How Portland identity theft, questionable police work landed Tacoma man in jail
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Stolen ID from Portland theft wrongly implicated Tacoma man in 2022 robbery.
- Portland police relied on weak eyewitness ID and failed to investigate further.
- Charges were dismissed after defense attorneys proved the man’s alibi.
A few years ago, Edward “Jack” Barry’s car was broken into on a work trip to Portland, and a couple of his IDs were stolen. The police gave him a case number, and he replaced what was taken. He didn’t think much more of it.
In July, the bizarre consequence of that theft arrived at his Tacoma home with a pounding knock on his door. It was the U.S. Marshals Service, and they had a warrant for Barry’s arrest.
Barry repeatedly asked the marshals what the warrant was for, he recalled in a recent interview with The News Tribune, but they wouldn’t let him read it. One told him something happened with a crowbar in Portland, which made Barry chuckle. He said that was fanciful. But it didn’t matter what Barry had to say. He was handcuffed in his front yard with his wife and toddler nearby and taken in an unmarked SUV to the Pierce County Jail.
This was the start of a two-night jail stay and what he called a “dizzying” month. He would later learn that a grand jury in Multnomah County, Oregon, had indicted him on felony charges more than a year ago. He was accused of smashing a car window, punching the vehicle’s ignition and threatening its owner with a crowbar, just months after Barry’s car was broken into in October 2022. His stolen passport card was found at the scene, and he instantly became a suspect. Barry’s charges were first-degree robbery, unlawful use of a weapon and first-degree criminal mischief.
With some help from a few lawyers in Tacoma and Portland, Barry, a 37-year-old U.S. Army veteran who served in the war in Afghanistan, was released on bail July 3. By the end of the month, he proved his innocence with an alibi, and the charges in Portland and Tacoma — being a fugitive from justice — were dismissed. Barry had been at home with his pregnant wife when the robbery occurred.
The ordeal left Barry feeling violated. It gave him doubts about the Portland Police Bureau’s detective work and soured his opinion of the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
“It could happen to anybody, and that’s not to scare anybody, that’s to prepare people,” Barry said.
Being whisked away from his family in an unmarked vehicle also gave Barry more sympathy for undocumented immigrants who have been swept up in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“More of a sympathy and empathy to what’s going on in our country right now, with a ton of people getting detained by ICE, a ton of people getting detained by the Department of Homeland Security,” Barry said. “Just felt that, but also just felt deeply broken emotionally.”
The Portland Police Bureau declined to comment for this story. The Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, after being contacted by The News Tribune, shared a letter Prosecutor Mary Robnett sent to Barry on Friday explaining their role in his case.
“I am sorry to hear that you were indicted and arrested for out-of-state charges for which you are innocent,” Robnett wrote. “Defendants’ liberty interests are of vital importance to all parties in the criminal justice system.”
“Please understand what the role of our office was in your case,” the letter continued. “You were booked on an out-of-state warrant for criminal charges in Oregon. Our job in such an instance is to file a fugitive case, which starts the process of ensuring a defendant appears in court in the place where they are charged. As soon as we were notified that Oregon had dismissed their case, we immediately dismissed the fugitive case.
“Regrettably, there is room for error during an investigation and it is apparent that Oregon authorities mistakenly identified you as the culprit.”
Portland smash-and-grab
The crime that temporarily upended Barry’s life occurred outside a worksite in Northeast Portland. According to a police report, a man, his wife and his daughter were driving back to his other car, a Kia Soul, when he saw someone grabbing things from the vehicle’s trunk.
The car’s owner, a 46-year-old man, ran toward the person and yelled something like, “What are you doing?” He tried to grab the robber as the person started to run across the street, and at one point, according to the report, the person raised a crowbar over his head as if to swing it at the owner. Instead, the robber fell backward into some bushes.
The robber ran off, and the owner was left with about $1,100 in repairs. He reported it to the police four days after the Dec. 30, 2022 incident. Some eyeglasses and cash were taken from his car, too. Left behind were the crowbar and a stolen Safeway tote bag that held Barry’s passport card. According to the police report, the car’s owner was certain the man on the ID was the robber.
“[The owner] told me he was positive Barry was the suspect as the suspect looked very much like the person on the passport card, only his beard had more white hairs and he looked slightly older and thinner,” the report states.
Detectives looked up Barry’s driver’s license photo from Washington, which was recently renewed. The detective wrote in the report that Barry’s beard had more white in it. Almost five months after the break-in, police had the car owner’s wife review a photomontage to see if she recognized the suspect. Photomontages are a collection of photos of people, including the suspect, often used by investigators to see if a witness can recognize the person believed to be involved in the crime.
The wife had previously reported that she stayed in the car with her daughter during the break-in, and it was dark so she couldn’t really make out what the suspect looked like. Now, looking at the photos police showed her, she said she was “100 percent” sure that Barry was the suspect.
Based on police reports and the wife’s identification, police now believed they had probable cause to arrest Barry.
But it was up to a grand jury to decide whether Barry would be charged with a crime. Court records show the proceedings began on July 10, 2024, and three witnesses were examined in person, one of which was the victim. Barry was indicted July 16, 2024.
“I don’t get word about an indictment, charges, anything,” Barry said.
Barry eventually received the police reports in legal discovery, and he said throughout them, investigators latched onto him as the robber. He called the detective work “lazy” and said police mostly took the witnesses at their word. One witness reported that there weren’t security cameras in the area, but Barry said the files didn’t show that police ever looked into that themselves. The crowbar, which was recovered, did not yield any fingerprints.
“He just assumes that I’m the guy,” Barry said.
‘Surreal’ two nights in jail
Spending two nights in the Pierce County Jail felt surreal, Barry said, or like something out of a satirical TV show like “The Office.” While he was processed in, Barry said corrections deputies seemed perplexed about why he was there.
Barry recalled one exchange with a deputy who asked him about his military service.
“I’m a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan,” Barry said he told the deputy. “And he goes, ‘Oh, OK.’ And then he looks at it, and he sees my rank, which says I’m an officer. And he goes, ‘Oh, sir!’ And he looks at me, and he’s just confused.”
When he was getting his mugshot taken, another deputy asked Barry if he knew why he was there. Barry told him he didn’t, and he was afraid and shocked at what was happening. Barry said the deputy told him most of the corrections staff were former military, and he told him he prayed that this would somehow blow over for him.
Meanwhile, Barry’s wife, Anastasiya, was at home trying to get help finding an attorney and wondering if she would need to start working again. Their son was 2 years old now, and Barry’s paycheck as a field-talent acquisition partner for a mechanical-electrical plumbing company in Seattle was their primary source of income.
“If we didn’t have the finances to have a lawyer, if we didn’t have family who was willing to let us borrow money, he could have spent a lot more time in jail unjustly,” Anastasiya said.
Anastasiya Barry’s church community rallied around her, but she was worried about her husband’s mental health. He saw combat in Afghanistan, and Anastasiya thought being jailed could trigger symptoms of PTSD.
The day after Barry’s July 1 arrest, he met with an attorney in jail to prepare for his arraignment. The attorney asked him when he was last in Portland. Barry said that’s when he started to realize his arrest was connected to the time his car was broken into. The attorney did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
“I feel like that kind of tipped me off to OK, now this is making sense,” Barry said. “That my IDs basically got taken and were used maliciously and kind of like stolen identity.”
Barry appeared for arraignment in jail clothes and flip-flops, and his charges were read before Superior Court Commissioner Barbara McInvaille. Barry said the deputy prosecutor said these were serious crimes he was accused of, and that they’d like to hold him on $50,000 bail.
“I think I almost, like, choked on whatever spit I had in my mouth,” Barry said.
Barry’s attorney convinced the judge to instead impose $5,000 bail. It was posted that day, records show, but due to some kind of error Barry spent another night in a cell before he was released. He remembered being escorted to get his clothes to change and leave.
“The guy who’s escorting me is like, ‘Is this your first time in jail?’” Barry said. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, and I hope it’s my last.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, don’t say that, come back and visit us sometime,’ or something like that.”
“I don’t want to,” Barry recalled with a laugh. “Like, do you understand? I never want to come back to this place.”
