Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty on Thursday roundly denounced a report to police that mistakenly identified her as a driver in a minor hit-and-run accident the day before and demanded an investigation to “get to the bottom of where this smear campaign originated.”
“Today began with an unnecessary burden put on my office to disprove a completely false accusation,” Hardesty said in a statement. “Now the Portland Police Bureau has admitted what we knew all along – I was not involved in any way with any hit and run incident and am not a suspect.
“While I am relieved to see the truth prevail, this incident brings up a number of urgent questions that I want answers to.”
She took The Oregonian/OregonLive to task for breaking news of the investigation along with what she called “right-wing media groups” while asking for police to release the 911 call and police report.
Police said a driver told them that her car had been rear-ended in Southeast Portland on Wednesday afternoon and that the other car left the scene without exchanging information as required by law.
The rear-ended driver contacted police about the collision after returning home hours later. She identified Hardesty as the motorist who hit her while driving a tan, four-door sedan, according to a computer dispatch report. No injuries were reported.
Police early Thursday would say only that they were investigating the hit-and-run report but in the afternoon issued a statement that said Hardesty wasn’t a suspect in the case.
“The Portland Police Traffic Investigation Unit (TIU) began an investigation and have ruled out Commissioner Hardesty as a suspect in the case,” the police statement said.
The driver who made the report, reached by The Oregonian/OregonLive, declined comment.
Initial call remarks on the Portland police computer dispatch data says a driver who "was rear ended earlier, " identified the suspect as the city commissioner and color of the car.
At a 12:30 p.m. news conference, before police announced Hardesty wasn’t a suspect, the commissioner called the allegations a “smear campaign” against her and said she wanted the report investigated because it “threatens to damage my reputation as a City Council member and as the transportation commissioner.” She said she was home at the time of the reported incident.
“I didn’t hit anybody. I wasn’t driving. Nobody drove my car. This entire allegation is totally false,” she said, speaking to media from her home by video. “I’m telling you today, these allegations are false, and to be frank, these allegations are suspicious.”
Portland police spokesman Lt. Greg Pashley said police received a report of a hit-and-run that had occurred at 4:48 p.m. near the intersection of Southeast 148th Avenue and East Burnside Street.
Hardesty said her car, a Volkswagen Passat, was outside her home and had been for the last six months, inoperable because of a broken door lock and dead battery. She said she donated another car to Volunteers of America and didn’t know whether that car was still registered in her name. She said she didn’t know the make and model of that car but planned to release the information soon.
“After COVID happened, it became impossible to actually do the DMV transfer process so it is very possible that there is another automobile that is registered to me,” Hardesty said.
Hardesty turned her suspicion to a Facebook site called Savepdx.org. It posted a Zoom live chat Thursday morning hosted by Jeff Reynolds, who cited a Portland police incident report on a hit-and-run involving Hardesty.
The Facebook site describes itself as a “Coalition to Save Portland” that is “fed up with the policies of appeasement that allow our cities livability to deteriorate.” The live chat was titled “Scandal at City Council. Guess who?” Reynolds, who served for four years as chair of the Multnomah County Republican party, did not return messages seeking comment.
Hardesty said she suspects she was being tarnished because she’s been leading a campaign to transform Portland police and demand police accountability. “As someone who’s been working on police accountability in this community for 32 years, I can tell you that this is a normal tactic to discredit people,” she said.
The local Rev. Chuck Currie, an assistant professor of religious studies at Pacific University, said Thursday he stands with Hardesty in condemning the rhetoric from the “Coalition to Save Portland.”
Later Thursday, Hardesty said she wanted to know: “Why did the Oregonian run this story with no proof to substantiate the false allegation?”
“We initially published a story that police were investigating a call from a driver who had alleged Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty was involved in a hit-and-run accident,” said Therese Bottomly, editor of The Oregonian/OregonLive. “We held off publishing the story until we had talked to Hardesty’s office and gotten her denial.
“Our initial report included not only Hardesty’s response but on-the-record confirmations from a dispatch record of the call, a police spokesman identifying the location and time that the hit-and-run call came in, and the mayor’s spokesman acknowledging that a criminal investigation was underway,” Bottomly said. “Additional details of the investigation came from sources, which we noted had knowledge of the investigation. We are pleased to also fully report she has been exonerated.”
At the end of the day, Hardesty said she was hurt by what she called “a personal attack, based on false accusations that were perpetuated by elements of the media.”
“When I have made mistakes in the past,” she said. “I have owned it, taken responsibility, and apologized. I hope those that brought this harm to me and my office today will feel compelled to do the same.”
This post has been modified to reflect numerous updates through the day Thursday. An erroneous reference to the victim reporting the license plate of the hit-run car has been removed.
-- Maxine Bernstein
Email mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian