Several people have been arrested. Here's one of them. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
And making such an arrest requires anonymous shock troops in unmarked vehicles -- why, exactly? What I find most disturbing is that Americans seem to think it perfectly natural to get their news, uncritically, from... ...twitter...
As someone who actually lives in Portland, Here are a few facts: This is not a "city under siege". All the pictures of damage, etc you see are contained to a couple of blocks radius. Anywhere else in downtown, you wouldn't even know that anything was amiss. The vast majority of Portland's residents are just going through their lives as normal. The protests, in the majority, have been peaceful (it's just that peaceful protesters aren't "news worthy"), and in terms of damage, etc, things had been calming down, until Trump sent his goons in and stirred things back up. He threw gas on a fire that was burning out.
The people in that video are taking pictures of a fire that's already burning. What fires could they set with cell-phones?
No, that's not true. The people in this video, which I previously linked are starting a fire and federal agents are inside the building. https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1285696625869037574?s=20
They’re not unidentified. The insignia is clearly displayed. You can see the POLICE, SRT and the CPB insignias.
Not personally, as I haven't had a reason to go downtown for quite a while. My daughter, however does work downtown and has gone through that area. I was just talking to her about it yesterday, and she confirms what I said in my post.
Because it was someone arrested in connection with a fire that was intentionally set during protest. Would you like to see more? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
That the majority of protesters have been peaceful, that the damage is contained to a small area of downtown, and that things had been calming down.
"Portland police and Multnomah County sheriff’s deputies have filed court documents that give a day-by-day accounting of their protest response over the last six weeks, including dozens of videos that show violence downtown, photos of broken windows to courthouses and businesses and a list of more than 100 fires set. They estimated repair costs to public buildings approaching three hundred thousand so far and 4.8 million in property damage to businesses."--Detailed Violence and Damage
This is beside the point. The point is how best to get the protests - which, as Janus said, were confined to a small area and were dying down - to die out completely and restore calm and order. The city authorities evidently felt they were on the way to achieving this by themselves, but Trump sent in his goons to stir it all up again, against their advice and against their wishes. You do not restore civil calm by means of troops dressed up like something out of a sci-fi dystopia movie. You do it by careful police work, using the minimum of antagonism and force. You de-escalate the situation. After all, the rioters are not enemy shock troops, bent on conquest. They are just citizens who have become pissed off - and inevitably some criminals, intent on exploiting the disorder. This is not rocket science. All police forces know, at least in principle, the way to do this. These DHS goons are trained for something quite different and so they are f***ing it up.