The family of a man shot and killed by a Portland police officer outside a strip mall five years ago has settled its lawsuit against the officer.
Portland Police Lt. Nicholas Goodman and family members of Chance David Baker filed paperwork Tuesday in federal court to dismiss the case.
Chance David Baker
No details about the settlement have been made public and the parties in the case refused to discuss the terms of the agreement this week.
Family members of Baker, who was 22 years old at the time of his death, first sued then-Sgt. Nicholas Goodman in 2019 for the “unlawful use of excessive and deadly force” against Baker in 2017. Baker was having a mental health crisis at the time, and carrying an air rifle he had purchased that morning from a nearby pawn shop. He had a blood alcohol level of at least 0.241.
Baker was surrounded by several officers at the time of his death, all of whom were responding to 911 calls about a man walking around the parking lot of the strip mall with what some witnesses said appeared to be a gun.
“Sgt. Goodman knew or reasonably should have known, Chance was holding a BB gun at the time deadly force was used,” the Bakers’ attorney Hunter Tzovarras wrote in the 2019 complaint.
Tzovarras confirmed in an email Wednesday afternoon that a settlement was reached and both parties agreed to dismiss the case.
“The terms and amount of the settlement agreement are confidential so I can’t disclose any of the details,” Tzovarras wrote.
The Bakers sued Goodman in his “individual capacity” as an employee of the City of Portland.
Police officers block off the scene where an officer shot Chance Baker at Union Station Plaza in Portland in February 2017. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
The city had yet to provide documents regarding the settlement in response to a formal public records request that the Portland Press Herald filed Wednesday. Spokesperson Jessica Grondin said it’s possible the city will provide documents next week, “as our Corporation Counsel is on vacation this week and our outside attorney who handled this matter is also on vacation.”
John Wall, Goodman’s attorney, said in an email Wednesday he had no reactions to share, and that his client “does not wish to comment or to respond to questions.” Goodman is still employed by the Portland Police Department and has since been promoted to lieutenant.
Baker had lived in Portland since 2012, when he moved to the city from a small Iowa town near the Nebraska border. Less than a year before Goodman shot him at Union Station Plaza on St. John Street, Baker had housing and was employed, working at three minimum wage jobs.
His coworkers at Hampton Inn on Fore Street and Nickelodeon Cinemas remembered him for his big dreams and as someone who was polite with guests and movie-goers. He was also an apprentice at ‘Til Death Tattoo, where his mentor at the time recalled enjoying his eccentricities, and never finding him aggressive or scary.
But then Baker began exhibiting signs of paranoia. Some colleagues suspected he was trying to self medicate with alcohol. After he was let go from his jobs and became homeless, Baker stopped returning calls from family in Iowa and stopped dropping by the Preble Street Teen Center, where at one time he was getting help from caseworkers.
Police had interacted with Baker several times before his death. Baker’s family has said that some of these interactions were missed opportunities to intervene.
The summer before he was shot, Baker called officers to his apartment, convinced someone was hiding explosives in his home. Instead, officers found a growing operation for psychedelic mushrooms, and they sent Baker to Maine Medical Center for a health evaluation.
When friends suspected he was either living on the streets or at a homeless encampment in late August, Baker’s family filed a missing person report. A Portland police detective reached Baker by cell phone, and then sent his family a recording of the young man saying he was deliberately ignoring calls and texts.
In October, officers tried taking Baker to a “wet” shelter for those intoxicated by alcohol, but that shelter declined to take Baker because of his drug use. Officers and shelter workers were unable to connect him with medical or mental health professionals who could assess his condition and develop a treatment plan with medication. All police could do, they determined that night, was take him to the Cumberland County Jail.
In addition to Goodman, the Baker family also named Coastal Pawn Shop as a defendant in their lawsuit, for selling him the air rifle. The store was released from the case in 2020.
Goodman told investigators he shot Baker because he was afraid for his own safety and that of others in the area, according to records reviewed by the Portland Press Herald in 2018. The Maine Attorney General’s Office called the shooting “justified” in a report issued that March.
But in February of this year, U.S. District Judge John Woodcock denied Goodman protection under “qualified immunity,” a legal doctrine afforded to law enforcement officers to shield them from civil liability. It was a rare decision that ensured the case some viability if it were to go to trial.
“Although Sgt. Goodman subjectively believed that he, other officers, and the public were at risk, the Court must view the reasonableness of his use of force through an objective lens,” Woodcock wrote at the time. “Based on the Court’s analysis and in the light most favorable to the Plaintiffs, it was clearly established at the time of Mr. Baker’s death that Sgt. Goodman’s action violated Mr. Baker’s Fourth Amendment rights.”
Attorneys for the Bakers and Goodman held a private settlement conference with the judge on April 28. Neither party filed anything else until the July 5 stipulation of dismissal.
Shooting Baker was not the first time Goodman killed someone while working for the city of Portland. In 2008, Goodman shot and killed Albert Wayne Kittrell of Portland. Goodman was trying to arrest Kittrell for driving under the influence. Kittrell began driving away to evade arrest, dragging Goodman who was clinging to the car, and the officer shot at him.
Copy the Story LinkComments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
