PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Brian Hunzeker, the one-time president of the Portland Police Association who resigned over a false leak concerning then-Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, was placed on leave Saturday by the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, two days after resigning from PPB.
Hunzeker was fired by Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler over the false leak that linked Hardesty as a suspect in a minor hit-and-run crash in March 2022. At the time of the leak Hunzeker was the president of the police union.
Wheeler said Hunzeker “accessed a confidential record, reproduced the information using his mobile phone and sent it to a news media outlet without authorization. This reproduction and release of information to the media was a violation of policy.”
But in February 2023, Hunzeker was reinstated to the PPB by an arbitrator appointed by the State Labor Board.
On Friday, Willamette Week first reported they notified the Portland City Attorney’s Office that Hunzeker was also a Clark County deputy.
In a statement to KOIN 6 News on Saturday, Chief Deputy City Attorney Heidi Brown said, “The City just learned of his employment with Clark County. Brian Hunzeker resigned from his position at the City of Portland and made it effective Thursday.”
Hunzeker was earning a nearly six-figure salary in Clark County as a sheriff’s deputy since being hired last August, Willamette Week said.
Now, though, he is on administrative leave “pending an internal investigation,” Clark County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Christopher Skidmore told KOIN 6 News.
Skidmore said Hunzeker began working for the sheriff’s office “sometime last year.”
Online data reviewed by KOIN 6 News shows Hunzeker was hired by the Clark County Sheriff’s Office in August 2022.
KOIN 6 News asked the sheriff’s office if they were aware he was also working with PPB. But officials at the sheriff’s office said they will have no further comment “until the investigation is complete.”
KOIN 6 News will continue to follow this story.