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On August 4, the Portland Police Office in Oregon protected two proto-fascist gangs while they were walking in the city, some in full armor, during a planned disruption disguised as a free speech demonstration .
Members of Patriot Prayer and his violent and joyous bodyguards, the Proud Boys, laughed and clapped behind barricades when police fired dangerous rubber bullets and other non-lethal weapons against their opponents: a mix of anti-racist and local anti-fascist demonstrators. The cops nearly killed one of these opponents when a percussion grenade penetrated a man's helmet and sank into his skull.
Police claimed that anti-fascists had thrown projectiles at riot police, which two HuffPost reporters have never seen. A few days later, after the indignation provoked by the department's reaction to the rally, Portland Police Chief Danielle Outlaw said in a conservative radio show that the protesters were acting like children and that they were only "Angry because I kicked you in the back."
What Outlaw did not say at the time was that the people that she and her ministry had defended were armed to the teeth. In a dreadful revelation on Monday, Mayor Ted Wheeler told reporters that the police found a group of Patriot Prayer members on Aug. 4 with a gun cache on a roof before the demonstrations of that day and that she had not said a word.
Instead, the police acted as a personal guard and kept silence on the cache – which included what officials described as "shoulder weapons" – for two months, when Wheeler learned About them.
At a press conference, he recalled the August 4th rally, revealing that "the Portland Police Office discovered individuals who were positioned on a rooftop parking lot in the downtown area." Portland city with a cache of guns ", according to The Oregonian. Police issued a statement on Tuesday in which he "clarified" that the cache consisted of three rifles. "After further examination, it was determined that no firearms had been seized or confiscated," the statement said.
Deputy Chief Ryan Lee stated that the unidentified members of Patriot Prayer were legally carrying the weapons and that the officers had not made any arrests.
When asked why the public was not informed about the gun cache, Outlaw reportedly said, "The recoil is always perfect." At the time, the Portland police posted photos and information about the weapons seized at the rally, without mentioning the weapons:
Joey Gibson, the leader of Patriot Prayer, who had Proud Boys among his bodyguards at various rallies he held in the Pacific Northwest, told The Oregonian that Monday was the first time that he had been in charge. he had heard about the hiding place.
Portland is a city with a white terrorist crisis. It has long been a battleground for right-to-right factions and counter-partisans, a haven for violent neo-Nazis and white supremacists and a difficult city for people of color and non-Christians . There have been many violent rallies in recent years in which fascists from outside the city have invaded the city to fight local protesters. Although the city is struggling to solve the problem, community leaders say that she has had many opportunities.
"It is simply disappointing that Portland executives do not realize that they are themselves attacked," said Eric Ward, longtime civil rights strategist and executive director of the Western States Center in Portland.
"It is a political group that joins the" right wing "that arrives in Portland with the firm intention of intimidating and provoking violence," he said. "It's not a fight between two factions. It's an assault on our values as a community, on what we want to be as a city. And we lose. "
Violent protests involving Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys erupted on the east and west coasts this weekend, sparking a national debate over what to do about a pro-Trump gang that has remained relatively uncontrolled for years by local governments.
Wheeler's latest plan, announced on Monday, concerns the regulation of all protests in the city, prompting criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union. According to Willamette Week:
At a press conference held this afternoon, Mr Wheeler said the emergency ordinance, if approved by the city council, would allow the police to limit protests to certain areas and within certain deadlines. Its purpose is to prevent the bloody fights that have broken out every time the Washington-based Patriot Prayer group in Vancouver goes to the city.
He would have learned the existence of the cache of weapons by reviewing this ordinance.
The Portland Police has not responded to the calls for comments for this article.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story wrongly asserted that the mayor of Portland was Tod Wheeler. He's called Ted Wheeler.
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