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retrofade

Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab Protesters Off Portland Streets

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This is utterly terrifying. Welcome to America in the era of President "Law and Order" Trump. 

  @Bob @Nevada Convert @pokerider @NorCalCoug @soupslam1 @Headbutt @bornontheblue @easybronc @Rebels18 @modestobulldog --- this is what you and the other diehard Trumpists are supporting. 

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Officers from the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and Customs and Border Protection’s BORTAC, have been sent to Portland to protect federal property during the recent protests against racism and police brutality.

But interviews conducted by OPB show officers are also detaining people on Portland streets who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity. Demonstrators like O’Shea and Pettibone said they think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration.

O’Shea said he ran when he saw people wearing camouflage jump out of an unmarked vehicle. He said he hid when a second unmarked van pursued him.

Video shot by O’Shea and provided to OPB shows a dark screen as O’Shea narrates the scene. Metadata from the video confirms the time and place of the protesters’ account. 

“Feds are driving around, grabbing people off the streets,” O’Shea said on the video. “I didn’t do anything +++++ing wrong. I’m recording this. I had to let somebody know that this is what happens.”

Pettibone did not escape the federal officers.

“I am basically tossed into the van,” Pettibone said. “And I had my beanie pulled over my face so I couldn’t see and they held my hands over my head.”

Pettibone and O’Shea both said they couldn’t think of anything they might have done to end up targeted by law enforcement. They attend protests regularly but they said they aren’t “instigators.” They don’t spray paint buildings, shine laser pointers at officers or do anything else other than attend protests, which law enforcement have regularly deemed “unlawful assemblies.”

Blinded by his hat, in an unmarked minivan full of armed people dressed in camouflage and body armor who hadn’t identified themselves, Pettibone said he was driven around downtown before being unloaded inside a building. He wouldn’t learn until after his release that he had been inside the federal courthouse. 

“It was basically a process of facing many walls and corners as they patted me down and took my picture and rummaged through my belongings,” Pettibone said. “One of them said, ‘This is a whole lot of nothing.’”

Pettibone said he was put into a cell. Soon after, two officers came in to read him his Miranda rights. They didn’t tell him why he was being arrested. He said they asked him if he wanted to waive his rights and answer some questions, but Pettibone declined and said he wanted a lawyer. The interview was terminated, and about 90 minutes later he was released. He said he did not receive any paperwork, citation or record of his arrest.

“I just happened to be wearing black on a sidewalk in downtown Portland at the time,” Pettibone said. “And that apparently is grounds for detaining me.”

https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement-unmarked-vehicles-portland-protesters

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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.

“A peaceful protester in Portland was shot in the head by one of Donald Trump’s secret police,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote in a Thursday tweet that also called out acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf. “Now Trump and Chad Wolf are weaponizing the DHS as their own occupying army to provoke violence on the streets of my hometown because they think it plays well with right-wing media.”

Civil rights advocates suggested the Trump administration is testing the limits of its executive power.

I think Portland is a test case,” Zakir Khan, a spokesman for the Oregon chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told The Post. “They want to see what they can get away with before launching into other parts of the country.

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. “Protesters in Portland have been shot in the head, swept away in unmarked cars, and repeatedly tear-gassed by uninvited and unwelcome federal agents. We won’t rest until they are gone.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/17/portland-protests-federal-arrests/

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What the actual F**k

 

There are going to be so many lawsuits. 

 

Welcome to Trump's SS law and order. 

Where's the the order to do this and where did it generate from? Oh, Where's Fatboy Barr?

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There are people that will explain this away; but if this headline was from a Latin American or African country those same people would use this as an opportunity to say, “I’m glad I live in the U.S.A.!”  

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Remember when Republicans used to pretend to stand for small government? Lol

#TrumpTyranny 

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1 minute ago, BSUTOP25 said:

Remember when Republicans used to pretend to stand for small government? Lol

#TrumpTyranny 

Phucking fascists... every single last one of them.

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7 minutes ago, retrofade said:

Phucking fascists... every single last one of them.

Maybe not every one of them but certainly all of them who support shit like this.

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6 minutes ago, BSUTOP25 said:

Maybe not every one of them but certainly all of them who support shit like this.

If they're supporting the piece of shit in the White House, then they're defacto supporting this gestapo bullshit.

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1 minute ago, NorCalCoug said:

You don’t know dick about what I do or don’t support Captain Collusion.  I happen to agree that this is BS but carry on.... 

 

jennifer lawrence ok GIF

Fascist says what?

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Could you all imagine if this was happening under the watch of a Dem President? These Trump cultists would be crying "tyranny"! But because it's their Golden Boy that's ultimately pulling these strings they're all too willing to turn a blind eye...

I've said it before and I'll say it again: history will look at Trump and his cultists as a $h!t stain in American history and as the bullet that ultimately debilitated the Republican party. Congrats.

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