Kristian Williams
Posted May 26, 2023
Police Lies Facilitate Racist Violence(1)
BENJAMIN SMITH IS going to die in prison. On April 18, Benjamin Smith was given a life sentence after pleading guilty to murder, attempted murder, and assault following his shooting of a group of unarmed women in Portland’s Normandale Park. Every indication is that the February 2022 attack — which killed June Knightly and injured four others — was politically motivated, driven by Smith’s anger over a racial justice demonstration that the women were supporting.
Smith, who used social media to voice his fondness for Nazis and his hatred for the Black Lives Matter movement, called the women “terrorist cunts” before opening fire.(2) Despite this evidence, the Portland Police, both in their public statements and in their investigatory interviews, tried hard to frame the incident as “a confrontation between an armed homeowner and armed protesters,” essentially suggesting that Smith was defending his home from a riotous mob.(3)
In a statement released ahead of the sentencing, the survivors of Smith’s assault thoroughly refuted the police narrative: “The ‘incident’ did not ‘start’ with a mutual ‘confrontation’,” they wrote. The confrontation was entirely one-sided. “The gunman … aggressively approached a calm group of women … more than 100 feet away from his residence. His victims, who had training and experience with de-escalation, urged him to depart peacefully. Smith shot them at point blank range.” Likewise, “Smith was not a ‘homeowner’” and his apartment “did not immediately adjoin the area where the shooting took place, nor any area where protesters gathered.”
The racial justice march, which so angered him, was “more than two full blocks away, out of eyesight, and separated from the scene by a fenced baseball stadium, a line of trees, and a field.” The women he attacked were not themselves protesting, but waiting to help direct traffic. And finally, “At the outset of the attack, Smith was the only ‘armed’ individual.” It was when the shooting started that the gunfire drew the attention of an armed bystander, who then shot Smith and effectively ended the assault.(4)
The cops’ misstatements concerning the details of this case, and their framing it so as to both blame the victims and give Smith the best opportunity to claim self-defense, cannot be understood as simple errors or innocent mistakes. They are instead part of a decades-long pattern of the Portland Police ignoring, excusing, or facilitating violence from the right, while simultaneously criminalizing the political left.
This bias was most evident during the Trump years, as far-right groups like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys made regular incursions into Portland. In each instance, the cops’ enforcement efforts were directed almost entirely against the left-wing counterprotesters.(5) For instance, police did not attempt to disarm Proud Boy Alan Swinney when he pointed a gun at the crowd opposing an August 22, 2020, pro-cop “Back the Blue” rally — though he was later charged and convicted.(6) A week later, the cops likewise made no move to stop Trump truck caravans from driving through the city, shooting bystanders with paintballs and spraying them with mace.(7)
At another demonstration several months earlier, they had declined to arrest Tusitala “Tiny” Toese after he was filmed, with another rightwing thug, repeatedly kicking a man already on the ground, aiming for his head. Police labeled the incident “mutual combat.”(8) Later, Lt. Jeff Niiya, the head of the riot squad, assured Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson that the cops would not arrest Toese at an upcoming demonstration, though he was wanted on a warrant. Niiya also provided Gibson intelligence on left-wing protests, and once notified him that the police would not be monitoring a Queer Liberation Front demonstration, essentially giving a green light for an assault.(9)
In contrast, the cops have consistently tried to discredit antifascist activism: When the coalition-builders (short for “popular mobilization”) organized an antifascist dance party and served vegan milkshakes — some of which were thrown at fascists — the Portland Police circulated a ludicrous lie that the milkshakes contained quick-drying cement. They did not, as was readily apparent from the fact that hundreds of people were drinking them without suffering any ill effect.(10)
One Lieutenant explained the Bureau’s enforcement priorities by stating that the Far Right was “much more mainstream” than their leftwing antagonists.(11) In police circles, this view seems to be a matter of received wisdom. In his 1994 book, Skinhead Street Gangs, Portland Gang Enforcement Team detective Loren Christensen openly declared that when nazis march, “it’s the counterdemonstrators who will cause the most problems.”(12) At the time the city was in the midst of a protracted conflict between racist and antiracist skinheads, which gained national attention after three white supremacists murdered an Ethiopian immigrant named Mulugeta Seraw.(13) The police, and their useful idiots in the media, were systematically dismissive of the politics involved, describing it simply as gang conflict.(14) More infuriating, they often conflated the two sides, or deliberately mis-identified antiracist skinheads as nazis.(15)
The Portland Police Bureau’s Gang Enforcement Team was ordered to monitor skinheads as early as 1987.(16) The “gang” label helped legitimize police intelligence operations against the left, and gave them a convenient excuse to neglect enforcement when antiracists were the victims of violence. On more than one occasion in the nineties, the cops declined to investigate shots fired into the homes of antiracist activists.(17) This deliberate indifference continues into the present.
In 2010, when an antiracist skinhead was shot outside of a downtown bar and left paralyzed, police were quick to dismiss it as gang rivalry.(18) They never made an arrest, despite ample evidence. Antifascist researchers identified the suspect as Tom Christensen, and he later received a thumping at the hands of a Chicago antifa group.(19)
A decade later, the police were similarly indifferent to the death of Sean Kealiher, a well-known antifascist. His murder does not seem to have been politically motivated, but it is hard to shake the idea that the police indifference was. It wasn’t until Oregon Public Broadcasting and The Intercept demanded the investigatory files, that the police arrested a suspect identified years earlier. The culprit immediately confessed.(20)
The Portland Police do not merely accommodate the violence of the right. They participate in it. They are, locally, its main purveyors. Consider, for instance, the more than https://www.businessinsider.com/portland-police-used-force-6000-times-george-floyd-protesters-2021-3″>6,000 uses of force, in Portland alone, against racial justice protestors in 2020.(21) It was later revealed that the Police Bureau’s crowd control training included a Proud Boys meme celebrating violence against a “dirty hippy.”(22)
This pattern is not reducible to the prejudices of individual officers, though that certainly remains a problem.(23) Instead, it points to a tendency inherent to policing. The central function of the police institution — more even than law enforcement or public safety — is the preservation of existing inequalities, especially those related to class and race.(24)
The defining difference between left and right is precisely the left’s egalitarianism and the right’s inegalitarianism. The very nature of policing will therefore lend itself to an affinity with the right and a hostility to the left. That rightward tilt is apparent in the violence they enact, the violence they allow, and the lies that they tell.
Notes
- A version of this essay was previously published as “Normandale Park Shooting Shows How Portland Police Facilitate Far Right Violence,” Truthout, April 26, 2023.
back to text - Alex Zielinski and Conrad Wilson, “Portland’s Protests Made Them Friends. After the Normandale Park Shooting, They Became Family,” opb.org, April 17, 2023.
back to text - Here’s the PPB’s official statement: “A preliminary investigation into the February 19, 2022 shooting near the intersection of Northeast 55th Avenue and Northeast Hassalo Street indicates this incident started with a confrontation between an armed homeowner and armed protesters. The scene was extremely chaotic, and a number of witnesses were uncooperative with responding officers. Most people on scene left without talking to police. Detectives believe a large number of people either witnessed what happened, or recorded the incident as it unfolded. This is a very complicated incident, and investigators are trying to put this puzzle together without having all the pieces. Detectives ask that anyone with information or video please contact Detective Scott Broughton at Scott.Broughton@portlandoregon.gov (503) 823-3774 or Detective Rico Beniga at Rico.Beniga@portlandoregon.gov or 503-823-0457. The case number is 22-47502.” Quoted in Normandale Survivors, “Survivors: Portland Police Misled Public about Normandale Park Mass Shooting [press release],” April 17, 2023.
back to text - Normandale Survivors, “Survivors: Portland Police Misled Public about Normandale Park Mass Shooting [press release],” April 17, 2023.
back to text - Arun Gupta, “Riotlandia: Why Portland Has Become the Epicenter of Far-Right Violence,” The Intercept, August 16, 2019; Corey Pein, “Armed Trump Supporters March on Portland, Beating Up Opponents and Calling for Hillary Clinton’s Arrest,” The Daily Beast, August 6, 2018; and, Katie Shepherd, “In Chaotic Scene, Portland Police Launch Flash-Bangs and Pepper Balls at Antifascist Protesters,” Willamette Week, August 4, 2018.
back to text - Shane Burley, et al., “Bodycam Footage Shows Far-Right Figure Alan Swinney Preparing for Portland Violence,” bellingcat.com, February 10, 2021; and, Jonathan Levinson, “Violent Extremist Alan Swinney Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison for Actions in Portland-Area Protests,” opb.org, December 9, 2021.
back to text - Sergio Olmos, et al., “Person Shot and Killed During Pro-Trump Car Caravan Through Downtown Portland,” opb.org, August 29, 2020; and, Tim Dickson, “Death at a Portland Protest: What You Need to Know,” rollingstone.com, August 31, 2020.
back to text - Katie Shepherd, “Portland’s Mayor Promises to Seek Solutions to Violent Protests. But Observers Say Police Just Need to Make More Arrests,” Willamette Week, July 10, 2019.
back to text - Katie Shepherd, “Texts Between Portland Police and Patriot Prayer Ringleader Joey Gibson Show Warm Exchange,” Willamette Week, February 14, 2019; and, Alex Zielinski, “Texts Show Protective Relationship Between Portland Cops and Patriot Prayer,” portlandmercury.com, February 14, 2019.
back to text - Alex Zielinski, “Portland Police Offer No Proof that Protestors Had Milkshakes with ‘Quick-Dry Cement’,” portlandmercury.com, June 30, 2019.
back to text - Katie Shepherd, “Portland Police Saw Right-Wing Protesters as ‘Much More Mainstream’ than Leftist Ones,” Willamette Week, June 27, 2018.
back to text - Loren Christensen, Skinhead Street Gangs (Boulder, Colorado: Paladin Press, 1994) 211
back to text - Elinor Langer, A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America (New York: Picador, 2003).
back to text - Coalition for Human Dignity, Report of the Community Defense Project on Organized Neo-Fascists in Portland, Oregon (May 18, 1990). As I argue in my book Gang Politics, they were right that there was a gang aspect, but wrong to think that made the conflict apolitical. Kristian Williams, Gang Politics; Revolution, Repression, and Crime (Chico: AK Press, 2022).
back to text - Coalition for Human Dignity, Report of the Community Defense Project, 10 and 14.
back to text - Christensen, Skinhead Street Gangs, 1.
back to text - Alice Speri, “Life and Death of an Anti-Fascist,” The Intercept, March 3, 2021.
back to text - Portland Anti-Racist Action, “Portland Anti Racist Action Media Release,” Three Way Fight, April 1, 2010; Maxine Bernstein, “Anti-Racist Group Argues Shooting of Portland Man was a Neo-Nazi Attack,” Oregonlive.com, April 2, 2010; and Brian Stimson and Lisa Loving, “Anti-Racists Say Sunday’s Shooting Was Politically Motivated,” The Skanner, April 1, 2010.
back to text - South Side Chicago Anti-Racist Action, “Known White Supremacist Tom Christensen Sent to Hospital by Antifa,” southsideantifa.blogspot.com, May 3, 2017.
back to text - Jonathan Levinson and Ryan Haas, “Portland Police Arrest Man for the 2019 Murder of Leftist Activist,” opb.org, August 4, 2022; Aaron Mesh, “Suspect Confessed to Killing Sean Kealiher After Security Video Showed Him at Crash Scene,” Willamette Week, August 5, 2022; and, Speri, “Life and Death of an Anti-Fascist.”
back to text - Tyler Sonnemaker, “Portland Police Officers Used Force More than 6,000 Times Against Protestors Last Year,” Business Insider, March 20, 2021; and, Maxine Bernstein, “Portland Police Reject Federal Judge’s Contempt Finding that Officers Used Excessive Force at Protest,” oregonlive.com, January 21, 2022.
back to text - Tom Dickinson, Portland Police Used a Proud Boy Meme in Their Training Materials. The Feds Want Answers,” rollingstone.com, January 26, 2022.
back to text - Katie Shepherd, “Report Shows Portland Police Officer Had Posted in Extremist Facebook Groups Promoting Islamaphobia and Anti-Government Paramilitary Organizations,” Willamette Week, June 27, 2019; Nick Budnick, “The Cop Who Like Nazis,” Willamette Week, February 10, 2004; Maxine Bernstein, “Portland Police Panel Finds Capt. Mark Kruger Brought ‘Discredit and Disgrace’ Upon the City by Erecting a Memorial to Nazi Soldiers,” Oregonlive.com, October 8, 2010; and, Maxine Bernstein, “Portland Police Capt. Mark Kruger’s Past Discipline To Be Erased — Including for Tribute to Nazi-Era Soldiers — Under City Settlement,” Oregonlive.com, July 16, 2014.
back to text - This is the central argument of my book, Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America (Oakland: AK Press, 2015).
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