Kate Brown shirts has sent Troopers to Portland. More police is not the answer
After more than three months of protests in Portland demanding police reform and an end to systemic racism, our local elected leaders have learned nothing.
Local law enforcement agencies and the Oregon State Police and Oregon Department of Transportation escorted a pro-Trump caravan into downtown Portland Aug. 29, and a man was killed after pro-Trumpers terrorized downtown by spraying bear spray and mace, shooting paint ball guns and ramming people with trucks. Gov. Kate Brown decided the answer to this was more police, police who have decided which speech they are OK hearing, and which speech they are only too eager to repress with beatings, tear gas, and mass arrests.
Brown has not listened to the people. She does not care that the people have demanded fewer cops. She does not care the people have demanded better policing. She does not care the people have demanded an end to chemical warfare in their neighborhoods.
To Brown, the only answer is more police, and to allow those troopers to be federally deputized. Federally deputized state troopers are able to circumvent Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt — who has said he has no interest in prosecuting people for exercising their First Amendment rights — by giving those cases to a U.S. Attorney who is all too eager to make an example of protesters demanding police reform. Brown is trampling on Oregonians’ rights, serving up protesters to a Trump administration that needs more fodder for its LAW AND ORDER campaign to seize control of the election and the country.
Tear Gas Ted Wheeler has learned nothing. Portland Police beat protesters nightly. They gassed an entire neighborhood Saturday night and beat residents for talking to police on their own property. They have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on crowd control munitions this summer. And even while Tear Gas Teddy was decrying the use of munitions against protesters after federal agents shot Donavan La Bella in the face, PPB turned around and spent $50,000 on the rounds Tear Gas Teddy was condemning.
Tear Gas Teddy has long shown he has no control over the police bureau he nominally supervises as police commissioner. When federal agents invaded the city, Wheeler had plenty of time to get on MSNBC and decry the federal overreach, and issue directives that Portland Police would not cooperate with the federal invaders. Too bad while he was getting make up on for that television appearance and reveling in the national spotlight, his own police coordinated with federal agents in cracking down on protesters that night.
Trump has latched onto and targeted Portland and Oregon because of the lack of leadership from local officials. Trump knew he could get away with it here because elected officials would take no action against him. As much as Trump is a quasi-dictator salivating at the chance to enact his own form of fascism here, he would be unable to do so in the United States if strong leaders stood against him. Trump flouts the rules and norms because leaders on both the national and local level let him. Having a President deploy hundreds of federal agents to quell what he has deemed an uprising was not normal, but he got away with it because local leaders were too scared to do anything.
Dictators come to power not only because they are evil and have designs on power, but also because they encounter weak leaders who underestimate the threat or the gravity of the moment. When Wheeler had his millionaire-heir-Twitter-pissing-contest-press-conference, he said in response to Trump’s tweets, “Let’s work together. Wouldn’t that be a message? Donald Trump and Ted Wheeler working together.” When Wheeler makes a response like that, what he doesn’t understand is Trump does not play by the rules of the game, and does not care about Portland, or Wheeler, or anything. Trump only cares about maintaining his own power and his own wealth. Portland and its civil rights are incidental and too easy to drown in a Trump golden shower.
Although this has changed in the last week, Wheeler went weeks without saying anything about the nightly protests. You would think if you were mayor and you had nightly protests, many of which ended in police beating people, deploying tear gas, and arrests and occasional minor property damage, you would have near daily press conferences about what you were doing to defuse the situation. Instead, Wheeler hid out in his Pearl District condo, not meeting with protesters, not talking to the press, and remaining hidden from view while the feds ran through the streets.
Brown wasn’t much better. While DHS agents were disappearing people and deploying tear gas nightly while they beat people, Brown said little besides issuing a statement condemning the action. She could have sent in State Troopers earlier, called up the National Guard, or done literally anything, but instead she stood by while Trump’s goons wrecked havoc on the streets of Portland. And now she is allowing her state troopers to aid in the state sponsored repression of Portland, allowing the federally deputized troopers to snatch up whomever they please to bring to the U.S. Attorney for trumped up charges.
Brown and Wheeler just want the protests to go away. Wheeler knows his lack of action towards the protests is directly responsible for his plummeting approval ratings in the city. Brown, eyeing potential employment in a future Biden administration, wants the protests to disappear too. National Democratic Party leaders know that Trump is using the ongoing protests to stir up his base, scare folks in the suburbs, and turn moderate voters in swing states who see calls for the defunding of the police and masked protesters in the street as scary. Brown knows if she wants a future in the higher echelons of the Democratic Party that she needs this problem to disappear yesterday to destroy Trump’s LAW AND ORDER ammo. To accomplish this end, she has a local Portland police force that has already shown its all to eager willingness to brutally suppress protests they disagree with politically while claiming to be short handed whenever Proud Boys rampage through town. The brutality continues and Trump gets additional footage of masked protesters in the street, protesters who in turn are radicalized by the escalation of police tactics.
Oregon Democrats want things to go back to normal in Portland because they have no desire to enact any sort of progressive agenda or to pursue real change. They had a super majority in both houses this past legislative session and control of the governor’s house and what did they accomplish? Not a whole lot, just like their special legislative session earlier this summer where they claimed they banned tear gas and chokeholds, only to have PPB the very night the law was enacted gas an entire neighborhood. Democrats don’t want to be real agents of change and reform, even with their super majority, because the powers that fund them are happy enough with the status quo and a failed state that has botched everything from its handling of the coronavirus to payment of unemployment benefits. Of course part of the reason of such a feeble and moderate Democratic Party in Oregon is the radicalization and nut jobs that have taken over the Republican Party in the state. When the rising stars of the Oregon Republican Party are a loony radio host and a corrupt construction company owner, and a man who collects urine samples and denies global warming, it’s easy to see how most of the state’s moderates and business interests have turned to the Democratic Party, especially when the Democrats are all to eager to cut sweetheart tax deals for them.
What could Brown and Wheeler do to end the nightly protests? They could listen and respond to some of the protesters demands. They could:
- Redirect some of the funding currently part of the police budget toward housing or mental health services.
- Reform the police discipline and arbitration system, where bad cops are actually held accountable for their criminal actions on the job.
- Make the police have real civilian oversight. The men and women in uniform in our military are ultimately answerable to civilians in the Defense Department, why not our police force?
- Increase the educational and training requirements to become a cop so that we get a police force that is professionally trained and responsible and not just a bunch of meatheads who love nothing more than cracking skulls, and inflicting cruelty on the communities they serve.
The police in Portland no longer represent the city they serve. They are an occupying military force, an army that needs to be withdrawn. More cops in the streets is not the answer to what is happening. The beatings continue. The gas continues. The cruelty continues. More cops are not the answer, and if Brown and Wheeler have learned nothing this summer, the protests must continue.
