In recent days the Department of Homeland Security has dispatched federal law enforcement officers to Portland, scene of more than 50 consecutive nights of protests, which have regularly included damage to the federal courthouse and other major buildings.
The Bulwark
From other things I've read, the "dmage" is graffiti.
Despite loose talk about “graffiti” as the main offense, the nightly outbreaks at the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse have included repeated arson attempts. The federal government is not required by law to wait until one of these attempts succeeds in burning down the courthouse before dispatching law enforcement to protect it. Nor is DHS required to accommodate the wishes of either the local or state elected officials that it stay away.
Much of the Civil Rights Era involved agents of the federal government wading into cities and states where the locals did not want them in order to enforce the law.
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To observe that the federal government has vast authority to deploy personnel to ordinarily local law enforcement situations does not mean either that it should do so in this case or even that it should have so much such power.
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U.S. Attorney for Oregon, Billy Williams, said he wants an investigation into the actions of the federal agents.
Congress should also investigate and, as appropriate, draw up new legislation to clarify and limit federal police powers and tactics.
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DHS, which houses multiple law enforcement agencies (as does the separate Department of Justice), seems to have organized the federal law enforcement response.
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While local police practice may require the use of such identifiers, it may come as an unpleasant surprise for people to learn that federal law does not as a rule require federal law enforcers to wear [badges identifying them by name].
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The practice in Portland echoed the events of June when the U.S. Department of Justice hastily organized employees from multiple agencies, including the Bureau of Prisons, to counter protests in Washington, D.C. Many of these officers lacked not only badges but any insignia indicating which agency they belonged to. It took days of press questions to get even some of the basics on the record.
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Unmarked police vehicles are not new. In this case, however, it is alleged that the camo-clad teams are picking persons off the street, bundling them into unmarked vehicles, and driving them away from the scene. In [an] NPR interview, [ acting Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Ken] Cuccinelli basically conceded the essentials of this allegation and defended the use of unmarked vans as a way “to keep both the officers safe and also, when crowds gathered, to move people to a safe location for questioning.”
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In the absence of a warrant, an arrest can be made only for probable cause. On Cuccinelli’s telling, the individuals are being arrested on probable cause of having committed crimes involving the federal courthouse in Portland.
In the episode related by OPB and most widely cited in the new reports, a protester named Mark Pettibone alleges that he was picked up at some distance from the courthouse, bundled into a van, and taken to a location for questioning—which turned out to be the U.S. courthouse itself. Then, after Pettibone refused to answer further questions without a lawyer, he claims he was released after 90 minutes, without charges or paperwork of any kind documenting his detention.
Cuccinelli did not address the Pettibone case directly in his NPR interview. But he did acknowledge a case in which agents “believed they had identified someone” who had broken the law at the courthouse, drove the person to a separate location, determined that “they did not have the right person,” and then released the individual.
"A separate location?"
Even if Cuccinelli’s account is accurate and complete, further investigation is badly needed to pin down exactly what probable cause the DHS officers had, what sort of record-keeping is being done concerning these detentions, and whether this kind of thing has happened other times.
I think I can answer that last question.
How far from federal property are federal agents operating? Cuccinelli said only “We will pick them up in front of the courthouse. If we spot them elsewhere, we will pick them up elsewhere.”
That is unacceptably vague.
For almost two months, protests — often peaceful, sometimes less so — have been going on in Portland, Ore. But recently they caught the attention of the president of the United States, who spied an opportunity to create a dramatic confrontation that would advance his reelection message of “law and order.”
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Local officials don’t want them to do this. And for very good reason: It’s apparently making the situation worse.
There is reason to believe that this is exactly what the Trump administration wants.
In an interview, Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon told us that her contacts with Trump administration officials about the situation had convinced her that “they are not interested in problem solving,” and this has “nothing to do with public safety.”
More troubling still, Brown tells us that the situation had actually been improving in recent days, and that the arrival of federal law enforcement has caused it to deteriorate.
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Brown said that on Tuesday, she bluntly told the acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, that the presence of federal officers in the streets was exacerbating matters.
“I told him that the federal government should remove federal officers from our streets,” Brown told us. “I said it’s like adding gasoline to a fire.”
“I said, ‘We do not want you here, you are exacerbating the situation,’ ” Brown continued, adding that the mayor of Portland had the same conversation with Wolf. “It provokes confrontation to have federal troops on the streets. This is purely for political purposes."
Wolf refused the request.
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It’s not entirely clear which federal law enforcement divisions are in Portland. But we got a clue when Wolf traveled to Portland, whereupon he found some graffiti and then helpfully tweeted photos of himself with a variety of officers, some looking as if they were about to invade Fallujah.
In one photo, an officer’s uniform reads “Homeland Security Rapid Protection Force,” which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service. It’s supposed to protect federal property. Another photo appeared to show Customs and Border Protection officers.
On Friday, both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and CBP confirmed that they have officers on the ground in Portland.
These are not military troops; they are federal law enforcement. Margo Schlanger, a senior Homeland Security official under Barack Obama, told us this means not only that they can arrest people (subject to their particular jurisdiction, though it’s still not clear how this is applying in Portland), but also that state and local authorities can’t tell them to leave.
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[G]iven that his homeland security chief is actively ignoring local officials’ demands that he pull out federal law enforcement — in a manner that those officials say is inflaming the situation — it’s reasonable to surmise that escalation is the whole point of these exercises in the first place.
WaPo
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
