‘It was like being preyed upon’: Portland protesters say federal officers in unmarked vans are detaining them

[homersapien 11,367]

(Emphasis mine)

 

Katie Shepherd

July 17, 2020 at 6:58 a.m. EDT

When several men in green military fatigues and generic “police” patches sprang out of an unmarked gray minivan in front of Mark Pettibone in the early hours of Wednesday morning, his first instinct was to run.

He did not know whether the men were police or far-right extremists, who frequently don militarylike outfits and harass left-leaning protesters in Portland, Ore. The 29-year-old resident said he made it about a half-block before he realized there would be no escape.

Then, he sank to his knees, hands in the air.

“I was terrified,” Pettibone told The Washington Post. “It seemed like it was out of a horror/sci-fi, like a Philip K. Dick novel. It was like being preyed upon.”

He was detained and searched. One man asked him if he had any weapons; he did not. They drove him to the federal courthouse and placed him in a holding cell. Two officers eventually returned to read his Miranda rights and ask if he would waive those rights to answer a few questions; he did not.

And almost as suddenly as they had grabbed him off the street, the men let him go.

Pettibone said he still does not know who arrested him or whether what happened to him legally qualifies as an arrest. The federal officers who snatched him off the street as he was walking home from a peaceful protest did not tell him why he had been detained or provide him any record of an arrest, he told The Post. As far as he knows, he has not been charged with any crimes.

His detention, which was first reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting, and videos of similar actions by federal officials driving around Portland in unmarked cars have raised alarm bells for many. Legal scholars questioned whether the detentions pass constitutional muster.

“Arrests require probable cause that a federal crime had been committed, that is, specific information indicating that the person likely committed a federal offense, or a fair probability that the person committed a federal offense,” Orin Kerr, a professor at University of California at Berkeley Law School, told The Post. “If the agents are grabbing people because they may have been involved in protests, that’s not probable cause.”

Federal officers from the U.S. Marshals Service and Department of Homeland Security have stormed Portland’s streets as part of President Trump’s promised strong response to ongoing protests. Local leaders expressed alarm at news of Pettibone’s detention and echoed calls for the feds to leave that have grown stronger since Marshals Service officers severely wounded a peaceful protester on Saturday.

“A peaceful protester in Portland was shot in the head by one of Donald Trump’s secret police,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote in a Thursday tweet that also called out acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf. “Now Trump and Chad Wolf are weaponizing the DHS as their own occupying army to provoke violence on the streets of my hometown because they think it plays well with right-wing media.”

Civil rights advocates suggested the Trump administration is testing the limits of its executive power.

“I think Portland is a test case,” Zakir Khan, a spokesman for the Oregon chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told The Post. “They want to see what they can get away with before launching into other parts of the country.”

Jann Carson, interim executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, called the recent arrests “flat-out unconstitutional” in a statement shared with The Post.

“Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street, we call it kidnapping,” Carson said. “Protesters in Portland have been shot in the head, swept away in unmarked cars, and repeatedly tear-gassed by uninvited and unwelcome federal agents. We won’t rest until they are gone.”

Nightly protests have seized Portland’s downtown streets since George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in late May. For more than six weeks, Portland police have clashed with left-leaning protesters speaking out against racism and police brutality. Tear gas has choked hundreds in the city, both protesters and other residents caught in the crossfire. Protesters have spray-painted anti-police messages on the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse and Multnomah County Justice Center, which serves as the local jail and a police headquarters.

After Trump sent federal officers to the city, allegedly to quell violence, tensions escalated. The feds have repeatedly deployed tear gas to scuttle protests, despite a newly passed state law that bans local police from using the chemical irritant except to quash riots. On Saturday, federal agents shot a man in the face with a less-than-lethal munition, fracturing his skull. Local officials, from the mayor to the governor, have asked the president to pull the federal officers out of the city.

“I am proud to be among the loud chorus of elected officials calling for the federal troops in Portland’s streets to go home,” Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said in a statement shared with The Post on Sunday. “Their presence here has escalated tensions and put countless Portlanders exercising their First Amendment rights in greater danger.”

Pettibone says he was simply exercising his free speech rights on Wednesday when he was detained. He and a friend were walking to a car to drive home after a relatively calm demonstration in a nearby park. He said he did not do anything to instigate police that night, or at any of the other protests he had attended over the past six weeks.

“I have a pretty strong philosophical conviction that I will not engage in any violent activity,” he told The Post. “I keep it mellow and try to document police brutality and try to show up for solidarity.”

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night, and likewise did not answer questions from Oregon Public Broadcasting. The Marshals Service told the radio station its officers had not arrested Pettibone and said the agency always keeps records of its arrests.

Trump has cheered harsh tactics by officers in Portland, and the acting Homeland Security secretary has vowed to keep federal forces in Portland until local leaders “publicly condemn what the violent anarchists are doing.”

“We’ve done a great job in Portland,” Trump said at a news conference on Monday. “Portland was totally out of control, and they went in, and I guess we have many people right now in jail. We very much quelled it, and if it starts again, we’ll quell it again very easily. It’s not hard to do, if you know what you’re doing.”

Yet the scene on Portland’s streets late Thursday reflected a different reality.

Protesters once again filled the streets in downtown, defiantly moving fencing meant to keep the crowd away from the Multnomah County Justice Center. And once again, federal officers launched tear gas into the protest.

As police, both local and federal, have responded to demonstrators with increasing force, the protests have grown more unwieldy and determined. Neither side appears ready to surrender.

“Once you’re out on the street and you’ve been tear-gassed and you see that there’s no reason — the police will claim that there’s a riot just so they can use tear gas — it makes you want to go out there even more to see if there can be any kind of justice,” Pettibone told The Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/17/portland-protests-federal-arrests/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_mm-portland-810am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans

 

Isn't this pretty much the sort of thing the second amendment folks use for justification of arming ourselves with assault rifles?

Think about the implications of that.

 

[homersapien 11,367]

Trump’s agents are sweeping peaceful citizens off the streets. This is not America.

Opinion by

Ruth Marcus

Deputy editorial page editor

July 17, 2020

 

“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech … or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Something terrible, something dangerous — and, yes, something unconstitutional — is happening in Portland, Ore. It must be stopped.

“Federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters since at least July 14,” reports Oregon Public Broadcasting. “Personal accounts and multiple videos posted online show the officers driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation of why they are being arrested, and driving off.”

The report continues: “The tactic appears to be another escalation in federal force deployed on Portland city streets, as federal officials and President Donald Trump have said they plan to ‘quell’ nightly protests outside the federal courthouse and Multnomah County Justice Center that have lasted for more than six weeks.”

Of course, authorities — and we’ll get to the matter of what authorities in a bit — have the power to prevent violence. But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening in Portland, where nightly protests have been taking place since early June. Law enforcement agents aren’t targeting protesters who engaged in violence; they appear to be sweeping up random people who have exercised their rights under the First Amendment.

Like Mark Pettibone, 29, who was heading home in the early hours of Wednesday morning when, according to The Post’s Katie Shepherd, “several men in green military fatigues and generic ‘police’ patches sprang out of an unmarked gray minivan.” Pettibone was detained, searched, driven to the federal courthouse, placed in a holding cell and read his Miranda rights against self-incrimination. He declined to waive them. And then, about 90 minutes later, he was released.

“I just happened to be wearing black on a sidewalk in downtown Portland at the time,” Pettibone told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “And that apparently is grounds for detaining me.”

This is not America.

As much as I revile what President Trump is doing to the country, I have not been among the alarmists who warn of incipient authoritarianism, of festering fascism. I believe — I have believed, anyway — in the rule of law; the steadfastness of the courts, even larded with Trump-appointed judges; the strong tradition of the U.S. military refraining from being used to serve partisan interests. But to have watched live as federal agents attacked peaceful protesters near Lafayette Square, and now to read the reports from Portland, is to worry: Perhaps that was over-optimistic.

This is not America because of the First Amendment, quoted above. It is not America because we are a federal system, something you would think Republicans, who supposedly believe in states’ rights, understand and respect. So we are a country in which governors can summon federal help, are authorized to call out the National Guard — not a country in which unbadged federal police are loosed upon innocent citizens of a state over the objections of its governor. In this case, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, joined by Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who have beseeched the feds to leave.

Yes, President Dwight D. Eisenhower deployed federal troops to Arkansas. That was to protect black students attempting to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, and to enforce a federal court order. It was to protect the students’ constitutional rights, not undermine them.

“This political theater from President Trump has nothing to do with public safety,” Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland” is “a blatant abuse of power by the federal government,” she said, adding that acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf, who visited the city on Thursday, “is on a mission to provoke confrontation for political purposes. He is putting both Oregonians and local law enforcement officers in harm’s way.”

Wolf, for his part, said Portland “has been under siege for 47 straight days by a violent mob while local political leaders refuse to restore order to protect their city. Each night, lawless anarchists destroy and desecrate property, including the federal courthouse, and attack the brave law enforcement officers protecting it.”

But Wolf’s list of terrible depredations allegedly committed by the Portland protesters was less than convincing — and, in any event, in no way justified the kind of random, unprovoked arrests that have been described. The tally from July 15:

• Violent anarchists doxed members of federal law enforcement.
• Violent anarchists attempted to damage the Hatfield Courthouse by throwing objects at it and spray painting it. Numerous fireworks were also lit.
• Violent anarchists trespassed on federal property and destroyed a card reader at the Justice Center.

There is a difference between solving a legitimate problem (the destruction of public property) and picking a political fight. Trump, understandably terrified of losing reelection, appears intent on doing the latter. “A federal courthouse is a symbol of justice — to attack it is to attack America,” Wolf thundered in his statement.

But there is a more important symbol of justice than a brick-and-mortar building.

It is called the Constitution. To ignore it is to attack America.

[Grumps 3,704]

It sounds like the Feds were trying to protect the guy from the violent anarchists!

[TitanTiger 20,472]

I’m not relishing a Biden presidency but we can’t take four more years of this senile idiot in the White House. 

[johnnyAU 3,630]

21 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

I’m not relishing a Biden presidency but we can’t take four more years of this senile idiot in the White House. 

LOL. Replacing him with another idiot, perhaps even more senile isn't the answer.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

1 hour ago, johnnyAU said:

LOL. Replacing him with another idiot, perhaps even more senile isn't the answer.

It’s the only other answer there is. And on his worst day he’s got more walking around sense than the clown we have. 

[McLoofus 35,182]

1 hour ago, johnnyAU said:

LOL. Replacing him with another idiot, perhaps even more senile isn't the answer.

Garbage. More normalizing. Terrible, terrible take.

[Mikey 16,578]

8 hours ago, homersapien said:

Trump’s agents are sweeping peaceful citizens off the streets. This is not America.

Those are not peaceful protestors. The federal troops are there to protect our federal buildings and grounds from damage similar mobs have been doing to other places lately. The problem so far is that there have been no unpleasant consequences for the rioters. Rounding groups of them up and hauling them in cattle trucks to Leavenworth for a few weeks in the stockade would calm things down. I think I'll send that in as a written suggestion.

[aubiefifty 16,766]

independent.co.uk

White supremacists pose as Antifa online and instigate violence

Gino Spocchia

7-9 minutes

Twitter has deleted a white supremacist account that was pretending to represent “Antifa”, the left-wing activist group that Donald Trump has blamed for disturbances during protests across the US.

“This account violated our platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts,” said a Twitter spokesperson. “We took action after the account sent a Tweet inciting violence and broke the Twitter Rules.”

The fake @ANTIFA_US account, which called on its followers to “f***k the city”, was linked to a white supremacist group known as Identity Evropa, said Twitter.

Download the new Independent Premium app

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

It comes as thousands of new Facebook members are added to so-called ‘justice for George Floyd’ groups created before the unarmed black man’s killing last week.

Whilst the groups are named in tribute to George Floyd, some pages appeared to be renamed in a bid to attract thousands of people to private feeds.

According to Facebook’s own data, one group named ‘Justice for George Floyd’ had seen more than 1,773 new members within the past 30 days, and some 1,860 in total.

That came despite the group having been created more than two years earlier, in February 2018, when it was called ‘Global RHL ( MEN & WOMEN Group)’.

The sudden increase in members appeared to come at the same time the page was renamed ‘Justice for George Floyd’, less than 48 hours after his death caused widespread outrage and attracted attention online.

But an admin account named Martin Hector Morales, who created the group in 2018, can be seen using apparent slurs against black Americans in previous posts.

On April 8th, he used the slur “dinda nuffins” to mock black Americans who had supported Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

No hype, just the advice and analysis you need

“Dindunuffins: I don’t vote, it ain’t gone change s***t,” wrote Mr Morales on his own Facebook feed. “Also dindunuffins: OMG I can’t believe Bernie Sanders duh snake left us, he was gone be the first black president.”

Another account with moderator control over the ‘Justice for George Floyd’ page, named Jay Ted M Peraah, had also made degenerative comments about black culture on his own Facebook feed.

“Sorry if you don’t like it but African rappers are culture vultures,” wrote Mr Peraah last month, who also slammed “black male Democrats” for listening to feminists, the LGBTQ community, and “Communists”.

The moderator then wrote “Trump 2020” underneath the post.

Alongside the Facebook group’s name changes, the opinions and posts of its members raise questions about the motives and authenticity behind the page that has now attracted almost 2,000 thousand members.

Whilst other Facebook groups named ‘justice for George Floyd’ appeared to be genuine, others also appeared to have been created to cause division through the same means.

In a statement, Facebook said it "blocks millions of fake accounts every day" and that the 'Justice for George Floyd' page brought to its attention would be reviewed.

The spokesperson added: “There’s no place for hate speech or inauthentic behaviour on Facebook and we are investigating the accounts brought to our attention."

[aubiefifty 16,766]

trofire.com

White Supremacists Caught Posing As Antifa To Recruit Looters And Rioters - The Ring of Fire Network

Farron Cousins

4-5 minutes

A noted white supremacist organization has been busted posing as Antifa activists to recruit people online to go loot and riot during the protests. This has been suspected since the rioting began, and now there is proof that not everything happening is a result of Antifa. The Right will never except this evidence, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t important. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

Transcript:

*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

So ever since these protests across the nation began, we’ve been hearing a lot more about Antifa because if you watch or read right-wing news, you understand that Antifa is the biggest threat that the United States has ever faced and that every single horrible thing happening in this country right now is clearly the work of Antifa. And sometimes depending on what right-wing site you’re reading, these Antifa people are actually being funded by George Soros. Now none of that is true. Okay. Let’s let’s make sure everybody understands. None of that is true. And what we’re finding out now is that apparently white nationalist organizations, racists, had been going online and posing as Antifa to get people, to recruit people to go out and loot and riot during these protests. So those people out there that the right wingers are blaming or claiming are Antifa, those are actually your people.

Like, we know that now. Facebook’s busted them. Twitter’s busted them. We know that those are your people out there doing it and now you’re sitting there trying to blame this on your mythical Antifa, which by the way, I just feel like this always needs to be repeated. Antifa means anti-fascist, like, that’s a good thing. That’s where we want to be as a country, anti-fascist. We don’t want to be Profa. It’s better to be Antifa, but right now, what we’re seeing throughout the country, we don’t even know if that is this so-called Antifa or not. Because so many hate groups have been trying to recruit people while pretending to be Antifa, just as a way to make Antifa look bad. One of the groups that Twitter identified and ended up having to suspend their account is a white nationalist organization called Identity Europa.

That is a white nationalist group and they had created a fake Twitter account, @Antifa_us, and they got on Twitter and they’re sending messages out, you know, tweets out, encouraging violence, encouraging looting and burglaries and the tweet that finally really set things over the edge was this one, it said, tonight’s the night comrades and they also had a Brown raised fist emoji. Tonight we say F this city and we move into the residential areas, the white hoods, and we take what’s ours. Because that’s totally how people talk. That seriously reads like an undercover cop, trying to be hip and cool with today’s youth. Like, how do you do fellow lawbreakers? What say you, we take what’s ours and we, you know. No, nobody, nobody actually talks like that you morons. But they thought that’s what Antifa was like, tonight’s the night comrades.

These people are ridiculous and so is everybody out there who thinks that Antifa is some kind of organization that has a headquarters or a leader, or has any kind of real tangible group. They don’t even have meetings. Right? It’s a group of people who slapped that label on themselves and they go out. Some of them cause trouble. Some of them stand up to the very fascists and neo-Nazis that are trying to smear them right now. All in all, I’d say Antifa is probably a net good for this country because they’re willing to go out there and fight fights that others aren’t willing to do. But we also need to understand that these white nationalist organizations, the group Antifa’s fought against for years now, they’re trying to smear this organization right now. It’s again, these people, not organization, they’re trying to smear them right now by pretending to be them because they’re afraid of them. Because in all the white nationalist years of organizing and rioting and protesting, the only group willing to get back in their faces and sometimes throw a few punches, has been Antifa.

[johnnyAU 3,630]

12 hours ago, McLoofus said:

Garbage. More normalizing. Terrible, terrible take.

No, we should have done better than Biden.  Four years, and this nimrod was the best we could muster?  Ridiculous.

[McLoofus 35,182]

1 hour ago, johnnyAU said:

No, we should have done better than Biden.  Four years, and this nimrod was the best we could muster?  Ridiculous.

In no way does that suggest he's not a far, clearly better option than trump. "Not as good as we should have done" doesn't equal "Not good enough".

This is a logical misstep that way too many otherwise intelligent people are making and it belies an underlying, emotional bias.

[homersapien 11,367]

18 hours ago, Grumps said:

It sounds like the Feds were trying to protect the guy from the violent anarchists!

We can depend on you to insert a mindless glib comment in the most god-awful situations.

We have unidentified armed military jumping out of unmarked vehicles and apprehending citizens with no probable cause and you think it's funny.   

 

[homersapien 11,367]

16 hours ago, johnnyAU said:

LOL. Replacing him with another idiot, perhaps even more senile isn't the answer.

Au contraire,  a mere "idiot" would be a HUGE improvement.

[homersapien 11,367]

10 hours ago, Mikey said:

Those are not peaceful protestors. The federal troops are there to protect our federal buildings and grounds from damage similar mobs have been doing to other places lately. The problem so far is that there have been no unpleasant consequences for the rioters. Rounding groups of them up and hauling them in cattle trucks to Leavenworth for a few weeks in the stockade would calm things down. I think I'll send that in as a written suggestion.

Do you ever read ANYTHING or do you just mindlessly respond out of a sense of MAGA duty?

 

.........But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening in Portland, where nightly protests have been taking place since early June. Law enforcement agents aren’t targeting protesters who engaged in violence; they appear to be sweeping up random people who have exercised their rights under the First Amendment.

Like Mark Pettibone, 29, who was heading home in the early hours of Wednesday morning when, according to The Post’s Katie Shepherd, “several men in green military fatigues and generic ‘police’ patches sprang out of an unmarked gray minivan.” Pettibone was detained, searched, driven to the federal courthouse, placed in a holding cell and read his Miranda rights against self-incrimination. He declined to waive them. And then, about 90 minutes later, he was released.

“I just happened to be wearing black on a sidewalk in downtown Portland at the time,” Pettibone told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “And that apparently is grounds for detaining me.”......

 

[homersapien 11,367]

3 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

trofire.com

White Supremacists Caught Posing As Antifa To Recruit Looters And Rioters - The Ring of Fire Network

Farron Cousins

4-5 minutes

A noted white supremacist organization has been busted posing as Antifa activists to recruit people online to go loot and riot during the protests. This has been suspected since the rioting began, and now there is proof that not everything happening is a result of Antifa.

Doesn't surprise me at all.  "False flag" operations are very effective on gullible people and no one is more gullible than a MAGA.

[aubiefifty 16,766]

2 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Doesn't surprise me at all.  "False flag" operations are very effective on gullible people and no one is more gullible than a MAGA.

i read an article the other day and these guys are even shooting at cops but i cannot find the damn article. they want a race war for sure.............

[aubiefifty 16,766]

18 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Do you ever read ANYTHING or do you just mindlessly respond out of a sense of MAGA duty?

 

.........But that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening in Portland, where nightly protests have been taking place since early June. Law enforcement agents aren’t targeting protesters who engaged in violence; they appear to be sweeping up random people who have exercised their rights under the First Amendment.

Like Mark Pettibone, 29, who was heading home in the early hours of Wednesday morning when, according to The Post’s Katie Shepherd, “several men in green military fatigues and generic ‘police’ patches sprang out of an unmarked gray minivan.” Pettibone was detained, searched, driven to the federal courthouse, placed in a holding cell and read his Miranda rights against self-incrimination. He declined to waive them. And then, about 90 minutes later, he was released.

“I just happened to be wearing black on a sidewalk in downtown Portland at the time,” Pettibone told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “And that apparently is grounds for detaining me.”......

 

maybe mikey wants to do some shooting himself........he would never go to jail because he is never wrong...........

 

[aubiefifty 16,766]

11 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

maybe mikey wants to do some shooting himself........he would never go to jail because he is never wrong...........

 

tough crowd on a saturday when the boys cannot take a joke.

[aubiefifty 16,766]

check your messages salty it is important.

[TitanTiger 20,472]

Imagine if Obama was sending in unnamed and unbadged federal stormtroopers to round up Tea Party protesters into unmarked cars, over the top of the objections of local governors and mayors.  People here defending it would have been absolutely losing their s***. And no, there wouldn’t be anyone here defending it. 

[I_M4_AU 7,801]

1 minute ago, TitanTiger said:

Imagine if Obama was sending in unnamed and unbadged federal stormtroopers to round up Tea Party protesters into unmarked cars, over the top of the objections of local governors and mayors.  People here defending it would have been absolutely losing their s***. And no, there wouldn’t be anyone here defending it. 

Obama was much more classy, he used the IRS on the Tea Party.

[I_M4_AU 7,801]

1 hour ago, homersapien said:

“I just happened to be wearing black on a sidewalk in downtown Portland at the time,” Pettibone told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “And that apparently is grounds for detaining me.”......

This is the biggest statement I have ever read.  Wearing black at night in the area of a protest would take a little forethought.

Look at me, I am soooooo innocent. 

[Grumps 3,704]

1 hour ago, homersapien said:

We can depend on you to insert a mindless glib comment in the most god-awful situations.

We have unidentified armed military jumping out of unmarked vehicles and apprehending citizens with no probable cause and you think it's funny.   

 

I just think it is funny that you believe that there was no probable cause. 

Red: Everybody's innocent in here.
Andy Dufresne: What about you?
Red: Only guilty man in Shawshank.

[homersapien 11,367]

1 minute ago, Grumps said:

I just think it is funny that you believe that there was no probable cause. 

Red: Everybody's innocent in here.
Andy Dufresne: What about you?
Red: Only guilty man in Shawshank.

Then what was it?   What was their probable cause?  Why did they release him?

I think it's funny when you assume this was a legal arrest apprehension.

Apparently, you also think it's "funny" when unbadged federal officers in military gear emerge from an unmarked car, snatch someone off the street and force him into the van.

I also think the notion of you being a citizen who values our constitutional rights is funny. 

Apparently, you think they don't apply to someone exercising their constitutional right to protest.