Portland Commissioner Rene Gonzalez called 911 to report ‘light assault’ after encounter on MAX train

Portland Commissioner Rene Gonzalez placed an emergency call to 911 minutes after a woman jostled him aboard a MAX train, a recording shows.

“911, what’s the emergency?” a dispatcher asks in the previously unreleased recording obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive through a public records request.

“Light assault on the orange train just now,” responds Gonzalez, who said he had just walked to his City Hall office from the Southwest Sixth Avenue and Montgomery Street MAX stop before making the report.

Listen to the audio below:

The episode, which took place in late January, garnered headlines after Gonzalez, who is running for mayor, took to social media to claim the incident had forced him to stop taking public transit.

Surveillance footage later appeared to undercut his assertion that the woman intentionally “bumped” him twice, an account he provided to the 911 dispatcher and later to police.

Video obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive in February showed that the woman may have at most brushed Gonzalez’s arm as she moved to the front of the nearly empty train car, where, according to the commissioner, she began criticizing him over the city’s homelessness policies.

At one point, according to the footage, she appears to bump his foot.

“So her bumping you had nothing to do with like the general motion of the train?” the emergency dispatcher asks Gonzalez during the three-minute call.

“I don’t think so,” Gonzalez responds. “She bumped me twice. I’m a public figure. She came up from behind. I don’t think it’s an accident.”

During the call, Gonzalez also mentions — unprompted — that the woman is Black before the dispatcher cuts him off to ask for the cross streets of the MAX stop where the commissioner exited the train. The dispatcher later asks Gonzalez for a detailed description of the woman.

Portland police ultimately closed an investigation into the incident, which authorities say included reviewing Gonzalez’s account to police of his experience while commuting to City Hall as well as the TriMet footage.

At the time of the 911 call, Gonzalez was the head of Portland’s Bureau of Emergency Communications, which for years has struggled with perilous wait times that are far longer than the national standard.

Bureau officials, including Gonzalez, have long stressed that the public should call 311 or the city’s non-emergency dispatch number to report most crimes and other alarming incidents.

“Call 9-1-1 when there is a serious threat to life or property AND it is occurring now,” says the bureau on its website. “We understand that some situations are emergencies to you, but we must prioritize helping those with life threatening situations first.”

Steve Novick, a former city commissioner who oversaw emergency communications, said it’s important for officials leading an agency to set a good example — something that Gonzalez failed to do in this instance.

“It is surprising and disappointing that Commissioner Gonzalez called 911 about something that was obviously not an emergency,” Novick said.

Shah Smith, Gonzalez’s chief of staff, defended the commissioner’s emergency call, noting that it came just three weeks after a car belonging to Gonzalez’s relatives was set ablaze in front of his Eastmoreland home, rattling him and his family.

“He felt legitimately threatened (on the train) and made the decision he felt he needed to make at that moment in time,” Smith said. “It also speaks to prior events that affected him.”

Shortly after the suspected car arson and MAX train encounter, the city began providing Gonzalez a 24/7 security detail. City officials beefed up his protection this week in response to a recent online threat made against him. That incident remains under investigation by Portland police.

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh covers Portland city government and politics, with a focus on accountability and watchdog reporting.

Reach him at 503-294-7632

Email at skavanaugh@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @shanedkavanaugh

Our journalism needs your support. Subscribe today to OregonLive.com.