PORTLAND, OR – It’s as if they are doing everything in their power to remove the ability of Portland cops to do their job.
Shortly after the protests and riots started, the Portland Police Department began live-streaming the events from the point of view of the police officer.
The start of the issue with this is that the recordings of what was happening would begin and end at unpredictable times.
Another issue with this is that the rioters and protesters did not like being video recorded during their criminal acts and filed a lawsuit through the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
In their belief, the recording of criminal acts in a public setting is somehow a violation of someone’s rights.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit against the Portland Police on Wednesday and requested that all live streaming of the protesters and rioters be stopped immediately.
Multnomah County Circuit Judge Stephen Bushong seemed to agree with their stance and ordered a ‘temporary’ block of all officers from “collecting or maintaining audio or video of protesters” that are committed in pubic spaces while they are enacting their First Amendment rights.
Their lawsuit contends that the Police Departments actions of “filming and broadcasting protesters violates an Oregon law prohibiting law enforcement from collecting or maintaining information about the political, religious or social views, associations, or activities of people who are not suspect of criminal activity.”
The problem with that mentality is that very few of the protesters and rioters are obeying state or local law in their criminal acts of destroying private, federal property or attacking police officers.
Not to mention that the criminal actions that are being recorded are being done in the public space which anyone has the rights to view, it would be one thing if the actions were taking place in an area where people have an expectation of privacy, it is another when people are committing criminal acts in places which provides no reasonable expectation of privacy.
Jann Carson, the interim Executive Director of the ACLU in Oregon says:
“We appreciate Judge Bushong’s order. Today’s decision is an important step towards ensuring all people can exercise their rights to protest and assembly without fear of government surveillance.”
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Other civil rights lawyers also filed lawsuits against the Portland Police Department which said that the livestream actually caused what they believed to be a surveillance state.
They argued that doing the livestream violated Oregon law which prohibits recording in any manner based upon their political beliefs, providing they are not committing a crime.
While there are probably many people who have been caught on the video committing crimes, there are others who have simply been exercising their rights to protest. In that mindset, police cannot record anything if there is a chance that people who are not committing crimes are recorded in anyway.
The complaint from the ACLU says:
“The videos regularly depict individual protesters who are demonstrating peacefully and engaging in no criminal activity at all. Nevertheless, the videos have focused and will continue to focus on specific protesters, apparently for the purpose of identifying them.”
It would not take a rocket scientist to determine that if anyone needs to be identified, it would be the people that are committing crime and violence against the officers and the city of Portland, but, perhaps, that is too logical for an area that is this liberal.
The temporary injunction that was ordered banning the livestreaming will run from now until at least August 9th of this year. Until then:
“The Portland Police Bureau [is] temporarily enjoined from collecting or maintaining audio or video of protesters demonstrating in public spaces…except where the video or audio relates to an investigation of criminal activities and there exist reasonable grounds to suspect the subjects of the videos are involved in criminal conduct.”
While there are peaceful protests that occur in Portland, whatever is set up as peaceful end when it becomes nighttime. Officers and/or video surveillance which would be capturing people who are committing crimes should still be able to be recorded and criminal cases pursued.
Although the language of the ruling sounds as if that is still allowed, the simple truth is, it is not. No officer will be allowed to video or audio record any incident while in Portland, in doing so, he or she may inadvertently record a peaceful protester and thus be in violation of the judges order.
Portland man firebombs court house, gets identified by vest grandma bought him
PORTLAND, OR – Monday evening in Portland, people calmly walked by a camera aimed at cement K-rails and protective metal fencing around the city’s federal courthouse.
An amateur drummer slowly rapped out a tinny, aimless tune on homemade drums in the background. A young woman in a gas mask leaned against a K-rail to check her smart phone. Others, mostly young men and women, walked by with and without masks. One of them was black. One young man had a mask and hood but his eyes are exposed, glaring at the camera as he passed.
One could be forgiven for thinking this was a street festival.
One minute and forty-seven seconds into a video of the scene, a flaming object arcs over the heads of dozens of people. It lands on the other side of the barrier, where the flames spread in a pool of fire on the ground.
The video gets closer, admiring as the flames ignite litter and a traffic cone.
https://twitter.com/Wow_ThatsLame/status/1288316133670440961
At two minutes and eleven seconds, a woman’s voice is heard shouting, in cadence:
“Black lives matter.”
She is answered lazily by dozens of voices, who repeat the chant at half speed.
At two minutes and twenty-five seconds, as the chant picks up, we see a hand tossing something, a flaming object flying to the left, a mousy young woman standing on a K-rail turns away from the building, perhaps to see who threw the object.
This is followed by a deafening roar and flames that fill the screen as a powerful explosion occurs off screen, on the other side of the barricade.
The courthouse has been hit.
The crowd is temporarily floored into silence, and then they cheer. Now, they are all rioters.
Lol @ “Simpothy McVeigh” and “beta blocker”
— David Pinsen (@dpinsen) July 29, 2020
After witnessing his handiwork, the bomber, wearing an olive green reflective vest emblazoned with the word “ICONS,” dashes off camera. He may not have realized it, but the clean-cut young bomber was captured on multiple cameras.
In one, he is seen standing on one side of an intersection with a woman clad only in a black bondage face mask beside him. She is naked from the chin down. She isn’t even wearing shoes.
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On the other side of the intersection are what appear to be about a dozen law enforcement officers. Some motivated members of the online group 4Chan decided to see if they could figure out who the bomber, nicknamed “the Beta Bomber,” was.
The other name 4Chan gave the suspect was SIMPothy McVeigh.
The ICONS vest led them to an online review of the garment by someone with the username “grammaf.”
She wrote:
“I got this for my grandson who’s a protester downtown, he uses it every night and says it does the job.”
Included is a picture of her grandson, wearing the vest and a mask, sitting on a red car. It is the Beta Bomber.
According to the Gateway Pundit, grandma’s review led to the identification of the bomber, though clearly that was not her intention. Maybe she believed what she saw on the mainstream news every night, that the “protests” were “peaceful.”
From her perspective, she may have felt duty-bound to protect her clean-cut white grandson against all those racist cops the news is always talking about.
Looking at the crowd of hundreds of people gathered around the courthouse is revolting. All those people, drifting in and out of the scene casually, drinking their bottled water, listening to music, chatting with friends, checking their phones for messages, and then they cheer when a powerful explosive goes off against an exterior wall of an occupied building.
After that, they go back to their mundane enjoyments. Do they not realize that a young punk just brought a dangerous explosive into a densely populated area and then set it off in their midst?
Apparently, because law enforcement is the target, it’s no big deal, just a bunch of pretty colors. Why don’t they care? Because to them, the people who work in law enforcement aren’t “people.”
They are enemies.
If that crowd were made up of anything but insurrectionists with war in their hearts, the bomber would have been tackled by twenty people before he managed to turn around after throwing the bomb.
The guy who threw an IED at the Federal Courthouse in Portland has been identified by 4Chan after his Grandma posted about buying his plate vest.
Operation Simpothy McVeigh is now trying to find someone willing to pay the $50 for his sisters only fans account! 🤣#PortlandRiots pic.twitter.com/CfLYIxz3CH
— KuqiCouture Esq. (@KuqiCouture) July 30, 2020
The indifference of this crowd to such a wanton and dangerous act, designed to cause great damage and which had the capacity to kill, marks them all as beneath contempt.
They think they are Social Justice Warriors, that stand for truth and justice.
They don’t.
They believe lies told them by Marxists and have been tricked into performing the criminal work of a revolution for them, becoming criminals themselves in the bargain. It won’t succeed.
There are too many good people in America who will stop it. But when? When will our elected officials marshal the courage to allow law enforcement to do their job and end this?
Officials have already sat idly by as dozens of people have been killed and hundreds more injured. Several police stations have been set on fire, some of which have suffered significant damage.
Whole cities have been ravaged.
If the Beta Bomber had dropped his bomb accidentally, it could have killed a dozen people right then and there. Is that the kind of accident we are waiting for before doing anything?
Let’s not wait any longer.
Enough is enough.
It is time to show our support of local, state, and federal law enforcement. It is time to resist the lie that these are “peaceful protests” rather than riots. Somebody’s grandson needs a spanking, and we think he will get it in federal prison.
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