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A Navy Veteran Had a Question for the Feds in Portland. They Beat Him in Response.


The veteran said he wanted to ask the officers whether they felt their actions violated the Constitution. Video shows them tear-gassing him and smashing his hand with baton blows.

By


July 20, 2020



Christopher J. David had largely ignored the protests in downtown Portland, Ore., but when he saw videos of unidentified federal agents grabbing protesters off the street and throwing them into rented minivans, he felt compelled to act.

Mr. David, a Navy veteran, said that federal agents’ use of violent tactics against protesters, without the support of the mayor, the governor or local law enforcement, was a violation of the oaths that agents take to support, uphold and defend the Constitution.

And so, on Saturday, he took a bus downtown to ask the officers how they squared their actions with that oath.

Instead of getting an answer, Mr. David was beaten with a baton by one federal officer as another doused him with pepper spray, according to video footage of the encounter. After he walked away from the confrontation, Mr. David was taken to a nearby hospital, where a specialist said his right hand was broken and would require surgery to install pins, screws and plates. He declined pain medication.


I wasn’t even paying attention to the protests at all until the feds came in,” Mr. David said in an interview on Sunday night. “That’s when I became aware.”

It just didn’t seem worth it to me at that point, but it reached that threshold when I saw Pinochet-type behavior from our own government,” he said, referring to the Chilean dictator.

With his mind made up, Mr. David grabbed a backpack with some essential items — migraine medicine, nicotine gum, his wallet and ID cards — and took a bus downtown, arriving near the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse about 8:15 p.m.

The courthouse has become a focus of protesters, as well as the federal Homeland Security agents who have been dispatched to protect it. But the response by those agents in Portland has prompted a backlash over whether the officers are exceeding their arrest authority and violating the rights of protesters by detaining demonstrators in the area around the federal courthouse.

On Mr. David’s backpack were patches commemorating his time as an officer in the Navy’s Civil Engineering Corps, serving with the construction battalions — the famed Seabees.

He also wore a heather gray sweatshirt with the word “Navy” emblazoned in blue across the top and a ball cap for the Academy’s wrestling team. He wanted the officers to know by sight that he was a veteran, and someone they could talk to.

I identified the hell out of myself for a reason, I want to give them pause so we could talk,” he said. “So I wanted to go down there to tell them that I believed they were not following their oath to the Constitution. That was my goal.”

By 10:45 p.m., Mr. David was just about to leave to return home, he said, when some protesters began removing fencing around the courthouse and federal officers emerged. He made his way to a clutch of federal agents.


A video shot by Zane Sparling, a reporter with The Portland Tribune, captured what happened next. Officers in camouflage and gas masks beat Mr. David with batons and blasted pepper spray at his face. The shaky cellphone video shows him briefly shoving away the hand of the officer with the spray-can before turning around, walking away and defiantly throwing up the middle fingers of both hands. He turned and faced the officers again, raising his middle fingers even higher — though a strike from a baton had just shattered his dominant right hand.

Internet users quickly called him “Captain Portland” for barely flinching at the blows. Noting how at 6 feet 2 inches tall he towered over the officers, some people compared him to the “Game of Thrones” character known as the Mountain. On Twitter, he went from having a handful of followers before the encounter to more than 60,000 on Monday.

“My life has turned pretty dramatically weird,” he said.



 
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https://www.thedesertreview.com/new...cle_58b24c2a-bbe0-11ea-aaa3-e754ea5c27af.html

11,000 Assault Weapons Parts Smuggled In From China, Says U.S. Border Agency

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A US Border authorities seized nearly 11,000 assault weapons’ parts smuggled into the US from China in Louisville, Kentucky – a city facing violent riots rife with illegal firearms – amid a Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry into Chinese involvement in nationwide protests, according to a recent report.

The report said the shipment, valued at almost $130,000, originated from Shenzen, China and was intended for a residence in Melbourne, Florida.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers in Louisville, however, intercepted the illegal weapons deal, emphasizing unreported weapons minimize the U.S.’s “safe and strong” status, per the release.

“The importing of any type of munitions is regulated by the ATF,” said Thomas Mahn in the release, Port Director, Louisville. “This smuggler was knowingly trying to avoid detection, however, our officers remain vigilant, ensuring our community is safe.”

The June 26th announcement cast Wall Street Journal reports of illegal firearms appearing around Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in Louisville and across the country in an interesting – and perhaps foreign – light, the report said.

The report said it also follows a fatal shooting in the area leaving one American dead, perhaps, as a result of illegally imported Chinese weapons.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray stated the bureau was “looking carefully” at foreign involvement or interference, chiefly at the hands of China, in nationwide protests responding to the death of George Floyd, per the report.

Wray also noted the FBI has over 2,000 active investigations into the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

According to the FBI statement, Chinese state media, mouthpieces for the CCP, have reveled in the violence and destruction faced by the U.S., with a Global Times editorial noting “protests and chaos have spread from the US state of Minnesota to the rest of the country, and Chinese citizens are cheering.”

China is responsible for the deaths of countless Americans – whether fueling the country’s opioid epidemic or spawning and spreading the novel coronavirus to the world writ large, the FBI reported.
 
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Trump to send federal officers to US cities to tamp down unrest
US President says 'Operation Legend' will send hundreds of troops into Chicago, and other cities will follow.

7 hours ago

5c113329e9bf4aab9186fd604c6a3912_18.jpg

A federal officer pushes back demonstrators outside a courthouse in Portland, Oregon on Tuesday [Noah Berger/AP]
MORE ON UNITED STATES
President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr announced Wednesday that federal agents will surge into Chicago and Albuquerque to help combat rising crime, expanding the administration's intervention in local law enforcement as Trump runs for re-election in the United States.

"Frankly, we have no choice but to get involved," Trump said at the White House event where he made the announcement.

"Politicians running many of our cities have put interests of criminals above law-abiding citizens," Trump said.

"These same politicians have now embraced the far-left movement to break up our police departments, causing violent crime in their cities to spiral - and I mean spiral seriously - out of control," Trump said, citing murder rates in New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Chicago.

Trump said he is deploying hundreds of agents to Chicago from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the US Marshals Service, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The federal officers will work with local law enforcement to identify, arrest and prosecute violent criminals, the president said.

e8eb1912f9ef42d3b297e7ed4ca2962d_18.jpg

Chicago Police officers investigate the scene of a shooting in the city that left 14 people wounded on July 21 [Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP]
AD
Barr said the "Operation Legend" programme is modelled on federal anti-gang enforcement efforts begun in the mid-1990s and a new programme begun recently in Kansas City, Missouri, in response to deadly shootings.

Barr said there has been a "significant increase in violent crime in many inner cities" following the racial justice protests triggered by the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The protests were an "extreme reaction that has demonised police" and directly resulted in a rise in crime, Barr said.

Hundreds of federal agents already have been sent to Kansas City, Missouri, to help quell a record rise in violence after the shooting death of a young boy there. Sending federal agents to help localities is not uncommon.

Barr announced a similar surge effort in December for seven cities that had seen spiking violence.

Usually, the Justice Department sends agents under its own umbrella from the ATF or DEA, but this surge will include at least 100 DHS officers working in the region who generally conduct drug-trafficking and child-exploitation investigations.

AD
Trump has linked the growing violence in the streets with protests over racial injustice, though criminal justice experts say the spike defies easy explanation, pointing to the unprecedented moment the country is living through - a pandemic that has killed more than 140,000 Americans, historic unemployment, stay-at-home orders, a mass reckoning over race and police brutality, intense stress and even the weather. And compared with other years, crime is down overall.

Local authorities have complained that the surges in federal agents have only exacerbated tensions on the streets.

The decision to dispatch federal agents to US cities is playing out at a hyper-politicised moment when Trump is trying to show he is a "law-and-order" president and painting Democratic-led cities as out of control. With less than four months to go before Election Day, Trump has been serving up dire warnings that the violence would worsen if his Democratic rival Joe Biden is elected in November.

But civil unrest in Portland only escalated after federal agents there were accused of whisking people away in unmarked cars without probable cause.

The spike in crime has hit hard in some cities with resources already stretched thin from the pandemic. But the move to send in federal forces was initially rejected by local leaders.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot later said she and other local officials had spoken with federal authorities and come to an understanding.

"I've been very clear that we welcome actual partnership," the Democratic mayor said on Tuesday after speaking with federal officials. "But we do not welcome dictatorship. We do not welcome authoritarianism, and we do not welcome unconstitutional arrest and detainment of our residents. That is something I will not tolerate."

ab17d96274f04425b3283cba88374c63_18.jpg

President Trump cited rises in violent crime as the reason to send US federal forces into cities, over the objections of local officials [Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]
Operation Legend - named after four-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was fatally shot while sleeping in a Kansas City apartment late last month - was announced on July 8. The first arrest came earlier this week.

The Trump administration is facing growing pushback in Portland. Multiple lawsuits have been filed questioning the federal government's authority to use broad policing powers in cities. One suit filed on Tuesday said federal agents are violating protesters' 10th Amendment rights by engaging in police activities designated to local and state governments.

Oregon's attorney general sued last week, asking a judge to block federal agents' actions. The state argued that masked agents had arrested people on the streets without probable cause and far from the US courthouse that has become a target of vandalism.

Federal authorities, however, said state and local officials had been unwilling to work with them to stop the vandalism and violence against federal officers and the US courthouse.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/trump-sending-federal-troops-cities-200722200732081.html
 
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They've gotten quite out of control, these marxist rioters but this may hurt Trump's chances in the elections.

What is next? send tanks?
their police already operates MRAPs and other military vehicles. :D
 
. . .
It's absurd to defund the police, Biden won't say anything of the sort.
defund dont mean get rid off police. it means spend more money on mental health etc etc and re allocate the resources where its needed more.
 
.
Trump to send federal officers to US cities to tamp down unrest
US President says 'Operation Legend' will send hundreds of troops into Chicago, and other cities will follow.

7 hours ago

5c113329e9bf4aab9186fd604c6a3912_18.jpg

A federal officer pushes back demonstrators outside a courthouse in Portland, Oregon on Tuesday [Noah Berger/AP]
MORE ON UNITED STATES
President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr announced Wednesday that federal agents will surge into Chicago and Albuquerque to help combat rising crime, expanding the administration's intervention in local law enforcement as Trump runs for re-election in the United States.

"Frankly, we have no choice but to get involved," Trump said at the White House event where he made the announcement.

"Politicians running many of our cities have put interests of criminals above law-abiding citizens," Trump said.

"These same politicians have now embraced the far-left movement to break up our police departments, causing violent crime in their cities to spiral - and I mean spiral seriously - out of control," Trump said, citing murder rates in New York, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Chicago.

Trump said he is deploying hundreds of agents to Chicago from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the US Marshals Service, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The federal officers will work with local law enforcement to identify, arrest and prosecute violent criminals, the president said.

e8eb1912f9ef42d3b297e7ed4ca2962d_18.jpg

Chicago Police officers investigate the scene of a shooting in the city that left 14 people wounded on July 21 [Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP]
AD
Barr said the "Operation Legend" programme is modelled on federal anti-gang enforcement efforts begun in the mid-1990s and a new programme begun recently in Kansas City, Missouri, in response to deadly shootings.

Barr said there has been a "significant increase in violent crime in many inner cities" following the racial justice protests triggered by the May 25 police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The protests were an "extreme reaction that has demonised police" and directly resulted in a rise in crime, Barr said.

Hundreds of federal agents already have been sent to Kansas City, Missouri, to help quell a record rise in violence after the shooting death of a young boy there. Sending federal agents to help localities is not uncommon.

Barr announced a similar surge effort in December for seven cities that had seen spiking violence.

Usually, the Justice Department sends agents under its own umbrella from the ATF or DEA, but this surge will include at least 100 DHS officers working in the region who generally conduct drug-trafficking and child-exploitation investigations.

AD
Trump has linked the growing violence in the streets with protests over racial injustice, though criminal justice experts say the spike defies easy explanation, pointing to the unprecedented moment the country is living through - a pandemic that has killed more than 140,000 Americans, historic unemployment, stay-at-home orders, a mass reckoning over race and police brutality, intense stress and even the weather. And compared with other years, crime is down overall.

Local authorities have complained that the surges in federal agents have only exacerbated tensions on the streets.

The decision to dispatch federal agents to US cities is playing out at a hyper-politicised moment when Trump is trying to show he is a "law-and-order" president and painting Democratic-led cities as out of control. With less than four months to go before Election Day, Trump has been serving up dire warnings that the violence would worsen if his Democratic rival Joe Biden is elected in November.

But civil unrest in Portland only escalated after federal agents there were accused of whisking people away in unmarked cars without probable cause.

The spike in crime has hit hard in some cities with resources already stretched thin from the pandemic. But the move to send in federal forces was initially rejected by local leaders.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot later said she and other local officials had spoken with federal authorities and come to an understanding.

"I've been very clear that we welcome actual partnership," the Democratic mayor said on Tuesday after speaking with federal officials. "But we do not welcome dictatorship. We do not welcome authoritarianism, and we do not welcome unconstitutional arrest and detainment of our residents. That is something I will not tolerate."

ab17d96274f04425b3283cba88374c63_18.jpg

President Trump cited rises in violent crime as the reason to send US federal forces into cities, over the objections of local officials [Shannon Stapleton/Reuters]
Operation Legend - named after four-year-old LeGend Taliferro, who was fatally shot while sleeping in a Kansas City apartment late last month - was announced on July 8. The first arrest came earlier this week.

The Trump administration is facing growing pushback in Portland. Multiple lawsuits have been filed questioning the federal government's authority to use broad policing powers in cities. One suit filed on Tuesday said federal agents are violating protesters' 10th Amendment rights by engaging in police activities designated to local and state governments.

Oregon's attorney general sued last week, asking a judge to block federal agents' actions. The state argued that masked agents had arrested people on the streets without probable cause and far from the US courthouse that has become a target of vandalism.

Federal authorities, however, said state and local officials had been unwilling to work with them to stop the vandalism and violence against federal officers and the US courthouse.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/07/trump-sending-federal-troops-cities-200722200732081.html
Lately I haven't seen on main stream news about the protests. If Trump is sending federal officers the protests are still happening.
 
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