A top lawyer in the Oregon Department of Justice has filed a civil rights complaint in the wake of a racial-profiling scandal that erupted when a colleague tracked his social media messages while investigating Black Lives Matter supporters.
A spokesman for the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries confirmed receiving the document Friday from Erious Johnson Jr., the attorney in charge of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. The Oregon Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will handle the investigation, said the spokesman, Charlie Burr.
In addition to the
, Johnson also filed a
April 2 that reserves his right to sue the state for damages and "lost earning potential."
News of Johnson's
comes four days after Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum released findings from an outside attorney hired in November to review allegations that Johnson, who is African American, had been profiled by his own colleagues.
The complaint argues that the surveillance wouldn't have happened "had I not been a black male" and "had my Twitter activity involved matters other than the lives and experiences of black people."
"I have been subjected to racial discrimination and a hostile work environment for engaging in protected social media activity," Johnson wrote in his four-page complaint.
He also noted: "All of the individuals involved in perpetrating said racial discrimination and hostile work environment are Caucasian."
The Twitter messages Johnson shared were largely a collection of political cartoons expressing outrage over police shootings and other racial justice issues, messages showing passion for black cultural issues, and photos showing Johnson's fondness for his wife and his German Shepherd.
His complaint also accuses Rosenblum of transferring "one of the individuals responsible" for the tracking, Darin Tweedt, the former director of the department's Criminal Justice Division, to an office down the hall from Johnson.
And it says several senior officials in the Justice Department learned about the surveillance after Tweedt ordered the investigator to create a report that included Johnson's Twitter history. That report, Johnson wrote, was shared by Tweedt "in an effort to negatively affect my employment, and damage my professional reputation."
Johnson didn't return a message seeking comment. A message left for Tweedt also wasn't returned. A spokeswoman for Rosenblum declined to comment, directing questions to the labor bureau.
Both documents were first reported Friday by Oregon Public Broadcasting.
The surveillance became public after Johnson's wife, Nkenge Harmon Johnson, the president of the Urban League of Portland, released a letter in November that stunned Oregon's political and criminal justice communities.
The outside findings by lawyer Carolyn Walker of Stoel Rives called the surveillance an "isolated incident," even as it said employees likely broke laws barring the collection of political speech and criticized the department for lacking "racial diversity and cultural competency."
The investigator who tracked Johnson was most disturbed by an image that he failed to recognize as the logo of Public Enemy, a widely acclaimed and internationally influential hip-hop group. It shows an African American silhouette in crosshairs. A spokeswoman for Rosenblum said Monday that the investigator remains on paid administrative leave.
Walker's report said investigators were trying out a new surveillance tool called Digital Stakeout, which searches publicly available social media material for chosen keywords, filtering results by specific locations.
The investigator said he found Johnson's tweets after searching for Black Lives Matter tweets centered around Salem. The investigator said he was reacting to police threats mentioned in law enforcement bulletins sent weeks earlier, around Sept. 11, 2015.
After seeing Johnson's tweets -- and worrying not just about the Public Enemy logo but also a mural of N.W.A members from a punk bar on Northeast Alberta -- the investigator told his his boss, David Kirby, a special agent in the department's Criminal Justice Division.
From there, Kirby "verbally described" the concerns to Tweedt. Tweedt told Deputy Attorney General Fred Boss that the investigator should write a report on what he found. That report eventually made its way to Rosenblum, who said she was outraged and worried that employees had engaged in profiling.
Johnson's complaint said a promised "audit" and "written report" from Walker have yet to be produced. Walker wrote in her report that she didn't need to do that work because she thought the incident was contained.
Leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon weighed earlier this week, saying that the surveillance was "dangerous" and evidence the Justice Department needs "outside help."
"Not only is this ineffective law enforcement," said the group's legal director, Mat dos Santos, "it will have a chilling effect on free speech and assembly, as Oregonians will rightfully wonder whether they, too, are being monitored."
-- Denis C. Theriault
503-221-8430; @TheriaultPDX