Portland police, investigating one of their own, rifled through her garbage. They did this sans search warrant, with the support of the chief, the mayor, and the DA, claiming that courts have often allowed for such searches (I’ve heard this before — trash is considered to be abandoned and in public, as opposed to stuff on your property, behind closed doors).
“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.
The mayor and the chief, at least, were a little bit less impressed with this argument and practice when a local newspaper did the same thing to them.
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.