What Candace Faller said she experienced on April 28, 2016, at Two Bridges Regional Jail lives vividly in her mind to this day. But for the central officer accused of violating her rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Paul Rubashkin, it was just another day on the job.
Rubashkin, one of several jail employees who took the stand in Faller’s civil trial Tuesday, testified that he has virtually no recollection of Faller’s arrest outside of reports he filed at the time documenting the use of force and Faller’s resistance. If it wasn’t in his report, he told the jury, it didn’t happen.
Faller sued the jail in U.S. District Court in Portland last year alleging the staff violated her rights by not providing a female officer to perform a hands-on search. Faller has PTSD, stemming from a long history of sexual abuse. As a result, being near large, aggressive-seeming men triggers her post-traumatic stress. A therapist who has worked with Faller confirmed those details in a deposition read to the court Tuesday.
Faller has alleged that three male officers physically restrained her and in “slamming her against the wall,” broke her coccyx before forcing her into a sitting position and then onto her hands and knees where, she said, she could feel the men “groping” her.
Faller’s attorney, Samuel Riotte, asked officers Tuesday why they didn’t wait for a female officer, calling it a “reasonable accommodation” for her PTSD, which Faller said she disclosed to jail staff.
But Rubashkin and others testified Tuesday that they couldn’t recall Faller making that request, and it wasn’t reflected in the records used to jog their memories seven years after the incident.
Rubashkin, who left the jail after 10 years in 2017 and is now a private investigator, told jurors he first encountered Faller the morning of April 28 while helping the officer who arrested her on an OUI charge. They were all sitting in the workstation, which doubled as a detox room. Faller was refusing to use a breathalyzer machine, he said. At some point, Rubashkin determined Faller was uncooperative and he felt it would be unsafe to keep her in the office area.
“Couldn’t you have just waited in the passage area for a female officer to conduct the pat-down search?” Riotte asked.
“I don’t think it would’ve been safe to do so,” Rubashkin said. “She was uncooperative, she was yelling, she was flailing around … it’s a pretty public area, with people going through there all the time.” He said that Faller was surrounded by office supplies that could easily “become a weapon.”
Lt. Naomi Bonang eventually arrived and took over the search once Faller was in the holding cell.
Everything that happened next, Rubashkin said, was rooted in the jail’s use of force policies and law enforcement training.
Rubashkin and the other officers who restrained Faller – Jonathan Flavin and Aaron Smith – and their supervisor, Steven Schut, who was present during the arrest, each watched and narrated the video for the jury, and the narrations varied.
Rubashkin explained the logic behind each move. He was seen taking her from the waiting area to the hallway, then to a holding cell where the men held her down on a mattress. Rubashkin said much of the restraint was used to prevent her from spinning out of their grasp. When they reached the cell and all three officers grabbed at her to hold her down, Rubashkin said, that was an effort to divide and apply less force.
“I know it sounds weird to people who have never worked in a jail, but it’s actually less force for three people to control a person than one person,” Rubashkin said. “Two people control an arm, one person controls the legs.”
“Did you think she was a threat?” Riotte asked Rubashkin.
“Yes,” said Rubashkin, who added that based on his reports Faller had been pulling away from him, yelling and screaming. At one point, he testified, she managed to briefly overpower and escape the grasp of three men in the holding cell. “She just generally did not cooperate.”
Faller, now 50 years old, is a petite woman with thick blue rectangular glasses who addressed the jury Monday with a shaky voice. The men testifying Tuesday are noticeably larger than she is.
Rubashkin said it didn’t matter that Faller is a “small, middle-aged woman” and that she was no less a risk than a large, tattooed man brought in from a bar on a Friday night would be.
In her testimony Monday, Faller talked about the sheer force she felt as Rubashkin held her against the wall at least twice. The first time, she said, she was “pinned to the wall,” and he was using his full force. The second time, she said, he broke her coccyx.
Rubashkin said his force wasn’t extreme – he said you can see space between them and that his movements were more measured. The officers all testified Faller’s actions were inconsistent with those of someone with severe back pain.
They also disputed Faller’s claims that they had groped her.
“I think that’s one of the parts about the case that bothers me the most,” Rubashkin said. “I would not do that to Ms. Faller. I would just never order someone on their hands and knees.”
Rubashkin and Flavin, two of the officers, disagreed about whether Faller hit Rubashkin.
“That was his perception,” Rubashkin said. “I don’t remember that happening.”
Faller’s attorney also had the court read a deposition transcript with her therapist, Kathy Ames, who began meeting with Faller the May after her arrest.
What the officers deemed as resistance and being uncooperative, Faller viewed through the lens of her experience as a survivor of sexual abuse, Ames said. Guards, being “men in a position of power,” yelling instructions at her, making her get on her knees, would all be “particularly triggering for Ms. Faller,” she said.
“I would deem that troubling and traumatic for any individual,” Ames told Riotte.
“How does Ms. Faller respond … when her PTSD is triggered by aggressive men?” Riotte asked.
“It’s a fight or flight,” Ames said. “And she’s likely to fight if she can’t get away.”
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