance of people
coming and going from a gay bar to try to blackmail married men. And
studies of camera systems in Britain found that they were used to
target minorities for increased police attention, while women caught
on camera were often targeted for voyeuristic reasons, with male
camera operators panning over them for purposes of ogling.

Small wonder that even conservatives such as Rep. Dick Armey, Sen.
Charles Grassley and New York Times columnist William Safire are going
ballistic. Attorney General Ashcroft is "out of control," and the
federal government has "no credibility" on protecting individuals'
privacy, said Armey, who has even volunteered to do consulting work
for the ACLU on privacy issues upon his retirement.

"You Are a Suspect" was the title of Safire's Nov. 14 column on the
Total Information Awareness program, which he called a "supersnoop's
dream" and a "sweeping theft of privacy rights."