The city of St. Helens paid $700,000 to settle an excessive force suit against an officer who punched woman in the face after she was knocked to the ground, fracturing her eye socket.
The agreement this spring came two years after the city paid $295,000 to settle a separate lawsuit against Officer Adam Raethke for striking a motorist lying on the ground several times with his knee.
The $1 million total – covered by insurance — equals nearly a fifth of the 15-officer police department’s annual budget.
The settlements are on par with some of the biggest payouts recently made by municipalities across the state for non-fatal excessive force, including $625,000 paid by Washington County after a deputy fractured a man’s skull at the jail and $400,000 paid by Portland after a police sergeant pushed and grabbed a man in a wheelchair during a 2020 protest.
Raethke faced no significant discipline in either case beyond a “letter of expectation” that addressed only his cursing at a suspect.
In the latest federal civil rights lawsuit, the woman’s lawyers alleged that Raethke was responsible for a higher proportion of force in his small agency compared to other officers. He accounted for slightly more than 15% of all self-reported use of force incidents in 2020, when he punched the woman, according to the evidence obtained by the woman’s lawyers.
The Columbia County district attorney at the time, Jeff Auxier, found the punch justified but concerning. He urged police to raise their professional standards.
“I was not convinced that a 6-foot-tall male police officer can punch a 5-foot-tall female in the face simply because she had scratched his neck,” Auxier wrote.
An outside investigator who reviewed the confrontation at Auxier’s request also found that Raethke had used justified force against the woman but said the officer could have avoided resorting to violence and that the encounter lacked “the very elements of a professional practice.”
“If they go to that level of force with a young woman, what do they do with a strong man?” said the investigator, William J. Lewinski, the executive director of the Force Science Institute and a psychologist who has often testified in support of law enforcement.
City spokeswoman Crystal King said St. Helens leaders recognized that the case “raised opportunities for improvement.”
St. Helens police have aligned their use-of-force policy with a landmark 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case that calls for use of force to be judged from the perspective of a “reasonable” officer based on the totality of circumstances at the time and not in hindsight, King said. The revised policy also includes a separate section directing officers to use “de-escalation” techniques to avoid higher levels of force and bars choke holds or the application of pressure to someone’s neck or throat.
The department started providing training on the updates in late 2020, including using a scenario-based simulator, King said. The department also now requires a supervisor to respond to a scene where an officer has used force.
A St. Helens police sergeant found Raethke’s closed-fist punch adhered to the department’s force policy, noting a “focused blow” is an acceptable pain compliance technique taught by the agency.
At the time of the punch, Raethke had not gone through the agency’s use of force training, the sergeant noted. The sergeant also recommended that St. Helens police not allow officers hired from other law enforcement agencies to work solo on the street until they complete a St. Helens police use of force class.
Raethke joined the St. Helens Police Department as a patrol officer in June 2019 after working two years as a deputy for the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office. His base annual salary is $99,559.92, according to the city.
Raethke didn’t respond to messages seeking comment. Attorney Dan Thenell, a lawyer for the St. Helens Police Association that represents Raethke, declined comment on Raethke’s use of force and said only that the city’s insurance risk pool handled the settlements without the officer’s input.
The punch
Raethke arrested Ashley D. Andrews, then 23, on Aug. 12, 2020, after a fight with her sister in the kitchen of an apartment on North 12th Street.
Andrews called 911, reported a domestic disturbance and said she had been physically attacked by her sister.
Raethke and Officer Jamin Coy responded and took statements from each woman.
Andrews accused her sister of scratching her neck and biting her hand. Andrews’ sister said Andrews punched her but that she wasn’t injured, according to police reports.
Andrews was still agitated when officers arrived. Raethke wrote that she needed to be arrested “to conserve the peace.” Coy told her they were going to arrest her for harassment and disorderly conduct but that he would let her finish smoking her cigarette. He also told her she wasn’t free to leave.
When Andrews picked up a black duffel bag and a paper bag from the front stoop of the apartment and started walking toward a parked pickup, Coy said, “Please don’t go over that way.”
When she said she wanted to put her bags in her truck to protect her belongings and ignored Coy’s orders to stop, he responded, “Why don’t I do that for you?”
When Andrews continued toward her truck, Coy grabbed the black bag hanging on her shoulder and grabbed her left wrist. “When I say not to do something, you don’t do it,” he told her.
Andrews swung around toward Coy and appeared to lift her right fist toward him. Coy responded, “Excuse me!” but continued to hold her left wrist, according to the lawsuit and the officer’s body camera footage.
Raethke, who stood behind Coy, rushed in and grabbed Andrews by the neck and slammed her against an outside wall and she fell against bags of recyclable cans stacked nearby.
Raethke stood over Andrews and then punched her in the face as she lay on the ground, according to video footage.
The two officers then turned her onto her stomach and handcuffed her as she yelled, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”
Her lawyers said Andrews coughed up blood and a fragment of her facial bone or cartilage while she told the officers she couldn’t see. Paramedics evaluated Andrews at the scene and took her to Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, where doctors diagnosed her with a fractured right eye socket, according to her lawyers, Michelle R. Burrows, Rian Peck and Ezra T. Glanzer.
After the ambulance drove away, Raethke could be seen on Coy’s body camera asking if Coy spotted any marks on his neck and Coy said he didn’t. Raethke asked him to take a photo anyway.
‘Get us out in front of this’
As Coy followed Andrews to the hospital, Raethke immediately called his sergeant.
In his police report, he said he advised the sergeant of “Ashley’s violent behavior, her resistance to arrest, and the subsequent use of force.”
Raethke, who stands 6 feet tall and is a former U.S. Marine, wrote that Andrews “scratched at his throat” just before he punched her.
Andrews’ attorneys argued in the lawsuit that the body camera footage didn’t support Raethke’s account and noted that her client was 4-foot-11 and weighed 115 pounds at the time.
Raethke’s punch was “not intended to defend himself but was simply intended to inflict pain and punish” Andrews, her lawyers wrote in the suit.
When the police department’s Facebook page started getting “blown up” with comments about the encounter, a lieutenant said he wanted to draft a press release to “get us out in front of this,” according to the lieutenant’s text messages with then-Chief Brian Greenway and other supervisors that were shared as discovery evidence during litigation.
The city of St. Helens argued in court papers that a “thorough investigation” by the department found Raethke’s actions adhered to its use of force policy.
The city denied Raethke had used unwarranted force and called his actions “reasonable under the circumstances.” The city also said Raethke stands an inch short of 6 feet.
The City Council did not vote on the settlement. According to King, the city’s spokesperson, the city’s insurer — Citycounty Insurance Services, known as CIS – doesn’t need additional authority from the city to reach a settlement once it receives a claim.
The district attorney dismissed all charges against Andrews.
Prior settlement
The earlier excessive force case involved similar allegations about Raethke’s tactics.
State police had chased Robert Barror’s Chevy Silverado after callers to 911 reported the truck traveling 100 mph in the center lane of Highway 30 on Aug. 6, 2019.
Troopers Travis Killens and Christopher Cowen responded and Raethke arrived on scene about two minutes after the state police officers had pulled over the pickup on Bachelor Flat Road.
Raethke and the troopers told Barror to step out of the Silverado with his hands up as they approached. Barror remained inside and repeatedly shouted that he couldn’t hold his hands up. Barror had a shoulder injury, his lawyer said.
Raethke testified during a deposition for the lawsuit that he didn’t hear Barror’s shouts.
Raethke helped state troopers remove Barror from the truck and take him to the ground.
Then Raethke drove his knee into Barror’s rib cage three times as Barror lay face down, according to the officers’ depositions.
Killens said he put his arm up in front of Raethke to stop him because “no more force was needed.”
The troopers complained to a supervisor about Raethke’s force, state records show.
The city’s lawyers argued that Raethke’s force was reasonable, noting he believed Barror might have had a gun. Once Barror was handcuffed and searched, the troopers found no weapon on him.
As a result of the knee strikes, Barror spent seven days hospitalized to treat a collapsed lung, according to his lawyer, Justin Steffen. The encounter was caught on state police dash camera video.
Greenway, the police chief then, wrote a “letter of expectation” to Raethke, citing concern about the expletive he used in yelling at Barror to get out of the truck but not his use of force.
“You acted without maturity and emotional intelligence,” Greenway wrote on Dec. 17, 2020.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Stacie F. Beckerman denied the city’s motion to throw out the case, finding that a reasonable jury could conclude “from the totality of the circumstances that Raethke’s use of force was not objectively reasonable under the circumstances.”
U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson adopted Beckerman’s recommendations in March 2024. Four months later, the lawsuit settled. Attorneys from CityCounty Insurance Services negotiated the payout on behalf of the city.
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