This past May Day, the same day the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center released a report with a series of policy recommendations aimed at improving the Portland Police Bureau’s response to political demonstrations, the Los Angeles police attacked peaceful demonstrators rallying in MacArthur Park calling for reforms to immigration laws.
Watching the video of police in riot gear brutally attacking everyone in sight, including children, women, innocent bystanders and members of the media, reminded me of our Police Bureau’s own troubled history in dealing with peaceful political demonstrations.
Video footage captured by National Lawyers Guild legal observers – the people wearing bright green hats at protests – and by the police during the August 22, 2002, visit by George Bush to Portland, forced the city to settle a multi-plaintiff lawsuit for more than half a million dollars for the unconstitutional actions of dozens of officers. But it was not the video that forced the city’s hand as much as the tactics and actions by police officers and their superiors.
The 2002 video by the Police Bureau’s Rapid Response Team captured a commanding officer ordering his troops to “push and spray” demonstrators with their batons and massive canisters of pepper spray. Officers followed the orders closely, attacking anyone who would stand in their way, including families with children, older men and women, and members of the national press. (At one point one can hear a reporter from the Associated Press yelling at the cops “I’m watching you guys,” to no avail; the reporter was pepper sprayed, hit and jammed with a baton, just like everyone else.) At least two babies – one of them only 10 months old – were pepper sprayed as well.
Less than a year later, the Portland police showed its tried-and-true tactics of targeting for arrest individuals believed to be “leaders” of the demonstrators. Police video recorded a conversation between two officers identifying a protestor who was standing on the sidewalk holding a sign as a “leader.” At that moment, the cops seem to have formed their suspicion that the young man was a “leader” because he had turned his face away from the camera and therefore did not want to be identified. (Less than a second later, the young man turned to look at the camera and yelled his social security number at the cops.)
Moments later an officer on a bike approached the man, told him he was under arrest, grabbed him by the arm and swung him to the ground, slamming the man’s head against the pavement. After several officers joined in, one of them doused the man with pepper spray while he was on the ground, under control and not resisting.
Incredibly, this was not the first time the Portland police used a grossly disproportionate amount of force against demonstrators. On May Day 2000, police shot at protestors with beanbags, charged the crowd with horses, arrested innocent bystanders and, according to news reports, at least one person was hit with a baton because he wasn’t moving fast enough. Apparently, the whole thing started because someone threw a newspaper box at the cops.
But in hindsight, even the cops admit they made a mistake. Captain Mike Crebs told the Willamette Week in 2005 that they had “learned from those mistakes.”
This, of course, several years after then-Chief Mark Kroeker tried to intimidate the community with his “show of force” at Maranatha Church and after Mayor Vera Katz had praised the police response. The police claim they made changes to their training and adopted different tactical approaches. Either the new training was ineffective, or the police missed an opportunity to make necessary changes to their whole approach to managing crowds.
After the August 2002 attack on peace demonstrators by the police, leadership within the Police Bureau and in City Hall failed to materialize, even after Mayor Katz admitted that “mistakes were made.” Chief Kroeker told the public that he was “pleased with the way it went.” Instead of coming up with any real changes to their policies, trainings, and tactics, the police issued a report in which they suggested demonstrators “carefully consider whether to bring small children to such events.”
“Such events” being activities as American as apple pie: speaking our minds and petitioning our government.
The failure to adopt any significant changes to the police’s crowd control policies despite these mistakes likely have contributed to the continued potential for police-led violence against political protestors. We saw the results of this lack of leadership last October, when the cops used pepper bullets, batons, and pepper spray against peaceful protestors that were complying with orders, and again in March of this year.
The NW Constitutional Rights Center’s recommendations to the police [see sidebar] offer a new opportunity to look at these flawed policies that have resulted in significant bodily and constitutional injuries, and in an erosion of the community’s trust in the police.
Mayor Tom Potter and Police Chief Rosie Sizer must take a hard look at their crowd-control tactics and seize this opportunity to make significant changes before an L.A.-type melee happens again.
