‘Underground Echo’ shares Police Commission email, calls for action

Presenter: Underground Echo wraps up a multipart series on the Eugene Police Commission by revealing what commissioners were saying behind the scenes in internal email messages. Here’s Echo:

Echo (KEPW, Underground Echo): Commissioner Jack Radey. Maybe you’ve heard the name, maybe you’ve seen him sit on the police commission dais, straight back speaking in the calm cadence of authority. Maybe you’ve read his words in the paper, the language of a man who claims to serve the public good.

[00:00:28] But behind the curtain, in the private emails, in the off- the- record jokes, In the quiet whispers that never make it to the official minutes, a different Radey emerges. One who mocks the very people he is sworn to listen to. One who treats public comment like a nuisance instead of a duty.

[00:00:48] And here’s the truth, the story is not just about Radey. This is the tale of a system that let him thrive in those contradictions, a system that asks for our trust while hiding its own records, a system that punishes truth-tellers like (former Police Commissioners William) Parham and (Jensina) Hawkins with burnout and silence, while rewarding duplicity with another seat at the table, and you, the lovely people of Eugene, are not powerless bystanders in this.

[00:01:16] The fact that over 70 of you stood up at the last Commission meeting proves it. The fact that voices are rising louder and sharper proves it.

[00:01:24] The question is not who is Jack Radey. The question is, how many more Radey’s are waiting behind the curtain? And the answer to that depends on what we, together, decide to do next.

[00:01:36] So listen closely. Let this be a spark, not just a story. Let it guide you past one man’s shadow and into the light of the rot beneath, because if we only stop at Radey, the system wins. But if we follow the threat, if we pull the seam, the whole rotten fabric might finally come undone.

[00:01:58] July 10th, 2025. The Eugene Police Commission gathered under the fluorescent hum of City Hall, the air sharp with tension, citizens lined to the back row, some angry, some wary, some simply curious to see what kind of democracy Eugene’s Commission could deliver.

[00:02:18] And at that front chair sat Jensina Hawkins, tasked with the impossible, guiding the night’s agenda while absorbing the storm of voices that demanded to be heard. Her gavel was less a tool of authority than a fragile dam, straining against the flood of frustration, and then there was Commissioner Jack Radey.

[00:02:37] In that room, his presence seemed steady, almost grandfatherly, grounding the room in sober perspective; but then betrayed something else: moments of laughter at inappropriate times, condescending remarks towards speakers who challenged him, and a thin smile that blurred the line between confidence and disdain.

[00:02:58] Publicly, Radey would later claim these were misunderstandings. Privately, in emails and in backchannel commentary, his mask slipped. There he revealed not a man of principled fairness, but one of defensiveness, dismissiveness, and denial. His private self belittled colleagues, minimized harm, and cast himself as the victim of plots against him.

[00:03:22] The July 10 meeting wasn’t just a hard night for Hawkins; It was the night the distance between Radey’s public face and his private beliefs widened in cracks in Eugene’s civic structures themselves.

[00:03:34] Jack Radey’s personal public persona is carefully cultivated. But, in private communications, a different Radey emerges. His emails drip with dismissal, colleagues’ concerns are labeled paranoid or nonsense.

[00:03:51] At one point, he wrote, ‘This is all being built into a case against me. Hawkins has decided I am the problem and the rest are being swept along.’ In another, he brushed off complaints from staff, insisting, “I’ve been accused of things that never happened and now everyone is treating it like gospel.”

[00:04:09] He describes younger commissioners as naive, staff complaints as fabrications, and criticism as personal vendettas. He cast himself not as a public servant under scrutiny, but as a besieged man targeted by hidden enemies. The tension is stark.

[00:04:27] Public Radey preaches civility. Private Radey ridicules those who feel unsafe around it. Public Radey claims to value accountability. Private Radey resents the chair’s warnings, suggesting they are overreach. Public Radey champions truth. Private Radey bends it to shield themselves from consequences.

[00:04:47] Publicly, Randy dismissed accusations of transphobia at a community festival as overblown. He leaned into the language of misunderstanding, insisting he was misread, that others had fabricated claims to tarnish his name. ‘I am not a transphobe,’ he wrote in one email, ‘and the idea that I would say something hurtful at the Asian festival is absurd. People are twisting my words.’

[00:05:11] He even position himself as a target of cancel culture, implying that his being called out was an injustice in itself.

[00:05:19] I just want to say that the intent to not harm is not the same as the harm that happens, regardless of the intent.

[00:05:30] Privately, his denials sharpened into contempt instead of grappling with why his words or behavior struck others as transphobic. He mocked the very idea. In one exchange, he dismissed the allegation flatly. ‘This is nonsense. They are inventing things that didn’t happen because it serves their agenda.’ There was no curiosity, no reflection, only scorn for those who raised the issue.

[00:05:57] Here lies the contradiction. The public commissioner claiming to stand for respect and inclusion, and the private man unwilling to even consider that his actions caused harm.

[00:06:09] Commissioner Parham’s departure from the Police Commission was a significant loss. A younger voice, a marginalized perspective, one that might have helped reshape the Commission’s dynamics.

[00:06:21] Publicly, Radey painted himself as a mentor figure who had tried tirelessly to reach out and connect with Parham. In a letter, he wrote, ‘I reached out several times, but he never wanted to talk. I did what I could to bring him into the circle.’

[00:06:36] Privately, his narrative was less generous. In emails, Radey cast Parham’s discomfort not as valid experience, but his personal weakness, even in gratitude. ‘Parham never gave me the time of day,’ he complained, ‘and now they’re painting me as the reason he left. That’s not on me. That’s on him not wanting to grow up and do the work.’

[00:06:57] Once again, Radey became the victim in his own story, positioning himself as misunderstood rather than accountable. This gulf widens. Public Radey, the patient elder, versus Private Radey, the man who dismisses lived experiences as fabrication.

[00:07:13] When the Commission’s minutes recorder expressed trepidation around Radey, the moment should have prompted reflection. But privately, he belittled the recorder’s discomfort, framing it as an attack on him rather than an honest expression of workplace fear. ‘Now the recorder is afraid of me? Give me a break. That’s been fed to her by Hawkins,’ he wrote. ‘This is part of the case-building, nothing more.’

[00:07:41] Instead of acknowledging the possibility of intimidation, he insists it was a conspiracy.

[00:07:47] Now let’s get to the July 10 meeting, the laughter, the condescension. The July 10 meeting crystallized the contradictions. When citizens rose to speak, some halting, some angry, some deeply vulnerable, Radey laughed. Not a belly laugh, not even a chuckle of recognition, but the kind of sharp condescending laugh that undercuts the speaker at once.

[00:08:14] Chair Hawkins later reflected on it. When you laugh in that way, it isn’t neutral. It tells the speaker they’re not respected. It undermines the work of the Commission. Radey, however, wrote afterwards, ‘I laugh because it was pompous and ridiculous. Sometimes you can’t help yourself. And now, apparently, that’s a crime.’

[00:08:34] Publicly he brushed this off as misinterpretation, but privately he rationalized it as righteous impatience. The natural response of a man too seasoned to suffer fools, and what he did not admit, publicly or privately, was the truth visible to all else:

[00:08:50] Laughter, in such a setting, is not neutral. It silences, it wounds, it is a weapon, and it confirms the very power and balance that commission is tasked with confronting.

[00:09:04] The Police Commission, like many advisory bodies, relies on the presumption of good faith among its members. Its procedures assume that commissioners will be guided by principle rather than ego; that the shared accountability will emerge naturally from shared values.

[00:09:21] But when a commissioner deploys a mask of fairness while privately undermining those values, the system falters. Hawkins’ warnings to Radey illustrate this. She had the authority to issue cautions, but little power to enforce accountability beyond public shaming.

[00:09:38] Radey in turn cast these warnings as political overreach. ‘She has no authority to threaten me with removal,’ he wrote. ‘That’s beyond her powers. This is bullying dressed up as leadership.’

[00:09:49] The structure left Hawkins isolated, bearing the weight of enforcement alone. In a resignation letter, she wrote, ‘I cannot continue to chair a body where accountability is treated as regression, where efforts to maintain basic decorum are framed as power plays. The cost to my well-being has become unsustainable.’

The result: marginalized voices dismissed, commissioners gaslit and staff made uneasy, and the chair ultimately exhausted into resignation.

[00:10:22] What happened with Jack Radey cannot be understood as a series of isolated lapses or harmless personality quirks. To see it that way is to miss the deeper and more dangerous truth. His contradictions—the public performance of principle paired with the private posture of dismissal—reveal a systemic illness, a boil that is festered on Eugene’s civic body and when it bursts, it exposes not only the pus of one commissioner’s hypocrisy but the rot that allowed him to thrive unchecked.

[00:10:53] It just demonstrates that Eugene’s civic structures are calibrated not to protect the vulnerable but to shield the powerful. Transparency is optional. Accountability is negotiable.

[00:11:05] A man can laugh at transphobia allegations in private while insisting on a spotless record in public. And the institution has no mechanism to reconcile the contradiction.

[00:11:17] In private emails that we’re quoting here, when colleagues raise concerns about harm, his words ring different. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. People are just too sensitive. This is being blown out of proportion.’

[00:11:30] These phrases, repeated enough, form a mantra of evasion. They are not apologies. They are shields. They are evasion tactics. The effect is corrosive. Every time a leader substitutes minimalization for reflection, the message is clear. The accountability is for others, but not for me.

[00:11:57] This is not a functional system. It’s a hierarchy, where the privileged actor can set the terms of accountability. And where those tasked with upholding integrity are left carrying the emotional labor of enforcement,

[00:12:10] Hawkins as chair, found herself in this impossible position, again and again, trying to impose order on a man who’s specialized in undermining it, only to face his private resistance afterwards. She acted with grace, she acted with morality. The stress and frustration of that task compounded over months contributed to her eventual resignation.

[00:12:36] The cost of silence then is measured not in lost trust but in lost leaders. When commissioners like Hawkins or Parham step down, the institution bleeds integrity. Meanwhile, the Radeys of the world remain protected by the various structures that should have checked them.

[00:12:57] This is why exposure matters, because without exposure, the pattern remains invisible. Without exposure, the boil will never burst. The rot spreads deeper. Transparency is disinfectant.

[00:13:12] This isn’t just about one meeting or one commissioner, or one laugh in the wrong place. This is about democracy at its most local, it’s the most vulnerable, which is where democracy is the most fragile. And if we don’t protect it here in these fluorescent chambers with two-minute public comments and weary staff recorders, where will we protect it? If we don’t insist on truth here, what chance do we have at any larger stage?

[00:13:35] Local governance is on the front line. Crack it here and you weaken it everywhere. Strengthen it here, and you set an example that ripples outward.

[00:13:45] So what can you do about it? You can see the pattern. You can show up, you can speak up, you can stay informed, you can protect each other, you can demand more, you can refuse the shrug, you can amplify the silence, and you can keep the long view.

[00:14:02] This is the beginning of accountability, this is the start of a culture shift. This is the call and you are the answer. So show up, speak up, stay loud, stay present, stay relentless and don’t stop until the system is as accountable as the people it’s sworn to preserve.

[00:14:19] Presenter: Echo wraps up a multipart series on the Eugene Police Commission with a call to action. You can hear Underground Echo Wednesday evenings at 6 p.m. on KEPW 97.3, Eugene’s PeaceWorks Community Radio.