Mike Schrunk

Michael "Mike" D. Schrunk served as district attorney of Multnomah County, Oregon, United States from 1981 until 2012.[1] He is believed to be the longest-serving district attorney in Oregon.[2]

Schrunk was born in North Portland in 1942.[2] His father, Terry Schrunk, was elected mayor of Portland when Mike was a teenager.[2] He was a football star at Roosevelt High School and at Portland State University, and joined the United States Marine Corps at the height of the Vietnam War.[3]

After eight Portland narcotics officers were implicated for misconduct in 1981, Schrunk, sought pardons from the governor for 58 people convicted.[4]

In 1985 a Portland police officer killed Lloyd Stevenson, a Black man, using a chokehold. It was ruled a homicide while under Schrunk's investigation,[5] but a grand jury convened by Schrunk declined to indict either of the officers involved, citing the wording used in the homicide ruling as insufficiently definitive.[6][7] Simultaneous with Stevenson's funeral, two officers sold T-shirts to fellow officers that read "Smoke Em, Don't Choke Em." The two officers were fired, but reinstated by a union arbitrator.[7]

After three men beat and killed Ethiopian national Mulugeta Seraw in Southeast Portland in 1988, Schrunk's office prosecuted them. Schrunk described them as members of East Side White Pride, which he stated was the largest skinhead group in the state.[8]

In 1989 Schrunk called on the county to devote more funds to drug use and gangs.[9]

Programs he championed have been replicated across the country.[2] He played a part in launching the nation's second drug court; twenty years later, there were 2500 such courts in the United States.[2]

In 2002 Willamette Week searched the trash of Schrunk, then-mayor Vera Katz, and then-chief of police Mark Kroeker, for a story in response to a police decision endorsing the search of citizens' trash during investigations. Of the three targets, only Schrunk responded with poise and good humor. A 2019 Oregon Supreme Court ruling which referenced the story established that privacy rights do in fact extend to an individual's trash.[10][11][12] In 2003 a star witness of Schrunk's ended up imprisoned himself, in a bizarre and complex case regarded as a blemish on Schrunk's record.[13]

By 2009, Schrunk was regarded as the most influential politician in the county. That power was exemplified by his open refusal to try cases against a specific judge he believed was too sympathetic to suspects.[3] In 2010, due to budget constraints, he made a controversial decision to treat a number of illegal acts as crimes.[14]

Schrunk never sought higher office.[2] Upon his retirement in 2012, Schrunk endorsed Rod Underhill, who was elected to the office unopposed in 2012 and 2016.[15]