Portland Police Using Smoke, Tear Gas, or Both in Residential Areas

Like a bad neighbor, Portland Police are there, but unlike the worst neighbor imaginable they are there on a nightly basis with their LRAD* chasing protesters through residential areas to keep them away from their buildings. In the process they have been deploying large amounts of smoke and/or tear gas. You can't really tell the difference between the two from watching the live streams at Woke.net, but either way it is bad news for those neighborhoods. It is bad enough when some neighborhood kid sets off a smoke bomb outside your place and the wind blows it inside, but that is nothing compared to police smoke grenades that when used in mass engulf entire city blocks. That was not a big deal when they were doing it at protests downtown outside the Multnomah County Detention Center (MCDC) where the closest residences were apartment buildings a few blocks away, but doing it in a residential neighborhood during the middle of the summer when people have their windows open at night to fight the heat is something else entirely. Imagine trying to sleep when your ear drums are blasted by an LRAD*, then giant a cloud of smoke comes through your window, and all of your smoke alarms go off. This has been happening on almost a nightly basis in neighborhoods on the east side of the Willamette River ever since protests began focusing primarily on the Portland Police Association Headquarters in North Portland, the Portland Police Bureau's East Precinct, and in the Laurelhurst neighborhood near the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office (MCSO). If having giant plumes of smoke coming through your windows sounds awful, imaging if that smoke were mixed with tear gas. That was the case for Portland residents living near the Portland Art Museum six blocks away from MCDC. Tear gas fired by the Portland Police and federal officers was entering their apartments whenever they pursued the protesters to the west. In one case, the City of Portland was sued by a resident and quickly offered her a $1,000 settlement (https://ift.tt/2DeYAPj). Inmates at MCDC were not so lucky because they too were gassed on the 8th floor when the gas entered the ventilation system through the roof (https://ift.tt/2CC3C8Y) and unlike the apartment dweller they do not have the resources to sue. We are not sure if or how much tear gas the Portland Police and Oregon State Police (OSP) officers supporting them have used in Portland neighborhoods lately. When the above screenshot was taken, we could hear streamers say that it was all smoke and not tear gas. According to The Oregonian, Portland Police have used tear gas on east side protesters at least once (see source link above article). You can see one such use of tear gas in southeast Portland at the end of the video below. Why does Mayor Ted Wheeler allow this? He himself was gassed just a couple weeks ago (https://ift.tt/3hs2jbb) and even after that he still permits his police to use it. We noticed that the police did not deploy tear gas or smoke when Ted Wheeler's house was picketed, so maybe the protesters need to focus their efforts there and see if Tear Gas Ted gets smoked out and gassed again. Conclusion The Portland Police indiscriminately pollute the homes of Portland residents that have nothing to do with the protests. This is an extension of their indiscriminate polices against the protesters in general. They will use the alleged behavior of a group's minority to justify attacking the entire group. If 1,000 people show up and 50 of them throw rocks, that does not justify gassing 950 innocent people. We hope that the residents whose homes have been violated sue the city for the actions of the PPB and sue the state for the actions of OSP. Qualified immunity does not apply to cases of deliberate indifference. The police know the risks of using tear gas and smoke grenades in residential areas, they are choosing to do it anyway, so they should be held liable. *LRAD stands for Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD). It is basically an outrageously loud speaker built to make staying in areas where it is deployed unbearable (https://ift.tt/1IVPyQa). #teargas #multnomahcountyjail #tedwheeler

source https://copblaster.com/blast/25908/portland-police-using-smoke-tear-gas-or-both-in-residential-areas