A New Get-Out-of-Jail Card?

Cops weren’t invited to a forum on Brain Injuries, Policing and Public Safety

Don’t ask Stephanie Grayce what felony she committed to land in prison. Whatever it was she did, it wasn’t her fault. It was because her car was rear-ended, giving her a head injury, which led her to do whatever it was she did.

Grayce, who graduated last year from Lewis & Clark Law School, is a public advocate for adding Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) to drug addiction and mental illness as reasons why people who commit crimes should be given special dispensation.

This summer the Portland Committee on Community-Engaged Policing (PCCEP), one of the city’s police oversight groups, turned its attention to Traumatic Brain Injuries. Specifically, how can law enforcement assist people they encounter who are suffering from TBI — an injury that can’t be seen.

Grayce was one of two former inmates who attributed their criminal behavior to TBI and spoke at the PCCEP Forum on Brain Injuries, Policing and Public Safety. Sitting in the audience was Lewis & Clark Law School Professor Aliza Kaplan, who worked with former Gov. Kate Brown to issue a record number of commutations.

Jonathan Boland was a beneficiary of Brown’s generosity. He was the other inmate to participate in the forum along with Grayce.

His story: He was born and raised in Portland — “It wasn’t that easy, but it wasn’t that bad” — went to church regularly — “We had everything we needed … clothes on our back, food on the table and love.”

At Parkrose Middle School and High School, Boland was a star quarterback on the football team. People looked up to him — “which was crazy,” he told the audience.

His sophomore year, he sustained his first concussion.

“You get your bell rung,” he said.

But he had his eye on a college scholarship.

“I was trying to be best in state. It messed me up,” he said.

At one point, Boland said, he ended up unconscious out on the field. EMT’s were called.

“I’m bruising my brain more and more getting my bell rung,” he continued. “You do what you love to do, and at that time I loved football.”

He graduated — “thank the Lord, barely graduated” — and got a full-ride scholarship to Portland State University.

In high school, Boland recalled, he didn’t inhale “one whiff of marijuana.” He didn’t drink until senior prom.

“At Portland State, right when I got on campus, it was a switch. …  From September 2015 to November 2016 before I got arrested I was on some type of intoxicant every single day …, still going to practice, still going to classes … alcohol,  Xanax, Ecstasy,” he said. “Just think of college and all the drugs, and add that to my plate. … It allowed a path of destruction to come upon my life.”

He was still playing football, still looking good on the outside, still going to church. As a star college football player, he took part in handing out backpacks to kids in need.

Until Oct. 26, 2016 when he got arrested. As he put it, he participated in three robberies over the span of two days. According to news accounts, he and two other college students robbed three convenience stores.

“Personally I did not hold the weapon … but I took responsibility like I was holding the weapon,” he told the PCCEP audience.

Nevertheless, he found himself facing 90 months in prison “after giving out backpacks. … They arrested me on the football field.”

Many people attending the PCCEP forum in person shook their heads in sympathy.

“Those crimes were committed out of a broken heart, broken brain,” Boland said.

Looking back on his arrest and initial stay in county jail, he added, “(T)hey handled me very well, the officers handled me very well. … They knew who I was …. ‘We’re sorry.’”

He pleaded guilty to one charge of first-degree robbery, with a minimum sentence of seven and a half years and no possibility of early parole before 2025. Thanks to former Gov. Kate Brown he got an early release.

“I was incarcerated … with multiple brain injuries,” he said. “The only thing I could do in there is work out. … I worked as peer companion in the mental health unit. …I’m not going to bash any police … I don’t like being up here talking. …Somebody’s got to do it.”

To his credit, Boland was much more forthright about the crimes he committed than Stephanie Grayce.

In 2012, she was in her car stopped at a red light, when a vehicle hit her from behind and pushed her into the car in front of her.

“The entire frame was bent … at the scene I was told I was walking around speaking gibberish… ,” she said. “I was in so much pain I couldn’t articulate all the things wrong with me.”

Grayce was diagnosed with whiplash, rotator cuff shoulder injury, jaw injury, vision problems and Traumatic Brain Injury. She underwent six weeks of rehabilitation. Her behavior changed.

“I reverted back to an obnoxious teenager. … I would tell dirty jokes with no regard for my audience,” she said.

Two years later she committed what she called “a nonviolent Class C felony.” She didn’t tell the PCCEP forum audience what she did, and she later declined to do so when asked privately by Portland Dissent. Grayce is an attractive woman with long, blonde hair and porcelain skin. She said she doesn’t want to be defined by what she did and feels horrible about it.

Among Class C felonies in Oregon are crimes like forgery, first-degree theft and identity theft. Typically, Class C felonies are not offenses that lead to prison in Oregon.

Grayce said she took “100-percent responsibility” and pleaded guilty, believing she was eligible for a sentencing alternative besides prison. Instead, she was sentenced to prison in 2015.

“They found my brain injury had no bearing on my case,” she said, adding tearfully, “I did harm someone.”

Although she passed the bar exam in 2023, she is still waiting to be admitted to practice law. Normally, within weeks of passing the bar, attorneys are sworn in. For whatever reason, Grayce’s application for admission has been held up. Is it a question of her moral fitness because of her criminal history? What exactly did she do?

A check of state and federal criminal records didn’t immediately turn up anything on Grayce, but she may have been using a different name when she committed her crimes. Or she may have already had her Class C Felony expunged, which is easily possible in Oregon.

Convicted felons can be licensed attorneys. Even Multnomah County Circuit Judge Kenneth Walker, now retired, was a convicted felon who did time for burglary.

Nevertheless, Grayce repeated to the audience what is now practically a mantra in favor of more lenient prosecution whether or not brain injuries are involved: Felons have trouble finding work.

Grayce is currently on the adjunct law faculty at Lewis & Clark and is affiliated with the Metropolitan Public Defenders. Last year, Mayor Ted Wheeler appointed her to the city’s Fair Housing Advisory Committee.

Standing before the PCCEP audience, she said that while in prison she was sexually assaulted by another adult in custody and called a “manipulative c-word.” When she was finally released, she said she had PTSD.

“Because of my interaction with law enforcement” she went to law school to pursue public interest law and explore the complexity of brain injury. Grayce has been encouraged by “some incredible sentences coming out of Colorado …  people released from incarceration with a brain injury focus.”

Colorado passed legislation to study whether a comprehensive brain injury program within the Corrections Department improves outcomes for offenders.

Grayce said a similar program in Oregon would reduce recidivism rates because offenders with brain injuries should not be expected to meet the same requirements of probation or parole. Offenders who break rules — such as missing check-in times or failing to conform to schedules — do so because of their brain injuries.

They are being set up to fail when asked to adhere to such requirements, Grayce said.

Traumatic Brain Injuries are serious — and not just to criminal offenders seeking a break. By some estimates, more than 13,000 people suffer TBI’s a year in Oregon. Far more live with the results of long-term brain injury, caused by everything from car crashes to stroke to physical assault to falls — and drug abuse.

As Willamette Week pointed out almost two years ago, Oregon ranks 49th in the U.S. in the number of rehab beds for patients with TBI. Despite this need, Legacy Health and the Oregon Health Care Association, which represents nursing homes that offer rehab, have stymied any competitors from coming in and offering new rehab beds.

The Willamette Week story quotes the executive director of Portland’s Central City Concern on the link between brain injuries and homelessness.

It also quotes Dave Kracke, a Portland lawyer from the Center on Brain Injury Research & Training who helped author Senate Bill 420 that passed last year. It directs the state Department of Human Services to provide specified services to individuals with brain injuries and to convene a Brain Injury Advisory Committee. During the 2025 legislative session it will report back to the Legislature to the services provided and number of individuals served.

Kracke also spoke at the PCCEP forum. As he did in the Willamette Week story, Kracke cited statistics that he said were staggering regarding the number of inmates — especially women — who have a brain injury.

Taken altogether it sounds like TBI’s are becoming politicized to aid criminal justice reform that will favor offenders. And, just as the state lacks treatment options for mental illness and substance abuse, it would appear the state also lacks rehab beds to treat brain injuries.

Although the focus of the PCCEP forum was brain injuries and policing, no one from the Portland Police Bureau was invited to speak.

The other speaker who joined Boland, Grayce and Kracke was Dr. Andy Ellis, a local neuropsychologist.

For the most part, they stayed with the theme of promoting understanding for all brain injury victims. Someone with a brain injury may act aggressively or in a manner to attract attention from the public or law enforcement.

Dr. Ellis said persons suffering from TBI exhibit mood swings, impulse control and anger outbursts. In prison they come afoul of corrections officers because they can’t keep their cells organized. He compared it to trying to raise a teenager.

On the street, “if a cop thinks you are up to something … you’re in trouble,” Dr. Ellis said.

At one point, almost speaking to himself, he said, “This is all preaching to the choir a little bit.”

Portland has a large choir.

When it was time for questions, a woman in the audience asked if it was possible to train someone to be compassionate or if it had to be something that already exists.

Another woman blamed “the incarcerate system culture. … That culture has to shift. … Let’s find a champion.”

Still another woman said she had started work four weeks earlier at PPB as an analyst and hoped to “help change the culture,” which is why she was attending the forum.

Among the handouts provided were “Brain Injury Identification Cards,” which look like business cards and allow people to self-report that they have a brain injury, “which may affect my behavior and ability to communicate.”

Designed by Brain Injury Connections Northwest in Portland, the back of the cards list a variety of symptoms that could be related to a brain injury — including agitation, anxiety, anger and disorientation.

They also sound like somebody on drugs. Or someone caught breaking the law.

Have Portland officers encountered anyone using these cards?

Portland Police Bureau spokesman Mike Banner didn’t answer the question directly. The Bureau, he said, is always looking for ways to engage with the community. 

The fine print on the back of the cards states, “Please exercise due courtesy and patience and assist me during crisis by calling the Emergency Contact Number on the reverse of this card.”

Should Portland experience rioting comparable to 2020, there could be an epidemic of brain injuries among rioters.