Portland Police Watch for July 18-19, 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]
Venmo: @theburgerboy Cash App: $theburgerboy
—————————————————————
This is the cold open. I make a joke here, and then I start my post.
F IS FOR FEDS
So much for “quelled” [3].
The sun may have risen by the time I filed my report last night, but that just meant that the action started all the sooner from my perspective. That same sun rose on a city unwillingly occupied by the forces of a federal government hostile to the desires of its elected officials—and many of its people—who are eager to see them gone. And so the siege continues.
With the national and international media descending upon Portland, it was only natural that we would start getting stories digging into the government’s response on a national level, what with their bureaus and sources back in DC. This is one of the major benefits of having the major outlets in town. While they don’t always get the context of these events right—PPB has been just as violent as the feds, and Ted Wheeler is far from the anti-police violence crusader some reports have made him out to be—they do have some truly excellent reporters and a bevy of resources and established sources back in Washington. You take the good with the bad.
Today, the New York Times released a truly alarming piece suggesting that the federal officers sent to Portland specifically to “quell” the “riots” were not, in fact, specially trained in quelling riots at all, according to a copy of an internal DHS memo that the Times received [4]. As veteran reporter Robert Evans has said on a number of his streams, the individuals that constitute the special squads sent here, such as BORTAC—Border Patrol’s equivalent of a SWAT team—are often ex-military folx trained more in breaking people than dispersing them. Those tactics have been on full display the last few weeks, which has galvanized the local protests that had seemed to be sputtering.
Meanwhile, over at City Hall, Mayor Wheeler announced that “federal agencies will no longer be co-located with the police bureau’s incident command” [5]. This goes a long way to explain just how prepared PPB officers seemed to be for the tactics used by the feds, particularly tear gas blocks away from federal property. It also adds fuel to the fire of the questions arising about just how much PPB has been coordinating, and not just communicating, with federal agencies. Local and federal forces have appeared to be acting in lockstep at times, most notably last night, and having federal representatives embedded with the PPB incident command would certainly make such coordination easier. We will have to see if this uncoupling materially changes their respective responses.
Finally on the fed front, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), one of the agencies currently occupying Portland, was quietly reclassified as a Security Agency by the Trump Administration [6]. Teasing apart the legalese, this shields all employee information, such as the identities of officers who have committed misconduct, from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Combined with the lack of personal or even agency identifiers on many of the federal officers in Portland right now, this effectively means that the only accountability the officers have is internal. If an officer commits misconduct, not only can protesters not identify who they are, but press can no longer file a FOIA request to expose them. The only people able to hold these law enforcement officers accountable is their own agency. But, hey, it’s not like police departments or the Trump Administration have thoroughly-documented histories of obfuscating, misleading, or outright lying to the public when it comes to personal misconduct, right? Right?
But what’s been happening down on the streets?
THERE IS TWO OF US
First, if you actually got the title reference, bravo, you win the Millennial Award. If you didn’t, go watch Homestar Runner. All of it. I’ll wait. does
For the 53rd consecutive day, demonstrators gathered in Portland in protest of racism and police brutality, spurred by the murder of George Floyd on May 25th by Minneapolis police. Today featured a number of events across the entire city. One group gathered at Salmon Street Springs along the Willamette River to hold a vigil for Shai’India Harris, who was shot and killed in the Lents neighborhood of Southeast Portland on July 10th [7][8]. Another, smaller group occupied a corner of Lents Park for a few hours. A third marched from the Lloyd District over to the Pearl before migrating Downtown. The biggest events, however, began at Peninsula Park in North Portland and, as always, the Multnomah County Justice Center.
Protesters met at Peninsula Park starting at 6 PM [9]. Around 7:40 PM, the emboldened group [10] had more than 300 participants, and began marching toward PPB’s North Precinct on MLK. By the time they reached the station, that number had swelled to over 500 [11]. Police, as you might expect from their behavior over the past two months, did not take kindly to this. Within minutes, they were issuing warnings and threats of force, despite the crowd engaging in no disruptive behavior [12]. In fact, the crowd was already moving on [13]. Their destination? The Portland Police Association building, the headquarters of the union for local rank-and-file officers and the site of two of the most violent nights of police brutality thus far [14][15][16][17]. What they found when they got there was truly surprising.
My God, I feel like a click-bait title editor. Still, though, it’s accurate to say that it was quite surprising to find the building devoid of police presence [18]. After all, even if police didn’t have plainclothes officers embedded in the crowd to inform them—something we know from court documents that the feds have been doing [19]—it doesn’t take a genius to figure out where a group of 500+ anti-police brutality protesters marching north on MLK from the North Precinct might be going, especially when a symbol of police lack of accountability and the location of two of the bloodiest clashes yet happens to be in exactly that direction. Regardless of my editorializing about seemingly suspicious circumstances, though, protesters sought to pounce on their seeming tactical advantage. They set up barricades in the street [20] and lit two dumpsters on fire before the LRAD showed up and began specifically commanding them not to break into PPA [21].
I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that protesters didn’t listen.
In the most aggressive tactics I have seen from protesters since the May 29th breaching of the Justice Center, protesters tore down the plywood covering the door, entered the building, and set fire to two desks [22][23]. While the fire was put out within minutes [24], PPB felt enough justification to declare a riot. They pushed the protesters down Lombard, bull rushing protesters on multiple occasions [25, 4:30], tear gassing them, tackling them, and even ripping them off their bikes [25, 21:00][26][27]. One protester ended up in the ER with multiple fractures [28]. Once again, police seemed to single out press, despite the court injunction [29][30]. As I wrote about recently, I suspect they are justifying this with the legal ambiguity created by the conflict between the recent court injunction, which prevents them from assaulting journalists—something it is surprising they needed a court order to ostensibly stop them from doing—and the expanded powers given to them during a riot declaration.
Protesters scattered into the local residential streets. Brilliant freelance journalist Tuck Woodstock—seriously, follow them on Twitter (@tuckwoodstock)—witnessed a white family offering masks, hand sanitizer, and shelter to groups that passed [31]. One of them even reached out to Tuck later, saying that they were gassed in their homes during one of the previous PPA demonstration dispersals, which motivated them to provide support when they heard that protesters were heading their way [32]. Like the new protestor Sergio Olmos interviewed a few nights back, it appears that in the police’s attempt to quell these protests, they’ve only added to the number of protesters.
Protesters continued to scatter throughout the local neighborhoods, and eventually dispersed entirely [33].
Now, whatever you think about the actions of the protesters tonight, I want you to try to put them in context. Before you rush to condemn them or laud them, put those actions into the context of the police response, local and federal, over the past 53 days. Put them into the context of feds disappearing people. Put them into the context of protester actions during the one real riot we’ve had during these protests, May 29th. Put them into the context of decades of police abuses, and the protests and riots they have spurred. Or, ya know, just listen to Robert Evans [34].
Over at the Justice Center, protesters were greeted by a new-and-improved Sacred Fence, which law enforcement said was out there to deescalate tensions [35]. This certainly came off as quite amusing to those of us who have been covering this for a while; after all, just a month ago PPB was taking DOWN a fence to deescalate tensions [36]. A group of medical professionals gathered on the steps of the Justice Center to speak about the intersection of police violence and public health [37][38][39]. Meanwhile, a block away at the courthouse, a group of moms created a human barricade to demonstrate their solidarity with the protesters [40][41].
Speaking of barricades, the new and improved Sacred Fence wasn’t fairing so well [42][43][44, 12:30]. The crowd, however, was [45], reaching a peak size of about 750 people. Combined with the other events, this made today the single largest turnout since the early weeks of the protests, demonstrating just how much the federal presence has revitalized the local movement. The feds in the courthouse did not seem to take kindly to the fence removal or protesters banging on the doors, so they tear gassed and flashbanged the entire crowd, including the moms up front [44, 41:40][46][47][48]. In a clip that I am certain will make the rounds in the next few days, feds started viciously beating an individual without provocation, to which he responded with the most legendary stoicism I have ever seen [49]. You don’t even have to be a fan of the protests to appreciate just how badass that moment was.
And, somewhat surprisingly, that was it. Despite most protesters regrouping quickly and continuing to occupy the supposedly-closed parks, which they have previously used an an excuse for gassing the crowd, that was the last major action of the evening.
It’s a strange world we live in when police responding tear gassing American citizens for taking a fence down seems blasé, but here we are. At least we have ribs [50].
Black lives matter, y’all. G’night.
(P.S. I’m taking the next three nights off. I work early on Monday, so I’m going to bed early tomorrow; what little standardized patient work there is right now is, naturally, early in the morning, after I’ve been staying up late covering the protests. Monday and Tuesday are to refresh my brain. If something major happens, I’ll still provide a short update, but probably not as deep of a dive as I usually do.)
TL;DR: The largest protests in more than a month. Two major actions, two major sets of police abuses.