“What I did not expect was the cop to keep chasing me—we had now traversed about 15 feet, he was chasing me—and to start doing sword type stabs at my head and neck. When he finally landed one it hit me directly between my shoulders where your neck meets your back. As everyone who has ever had a neck injury or almost had one knows, every cell in my body tensed up involuntarily as that sort of injury can end you. Though egregious, this was not the issue. The issue was as soon as I involuntarily spun around and said "Hey my nec—" the officer shot me directly in the face with not the handheld can of mace, but the crowd control mace that looks like a fire extinguisher and is meant for, well, a crowd. He was so close—one inch from my eyes—and the burst was so intense that for the first second I thought he had taken out the big canister and punched me with it.”
To read his description of police violence against him, you might instinctively assume Donovan Farley was a hardened criminal under arrest for a serious offense, and had been fighting the officers attempting to take him into custody. Rather, Farley is a freelance reporter who one June 6 was filming Portland officers as they arrested a protestor at one of the city’s demonstrations against police violence. Concerned that the arrestee was having trouble breathing, Farley had also begun to yell at the officers to get off him. That was when the police attack on Farley began. The tear gassing he received left him temporarily blinded; he was only able to make it out of the downtown Portland when a protestor came to his rescue. His full account can be read here.
What happened to Farley is chilling and infuriating, but still more so is the fact that police assaults on reporters during the Portland protests have been a repeat occurrence, some of which are noted in this Willamette Week article and this editorial at the Portland Tribune. Their quantity and persistence suggest, at a minimum, that some Portland police personnel have deliberately chosen to disregard their obligation to respect and defend journalists’ freedom to report on the news of the city. But as the Portland Tribune editorial noted above suggests, there’s also a possibility that these assaults represent “an organized attempt by rank-and-file Portland police to intimidate accredited journalists.”
Clearly, an investigation is required to determine whether these offenses against the press constitute an organized effort, or are instances of spontaneous lawbreaking. If it’s an organized effort, this would be a grotesque and sinister abuse of power by a public institution; but even if arising spontaneously, the offense against not just journalists, but even more importantly against the citizenry of Portland and beyond, is immense and unforgivable. By their actions, the police are effectively seeking to blind the public, not as painfully but just as effectively as spraying us with one of those crowd-strength tear gas dispensers used against Donovan Farley. By preventing reporters from doing their job, whether through direct physical harm or a broader goal of intimidation, they are preventing us from knowing what is happening in our city. It is extremely important to recognize that the journalists out in the streets are not just representatives of the press but representatives of all of us, the public’s eyes and ears in the world. When police attack journalists, it is always also an attack on the public — not just a display of contempt, but a concrete effort to prevent us from knowing what it is our right to know.
In acting against journalists in ways that echo the president’s insane rhetoric about the free press being “the enemy of the people,” the Portland police officers involved and complicit in these incidents effectively constitute a Trumpist militia in the midst of our city. Whether responding to the president’s incitement to violence against journalists, or simply trying to protect their own perceived privileges, this is pure lawlessness by officers of the law. What we’ve seen happening in Portland has been repeated across the country, with hundreds of reports of journalists experiencing assaults or arrests while doing their constitutionally-protected work covering the recent wave of social justice protests. Just last week, several news organizations requested that U.S. governors investigate upwards of 60 specific cases of assault against photojournalists around the country.
In Portland last week, after complaints by the Oregonian’s editor about assaults on two of that paper’s journalists, as well as a letter from the Oregon chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, Mayor Ted Wheeler and Police Chief Chuck Lovell issued a joint statement that indicated, “Members of the media, not just in Portland but around the country, should not be targeted, hurt or arrested while reporting on the demonstrations." According to the Willamette Week, they also “vowed to thoroughly investigate all reported incidents of assault by police officers against journalists and said they are reviewing the Portland Police Bureau's tactics ‘to make sure we have the best systems in place that serve our first responders and protects the constitutional rights of our journalists.’”
It’s good that after weeks of such abuses, the mayor and the police chief have been moved to speak out (to be fair, the police chief has not held his position for that entire time) — but pledging investigations of these abuses is hardly adequate. Journalists and Portlanders in general need assurance from the mayor that any police officer deliberately engaging in such abuses is fired from the police force. When you assault our free press, there should be no second chances. This is not some mere technical violation, but an authoritarian tactic that’s a direct attack on our democracy and our free society.
It’s encouraging to see state officials start paying attention; after Wheeler and Lovell released their statement, House Speaker Tina Kotek tweeted that, “The physical intimidation of journalists by Portland police officers is a threat to the First Amendment and a free press. It’s appalling and must stop.” But like Mayor Wheeler, our state senator and representatives are responsible for doing much more than condemning. We are clearly in need of state legislation ensuring that police officers who assault members of the media face penalties commensurate with their authoritarian actions.
It’s also worth remarking on the sheer cowardice of deliberate law enforcement assaults on the press. Journalists are at these social justice demonstrations to observe and report. They are not taking part in the demonstrations, are not carrying signs insulting the police, are not part of the minority of demonstrators engaged in violence towards the police. They are neutral parties there to tell the story of what is happening, acting in a professional capacity. Striking a reporter with a baton, or shooting a photographer with a rubber bullet, are despicable attacks on neutral parties acting in the public interest. Such attacks should be considered taboo in the same as when police assault doctors or other medical professionals.
When law enforcement views journalists not as neutral parties but as enemies needing to be targeted and injured, then we are not just talking about an assault on the free press, we are talking about an assault on a free society. It’s crucial that news outlets like the Oregonian, the Associated Press, Reuters, and others are calling out the police and political leaders in defense of their reporters — but the defense of a free press is the responsibility of all of us, whether it’s through demanding laws protecting journalists or requiring that police be held accountable for their actions. A free press defends our democracy; but our democracy in turn must defend our free press.