Portland Police Watch for July 22-23, 2020
CW: police brutality
TL;DR at the bottom.
Note: These observations are on tonight’s abuses by the Portland Police. These abuses, of course, come in response to the protests over racial discrimination and police brutality spurred by the murder of George Floyd. While I believe these abuses are important to document and do play a part in the overall narrative of the protests, they should not overshadow the larger message fighting racial inequity. Along with donating and promoting the voices of BIPOC, they are simply how I feel I can be most actively useful given the health conditions that prevent me from participating in the demonstrations during this damn pandemic.
If you’ve been finding my reports useful, and have the means to do so, consider throwing a few bucks my way. I’m spending five to eight hours every night watching these protests, doing research, and communicating with protesters and reporters on the ground, and while I’m happy to contribute in the small way that I can and will continue to do so regardless of donations, it’s quite draining work. Additionally, with most forms of acting cancelled for the foreseeable future, my finances have taken a severe hit, and soliciting voluntary donations allows me to dedicate more time and energy to providing the in-depth coverage this movement needs. Alternately, consider donating that money to either the journalists I’ve been citing or to one of the nonprofits supporting the protests, like Don’t Shoot PDX or the Black Lives Matter group, itself.
Donate to Don’t Shoot PDX [1]
Donate to Black Lives Matter—Portland Chapter [2]
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It is with great honor that I present Ted Wheeler his tear gas merit badge. Welcome back to Portland Police Watch!
(If you’re just interested in what happened tonight, feel free to skip on down to the section titled TOMORROW THERE’LL BE MORE OF US.)
WAR…WAR NEVER CHANGES
Urban warfare has come to Portland [3].
For the past several weeks, Portland has played host to federal officers from a variety of agencies, ostensibly here to protect statues, monuments, and federal property, most notably the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Downtown. This comes despite nearly universal opposition from local and state elected officials, not to mention community members, who have repeatedly admonished the feds for their extreme and at times apparently unconstitutional behavior. Federal police have targeted journalists [4], attacked medic tents and food stalls [5], and whisked away peaceful protesters whose only crime was wearing black clothing [6]. That comes in addition, of course, to indiscriminately beating them and dousing them with copious amounts of pepper spray, impact munitions, and tear gas. It has all the trappings of a hostile occupation, minus the live ammunition. As war reporter Robert Evans said recently, it’s about as close as you can come to war while still using non-lethal munitions.
Tonight was no different.
Before we get to the action on the streets, though, there were a couple of interesting developments today that I’d like to draw your attention to, both national and local.
EXPECTED THE…EXPECTED
First and foremost, of course, was the official announcement of the expansion of the federal occupation of Democratic-controlled cities to include Chicago and Albuquerque [7]. The Trump administration will be sending officers from the US Marshals and the Department of Homeland Security—two of the agencies leading the Portland occupation—in addition to those from a few smaller agencies to tamp down on what President Trump calls “violent crime.” He had “no choice but to get involved,” he added.
This was far from unexpected. Just the other day, Trump announced that he would be taking unspecified action against cities like Chicago, curiously emphasizing that they were all run by Democrats. Nonetheless, this marks an important escalation of his crackdown on supposed violent crime—at the same time that he has insisted the mostly peaceful protesters are “anarchists and agitators” [8]. “Violent anarchists” and “criminals,” as DHS put it. It’s unclear at this point how, or if, their tactics will differ from the ones deployed in Portland that have earned them such strong condemnations.
A FINE, FINE LINE
Speaking of tactics, the Washington Post did a deep exploration of how those tactics are being seen by experts in the field and former DHS officials, including the very first DHS Secretary [9]. As I wrote the other day, this is the benefit of having the national news media in town; they don’t always provide the greatest context for what is going on, but their resources and contacts allow them to do much deeper dives on issues that touch the national scene, like the evolution of DHS tactics, than most local reporters could hope to do on their shoe string budgets and caffeine addictions (speaking as one of those). The article itself goes into great detail about how the Department of Homeland Security, formed in the wake of 9/11 with the mission of preventing another such attack, has been turned inward by the Trump administration onto its own citizens. I was most interested, though, in a couple of quotes from the interviews they conducted while writing it, which I’ve quoted below:
1. “There’s a line that it certainly looks like they’ve crossed. And, if I may, it’s an important line because it’s the difference between federal law enforcement and a roving commission where you’re using these law enforcement officers to go out and restore what they deem to be order,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
It is not merely the protesters on the street saying it. Even experts at well-respected law schools are arguing that these actions cross a new and dangerous line. They are engaging in, at best, questionably constitutional behavior that violates the spirit of the freedoms of expression and peaceable protest.
As I wrote about last month, police tend to be disproportionately white, male, and conservative, so “what they deem to be order,” as Vladeck puts it, might be very different than what locals would deem it to be, especially in progressive cities like Portland. Portland, particularly, has a long history with protest culture—President H.W. Bush didn’t call us Little Beirut for nothing—and its citizens (although not its police) may be more tolerant of these kinds of protests than non-locals. That’s a big reason this federal occupation has scared so many Portlanders. These officers do not know the local landscape, are not bound by local rules, and are not accountable to local or, with them covering up any kind of personal or even agency identification, even national officials.
2. [The specialized DHS teams sent to Portland] are among the most “heavily militarized” components in federal law enforcement, normally assigned to “engage in low-grade warfare against heavily armed narco-terrorists,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former DHS official who now works as a senior fellow at the R Street Institute.
“I think it is not illegal, but it is an expansion of mission and what I would characterize as a misapplication of authority,” Rosenzweig said. “So make it lawful but awful.”
In other words, the officers they sent to Portland are about as close to soldiers as you can get without actually being soldiers. In fact, according to Robert Evans, many of them are FORMER soldiers. Furthermore, as we learned from the New York Times recently, these officers have no special training in crowd control tactics. That calls into question why, if they are trained in low-grade warfare against armed terrorists but not in peaceful crowd control, these specific groups were sent here in the first place. It might well reveal what they think of the protesters, and offer a clue as to how they will treat those in other cities moving forward.
3. Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor who served as the country’s first homeland security secretary under George W. Bush, said during an interview Tuesday with broadcaster Michael Smerconish that DHS was established to protect the country “from the ever-present threat of global terrorism.”
“It was not established to be the president’s personal militia,” Ridge said. “It would be a cold day in hell before I would consent to a unilateral, uninvited intervention into one of my cities,” he added, “and I wish the president would take a more collaborative approach toward fighting this lawlessness than the unilateral approach he’s taken.”
Even the first head of DHS, Republican Tom Ridge, believes that President Trump is using DHS as his own personal militia, a far cry from its intended purpose. It puts into relief why some in the administration and right-wing media have been trying so hard to label these protesters as actual, bonafide terrorists. The right has used this kind of rhetoric for a long time, but it seems to me we are at a tipping point right now with DHS actually being deployed against its own citizens. Then again, if you asked Black folx, or undocumented immigrants, maybe we should have been expecting this; they’ve been dealing with it for years.
WHAT IS SIMON WITHOUT GARFUNKEL? (BESIDES A GREAT MUSICIAN…YOU KNOW WHAT, THIS IS A TERRIBLE TITLE)
Finally, it seems the dynamic duo has finally been forced to break up. Today, the Portland City Council voted unanimously to prohibit the Portland Police Bureau from cooperating with any of the federal agencies currently occupying Portland [10]. It’s unclear exactly what effect this will have on tactics, as it does not prohibit them from communicating, but it likely means that we will see less of the behavior we saw last week, with PPB working hand-in-hand with feds and seemingly using them to circumvent the court orders they are bound by. We’ll have to wait to find out.
So, what’s been happening down on the streets?
TOMORROW THERE’LL BE MORE OF US
The protests have doubled in size since I last talked to you, that’s what! Just a matter of weeks ago, the protests had shrunk down to around 200-300 per night. Now they are ten times that [11]. Reporters on the ground said that, at its peak, the crowd was bigger even than the previous two nights, which would put it in the 2000-3000 range or above. Certainly not “quelled,” as President Trump said last week.
For the 57th consecutive day, protesters gathered in the parks abutting the Multnomah County Justice Center and the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Downtown Portland, OR as part of protests against racism and police brutality spurred by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody on May 25th. They were joined for the first time by an unexpected guest—well, as unexpected as you can be when you announce your intention to be there hours ahead of time—Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who has long been the subject of protester ire for his anti-protester messaging before the arrival of the feds [12]. He listened to protester complaints and spoke for a short while about his intentions moving forward, at times to the chagrin of many attendees [13][14]. Eventually though, he heeded the calls of protesters and joined them on the front lines [15].
Meanwhile, protesters began their usual ritual of firing fireworks at the courthouse, where federal officers have been staging [16][17][18]. Combined with the trash some protesters had thrown over the newly reinforced fence, a fire started, which quickly grew into a small blaze [19][20, 9:40]. A few protesters managed to get the side gates open, and began meandering around the makeshift courtyard. Just after 11:15 PM, federal officers deployed their first round of tear gas, also peppering the crowd with…well, pepper balls. And impact munitions, but that’s not as funny when paired with the word “peppering” [20, 22:10][21]. Mayor Wheeler himself was gassed at the front of the crowd [22], and immediately said that he was reconsidering the use of such weapon, especially given that protesters had done nothing to warrant it, in his view [3][23].
This will certainly come as welcome news to protesters, although it rang a bit hollow, considering protesters had been saying the exact same thing since police under his command began gassing protesters on May 29th [24]. It called to mind the age old stereotype of the out-of-touch white person refusing to believe how horrible things can be for BIPOC until they themselves experience a taste of it.
The crowd regrouped quickly [25], leading to about a half hour standoff between feds and the more than 1000 demonstrators still in attendance. Protesters returned to meandering around the steps of the courthouse, banging in the fence, and shooting the occasional firework, which prompted another federal response [20, 46:20][26]. Officers once again launched munitions indiscriminately into the crowd [20, 55:05]. Protesters again regrouped, and in one of the more surreal moments of the night, began loudly playing the famous “Imperial March” from Star Wars [27]. In another odd move, the feds seemed to refuse to put out the fire on federal property despite their supposed mandate to protect federal property [28].
For the next half-hour, officers continued their song-and-dance of storming out the courthouse, firing off a round of munitions, then retreating [29]. Sometime around this point, Mayor Wheeler left due to the effects of the tear gas, followed by a throng to the Portland Building [30]. Exactly 36 minutes after Wheeler’s departure, PPB showed up and declared a riot [31][32][33]. It was unclear to me what changed over the course of those 36 minutes, other than the departure of their commissioner, as protesters did not appear to do anything they hadn’t already been doing, which Wheeler himself had just said did not warrant the feds’ overwhelming use of crowd control munitions. Nevertheless, PPB threatened crowd control all the same, including the very tear gas that their commissioner had so recently decried. In a somewhat amazing change of pace, however, they never actually used those munitions, nor did they even appear to attempt to push people out from what I saw.
Instead, the feds saw to that.
Federal officers continued their aforementioned song-and-dance [34][35][36], until making one big final push [37]. Most reporters had left by this point, so I was unable to find a reporter who witnessed the attack to confirm whether or not there was an inciting incident, but their previous assaults on the night suggest that there was little to none, and certainly not one that warranted the type of overwhelming force they used.
And that was about it, he says acknowledging that two months ago he would have thought that was enough to write a book on. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but it has become a part of daily life under the occupation of federal officers, who continue to indiscriminately assault the people of Portland. I guess when you think peaceful protesters are terrorists, anything is game.
Black lives matter, y’all. G’night.
TL;DR: Mayor Wheeler took to the streets alongside the largest crowd since the first week, receiving a deluge of boos, heckles, and, eventually, tear gas.
Donate
[1] https://www.dontshootpdx.org/support-our-work/
[2] https://blackpdx.com/become-a-patron/
Sources
[3]
https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286194497559252992?s=21
[4] https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-officers-portland-force-journalits-legal-observers/
[5] https://twitter.com/pdocumentarians/status/1285882926316449793?s=21
[6] https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/07/oregons-attorney-general-argues-for-temporary-restraining-order-against-federal-law-enforcement.html
[7] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/508566-trump-announces-hes-sending-federal-agents-to-chicago
[8] https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1284831061181173761?s=21
[9] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/facing-unrest-on-american-streets-trump-turns-homeland-security-powers-inward/2020/07/21/655e7822-cb71-11ea-89ce-ac7d5e4a5a38_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_protestpowers-753pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans
[10] https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2020/07/portland-bans-police-from-working-with-federal-law-enforcement-targeting-journalists-and-legal-observers-during-protests.html
[11] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286157778965262337?s=21
[12] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286151667780476930?s=21
[13] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286157991188688899?s=21
[14] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286160468013268993?s=21
[15] https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286182983485894662?s=21
[16] https://twitter.com/dirquez/status/1286175064015032321?s=21
[17] https://twitter.com/alex_zee/status/1286175141559296000?s=21
[18] https://twitter.com/pdocumentarians/status/1286175583689297920?s=21
[19] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286180979149664256?s=21
[20] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1286177806464950272?s=21
9:40 for fire
22:10 first gassing
46:20 second gassing
55:05 third gassing
[21] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286186098520027136?s=21
[22]
https://twitter.com/bymikebaker/status/1286190958455844866?s=21
[23] https://twitter.com/evertonbailey/status/1286191443824926720?s=21
[24] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286189393544265729?s=21
[25] https://twitter.com/donovanfarley/status/1286185879904509952?s=21
[26] https://twitter.com/therealcoryelia/status/1286190801156939777?s=21
[27] https://twitter.com/13374nt1f458008/status/1286193120384876544?s=21
[28] https://twitter.com/bethnakamura/status/1286198386316546048?s=21
[29] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1286203439974768641?s=21
[30] https://twitter.com/tuckwoodstock/status/1286193671629443072?s=21
[31] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286205487743082496?s=21
[32] https://twitter.com/lindseypsmith7/status/1286203048277102592?s=21
[33] https://twitter.com/andrewjank/status/1286202967494991872?s=21
[34] https://twitter.com/iwriteok/status/1286204519559225344?s=21
11:40 for yet another gassing, I’ve lost count
[35] https://twitter.com/mrolmos/status/1286208094880411648?s=21
[36] https://twitter.com/therealcoryelia/status/1286217439210958849?s=21
[37] https://twitter.com/cascadianphotog/status/1286239797132947456?s=21