West Linn protests cop on leave from Oregon training agency
March 10 2021
Mike Stradley has been on leave from his supervisor role at the state agency for over a year.
Mike Stradley, a former West Linn Police Department lieutenant, has been on leave for more than a year while his current employer — the Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training — investigates his role in the 2017 false arrest of Michael Fesser. In that time, DPSST has paid him $131,844.91 in salary and benefits, according to the agency's human resources department.
In 2017, West Linn police concocted a plan to arrest Fesser, a Black Portland man, on theft charges as a favor to a friend of then-police Chief Terry Timeus. Timeus' friend, Eric Benson, was Fesser's boss and feared he would sue him and his towing company over the racial harassment he faced at work.