01-25-2014, 10:27 AM
(This post was last modified: 01-25-2014, 10:32 AM by PonderThis. Edited 3 times in total.)
The ATF sets up a storefront operation across the street from a Gresham school, selling ghetto clothing and cigarettes, and hopes some stolen guns fall into the mix. They get 10 stolen guns for the whole operation, mainly from poorly educated victims of questionable mental ability - they even got two of them to tattoo the stores logo on their necks at government expense (the judge didn't like that one). An ATF out of control? You decide: http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northw...hly-t.html
![[Image: -6e9f396aa9a085a8.jpg]](http://imgick.oregonlive.com/home/olive-media/pgmain/img/oregonian/photo/2014/01/-6e9f396aa9a085a8.jpg)
Excerpt: "The 25-year-old meth addict stepped into Squid's Smoke Shop toting a wadded sweatshirt concealing a pistol.
She probably gave little attention to the hundreds of students streaming out of nearby H.B. Lee Middle School, excited for a weekend that promised snow.
She was intent on trading with "Squid," the long-haired man behind the Gresham smoke shop's counter, or his crew. They paid her $520 in cash and two cartons of Marlboros for the Makarov semi-automatic pistol.
Roughly a month later, in March 2011, she learned Squid was no underworld buyer of guns and drugs. He was a special agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
He and his team ended their elaborate eight-month undercover sting in March 2011 by arresting 48 people who sold drugs and guns to Squid's. But now the $150,000 operation -- which recovered only 10 stolen guns, none traced to a crime -- is itself being investigated for its methods, including targeting mentally impaired individuals.
Congress recently called for probes into how ATF conducted undercover operations in Oregon and elsewhere across the country. The U.S Justice Department has tasked its inspector general to review ATF's conduct. And the ATF already has had to reform some of its tactics because of a recently completed internal review.
"Operation Kraken" was ATF's part of police efforts to tamp down gang violence and drive-by shootings plaguing East Multnomah County in 2010.
The Oregon operation was spotlighted last month in an investigative report by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The Wisconsin newspaper reported that ATF operations in six states snared mentally impaired suspects, staged illegal trades with juveniles and lured underworld figures to operations set up near schools and churches.
The Oregonian's investigation of the Oregon operation found that Operation Kraken had many shortcomings, based on court records, previously confidential ATF reports and interviews with agents, prosecutors, defendants and defense attorneys:
* Agents didn't discover until they had leased space in a strip mall that a middle school was nearby. The operation was so high risk that surveillance teams were posted outside the store to protect the undercover agents.
* Although experienced federal agents didn't initially spot the school, state prosecutors later charged 16 people under a stiff state law against trading drugs near a school. Federal prosecutors opted not to make the school an issue in their charges.
* None of the 80 guns confiscated proved to have been used in a crime. Just 10 of the guns were stolen. That hardly puts a dent in the 14,000 guns still outstanding as stolen in Multnomah County alone.
* Following their arrests, four suspects were determined to have diminished mental acuity, including one woman diagnosed with mental retardation.
In the end, everyone arrested, including three juveniles, pleaded guilty or no contest to state or federal charges. Most sentenced on state drug charges got probation while several repeat felons went to federal prison for as long as 12 years.
The impact of the operation is hard to gauge. At the time, an ATF official said the operation swept up gun-toting criminals who were "terrorizing our community."
That wasn't how a federal prosecutor later described the case to a federal judge.
"You have individuals who are small or low-level criminals committing big, giant crimes all of a sudden simply by virtue of the fact that the ATF is involved with a storefront," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Nyhus.
Still, the operation was "extremely successful" at getting guns out of circulation, Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Kerin told The Oregonian. He led the federal prosecution team.
"When ... people are selling sawed off shotguns, you want those out of the community," Kerin said. "You have this violence just waiting to happen."
Gresham Police Chief Craig Junginger agreed.
"Programs like Operation Kraken made a difference for a short while, but often times when criminals are sent away, others take their place," Juninger said. "Somehow we need to continue to keep the pressure on the criminals and drug dealers."
In contrast, defense attorneys say Operation Kraken employed outrageous tactics that tricked small-time offenders into felony conduct.
"They are the low hanging fruit. They are people that want to please others. They have disabilities, drug addiction, low mental functioning," said one of the defense lawyers, Andrew Kohlmetz. Federal agents "send these folks out to do their bidding. They put them in danger." Federal Public Defender Steve Wax said agents at times appeared "overly aggressive."
"They may not have engaged in entrapping behavior," said Wax, whose office represented several defendants in the case. "That doesn't mean as a society we should be supporting efforts by law enforcement to get people to commit crimes."
THE OPERATION
In 2009, the Metro Gang Task Force sought ways to dampen a surge of drive-by shootings and gang violence. The task force, counting officers from Portland-area local and federal agencies, endorsed ATF's idea to target gun traffickers and drug dealers with an undercover operation.
ATF agents were struck by statistics that showed in the period 2006 to 2009, 214 out of 561 guns tied to Portland shootings and other crimes came from Gresham.
That spurred ATF to set up shop in the heart of the gang territory in East Multnomah County in the only location with terms the agency could accept. ATF leased space in the rear complex of a two-building strip mall known as Snow Plaza, on Northeast Halsey Boulevard at 172nd Avenue.
Agents devised a logo – a squid smoking a cigar -- and promotional fliers. They stocked shelves with cigarettes and other tobacco products, some seized in earlier investigations. They stocked clothing, including knock-off gear confiscated earlier by a local police agency.
"Much of it was designer clothing that is quite popular in poor, urban areas," wrote defense attorney Kathleen Dunn, "making this false store a very attractive gathering place for low-income urban residents."
The agents installed video cameras to record every illegal deal. Those videos later convinced lawyers and their clients there was little hope of escaping conviction.
Before the doors opened in June 2010, agents discovered a problem. The store was a Frisbee toss from the grounds of Lee Middle School and its 800 students. The school building itself is roughly a block south of the store complex on Northeast 172nd.
Dunn's client, Marquis L. Glover, now 21, lived in the neighborhood and told The Oregonian the location was a dangerous choice.
"What if there was an altercation or rival gang members show up? It was too much," said Glover, convicted of trading marijuana for a sweatshirt at the shop.
Doug Dawson, recently appointed the special agent in charge of ATF's Seattle regional office, said agents adjusted store hours and scheduled buys after school hours when they could. He said the agency also conferred with state and federal prosecutors about the school's proximity before proceeding.
David Hannon, Multnomah County deputy district attorney, prosecuted 16 defendants out of the operation, all on drug charges relating to sales close to a school.
"I did not know the undercover operation took place within 1,000 feet of a school until the completed investigations came in for prosecution review," Hannon said in an email to The Oregonian.
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
To generate business, undercover ATF agents and their informants spread the word at clubs, car shows and other venues that Squid's was open. The cover story passed on the street was that two operators from Seattle were buying guns and drugs for re-sale at huge profits in Canada. They were occasionally joined at the store by an attractive woman "cousin" – yet another ATF agent who some suspects thought encouraged romantic attention.
Agents made their first under-the-counter buy in early July 2010, paying $120 for a .22-caliber revolver.
Using cell phones and text messages, agents arranged one buy after another. Dawson said agents paid the market price for most guns, but went higher when they wanted to keep a gun from going back out the door. They proved ingenious at cooking up excuses why they couldn't meet sellers elsewhere, forcing them to come to the store for their 15 minutes of videotaped fame.
Agents drummed up gun offers by spreading word that the store had been burglarized. They told customers they needed guns for protection.
"They wanted everybody to go find guns," said Glover, who spent many afternoons in the store.
Glover's buddy at the time, Aaron Key, now 21, told agents he'd ask around. He later brought them a .20-gauge sawed off shotgun. Key's brother sold his own shotgun to the agents in a deal prosecutors declined to charge.
When suspects bragged they could get guns, ATF agents pushed them to do so.
In July 2010, an informant acting at ATF's direction pressed Colton D. Smith, then 22, for an AK-47 he said he could get.
"Try and get the AK," the informant texted Smith.
"That will take a week or so to get," Smith responded.
A month later, agents pressed another Smith associate to come through with an SKS rifle. The associate wasn't sure he could, texting the cryptic "idk if I can get the sk u want." The agent shot back: "Yeah but try and get it."
The ATF said in a written explanation to The Oregonian, "We were trying to get a stolen SKS off the street. Once a gun is stolen and in the hands of criminals it is no longer possessed for legitimate means and often used in crimes."
Suspects, aware Squid's was buying firearms without asking many questions, brought in freshly-stolen guns. In late July 2010, a burglar stole rifles and handguns from two homes in Battle Ground, Wash. Within days, the guns appeared at Squid's, sold for cash and cigarettes.
In November 2010, four guns stolen in a Reedsport burglary popped up just four days later on the counter at Squid's, courtesy of a meth trafficker.
ATF officials said their undercover operation didn't provoke such burglaries.
"It is not likely that someone stole guns in a burglary and then drove four hours to sell them to another guy to sell them to our storefront," the ATF said in a written statement. "It is more likely that they were stolen, traded for meth and then entered into the meth trafficking network."
ATF officials also said they weren't troubled getting guns and suspects outside the target area of East Multnomah County, though such arrests diluted the local impact of Operation Kraken.
"Drugs and guns move inter and intrastate just as criminals do." the ATF wrote. "Many of the guns recovered in Northeast Portland and Gresham did not originate there. To limit this case because the targets did not live locally would be doing a disservice to the greater Portland metro area.
QUESTIONABLE TARGETS
Agents also came under fire for engaging mentally challenged individuals.
"It should have been apparent to the investigating agents in a number of instances that the people with whom they were dealing were of limited functioning ability," Wax said. "When that becomes apparent, one should question the extent to which they continued to work those people, to have those people continue to deal guns or deal drugs."
Dawson said agents had no way to evaluate suspects' mental conditions but "we don't go out and target mentally disabled people," Dawson said. He said many of those arrested were "not that highly educated."
Kerin, the assistant U.S. attorney, also rejected the notion the government was luring disabled people into criminal conduct.
"We absolutely, positively do not target anyone perceived with mental health issues or limitations," Kerin said. "It would be reprehensible to think of anyone doing that."
Reprehensible or not, such individuals did get caught in Squid's tentacles.
Key and Glover have become the poster boys for that criticism.
They were 19-year-old friends with petty criminal records when they showed up at Squid's in November 2010. They said in interviews with The Oregonian they found the undercover agents engaging, the atmosphere of the store relaxing. They showed up regularly, playing video games and chatting with the agents who seemed to befriend them.
About a month later, the conversation turned to marketing. Key and Glover said they were joking around with the agents about tattoos. Glover said agents told them they would become lifetime members of the store if they had the store's logo tattooed on them.
Glover said they agreed. "Okay, we'll do it," he recalled telling the agents.
The tattoo artist used a shirt with the store's logo to etch the cigar-smoking squid onto the necks of the two teens. Each tattoo took three hours. Squid's paid the teens $150 each for getting the tattoos.
Their mental status became an issue at sentencing, after both agreed to plead guilty.
Kerin said Key's conduct couldn't be excused but urged a federal judge to take "low-intellectual functioning into account in determining a proper sentence." Key still ended up serving more than a year in federal prison.
Glover initially got probation on his state charge, but probation violations landed him in jail for 10 months.
Kerin told The Oregonian prosecutors consider mental health issues, often first documented after defense attorneys arrange exams for their clients. He said the U.S. attorney's office considers individual circumstances in proceeding with plea offers and sentencing recommendations.
"It's the right and just thing to do," he said.
Sentencing proceedings also put the spotlight on the ATF's tactics in pushing the Squid tattoos.
"This wasn't simply just a suggestion, 'Hey, you'd look really great if you had a tattoo.' This was paid for, was suggested and paid for by the government," said attorney Alison Clark at Key's sentencing.
Kerin asserted that the ATF agents urged the tattoos to preserve their cover. He said Key appeared to be suspicious they were law enforcement.
But the explanation puzzled U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mosman, according to a transcript of Key's sentencing hearing.
"I just don't understand why you put someone off your trail by suggesting they get a tattoo," said Mosman, who ordered ATF to pay for having Key's tattoo removed.
ATF officials said Key hasn't made all his appointments for that process but "ATF will pay until it is removed to Mr. Key's satisfaction."
Multnomah Circuit Court Judge Karin Immergut, herself a former U.S. attorney for Oregon, wasn't impressed by the tactic either as she sentenced Glover. She told prosecutors to pass word to the ATF that the tattoos were "a really bad idea. Nothing unlawful about it, but not a good idea."
The ATF said it hasn't been asked to pay for removing Glover's tattoo. Glover told The Oregonian he's considering legal action, not only for the tattoo, but for "pain and suffering."
Excerpt: "The 25-year-old meth addict stepped into Squid's Smoke Shop toting a wadded sweatshirt concealing a pistol.
She probably gave little attention to the hundreds of students streaming out of nearby H.B. Lee Middle School, excited for a weekend that promised snow.
She was intent on trading with "Squid," the long-haired man behind the Gresham smoke shop's counter, or his crew. They paid her $520 in cash and two cartons of Marlboros for the Makarov semi-automatic pistol.
Roughly a month later, in March 2011, she learned Squid was no underworld buyer of guns and drugs. He was a special agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
He and his team ended their elaborate eight-month undercover sting in March 2011 by arresting 48 people who sold drugs and guns to Squid's. But now the $150,000 operation -- which recovered only 10 stolen guns, none traced to a crime -- is itself being investigated for its methods, including targeting mentally impaired individuals.
Congress recently called for probes into how ATF conducted undercover operations in Oregon and elsewhere across the country. The U.S Justice Department has tasked its inspector general to review ATF's conduct. And the ATF already has had to reform some of its tactics because of a recently completed internal review.
"Operation Kraken" was ATF's part of police efforts to tamp down gang violence and drive-by shootings plaguing East Multnomah County in 2010.
The Oregon operation was spotlighted last month in an investigative report by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The Wisconsin newspaper reported that ATF operations in six states snared mentally impaired suspects, staged illegal trades with juveniles and lured underworld figures to operations set up near schools and churches.
The Oregonian's investigation of the Oregon operation found that Operation Kraken had many shortcomings, based on court records, previously confidential ATF reports and interviews with agents, prosecutors, defendants and defense attorneys:
* Agents didn't discover until they had leased space in a strip mall that a middle school was nearby. The operation was so high risk that surveillance teams were posted outside the store to protect the undercover agents.
* Although experienced federal agents didn't initially spot the school, state prosecutors later charged 16 people under a stiff state law against trading drugs near a school. Federal prosecutors opted not to make the school an issue in their charges.
* None of the 80 guns confiscated proved to have been used in a crime. Just 10 of the guns were stolen. That hardly puts a dent in the 14,000 guns still outstanding as stolen in Multnomah County alone.
* Following their arrests, four suspects were determined to have diminished mental acuity, including one woman diagnosed with mental retardation.
In the end, everyone arrested, including three juveniles, pleaded guilty or no contest to state or federal charges. Most sentenced on state drug charges got probation while several repeat felons went to federal prison for as long as 12 years.
The impact of the operation is hard to gauge. At the time, an ATF official said the operation swept up gun-toting criminals who were "terrorizing our community."
That wasn't how a federal prosecutor later described the case to a federal judge.
"You have individuals who are small or low-level criminals committing big, giant crimes all of a sudden simply by virtue of the fact that the ATF is involved with a storefront," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg Nyhus.
Still, the operation was "extremely successful" at getting guns out of circulation, Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott Kerin told The Oregonian. He led the federal prosecution team.
"When ... people are selling sawed off shotguns, you want those out of the community," Kerin said. "You have this violence just waiting to happen."
Gresham Police Chief Craig Junginger agreed.
"Programs like Operation Kraken made a difference for a short while, but often times when criminals are sent away, others take their place," Juninger said. "Somehow we need to continue to keep the pressure on the criminals and drug dealers."
In contrast, defense attorneys say Operation Kraken employed outrageous tactics that tricked small-time offenders into felony conduct.
"They are the low hanging fruit. They are people that want to please others. They have disabilities, drug addiction, low mental functioning," said one of the defense lawyers, Andrew Kohlmetz. Federal agents "send these folks out to do their bidding. They put them in danger." Federal Public Defender Steve Wax said agents at times appeared "overly aggressive."
"They may not have engaged in entrapping behavior," said Wax, whose office represented several defendants in the case. "That doesn't mean as a society we should be supporting efforts by law enforcement to get people to commit crimes."
THE OPERATION
In 2009, the Metro Gang Task Force sought ways to dampen a surge of drive-by shootings and gang violence. The task force, counting officers from Portland-area local and federal agencies, endorsed ATF's idea to target gun traffickers and drug dealers with an undercover operation.
ATF agents were struck by statistics that showed in the period 2006 to 2009, 214 out of 561 guns tied to Portland shootings and other crimes came from Gresham.
That spurred ATF to set up shop in the heart of the gang territory in East Multnomah County in the only location with terms the agency could accept. ATF leased space in the rear complex of a two-building strip mall known as Snow Plaza, on Northeast Halsey Boulevard at 172nd Avenue.
Agents devised a logo – a squid smoking a cigar -- and promotional fliers. They stocked shelves with cigarettes and other tobacco products, some seized in earlier investigations. They stocked clothing, including knock-off gear confiscated earlier by a local police agency.
"Much of it was designer clothing that is quite popular in poor, urban areas," wrote defense attorney Kathleen Dunn, "making this false store a very attractive gathering place for low-income urban residents."
The agents installed video cameras to record every illegal deal. Those videos later convinced lawyers and their clients there was little hope of escaping conviction.
Before the doors opened in June 2010, agents discovered a problem. The store was a Frisbee toss from the grounds of Lee Middle School and its 800 students. The school building itself is roughly a block south of the store complex on Northeast 172nd.
Dunn's client, Marquis L. Glover, now 21, lived in the neighborhood and told The Oregonian the location was a dangerous choice.
"What if there was an altercation or rival gang members show up? It was too much," said Glover, convicted of trading marijuana for a sweatshirt at the shop.
Doug Dawson, recently appointed the special agent in charge of ATF's Seattle regional office, said agents adjusted store hours and scheduled buys after school hours when they could. He said the agency also conferred with state and federal prosecutors about the school's proximity before proceeding.
David Hannon, Multnomah County deputy district attorney, prosecuted 16 defendants out of the operation, all on drug charges relating to sales close to a school.
"I did not know the undercover operation took place within 1,000 feet of a school until the completed investigations came in for prosecution review," Hannon said in an email to The Oregonian.
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
To generate business, undercover ATF agents and their informants spread the word at clubs, car shows and other venues that Squid's was open. The cover story passed on the street was that two operators from Seattle were buying guns and drugs for re-sale at huge profits in Canada. They were occasionally joined at the store by an attractive woman "cousin" – yet another ATF agent who some suspects thought encouraged romantic attention.
Agents made their first under-the-counter buy in early July 2010, paying $120 for a .22-caliber revolver.
Using cell phones and text messages, agents arranged one buy after another. Dawson said agents paid the market price for most guns, but went higher when they wanted to keep a gun from going back out the door. They proved ingenious at cooking up excuses why they couldn't meet sellers elsewhere, forcing them to come to the store for their 15 minutes of videotaped fame.
Agents drummed up gun offers by spreading word that the store had been burglarized. They told customers they needed guns for protection.
"They wanted everybody to go find guns," said Glover, who spent many afternoons in the store.
Glover's buddy at the time, Aaron Key, now 21, told agents he'd ask around. He later brought them a .20-gauge sawed off shotgun. Key's brother sold his own shotgun to the agents in a deal prosecutors declined to charge.
When suspects bragged they could get guns, ATF agents pushed them to do so.
In July 2010, an informant acting at ATF's direction pressed Colton D. Smith, then 22, for an AK-47 he said he could get.
"Try and get the AK," the informant texted Smith.
"That will take a week or so to get," Smith responded.
A month later, agents pressed another Smith associate to come through with an SKS rifle. The associate wasn't sure he could, texting the cryptic "idk if I can get the sk u want." The agent shot back: "Yeah but try and get it."
The ATF said in a written explanation to The Oregonian, "We were trying to get a stolen SKS off the street. Once a gun is stolen and in the hands of criminals it is no longer possessed for legitimate means and often used in crimes."
Suspects, aware Squid's was buying firearms without asking many questions, brought in freshly-stolen guns. In late July 2010, a burglar stole rifles and handguns from two homes in Battle Ground, Wash. Within days, the guns appeared at Squid's, sold for cash and cigarettes.
In November 2010, four guns stolen in a Reedsport burglary popped up just four days later on the counter at Squid's, courtesy of a meth trafficker.
ATF officials said their undercover operation didn't provoke such burglaries.
"It is not likely that someone stole guns in a burglary and then drove four hours to sell them to another guy to sell them to our storefront," the ATF said in a written statement. "It is more likely that they were stolen, traded for meth and then entered into the meth trafficking network."
ATF officials also said they weren't troubled getting guns and suspects outside the target area of East Multnomah County, though such arrests diluted the local impact of Operation Kraken.
"Drugs and guns move inter and intrastate just as criminals do." the ATF wrote. "Many of the guns recovered in Northeast Portland and Gresham did not originate there. To limit this case because the targets did not live locally would be doing a disservice to the greater Portland metro area.
QUESTIONABLE TARGETS
Agents also came under fire for engaging mentally challenged individuals.
"It should have been apparent to the investigating agents in a number of instances that the people with whom they were dealing were of limited functioning ability," Wax said. "When that becomes apparent, one should question the extent to which they continued to work those people, to have those people continue to deal guns or deal drugs."
Dawson said agents had no way to evaluate suspects' mental conditions but "we don't go out and target mentally disabled people," Dawson said. He said many of those arrested were "not that highly educated."
Kerin, the assistant U.S. attorney, also rejected the notion the government was luring disabled people into criminal conduct.
"We absolutely, positively do not target anyone perceived with mental health issues or limitations," Kerin said. "It would be reprehensible to think of anyone doing that."
Reprehensible or not, such individuals did get caught in Squid's tentacles.
Key and Glover have become the poster boys for that criticism.
They were 19-year-old friends with petty criminal records when they showed up at Squid's in November 2010. They said in interviews with The Oregonian they found the undercover agents engaging, the atmosphere of the store relaxing. They showed up regularly, playing video games and chatting with the agents who seemed to befriend them.
About a month later, the conversation turned to marketing. Key and Glover said they were joking around with the agents about tattoos. Glover said agents told them they would become lifetime members of the store if they had the store's logo tattooed on them.
Glover said they agreed. "Okay, we'll do it," he recalled telling the agents.
The tattoo artist used a shirt with the store's logo to etch the cigar-smoking squid onto the necks of the two teens. Each tattoo took three hours. Squid's paid the teens $150 each for getting the tattoos.
Their mental status became an issue at sentencing, after both agreed to plead guilty.
Kerin said Key's conduct couldn't be excused but urged a federal judge to take "low-intellectual functioning into account in determining a proper sentence." Key still ended up serving more than a year in federal prison.
Glover initially got probation on his state charge, but probation violations landed him in jail for 10 months.
Kerin told The Oregonian prosecutors consider mental health issues, often first documented after defense attorneys arrange exams for their clients. He said the U.S. attorney's office considers individual circumstances in proceeding with plea offers and sentencing recommendations.
"It's the right and just thing to do," he said.
Sentencing proceedings also put the spotlight on the ATF's tactics in pushing the Squid tattoos.
"This wasn't simply just a suggestion, 'Hey, you'd look really great if you had a tattoo.' This was paid for, was suggested and paid for by the government," said attorney Alison Clark at Key's sentencing.
Kerin asserted that the ATF agents urged the tattoos to preserve their cover. He said Key appeared to be suspicious they were law enforcement.
But the explanation puzzled U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mosman, according to a transcript of Key's sentencing hearing.
"I just don't understand why you put someone off your trail by suggesting they get a tattoo," said Mosman, who ordered ATF to pay for having Key's tattoo removed.
ATF officials said Key hasn't made all his appointments for that process but "ATF will pay until it is removed to Mr. Key's satisfaction."
Multnomah Circuit Court Judge Karin Immergut, herself a former U.S. attorney for Oregon, wasn't impressed by the tactic either as she sentenced Glover. She told prosecutors to pass word to the ATF that the tattoos were "a really bad idea. Nothing unlawful about it, but not a good idea."
The ATF said it hasn't been asked to pay for removing Glover's tattoo. Glover told The Oregonian he's considering legal action, not only for the tattoo, but for "pain and suffering."