States rights

[Bubba]

Sure. Oregon authorizes federal officers to enforce state law. Under Oregon Revised Statutes § 133.245, a federal officer may arrest any person “[f]or any crime committed in the federal officer’s presence if the federal officer has probable cause to believe the person committed the crime.”

There are also several Federal properties in Portland including Federal court houses, IRS, FBI field office, etc. Those are on Federal land, not City or State and the Federal Government has full independent authority to protect those buildings, statutes or whatever.

So, unless you believe in the use of secret police by the Federal government, put names and identification on their people, put identification on their vehicles, and read those hauled off the streets their Miranda rights as you take them in.

Are you against unmarked local police like detectives and street crime units as well?

Apples and oranges. Unmarked local police and investigating or looking for crimes taking place or having taken place. When they haul someone in, even for questioning, they identify themselves. Meanwhile, a navy veteran is alleged to have asked federal "police" about how they feel about the constitutionality of their actions and got smacked and sprayed in response.

[easyrider16]

Yeah, I think the bigger issue is the excessive force being used by Federal agents in response to this situation, and without sufficient justification. It looks to me like the Feds are engaging in crowd control, disbursing protestors, and frankly they might not have the legal right to do it. That's why the state AG filed for a restraining order against them, btw.
https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/vi ... 7943749577" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Also the AG is alleging the Feds did not have markings identifying them as police, but I think that's kind of a red herring as we all know these are federal agents and likely the protestors did, too.

Bottom line is these kinds of heavy-handed tactics are the kind of thing you tend to see in oppressive regimes, not democracy. I agree the situation in Portland got out of control, but this is not the way to fix it. It doesn't even matter that they were federal versus state police, the bigger problem is the conduct. We can find a better way.

[Sporte]

Happening at least 45 days before the Feds showed up. Peaceful?

July 7 - Portland police and Multnomah County sheriff’s deputies have filed court documents that give a day-by-day accounting of their protest response over the last six weeks, including dozens of videos that show violence downtown, photos of broken windows to courthouses and businesses and a list of more than 100 fires set.

They estimated repair costs to public buildings approaching $300,000 so far and $4.8 million in property damage to businesses.

[Sporte]

This is America. Anyone can sue anyone. What matters is if you win. She is a Democrat in a very liberal state faced with the goings on in an extremely liberal city. She had to be able to say she did something.

[easyrider16]

Some of the protests were peaceful, and some acts of violence occurred. You can't just lump all the protestors together and tear gas them all when not all of them are guilty. At least, that's how I feel.

You may not agree with the AG's lawsuit but I think it has some legal merit, particularly with regard to unlawful detainer and use of force without justification. It seems to be in line with the statute you cited, which only authorizes use of force in specific situations. I don't think disbursing protestors is one of them.

[Sporte]

But they come in a lump, often in the dark. Which ones are which? Ever notice there are never 20 armed (with say bricks) Antifa members setting fires all alone. Coincidence? I respect your point of view although I come at it with a different set of assumptions. For instance, I don’t believe the police are just standing around, get bored and decide to throw a little girl walking her poodle into a car. I do believe that the majority of protestors in St Louis, Portland, Seattle, etc. are peaceful and have the right to protest. But, what happens if there are say 100 protestors, 20 of which are, throwing bricks at police, handing out frozen water bottles to encourage others to join in, possibly armed with guns and knives, using bats to smash business windows. Defiantly armed with bricks and bats, etc. which are deadly weapons that can do more damage than teargas. The other 80 are mostly yelling something but not breaking any laws. They are mixed together. There are serious laws being broken. You’re a Portland police officer, just hit in the head with a rock, who has been given the job of breaking it up by the Mayor. What do you do? Can't use teargas, can’t use rubber bullets, can’t use flash bangs… Talk to them? I don’t think the 20 want to talk. Just let them beat the old woman up with the MAGA hat (granted she isn’t very bright) or ignore that they are trying to set fire to someone’s house? What do you do? Wade into the crowd with 6 of you (whom the crowd hates) to stop it? Go home? My opinion, probably not the law, is that when peaceful protests get violent, there are the criminals and the rest of them are now accessories to that crime and should leave quickly or face the consequences. Go form up a block away or better yet, tell the rioters to cut that S&%t out.

We will see how that AG’s law suit goes. Guessing it was a political statement and will be dropped but maybe not.

[Bubba]

But they come in a lump, often in the dark. Which ones are which? Ever notice there are never 20 armed (with say bricks) Antifa members setting fires all alone. Coincidence? I respect your point of view although I come at it with a different set of assumptions. For instance, I don’t believe the police are just standing around, get bored and decide to throw a little girl walking her poodle into a car. I do believe that the majority of protestors in St Louis, Portland, Seattle, etc. are peaceful and have the right to protest. But, what happens if there are say 100 protestors, 20 of which are, throwing bricks at police, handing out frozen water bottles to encourage others to join in, possibly armed with guns and knives, using bats to smash business windows. Defiantly armed with bricks and bats, etc. which are deadly weapons that can do more damage than teargas. The other 80 are mostly yelling something but not breaking any laws. They are mixed together. There are serious laws being broken. You’re a Portland police officer, just hit in the head with a rock, who has been given the job of breaking it up by the Mayor. What do you do? Can't use teargas, can’t use rubber bullets, can’t use flash bangs… Talk to them? I don’t think the 20 want to talk. Just let them beat the old woman up with the MAGA hat (granted she isn’t very bright) or ignore that they are trying to set fire to someone’s house? What do you do? Wade into the crowd with 6 of you (whom the crowd hates) to stop it? Go home? My opinion, probably not the law, is that when peaceful protests get violent, there are the criminals and the rest of them are now accessories to that crime and should leave quickly or face the consequences. Go form up a block away or better yet, tell the rioters to cut that S&%t out.

We will see how that AG’s law suit goes. Guessing it was a political statement and will be dropped but maybe not.

Well, considering that our government used troops to wantonly attacked peaceful protesters in Washington DC recently for a presidential photo op, and the head of DHS (I believe) acknowledged the Portland agents’ lack of training, I’d say you’re stretching a bit to believe they’re not abusing authority.

[Sporte]

The DC thing is for another day but let's just say you cannot protest whenever you want whereever you want. Try having a sit-in in Nancy Pelosi's offices and see how that goes.

Not sure what their level of training has to do with their authority. Do better trained police have more authority? BTW, Antifia and BLM don't like The Portland police any better than the Feds. All the same arguments are being made where there are no Feds.

[easyrider16]

But they come in a lump, often in the dark. Which ones are which? Ever notice there are never 20 armed (with say bricks) Antifa members setting fires all alone. Coincidence?

I agree with many of your assumptions. But one thing I think you are leaving out is that police play a part, and their actions can magnify or de-escalate the violence. Often, heavy-handed tactics just make things worse. Here's an article with perspectives from officers experienced in dealing with these types of situations:

Owen West was a police officer for 30 years. Before he retired in July, he was the chief superintendent of the West Yorkshire Police in the U.K., which has about 5,000 officers.

Back in the 1980s, when he became a policeman, West said he was taught to contain, disperse and arrest unruly crowds. Police could use riot gear, cars, horses, tear gas, batons, water cannons. There was one problem with that, he said, “Very little … was known about the psychology of crowds, so we were in effect implementing tactics without knowing the science behind the way that people behave in a crowd.”

And there wasn’t a lot of science on policing in general.

“This is around a police sense of identity — you have to be a police officer to understand policing,” West said. “And I’ve often heard colleagues say, ‘What can an academic teach me about policing? What can an academic tell me about life on the streets?’ And so there’s been a mistrust, there’s been a reluctance to open up, there’s been a reluctance to share knowledge.”

But West thought academia could offer some insight. He welcomed a researcher into his police force, Clifford Stott, a social psychologist. (Hong Kong’s police watchdog recently appointed Stott to an expert panel to give advice on investigating the protests there.)

West let Stott ride along with his officers, and have all the same access that he had. In return, they collaborated on science-based crowd-control tactics.

Stott said scientists used to think that crowds have a mob mentality, “that when people enter a crowd, psychologically, their normal way of controlling their behavior through consciousness disappears, as a function of becoming anonymous.”

He disagrees. For example, he said, protesters in Hong Kong have a shared identity around fighting for democracy in defiance of the Chinese government.

Using this social-identity way of thinking about crowds, Stott argued that heavy-handed policing actually makes things worse. Once a crowd gets angry with the police, he said, its reason for being there can shift. Now, it’s about being angry at the police on top of what the initial demands were.

Reporter Phila Siu said that’s what’s happened in Hong Kong: Protests that started because of an extradition bill have largely become about how the police have handled the protests.

That has implications, Stott said, “most notably that the authorities, and in particular the police, can often have a profound role to play in producing the very violence that they pretend to stop.”

He said, that means the police are not passive, third-party peacekeepers — they play a part in what happens.

West worked with Stott and came up with something different, which he tried out in 2014.

There was a soccer game in West Yorkshire. About a hundred fans gathered in a bar, some on the street. Some of them had probably been drinking.

West’s officers wanted to do what they’d always done: control the crowd, use officers and horses to march them up to the stadium.

Instead, West asked some officers to wear different-colored jackets, blue instead of yellow. These officers talked to fans to find out what was going on. The officers found out these fans just wanted to get to the game, and they worked with cab drivers to help them do that. West did not have to use any riot gear, and there was no violence.

That’s not to say that the police liked it.

“There was a lot of nervousness about it,” he recalled. “There was a lot of fear that we were essentially handing this problem over to a small number of officers, rather than the many that we had available to us.”

But over time, the approach gained traction. West said the crowd-control tactics he and Stott worked on together are now mainstream among U.K. police.

Here in the United States, in Madison, Wisconsin, more than 40 years ago, a young police chief had reached similar conclusions about how to handle crowds.

David Couper was in his 30s, and he came face-to-face with the antiwar protests of the 1970s. He started in 1972, after the Ohio National Guard shot unarmed college students at Kent State University in 1970. Four students died, and nine were injured.

Tensions were high.

Before Couper got to Madison, some of the protests there went notoriously out of control. In 1967, students threw rocks at police. The police used tear gas, and beat students with clubs.

When he arrived, Couper told his officers not to do any of that.

“We passed out handouts and said, ‘We’re here … to accompany this protest, our job is to facilitate your ability to protest, to regulate traffic around you … and we want to work with you.’”

He asked his officers to wear blue blazers, hide their weapons and just talk to the protesters, instead of going in with force. Some officers disagreed and even tried to get him fired. But the mayor and the younger officers supported him. Couper served as police chief in Madison for 21 years. His crowd-control tactics are now known by police as the Madison Method.

https://whyy.org/segments/can-science-o ... -protests/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Sporte]

Please keep in mind that police are who we call to counter violence with violence. Unfortunately this is sometimes necessary. They are the force that we and pretty much every other country authorize to use force. They are not social workers. There are something like 700K full time local police. That doesn't include state, FBI, CBP, ATF, etc. etc. Agreed that police can do better. In any group that size there are going to be bad apples and they should be removed but you can never get that down to zero. Violent crimes are what is happening too often in some of our cities and sometimes we can't just talk the violent people out of it. The mayors send them out there to stop the violence and when the encounters turn violent, the mayors blame the police instead of the criminals. I believe police recruiting will be way down over the next few years.

BTW, in the news today about the "secret police". You want to be a cop?

"Dozens of federal law enforcement officers in Portland have had their personal information posted online by individuals who have also encouraged protesters to go to those officers’ homes, officials said Tuesday
Federal Protective Service (FPS) Deputy Director of Operations Richard Cline said at a press conference that approximately 38 law enforcement officers had been doxed as he explained why officers had had name badges removed."

[easyrider16]

In regards to countering violence with violence, there's a big difference between say, countering a drug trafficking operation or a gang like MS-13, and dealing with a largely peaceful protest with a few bad apples. Police may not *want* to be social workers, but part of their gig is community relations. They are not paramilitary. The problem with the USA is police are trained more on paramilitary techniques than community relations techniques. This is actually one of the big points BLM is trying to make.

[daytripper]

Seems to have worked in NYC, Trump threatened to bring in feds to get the some violent protesters and some peaceful protesters out of city hall park where they were illegally camped and the next day the NYPD took care of it. If you don't want the feds coming in then have the local police do their job.

[easyrider16]

Based on what I've read, the mayor and governor of NYC/NY are no more in favor of federal intervention than are those in Portland.

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/s ... n/2525245/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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[daytripper]

Based on what I've read, the mayor and governor of NYC/NY are no more in favor of federal intervention than are those in Portland.

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/s ... n/2525245/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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Correct, so to keep the feds out they did what needed to be done and let the local police maintain the law.

[easyrider16]

Apples and oranges, but to your point the protests in Portland were dying down until Trump called in the Feds.

In an interview Sunday with NPR, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler blamed the federal government for making things worse in the city.

"We have an already heightened situation. It's already tense," Wheeler said. "But after nearly five weeks of demonstrations, we are starting to see that small handful of people who were engaged in criminal activity — it was dissipating. It was calming down. We believed a week ago it would be over by this weekend. But what happened instead is the feds stepped in with a very heavy-handed approach, and it blew the lid off the whole thing."

https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updat ... n-portland" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


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