Unions can challenge authorities in ways that the workforces they represent cannot, so it was unsurprising that Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner called out the city’s mayor and district attorney so strongly in August. “As Police Commissioner and District Attorney, your primary jobs are public safety, not politics,” Turner wrote in a letter to Ted Wheeler, who serves as Portland’s mayor and police commissioner, and county District Attorney Mike Schmidt. “You are failing.”
It is somewhat surprising, though, that the Portland Police Bureau’s media relations arm put out an official statement on Thursday suggesting that officers are being emasculated by public officials and particularly by Wheeler’s order that the bureau no longer use CS gas (a type of tear gas) to disperse crowds.
“Police need all kinds of tools and resources to effectively respond to violence perpetrated by groups of people,” the statement says. “Lately, it seems more tools have been taken away than added.” These are words of desperation.
In his Thursday announcement, Wheeler said that officers need to use something different to address the nightly violence, but he didn’t make a suggestion.
To that, the bureau responded, “No one has presented a solution of how officers can stop a rioting group who are threatening the lives of those present, especially given that in most of these cases, officers are clearly outnumbered, sometimes by hundreds.”
If we’ve learned anything in the past few months, it’s that people who assault police officers and set buildings ablaze, if championing a social justice cause, are shown incredible deference by sympathetic public officials. Police officers in cities that have seen such violence (Portland is the prime example) have been given little such deference.
The bureau acknowledged that using CS gas is undesirable, though the thing to recognize is that officers would not be in the position of using gas at all if Portland weren’t being subjected to disruptions, which often become riots, nightly. That they should be expected to prevent arson, vandalism, and violence and to arrest perpetrators, all while being assaulted with fireworks and hard projectiles, but not be permitted to use the methods at their disposal when necessary doesn’t bode well for Portland. It’s not fair to officers, either.
Policing conversations need to be had, though when gatherings descend into riots, police serve as the only barrier between bad outcomes and terrible or deadly outcomes.
