“This story, like many that have come before it, simply confirms what many in the community have already known – there are members of the Portland police force who work in collusion with right-wing extremists,”
Been this way for a loooong time.
Friendly Texts Between Oregon Police And Far-Right Extremists Rock Portland
Remember that Oregon is a very white state. Its founding documents (from the 1840s) excluded even free African-Americans from the territory.
IOW, quelle surprise.
ETA: Oregon was also a big KKK area in the 1920s. Many states had KKK members at the time (it was all the rage, very fashionable…), but Oregon went well beyond that.
I didn’t think the neo nazis ever traveled west of the Cascades.
What, a white guy motivated to become a cop has a white superiority complex, who’d a thunk it?
Yeppers. I had it in the back of my mind that the alliance between police and the right probably has a significant basis in the history of nabbing fugitive slaves and punishing the “uppity other” post-Emancipation.
On one hand, I’m surprised that weird Portland still has cops like this.
On the other, I know some cops who work to maintain lines of communication with demonstration leaders to try and avoid tensions that might build to violence.
On the third hand (thank you Tevye), condoning the appearance of a guy known to commit violent acts and not even bothering to check his warrants seems like it would lead to a neglect suit if anyone was injured by the white supremacist group. Niiya (what kind of white Murkin name is that?) looks like he condoned the guy’s presence.
Here’s a map put together by the Southern Poverty Law Center of hate groups.
The West Coast has it’s share. And it looks like there is now a serious nest of statewide Oregon groups that were not there a couple of years ago.
Those of us who live in Portland are not really surprised by this. Likely, nothing will happen to anyone on the force as the Portland police union rules the roost here. However, it may give the union president, an African-American officer, a bit of a moral dilemma.
In particular, his statement that he didn’t check warrants himself and so didn’t know is as wink-and-nudge as you can get. In a nonviolent context, this kind of contact makes a fair amount of sense. One friend who was in Act Up used to talk about the negotiations with police about just who would be arrested at protests and for what (for example, when they were chaining themselves to various gates).
Sounds like the police spokeswoman is speaking out of turn. Let’s hear from the police chief. And let’s review how police are hired and promoted there. There are a lot of good soldiers back from Afghanistan who should make good replacements for cops with neo-Nazi sympathies.
Fire him and any others who think its appropriate to warn extremists ahead of time.
For additional information on the background, the Oregon Historical Society has (at least) two online exhibits of interest: Blacks in Oregon and Ku Klux Klan.
Portand isn’t unique.
It’s stories like this that raise the concerns about donnie just saying that his admin is busy distributing military grade surplus to law enforcement.
Might as well ship it directly to the Proud Boys.
Hell, not only in Oregon but a good portion of Idaho and Montana’s overrun with them.
The stupid “stand” at the Malheur bird sanctuary helped spread the word that Oregon is open to racists. Sorry, all you Oregon libs.
Huntington Beach, CA has had the nazi cop reputation since I was a teenager (over 50 years). Think Dana Rohrabacher and you understand.
Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing Gohmert, Jordan, Meadows, Trump and FOX have been suggesting might have been implied by the Strzok-Page texts? I mean, if you assume that Strzok and Page had the power to decide between them not to arrest Hillary and to cause the Trump-Russia Investigation to be originated?
Oregon was a very popular destination for white people fleeing the South during/after reconstruction specifically because they wouldn’t have to deal with any pesky freed blacks.
Ironically, it is also one of the reasons Oregon became such a liberal state in other regards.