by Victoria Taft at PJ Media
It took 18 months of steady abuse by rioters and their overlords at city hall for Portland cops to say “no mas” and tap out. As one retired Portland police detective said, “If anyone did to a horse or a dog what has been done to PPB cops for 18 months, that person would have amassed hundreds of counts of felony animal abuse, but it’s perfectly OK to do it to cops, wholesale, and with an army of anarchist pals.”
The police officers in the Portland riot squad, officially called the “rapid response team (RRT),” still work for the agency, but will no longer volunteer themselves for the duty that resulted in “nearly all” members being injured with “broken bones, torn ligaments, and cartilage, traumatic brain injuries, hearing damage, damaged eyesight, lacerations and burns,” in the words of the resignation letter sent to the chief by the squad’s leader.
Expect more of this.
Unconfirmed reports abound that another nearby police agency riot squad, whose members provided back-up to the Portland Police Bureau for antifa, anarchist, and Black Lives Matter riots in the past, walked out as well. No official announcement has been made and efforts to confirm the reports have been met with silence.
Los Angeles and Seattle cops are probably next.
This cop chaos isn’t a side effect of wokesters who want to “burn it down” with no plan for keeping order after the destruction of the institutions they hate, it’s a feature.
Civil libertarians know that police power exercised by elected officials must be scrupulously watched, but also know that order doesn’t have to be sacrificed in order to achieve accountability.
Not so in Portland.
The chaos started at the top by assuming rioters were victims and cops were criminals.
In their letter, RRT leader Lieutenant Jacob Clark said rules on the books for dealing with protests and riots didn’t change, but interpretation of those rules changed often and were in conflict with interpretations by council members, the city attorney, and others. Worse, the changes in the interpretations were applied retroactively and officers, staying within the limits of the law, were suddenly written up under a new interpretation of the rules…
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