Forest Grove police officer’s firing shouldn’t be the end of the story
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April 04 2021
Mirella Castaneda wanted to know who attacked her Forest Grove home and traumatized her family. Things only got worse.
Part Four of a series
When the Washington County Sheriff s deputy arrived at Mirella Castaneda s home early on Saturday, Oct. 31, he did not tell her or her husband, Pablo Weimann, why he was taking over for Forest Grove Police Department Officer Amber Daniels, who already had interviewed Castaneda for half an hour starting around 1:20 a.m.
The deputy didn t disclose that the man suspected of attacking their home was a Forest Grove police officer and that, therefore, the city s police bureau had a conflict of interest.
April 06 2021
Mirella Castaneda says she doesn t think Forest Grove Police Officer Steven Teets should keep his badge.
Until Forest Grove Police Officer Steven Teets accepts a plea deal or is convicted in court, it s unclear what consequences he will face for his drunken, violent attack on Mirella Castaneda s home last Oct. 31.
If Washington County offered an official Restorative Justice program for adult defendants, Castaneda might have felt more in control of the process. Restorative Justice empowers victims by letting them shape more creative and transformative consequences for their offenders than the regular criminal-justice system allows.
But it also often involves victim and perpetrator sitting down together to talk about what happened, which wouldn t work for Castaneda, who is still too afraid of Teets to face him in person.
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But Teets s attack and its aftermath did change her feelings about local law enforcement.
As a child growing up in Forest Grove and Aloha, Castaneda heard negative stories about how some of her relatives and other Latinos had been treated poorly by police. But since she came back to Washington County at age 18, after three years in Mexico, she has had only positive impressions of its law enforcement agencies.
It helps that two of her relatives are police officers in the Portland metro area. Also, in the Washington County department where she works, some of her co-workers are married to sheriff s deputies and her supervisor previously supervised administrative staff in the sheriff s office. She has always had a good impression of the county s law enforcement agency.