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Two people who attended a hearing on Portland policing have filed a formal complaint against City Councilor Angelita Morillo’s chief of staff, Andre Miller.
At issue in the complaint is a Feb. 26 meeting of the Community and Public Safety Committee, during which a proposal to tweak the city’s Police Accountability Commission inflamed tensions between the police union and Councilor Sameer Kanal, who’s staked out a place on the council as the most vocal critic of the Portland Police Bureau.
During the committee meeting, supporters of the Police Bureau and advocates for police accountability showed up to testify and listen to the proceedings.
The two complainants, who are both outspoken supporters of a more robust Police Bureau, took issue with how Miller, Morillo’s chief of staff, conducted himself during the meeting.
Tiana Tozer and Loretta Guzman wrote in their complaint that Miller “glared” at them multiple times during the meeting, told them in so many words to quiet down, and after the meeting was “unprofessional” to the two women.
Miller tells WW that at no point did he act disrespectfully to the two complainants, but simply asked the chairs of the committee to enforce the rules of conduct during public meetings, in which onlookers are not supposed to interrupt formal proceedings.
Tozer yelled in anger at councilors on the dais several times during the meeting about the shortened time for public comment. After one disruption, Miller stood up and called for the chairs of the committee to get a handle on the crowd, saying: “I don’t know who is supposed to be running this, but as chairs, this doesn’t happen in council. We continue to have these disruptions, and no one is addressing it.”
Miller tells WW his request had “absolutely nothing to do with policing.”
“For council, this type of behavior isn’t allowed, and we need to make sure we have that same structure in committee settings,” Miller says.
The complaint was filed as the temperature around policing in Portland rises, largely thanks to the election to the City Council of several vocal critics of the Police Bureau.
Councilor Kanal has twice now needled the Police Bureau and the Portland Police Association, first by asking the city to explore budget cuts to the bureau and then again by proposing tweaks to the Police Accountability Commission. And, as The Oregonian reported earlier this month, the presence of uniformed officers at town halls recently held by Kanal and Morillo were interpreted by some as peculiar.
Before serving as Morillo’s chief of staff, Miller worked for former City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, who was a fierce critic of the Police Bureau and who in turn became the political target of the police union. In March 2021, an officer leaked a hit-and-run report to a reporter at The Oregonian that mistakenly implicated Hardesty as the fleeing driver. Hardesty subsequently sued the officers and the police union and in September 2023 settled for $680,000. (Morillo, Miller’s boss, also worked for Hardesty.)
Guzman, one of the complainants, owns Bison Coffeehouse in Northeast Portland. The shop became the subject of headlines in 2022 when vandals smashed the windows in the wee morning hours of Oct. 5, apparently because Guzman had advertised on social media a “coffee with a cop” event. Guzman, who is Native American, was a political donor to former City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez, a known cheerleader for police officers.
Guzman’s nephew, Leno Batiste-Guzman, was shot and killed in October in Northeast Portland. During her testimony at the Feb. 26 committee meeting, she fought back tears describing how she found her nephew, dying, outside of her home.
“I was immediately in the worst nightmare of my life. I felt like I was going to lose my mind while praying to God to not lose it,” Guzman told the committee. “If I call 911, I want a real person, not a recording. I’m a real person with grief from this…public safety is a fundamental right."
Tozer was one of the plaintiffs (and by far the most outspoken) represented by attorney John DiLorenzo in a 2022 lawsuit in which they sued the city over tents on sidewalks, arguing they reduced access for people with disabilities. The parties settled, and the city agreed to more aggressively sweep camps from blocking rights of way.
The details of the complaint describe a scenario that’s the inverse of the common scene at the City Council over the past decade, as activists protesting shootings by police officers disrupted public hearings.
In the four-page complaint, Guzman and Tozer describe behavior by Miller during and directly after the council meeting that they felt was rude.
Guzman, for instance, wrote that Miller gave her a “dirty look” twice after she testified against Kanal’s proposal.
Miller ”gave me a dirty look and then he started to stare me down, so I returned the stare. I did not personally know him. But he tried to stare me down twice, which made me feel like he was trying to intimidate me," Guzman wrote.
(Miller tells WW he was looking around to identify who was yelling during official proceedings.)
Tozer wrote that people in the crowd were unhappy that there was not a longer time allotted for public testimony. “I let the council know that I was upset by yelling out that I had taken time off work to come and testify and that it was disrespectful to cut off public testimony,” she wrote. “I said what I wanted to say and shut up, but Andre Miller kept glaring back at where I was sitting. And then a few minutes after I had shut up, he started yelling about people being disrespectful and unprofessional.”
Miller did stand up at one point, telling the chairs of the committee to get a handle on the crowd’s disruptions.
“It was about how unprofessional the crowd was being,” Miller now tells WW.
According to their own account of events in the complaint, Tozer and Guzman sought to continue the interaction after the council meeting had ended. Miller, according to the timeline laid out in the complaint, twice tried to exit conversations with the complainants.
Tozer says in the complaint she approached Miller after the meeting ended as he was speaking to former City Council candidate Terrence Hayes.
“I went over to speak to him about what had happened, and once again he started taking me to task about my unprofessionalism,” Tozer wrote. “I said, ‘Well, your people,’ referring to the activists whose rudeness I had endured, but he immediately took offense, said ‘your people,’ in a sarcastic tone, gave Mr. Hayes a look and walked away.” (Miller and Hayes are Black.)
Once again, according to Tozer’s account, she approached Miller as he spoke to another person—the head of the Portland Police Association, Aaron Schmautz. Tozer wrote that she said to Miller that she wanted him to understand that she was “the victim of assault and that it was my minority people with disabilities who were being shot by police.”
Then, according to the complaint, Guzman walked up to join the conversation between Tozer and Miller. Guzman says she questioned Miller about being a public servant and whom he worked for.
“I said, ‘Why were you staring me down in there?’ He said, ‘You all were being loud speaking out,‘” Guzman wrote in the complaint. “I said, ‘I didn’t say nothing.’ Tiana Tozer who was standing there said, ‘Loretta didn’t say anything, it was me who yelled.‘”
The complainants took issue that Miller left the conversation after a couple of more sentences were exchanged: “He actually walked away from both of us, which I feel is inappropriate for a public servant,” the complaint reads.
Tozer and Guzman wrote in the complaint that it was “inappropriate behavior for the chief of staff of a public servant.”
Guzman tells WW testifying that day was the most difficult speech she’s ever had to make.
“It was something that was hard for me to speak about because my nephew was just killed. And then [Miller is] in there, giving me dirty looks,” Guzman says. “Sits in front of me and starts to turn around to stare me down. Like, I don’t even know you...I don’t have a political motive. I live real life. For some of us, this is life and death.”
Miller stands by his conduct. He contends his request that the committee chairs keep the crowd in check had nothing to do with the fact that Guzman and Tozer are strong supporters of the Police Bureau.
“While I may come from being an activist, I don’t think we’ve been critical of police in this new role for Councilor Morillo,” Miller says. “We’ve been focused on other things other than policing. As far as this actual complaint, I’m going to let HR do their investigation.”