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Yesterday, just as The Oregonian photographer captured the now-iconic photo of a Portland riot police officer directing a forceful spray of mace directly in the face of an #OccupyPortland demonstrator, Portland Police Bureau Chief and likely mayoral candidate Mike Reese claimed, during an interview with a reporter, that #OccupyPortland was interfering in police response for Portland citizens, citing a rape report that couldn’t be attended to for three hours. Shocking, and horrifying, if true:
Reese, speaking live to a KGW reporter Thursday afternoon while Occupy Portland’s march on downtown banks continued to unfold, was asked how the Occupy events were distracting police from other crimes in the area.
Reese responded: “You know that’s a great question. I appreciate you asking because we are reducing our patrol response. Many days, like today, we’re taking emergency calls only for service. For example, we had a rape victim stand by for 3 hours until we could get an officer to take a report, and that makes all of us very sad.”
KGW: For three hours?
Reese: Three hours
KGW: And that’s directly related because there wasn’t enough staff, because they’ve been doing other things with Occupy Portland?’
Reese: Correct
The Police Bureau is now “clarifying” that, in fact, there was no rape ongoing, the call came in on November 6th (not a demonstration day) and that the victim was reporting a crime committed two days previously.
The 9-1-1 call came in during the day Nov. 6, not during any of the large-scale Portland police deployments, but when Central Precinct had four officers and one sergeant assigned full time to the downtown encampments. It also didn’t involve a sexual assault occurring at that moment but two days earlier, police said.
It remains to be seen whether Chief Reese’s inflammatory use of an old report of rape, blaming his department’s inability to respond to it on the protesters, will affect his credibility as he becomes less coy about his mayoral ambitions.
44 Comments
It sure seems indicative of a piss poor manager if he has to use all his resources dealing with non-violent, peaceful protestors rather than having cops available to do, you know, their fecking jobs
But now that he’s been caught in the lie, wonder what other lies he’s telling to
…snow the public
tweeted and recommended teddy. thank you — looks like the chief is part of the disinformation campaign and got caught pushing the fear fear fear button.
his having to walk that back is not gonna help his possibly running for mayor. how ironic that the pepper spray photograph was taken at the same time he was saying be afraid
Added as an afterthought on Portland PD’s behavior, and twitterized.
Just makes you feel all safe and secure when folks like these are in charge, doesn’t it?
Wow. Stupid AND thuggish!
Y’all got yourselves a genuine slimeball who ain’t fit to sleep with hawgs in a mud pit.
PdxPD Chief Mike Reese might have been “exaggerating” Mongo the Horse punching hippy!?! Say it ain’t so, Joe
http://twitter.com/#!/Fox12EP/status/137674930635554816
8-\
The young woman, Liz Nichols, reports
“Next time you get pepper sprayed, keep your mouth shut, she said they told her.”
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2011/11/a_face_full_of_pepper_spray_va.html
By the way… just to put it on the record somewhere…
The stupid horse moved it own hear, The police video is on the tweet. At moment at question, at the :39 sec of video, the officer controlling horse has the reins on the tight. At that horse’s the horse’s head swings left. Looks to me like the horse thought it was commanded to move left through tight rein.
(typo) moved it’s own head,
When they put that fracking shit into the facts, it is no wonder they poison their own damn well. Thanks for the report, Teddy.
Thanks for the link. That’s sadism, not policing.
Good information, Teddy.
Oakland Police said before the raid that they ignored emergency calls for hours in order to send their troops to attack protesters.
Here is a narrative provided Nov. 18, 2011 of a prior incident in NYC that involved Liza Sabater (@blogdiva ; http://lizasabater.com/stream) and was broadcast across Twitter. I’ve extracted the message body so you can more easily read it. The first post begins here and the last post ends here:
Thank you for sharing that.
How can anybody be so clueless about the reality of life in this information age? I guess, like FOX “News” et al, they are relying on being able to convince just enough people to muddy the waters and try to make sure that the truth never comes out.
fucking liars… I hate fucking liars….
He wasn’t “clarifying.” He was “admitting he was a goddamn liar.”
Spot on. But hence the quotation marks. I think if Teddy believed him, he wouldn’t have used them.
Thanks, Teddy.
PD “clarifies” that they’re LYING. Nice.
I’ve had an ongoing discussion w/a friend, who *initially* was more sympathetic to the Occupy movement/protests. But this friend watches a lot of tv “nooz” (not nec. Fox; just any old station will do). Said friend has rapidly imbibed the propoganda and now professes that ALL the protestors are lazy dirty slackers who don’t “feel like” working and don’t “contributed” to “the system” (no irony here). And said friend is mightily *pissed off* at how the Occupy protestors are “causing the PD to *waste* our tax dollars” on “dealing” with these “violent & out of control” protestors.
When I try to explain the reality of what’s happening, of course my friend doesn’t even WANT to believe me… very motivated by the propoganda to BLAME the protestors, see the protestors are lazy violent slackers, yadda yadda, and of course the PD is perfect in every way, etc.
The propoganda is VERY powerful. Citizens are definitely drinking the Kool Aid – as intended – and buying it. And the Kochs just laugh and laugh and laugh… all the way to their off-shore accounts. Bastards!
Because we don’t all live in Austin?
You wouldn’t believe the number of clueless in my neighborhood.
Nevertheless, this is where I live.
One result of the Occupy movement, imo, is remembering police overreact for The Powers That Be. That is captured by videos of overstepping the use of pepper spray in non-threatening situations from NY, Seattle, Oakland or UC Davis. Or police violence including use of “non-lethal” bullets to beating protesters with batons or thrusting the baton end-wise into trapped female protesters at UC Berkeley (I’d forgotten UC Chancellors think they’re of the 1%).
An outcome from police violence against Occupy and puppetry by Homeland Security and DoJ (collusion anyone) should be new State or community laws on use of force by police and accountability for civilian and police (line and management) up to criminal offences.
The Police Bureau is now “clarifying” that, in fact, there was no rape ongoing, the call came in on November 6th (not a demonstration day) and that the victim was reporting a crime committed two days previously.
So the Mayor is lying and his lie is well sick is there nothing he won’t won’t say say?
Is this police chief related to fact-deficient Newt Grinchgrinch?
Yes, but a true problem is that the propoganda media shows footage of the protests in such a way as to make it truly look like the protestors are out of control & violent, and that the PD is just “doing their best” to “manage” the situation.
True: there is footage and photos out there telling the TRUE story about how the PDs have mainly acted like storm troopers and often done nothing but pen in the protestors and then start to beat them up in various ways.
But too many citizens merely watch propoganda media, which, believe me is making a use of the footage and photos to make it *appear* as if the protestors are the problem, not the PD.
Just an fyi… we know much better here at FDL. But most citizens do not.
Gotta hand it to the Chief. If you’re going to lie, which is a given, lie big. He’s a real piece of shit that Chief.
wow, mzchief. thank you so much for detangling that from the twitter feeds and posting it. very sobering and a very beautiful action liza took in the situation.
TCU is correct.
Blatant and sick lie.
Is there anything these things won’t say?
Who wants to be Mayor, and already attends community meetings where he identifies himself as a candidate for office while wearing his uniform (see last link in post).
My partner points out that there was no pepper spray and no baton swinging for Penn State students during their car-tipping riots for Paterno et al.
Content matters to The State’s Force.
When the UCDavis Chancellor said “it isn’t safe for students on the Quad” before her Police Force opened the mouths of seated students and chemically waterboarded them with pepper spray, I guess she knew what was coming. It WASN’T safe, because her police were there.
Yes. His timing of the lie was too spot-on. He clearly hoped to bat down the possible picture of the open-mouthed protester being chemically waterboarded.
I presume that, since he’d obviously had the rape-victim-unresponse-blame story in his back pocket since November 6th, and raced out with it when it was needed.
x2
@ SharonMI, greenwarrior and Teddywan:
आपका स्वागत है! (“You are welcome!”)
I will attempt to do the same type of “transliteration” effort for more jewels I see along the way during my travels in the Twitter-verse as surely “Blessed are the peace makers” whose presence and activity is cause for gratitude and celebration.
In case you want to print out your own xmas cards, this one has a nice shade of orange: http://i.imgur.com/J3AE5.jpg
On the positive side, it’s only been two months. That they have to use such lame reasons for violence like this means the police community could be out of even the worst reasons by New Year’s. That’s when major public opinion starts turning, when all they can say anymore is “they were sitting there.”
Incidentally, is it just me who wonders if the PD’s are using rape as the banner crime that OWS supposedly is increasing, in an attempt to pit the OWS folks against the women’s rights groups?
I hope I’m wrong — I hope they aren’t THAT evil. And even so, I’m glad to see that it isn’t working.
Police brutality AND rape are BOTH horrible crimes, and BOTH need to be stamped out.
I wonder if it is possible for non police to acquire pepper spray. It would be appropriate for someone who has been sprayed to turn the table and spray the cop.
The resulting court case would be interesting. A peaceful protester exercising her/his constitutionally protected right of peaceful assembly, being sprayed. Why isn’t it assault on the police when it surely would be assault on the protester? Actually, maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to spray the cop, his friends would descend on the protester with clubs.
But, the cop in this photo deserves to be sprayed.
Rape is torture and a classic warfare tactic. Torture is common place within command-and-control structures (e.g. militaries and, yes, I know former military rape victims all the way up to the rank of general).
One of the few systematic torture operations ever revealed with the US government besides the squelched Franklin Scandal was the Tailhook Scandal (1991; note the definition of a tailhook). More recently the US public became aware that a the multi-national corporation, DynCorp, and how DynCorpt, purchased male children for Afghan police to rape as part of their indoctrination (RawStory.Com, Dec. 3, 2010). The same multi-national corporation trafficked women for similar slavery and torture under the sanction of the United Nations (Kevin Gozstola, Aug. 19, 2011).
SWAN was created to help female former Service members heal from their torture (Nov. 25, 2010). CoffeeStrong.Org is attempting to deconstruct the “Culture of Torture” as well which includes education (e.g. the reasons for creating the film, “Grounds for Resistance) and peer counseling.
Wonder if he’d have run as fast had he noticed how much that photo looks like a rape occuring at the demonstration, by the policeman.
(Not to mention the buffoonish claim of a “3-hour tour” to respond to the alleged rape report.)
I don’t understand:
“as an aside, not a coincidence the minute labor unions became a majority BLACK & BROWN like SEIU, they became eeeeeeevil :P”
…can someone clarify?
Here’s more regarding Police Executive Research Forum.