Incompetence or corruption?

Either way, it doesn’t look good

Oregon Police Made One of the Biggest Fentanyl Busts in State History Then Released the Ringleader

Someone in the prosecutor’s office didn’t get around to filing charges in time, for reasons unexplained.

A months-long investigation by the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office Dangerous Drugs Team resulted in one of the largest illegal fentanyl seizures in state history, and the largest seizure in agency history…

Search warrants were executed at locations in Portland and Oregon City. At the Portland location, law enforcement located more than 52 pounds of powdered fentanyl. At the Oregon City location, more than one pound of fentanyl powder and over 8,000 fentanyl pills were discovered.

The police press release went on to say that this amount of fentanyl found would have been turned into 11 million doses of the drug destined for Portland’s streets. Getting that amount of drugs off the street was a big win and best of all the police caught the people involved at the scene of the crime. Specifically, they caught 23-year-old Luis Funez, the suspected ringleader, fleeing the house where the drugs were stored.

Deputies stormed Funez’s house in the Cully neighborhood on Dec. 7 and apprehended him as he attempted to flee out the back. He claimed, according to the prosecutor’s affidavit, that the 52 pounds of suspected fentanyl “found open in a cardboard box lined with a trash bag” were for “cookie baking.”

His girlfriend, Dezirae Ann Torset, was inside and also arrested. (She’s currently being held in jail on out-of-state warrants.) Torset, 37, said the $7,000 dollars in the Infiniti out front were “funds for her tax/accounting business startup,” but admitted to police that she wasn’t a certified public accountant and “didn’t have the credit to rent the Airbnb where they were at.”

…. Oops! Just one problem. Luis Funez may not be heading to trial. After being busted with one of the largest fentanyl stashes in state history he was immediately released by the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice.

Multnomah County jail records show Funez was booked at 10:30 a.m. Thursday and released later that same day. His court record includes a pretrial release assessment filed Thursday afternoon and a release agreement that states he must appear in person for a court hearing the following morning. A subsequent document filed Friday states that he failed to appear at that hearing.

So apparently what happened here is that prosecutors planned to file a bunch of charges stemming from the drug bust but for reasons that still aren’t clear they didn’t get around to it in time and that meant Community Justice had nothing to hold him on. They couldn’t even hang on to him for 24 hours.

Friday morning a judge issued a new arrest warrant for Funez who, not surprisingly, failed to show up for court. He had previously come to Portland from Sacramento but is originally from Honduras and no one has any idea where he is now. [Hint: probably not in Portland]

Here are a few more details from the Willamette Week

An affidavit filed by prosecutors late Friday afternoon says Funez, who also goes by Arteaga-Sanchez, was taken to jail on an outstanding warrant with “new charges to follow.” But he “was released by [the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice] before the new charges could be filed, however.”

A DCJ spokesperson says the county followed state-mandated guidelines that determine who can be held in jail while they await trial. The U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office, and MCSO could not immediately respond to questions about the aftermath of the bust. ….

Funez’s release puts a bit of a damper on the monthslong investigation and its culmination Thurs ….