For anyone concerned about the rise of right-wing political violence in the United States, I strongly recommend these recent pieces from Oregon Public Broadcasting, Willamette Week, and The Oregonian for an object lesson in how politicians and police can completely mishandle the challenge. A little over a week ago, Portland was the destination for a motley gang of Proud Boys and other violent white supremacists who had long planned a rally in the city. Before their arrival, the Portland Police Bureau, backed by Mayor Ted Wheeler, who also serves as the police commissioner, stated publicly that they would not attempt to intervene in the event of any fights between the right-wingers and counter-protestors, except in the case of a “life safety emergency.”
In doing so, the city sent a signal not only to the Proud Boys and their ilk, but also to the misguided counter-protestors who seek physical confrontation with their right-wing nemeses, that they were free to turn parts of the city into free-fire zones of roving gangs and lawlessness — which is exactly what happened Sunday, as fights and mayhem ensued in both northeastern Portland and downtown. In the Parkrose neighborhood, fights in a K Mart parking lot moved onto the property of nearby businesses, as well as Parkrose High School, where vehicles were vandalized. Downtown, among clashes between right-wingers and counter-protestors, a man fired a gun; thankfully, no one was injured, and the police arrested him within minutes (the police say he wasn’t associated with any of the brawling groups).
Perversely, Mayor Wheeler proclaimed the police strategy a resounding success, saying, “With strategic planning and oversight, the Portland Police Bureau and I mitigated confrontation between the two events and minimized the impact of the weekend’s events to Portlanders. In the past, these same groups have clashed with extremely violent and destructive results. This time, violence was contained to the groups of people who chose to engage in violence toward each other. The community at large was not harmed and the broader public was protected. Property damage was minimal.’’
But these claims of success are contradicted by the actual events of the weekend. Residents of the Parkrose neighborhood told reporters from Willamette Week and OPB of feeling traumatized by the violence and unsafe on their own streets. Even absent outright violence against them, police decisions that turned over parts of one of Portland’s most diverse neighborhoods to groups who avow hatred for minorities, with the result being that Portlanders feared for their safety on the streets and in their workplaces, is incomprehensible and contemptible. It is startling that the mayor thinks that the terrorization of a Portland neighborhood counts as a success if actual casualties were confined to the brawlers.
It is also incredibly difficult to believe that Portland police wouldn’t have responded if the Proud Boys and their compatriots had invaded a wealthier, and whiter, neighborhood. As Zakir Khan, a Portland civil rights advocate, told the Willamette Week, “We learned lessons on Sunday that showed that East Portland and West Portland are treated like entirely different places, that one huge swath of the city will be disregarded and unprotected. When you say you are not going to put a police presence in between groups that are going to fight each other—and especially between a Proud Boys group that has shown a propensity for hurting innocent bystanders before—you are saying that you are willing to accept collateral damage as a city.” Indeed, this is a theme that Willamette Week’s coverage captures very well — decision-making by the city that ended up allowing racist groups to rally and brawl in a diverse neighborhood.
The shooting incident in downtown Portland, though, gives the lie to the idea that the hands-off approach by police was wise or justified. Even if the man who fired his weapon was not connected to the day’s clashing groups, as the police state, Mayor Wheeler’s suggestion that violence can be easily confined to battling gangs still flies out the window when we consider that terrible piece of technology, the firearm, which is well know for shooting high-speed projectiles at long distances and hitting innocent bystanders. It is completely within the realm of possibility that a non-participant might have been wounded or killed by the downtown shooting. But it’s also unsettling to think that the mayor thinks that anyone who shows up to fight deserves what they get, even if what they get is a bullet in the head.
Police officials expressed concern that a police presence might inflame the protestors, but the protestors seemed self-inflaming even in their absence. Police also suggested that they might become targets of the factions if they were to intervene, but this seems an inevitable part of the job of stopping violent individuals. They also pointed to a depleted number of officers as one reason why police adopted their hands-off strategy, but it is hard to believe that an organization that still has more than 800 sworn officers could not handle the much smaller groups of brawlers involved in Sunday’s fights.
But this last police concern goes to a larger point raised by Amy Herzfeld-Copple, deputy director of programs and strategic initiatives at the Western States Center. Herzfeld-Copple told The Oregonian that, “It’s time for city and county officials and communities outside Portland to take responsibility for countering such violence. Portland isn’t an island. It requires support from all levels of government.” If Portland police really lack sufficient manpower to combat political violence, then other jurisdictions, including state support, should be requested. And beyond this, political leaders in Oregon and beyond need to be asking hard questions about how to counter right-wing violence that denies Americans their basic liberties of safety, the right to work, and free movement. The city and police are also making a grotesque error in continuing to conflate the threat from right-wing and left-wing protestors. Only one side is dedicated to violent opposition to modern America and encompasses groups that participated in an actual armed insurrection against the U.S. government on January 6, which also included mass mob violence against law enforcement personnel. Herzfeld-Copple notes that, “When there isn’t rule of law, when law enforcement doesn’t intervene to protect public safety, it only reinforces the lawlessness and fear that anti-democratic groups thrive on.”
City and police decisions to turn any section of Portland into a free-fire zone for brawling political factions are not compatible with public safety or a free and democratic society where we are all able to move about our neighborhoods and city, without Proud Boys or antifa types catching us in their crossfires, and causing us to fear for our physical well-being. When the police and mayor decided to contain right-wing violence rather than disrupt it, they failed in their duty to the city. The mayor’s statements that the Portland police achieved a great victory last weekend is the very definition of gaslighting, and ignores the lived reality of thousands of Portlanders that day.