And almost as suddenly as they had grabbed him off the street, the men let him go. The federal officers who snatched him off the street as he was walking home from a peaceful protest did not tell him why he had been detained or provide him any record of an arrest, he told The Post. As far as he knows, he has not been charged with any crimes. And, Pettibone said, he did not know who detained him.
During a video press conference Friday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler twice called the federal police in his city President Trump’s “personal army” and said that he is joining a chorus of Oregon’s elected officials in sending a clear message to Washington: “Take your troops out of Portland.”
Federal officers from the U.S. Marshals Service and Department of Homeland Security have stormed Portland’s streets as part of President Trump’s promised strong response to ongoing protests. Local leaders expressed alarm at news of Pettibone’s detention and echoed calls for the feds to leave that have grown stronger since Marshals Service officers severely wounded a peaceful protester on Saturday.
Jann Carson, interim executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, called the recent arrests “flat-out unconstitutional” in a statement shared with The Post.
“Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street, we call it kidnapping,” Carson said.
“I am proud to be among the loud chorus of elected officials calling for the federal troops in Portland’s streets to go home,” Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said in a statement shared with The Post on Sunday. “Their presence here has escalated tensions and put countless Portlanders exercising their First Amendment rights in greater danger.”
Pettibone says he was simply exercising his free speech rights on Wednesday when he was detained. He and a friend were walking to a car to drive home after a relatively calm demonstration in a nearby park. He said he did not do anything to instigate police that night, or at any of the other protests he had attended over the past six weeks.
“I have a pretty strong philosophical conviction that I will not engage in any violent activity,” he told The Post. “I keep it mellow and try to document police brutality and try to show up for solidarity.”
“We’ve done a great job in Portland,” Trump said at a news conference on Monday. “Portland was totally out of control, and they went in, and I guess we have many people right now in jail. We very much quelled it, and if it starts again, we’ll quell it again very easily. It’s not hard to do, if you know what you’re doing.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...ble-high_mm-portland-810am:homepage/story-ans
Pretty clear what is going on. DHS is being used in a provocative manner. very poorly chosen one trying to provoke a pretext to further militarize the situation. What a sad excuse of a human being. A decent person would be looking for ways to de-escalate. The disturbed child we have in the White House wants to escalate.
