Unconstitutional actions by fededal police in Portland? - Page 7

HoverBoarder · 21st July 2020, 10:11 PM

Originally Posted by BobTheCoward

Now, the deputy director has admitted to an unlawful arrest

https://mobile.twitter.com/AndrewMCr...38001004482561

Wow, that is an excellent source, they directly describe the directions that they have received directly from US William Barr's office on this.

They also cite their legal justification for the abduction incident with the van. As described by FPS Deputy of Operations Richard Cline.

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Originally Posted by Federal Protective Service Deputy Director of Operations Richard Cline

So, uh, USA 40 15 13 does allow us to investigate crimes both on and off the property based on a crime occurring, or alleged crime occurring on Federal property. So in this instance, you are probably talking about the van. So the CBP, the Border Patrol officers, have been in cross desde [? Can't hear the word] with our authority. The individual that they were questioning was in a crowd and in an area where an individual was aiming a laser at the eyes of officers. People in the area that observed and kept track of him where he's going. We don't want to go into the crowd because then it's a fight between our guys and the demonstrators.

So we wait until the individual gets into a somewhat quiet area, where we don't expect to have violence when we want to talk to him. In this instance the CBP officers approached him, and he saw the approach, it was peaceful, there was no tackle, there was no get on the ground, they went to talk with him. But as they approached him, they noticed that coming in their direction were violent demonstrators that now see what's going on and they want to help, so they asked the individual, please get in the van, and they did take him to an area that was safe for both the officers and the individual to do the questioning.

So it's not a custodial arrest, we need to question this individual to find out what their role was in this laser pointing and unfortunately it got kind of spun out of control with what happened. It was a simple engagement. The individual was with the CBP officers for less than 20 minutes while they did the questioning. They had to get out of the area so weren't attacked and then they conducted the questioning and they released the individual because they did not have what they needed. The US attorney's office has consulted on every engagement that our officers are doing. The Attorney's office is also at our roll call every evening to make sure that our officers and agents are aware of the use of force, the rules of engagement, authority jurisdiction. They spent a lot of time on that, so that's how that came about

edit: note that while Cline cites 40 U.S. Code § 1513, it is actually 40 U.S. Code § 1315

40 U.S. Code § 1315.Law enforcement authority of Secretary of Homeland Security for protection of public property

Quote:

(2)Powers.—While engaged in the performance of official duties, an officer or agent designated under this subsection may—

(A)enforce Federal laws and regulations for the protection of persons and property;
(B)carry firearms;
(C)make arrests without a warrant for any offense against the United States committed in the presence of the officer or agent or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if the officer or agent has reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing a felony;
(D)serve warrants and subpoenas issued under the authority of the United States;
(E)conduct investigations, on and off the property in question, of offenses that may have been committed against property owned or occupied by the Federal Government or persons on the property; and
(F)carry out such other activities for the promotion of homeland security as the Secretary may prescribe.

HoverBoarder · 21st July 2020, 11:29 PM

As a follow up, to the video, Cline also noted that there are three officers who have eye injuries because of the laser attacks, and they may not recover sight in those eyes. Having three officers facing potential partial blindness was likely a primary reason to question the suspect in the van abduction incident. He also noted that the more violent protesters have begun talking about attacking the water supplies for the Federal Courthouse building. That is not even mentioning the comments I have seen of people wanting to kidnap or kill officers in retaliation for the van abduction incident.

One of the clear problems is that you have people attacking officers without a good way for the agents protecting the building to make arrests in a safe way without the more violent protesters becoming more violent. To be clear, I am sure that the FPS and CBP officers would be more than happy to stay in the courthouse if they were not being attacked every night.

The Navy veteran being attacked and having his hand broken for asking the officers a question was pretty horrific. However, from the news, I had the impression that officers were roaming around neighborhoods looking for people dressed in black to abduct and question. Now that I know more information on the background, I think it is pretty irresponsible for the news and the Mayor to be goading on the violence for click bait and likes.

It's Mayor Wheeler's city that is being destroyed, and he bears a lot of responsibility for all of the boarded up businesses. With 52 nights of straight violent protests, you can be pretty sure that there will be violence at the Courthouse on night 53, or 60, or 75, and maybe even 100. It is incredibly likely that there will be at least a few deaths in the time with the escalating violence, and the Mayor is almost entirely responsible for allowing the violence to continue. He could absolutely support and encourage peaceful protests while stopping the violent ones.

If the Mayor wanted, he could stop the violence at the Courthouse both to and from the CBP officers by setting up a setback zone, and declaring areas a riot as soon as they become violent.

If the protesters wanted their message to not be hijacked and stay peaceful, they could set up their own setback zone.

I definitely agree with holding the CBP accountable, but Wheeler needs some accountability too. Wheeler and the Governor are making a conscious choice to allow the violence to continue, and they are just as responsible if not more than the CBP officer who broke the Navy veteran, Christopher David's hand.

HoverBoarder · 21st July 2020, 11:48 PM

Originally Posted by Stacyhs

What is happening in my city at night now is disgusting. These are not the peaceful protesters we see during the day. They are a destructive mob who are burning and looting. This mob is not about police brutality or George Floyd. Mayor Wheeler, who completely supports the BLM peaceful protests, is as disgusted with these criminals as much as I am. They are doing BLM great harm. They are only giving Trump justification for sending in federal troops.

How much of the violence do you think is a result of Wheeler's actions? Does anyone think a semi passive statement of disapproval from him a few weeks ago against the violence would do anything to stop it?

caveman1917 · 22nd July 2020, 12:51 AM

Originally Posted by thaiboxerken

Yea, but mostly just for minorities.

Yeah it's amazing, isn't it. This (people being snatched into unmarked vans by unidentified people) has been happening for years to migrants. But now that it also starts happening to the rest suddenly everyone goes nuts about it.

Craig4 · 22nd July 2020, 02:32 AM

https://www.wweek.com/news/2020/07/2...as-from-parks/

Some should have warned Himmler about the talent Portlanders have for mockery. His Gestapo had just better hope they don't break out the Unipiper.

Aridas · 22nd July 2020, 02:33 AM

Originally Posted by Mader Levap

I see you still don't get it, so I will speak to you slowly and loudly.

You do not see USA as already being police state because you have correct skin color, thus not witnessing things that does fit description of what is generally understood by concept of police state.
What you describe as "getting steadily closer" is simply already existing police state being less selective in picking it's victims, like, I dunno, topic of this thread - recent kidnappings in Portland.

Do you now get it?

Rather, I do get it. Seemingly more than you, if you're going in that direction. I'm not denying that serious discrimination exists, but rather pointing out that you're conflating what constitutes a "police state" with the unpleasant truth that the police, effectively as an institution, are implicitly about control of the less wealthy and powerful and not always with particularly savory methods. What you're directly pushing is historical revisionism that thoroughly misleads on a number of points and effectively treats "police state" as a cover-all description for numerous types and forms of oppression that just don't fit it.

Has the US always been a police state like you claimed? The US existed well before there was anything that could reasonably be even called the police, so that seems more than a little farcical! So, quick and dirty skim through history time as it relates to the color of skin that you seem to be referring to.

Independence to Civil War? Yes, there was slavery. Legal slavery is really, really not the same as having a police state. Slave recapturing forces increased in numbers and can be considered some of the precursors to the police, but that's still nowhere close to having a police state. Horrible oppression to that minority in some parts of the country? Of course.

After the Civil War? Slavery was officially banned, though the loophole to use criminals as effective slaves was left and Reconstruction was thoroughly sabotaged, so there was a fair amount of criminalization of black people to try to substitute for the loss of official slave labor. "Crime" rates of black people were high, which led to more wariness towards black people at the same time as quite a lot of them took the opportunity to try to get to safer grounds. More modernish police started to exist and become more prevalent, as well as far too often acting in a rather racist manner. Numerous other forms of less obvious, but quite nasty, discrimination spread, as well. In the states that had depended on their slave economies especially, there were plenty of extrajudicial methods used to suppress the newfound political access to government that people of color had. None of this made the south, let alone the US as a whole, a police state, though that does not diminish in any way the oppression that happened. To poke at a big example of oppression, though... the Tulsa Race Massacre. That was not a government action (despite a number of policemen apparently joining the bloodthirsty mob), but it was very much a massive act of oppression. Trying to say that the US was always a police state directly interferes with any decent understanding about what was going on with the Tulsa Massacre, though.

Skip ahead a bit to the Civil Right Movement. Plenty of conflict there, of course, very much including police acting very badly, but the Civil Rights activists did succeed and reform did happen and there have been notable trends of life getting better for people of color that have continued fairly steadily since then, though with significant resistance, of course. Still no police state, though fairly modern police are by then quite prevalent. Still lots of oppression in a lot of ways.

Skip ahead to recent times and the story really doesn't change too much as the trends towards equality continue, even with setbacks like the "War on Drugs." With that said, though, the things that I was referring to when I spoke of steadily getting closer is more along the lines of, for example, how electronic surveillance and tracking is overwhelming more common in the present day, which, alone, puts us in far too easy striking distance of turning into a police state should a political police force truly be unleashed upon the US. That, combined with the way that the Trump Administration especially, though it didn't remotely start with them, has been busily working to destroy the softer, more unwritten cultural defenses that were in place to guard us against such a political police force being even able to form without causing a backlash that would fairly directly destroy a party. What's happening in Portland can effectively be treated as a benign testing of the waters in comparison to what would fairly certainly happen if the US truly did become a police state, though, like what happened in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and North Korea.

Originally Posted by Safe-Keeper

I'm not even sure if it's a race issue. That's what I'm struggling with understanding with the current demonstrations on police officers' abuse of power. Don't people see it's something that hurts everyone? That it extends from black people being choked to death, to teenagers thrown into boot camps and for-profit prisons for the most minor of offenses, the widespread problem of sexual assault in prisons, people trying to enter the States being detained and/or yelled at for hours and hours because they made some tiny mistake when filling out their forms or whatever, ludicrous sentences for minor crimes, and still I could go on and on.

I get part of this is a cultural thing, around the mentality that you have to be "tough on crime", rather than a mentality around prevention and rehabilitation and actually, you know, understanding why crime happens in the first place, but I just don't get the people dismissing the protests with pretending racism doesn't exist in the police force. It's not even that it's so crystal clear it does, but also that racism is only one of the countless problems with the US police force.

"Police state" is one of those buzzwords it's really hard to nail down the actual definition of, so I won't get into that, but the fact remains the US police force has been in dire need of reform for ages, and that hurts everyone, not just black people and immigrants from the south.

Pretty much. It's well worth acknowledging that the current state of things disproportionately hurts certain groups, though, and that it is easy to lose sight of the larger picture, especially by those most affected. Not that the larger picture is particularly pretty, but pretty much all of us like to simplify things for easier comprehension and those harmed most have much more powerful motivation to focus on the parts most immediately relevant to their experience, rather than the larger picture.

Originally Posted by caveman1917

Yeah it's amazing, isn't it. This (people being snatched into unmarked vans by unidentified people) has been happening for years to migrants. But now that it also starts happening to the rest suddenly everyone goes nuts about it.

There are a couple important differences between cracking down on people who are directly exercising their First Amendment rights in an already in the spotlight area and pointedly without valid cause and cracking down on people of color or migrants who were just, say, walking home and at a not at all in the spotlight area. Still, you do have a point that both are problematic, if I'm understanding you correctly.

BobTheCoward · 22nd July 2020, 04:42 AM

Originally Posted by HoverBoarder

Wow, that is an excellent source, they directly describe the directions that they have received directly from US William Barr's office on this.

They also cite their legal justification for the abduction incident with the van. As described by FPS Deputy of Operations Richard Cline.

YouTube Video This video is not hosted by the ISF. The ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.

I AGREE

edit: note that while Cline cites 40 U.S. Code § 1513, it is actually 40 U.S. Code § 1315

40 U.S. Code § 1315.Law enforcement authority of Secretary of Homeland Security for protection of public property

The problem with the statement is court cases trump that law affirming that they cannot detain and take someone somewhere for questioning. Whatever reason they have, it still constitutes an arrest which means needs probable cause.

Mader Levap · 22nd July 2020, 05:21 AM