LAKE OSWEGO, Ore. (PORTLAND TRIBUNE) — When Lake Oswego resident Peggy Lant heard 19-year-old Thomas A. Jakmauh had been charged by the Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office with two counts of second-degree disorderly conduct and two counts of offensive littering — all misdemeanor charges — for leaving a severed deer head on her lawn, she was outraged.
“I think the charge of littering is an insult to everybody in our community,” she said.
Offensive littering is Oregon’s statute term for littering and basically means someone has discarded garbage onto someone else’s property without their permission.
“You throw your McDonald’s wrappers on someone’s property, that’s technically offensive littering,” Lake Oswego Police Sgt. Tom Hamann said.
Both Peggy Lant and her daughter, Hazel Chu Lant, felt the charges weren’t enough.
“It actually took a couple days for me to realize who he was, and that was when it hit me. I went to class with this kid and I helped him with math homework,” said Hazel Chu Lant, who graduated from Lakeridge High School earlier this year.
“He’s not just some obscure face who happened to dump a severed deer head on my lawn — he’s a former classmate and someone I graduated with as the class of 2020. I think that realization made it more personal.”
Lake Oswego police launched an investigation after multiple deer heads were left at or near homes in the Palisades neighborhood Oct. 29. Passersby reported the severed deer head sightings at 9:19 a.m. and 12:23 p.m., with one on the corner of Greentree Road and Campus Way and the other on the 2700 block of Greentree Road. The two deer heads were left next to Black Lives Matter signs and a sign supporting Joe Biden.
Lake Oswego Police received a tip and, with help from one of the local school resource officers, identified the suspect as Jakmauh. The DA’s office then determined the charges.
“I think that the charge of littering is really outrageous. You litter a piece of paper, you litter a cigarette, you litter something you’re not thinking about,” said Peggy Lant, adding that the decision to place severed deer heads near political signage was not a thoughtless or frivolous decision.
Hazel Chu Lant thought Jakmauh got off easy.
“The authorities said he chose to target our lawn because ‘he wasn’t a fan of Biden,’ but that excludes the fact that there was also a Black Lives Matter sign,” Hazel Chu Lant said. “TJ (Thomas A. Jakmauh) knew exactly what he was doing and the message it would send — not just locally but nationally, too.”
Peggy Lant and her daughter thought it should have been charged as a bias or hate crime.
“We had the principles to put a Black Lives Matter sign in our yard, and I think that’s what the hate crime was addressed to,” Peggy Lant said. “I believe firmly, strongly, wholly: That’s what laws, statutes preventing hate crimes are supposed to address. They’re supposed to address people who attack them for what they believe.”
Hamann said that in order for a crime to be classified as a bias crime, it has to directly address one of the protected classes that include race, gender identity, disability or religion — to name a few — and political affiliation is not one of them.
Hypothetically speaking, Hamann said — since Jakmauh was charged by the Clackamas County District Attorney’s Office, not LOPD — if the severed deer heads were placed on someone’s property and investigators had some indication they were placed there because of the property owner’s race, then it would be considered a bias crime.
“It has to have that relation to those protected classes for that to be a bias crime,” Hamann said. “Again, that doesn’t mean it’s not a crime … It’s a different crime.”
Hamann said if someone does believe they are the victim of a bias crime, they should call the LOPD at 503-635-0238 or the State of Oregon Bias Hotline at 844-924-BIAS, where there are trauma-informed hotline advocates who are trained in crisis intervention and can provide bias response advocacy, including assistance in reporting a bias crime to law enforcement.
“I think it’s important that we have to look at the facts, and while things may seem like they may be a particular thing, we have to, at the end of the day, be able to prove that and we have to go with what the facts tell us,” Hamann said. “We can’t make assumptions or inferences really. It’s based on what we can prove. We don’t want people hurting each other, we don’t want people showing bias and discriminating against other people.”