Sidebar:
More Letters From the Front Lines
For WW coverage, see "Panic
in Portland," May 3, and "The
New Portland Police Bureau," May 10, 2000.
The most prophetic
line of the day came as police declared an emergency.
Standing a half-block away from the action, one officer
can be heard on a police videotape saying, "Uh-oh. Showtime."
After the fracas
at Southwest 3rd and Salmon, marchers continued calmly
on their way to the World Trade Center, where police called
a street-level emergency at 4:06 pm.
"Anarchists
did leave behind one territorial pissing: a spray-painted
"A" inscribed in a circle on the Hilton's parking garage
on Southwest Salmon Street.
Earlier claims
of graffiti at City Hall turned out to be untrue. Reports
now indicate that the worst thing there were chalk marks
on the sidewalk.
Copies of the
police videotapes are available at Multnomah County public
libraries.
Mayor Vera Katz was hoping her May 9 forum would be a
quasi-cuddly community event for people to "tell us what
worked and what didn't" during the now-infamous May Day
march. Instead, the 500-plus people gathered at the Maranatha
Church of God last week greeted police chief Mark Kroeker
with boos and hisses. While impolite, the conduct was
somewhat understandable. Using a PowerPoint presentation
interlaced with video clips, Assistant Chief Bruce Prunk
ran through a May 1 time line, noting the places where
police say marchers so crossed the line that the hammer
had to come down. Most of what he said, however, bore
little resemblance to what their videos show.
IRVINGTON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
One of Prunk's most startling revelations was that that
several black-masked marchers--a.k.a. "anarchists"--went
onto the grounds of Irvington Elementary at lunch during
the so-called "pirate" march that preceded the downtown
demonstrations. They scared children and forced administrators
to lock down the school at Northeast 13th Avenue and Brazee
Street.
Irvington principal Carol Sanders, however, says it just
didn't happen. Unclear about the march's purpose, she
says she called children in from the playground to the
school cafeteria. But she told WW that the school
was never under lock-down conditions and, to her knowledge,
no marcher set foot on school property and no children
ever saw them, let alone were frightened by them.
NIKETOWN
Here, Prunk alleged, "rocks [were] thrown through [the]
window" of the Nike store at Southwest 6th Avenue and
Salmon Street.
Prunk later told WW that Josh Strausser was identified
by store security guards and arrested in connection with
the incident. He was charged with malicious mischief.
None of the police videos, however, provide documentation
of damage to windows, even though an officer with a hand-held
camera walked right past the store. Nike spokesman Scott
Reams told WW that no window was broken. He says
that "a small nick on a window" was the only damage reported
on May 1 and that the window wasn't replaced. He even
downplayed the damage. "Windows get nicked up from all
kinds of things," he says.
SOUTHWEST 5TH AVENUE AND MAIN STREET
This is the downtown corner where police horses threw
marchers back into a bus shelter and riot squads squared
off against radical cheerleaders and drummers. Prunk says
that conflict was caused by dancers at the front of the
300-plus crowd who sat down in the street, an incident
he says he witnessed from his 15th-floor Justice Center
office. None of the police videos available to the public,
however, contain footage from that corner.
Police did arrest Dawn Katona, a drummer at the front
of the march, charging her with disorderly conduct. In
his arrest report, a sergeant writes that his squad of
riot cops was instructed to "take an individual out of
the crowd." But the report does not mention people sitting
in the street.
None of the 20-plus marchers contacted by WW say
that they saw anyone sitting at the corner. "We were all
in the street, in the lane
we were supposed to be in," says Gail Karuna, who was
marching at the front.
Is it possible that the cheerleaders, who'd performed
routines since the march began, had acted out another
at this corner which involved stooping to the ground?
"It would be either an amazing coincidence or precoordination,"
Prunk says.
SOUTHWEST 3RD AVENUE AND SALMON STREET
This is the one place where police have clear evidence
of aggressive behavior by marchers. An unidentified person
threw a plastic newspaper box, bruising the leg of a mounted
officer. Videotape also shows that someone else lobbed
a rock toward a mounted cop. Clearly, some of the protesters
were way out of line.
What started the clash is more opaque. Videotape shows
that for a minute and a half, marchers rounded the corner
without incident. Then the five-person mounted patrol
trotted into the crowd, apparently to arrest one young
man. Momentum being what it is, the crowd continued forward
up against the horses. The horses went wild. One woman
was knocked to the pavement, leaving her bruised for several
days.
This, too, is where Prunk advances the Black Mask Theory.
He says a group of demonstrators in black masks--the "anarchists"
whom police had been warned about--moved to the front
of the crowd "with the express purpose of confronting
the police personnel." Again, however, there is nothing
on the video tapes that shows this. In one instance, two
young men in black are seen standing in front of the horses,
but they show no signs of aggression. Other video footage,
provided by the police, shows a group of people in black
in the center of the march, a position consistent with
what the protesters recall. Contacted by WW, two
Eugene "anarchists" said that police had been singling
them out all day, especially the mounted patrol, and they
decided to move into the middle of the crowd for protection.
MORE LETTERS From the Front Lines
Last week's cover story about the May Day protest ("The
New Portland Police Bureau") included readers' observations
about the clash between cops and demonstrators. Here are
a few more that didn't fit in that issue, as well as a couple
of new ones.
REWRITE THE BOOK
Our new police chief stated that
the police aggression on May 1 all went "according to
the book." If that is indeed the case, then "the book"
needs to be changed. I am one Portlander who will not
"get used to" seemingly militaristic shows of aggression
by the police (as the police chief advised us to do in
his interview with The Oregonian). The only violence
I saw on Monday was both incited and exacerbated by the
police. Their violence and aggression was unprovoked,
unjust and completely unnecessary. The city must take
whatever steps necessary to ensure that this type of assault
to both the physical well-being and the constitutional
freedoms of the people of Portland will not happen again.
Brenna Bell
Southeast Portland
JAILED FOR LIBERTY
I chose to be arrested on May
Day. Our schools teach that free speech and assembly are
necessary to protect against tyranny. Chief Kroeker and
Mayor Katz need a remedial civics lesson. Only police
states allow police to regulate speech. The police said,
"Don't protest here. Don't protest there." Concerned I
could not protest anywhere, I sat down on the curb. I
ignored illegal, unconstitutional orders to move, then
spent six hours in jail to make a point: Free speech is
a vital, if sometimes messy, ingredient of a free society.
Andy Davis
Southeast Portland
WRONG WAY! DO NOT PROCEED
I work for a downtown
law firm and currently live in the Irvington District
in Northeast Portland. I was raised in Portland and have
lived in Chicago, Nehalem, Cannon Beach and London, England.
After living in old Portland, in small communities, and
in a country with very few guns, I have a good idea of
what works best in community policing. Portland is clearly
headed in the wrong direction. As we all know, aggression
escalates into more aggression. Then why are these archaic
tactics that employ force and aggression being used in
our city? How can Portland tolerate a police chief who,
when confronted with this issue, tells us "this is how
it is going to be" and "Portland will just have to get
used to it"?
Kathleen Langtry
Northeast Portland
TIME FOR THE GUILLOTINE?
I'm not sure what point
Sarah Griffith is trying to make when she says that
"Historically, when people protested (example: the French
Revolution), they did not complain about getting pushed
on the ground or arrested by local police" ("Letters from
the Front Lines," WW, May 10, 2000). As a historian
preparing a book on the riots of the early years of the
French Revolution (before the fall of the Bastille), I
can assure you that she is wrong. On Aug. 29, 1788, for
example, Parisians were so enraged by a police riot of
the previous day that they sacked and/or burned six police
stations of the Paris Guard and disarmed, stripped and
beat the guards they found there. Three weeks later the
Parliament of Paris launched a criminal investigation
into the conduct of the commander of the Paris Guard,
Jean-Baptiste Dubois, and that of the lieutenant-general
of police, Louis Thiroux de Crosne. The king quashed the
investigation but persuaded Dubois to resign. Several
years later, de Crosne was guillotined.
Come to think of it, maybe there is a point to Ms. Griffith's
comparison. The experience of the French Revolution shows
that police riots are not an effective way to prevent
popular violence. In the short run they undermine the
moral authority of the police, as we have seen here in
Portland over the last two weeks. In the long run they
desensitize crowds to violence and train them in paramilitary
tactics. Believe me, Chief Kroeker, you don't want to
go there.
Thomas Luckett
Southwest Portland
WAKEUP CALL FROM A BULLHORN
My wife and I were
at the county courthouse paying a parking ticket when
we saw the protest heading towards Salmon Street. When
we were finished in the courthouse we saw that a large
force of police had gathered just east of the protest
which was now in front of the World Trade Center. Hoping
to go there and observe, we were allowed to enter the
protest, but the police formed a line just behind us,
not allowing us to leave. We asked them if we could go
to our car, and they said no. They didn't tell us to go
the other way, just "no." Becoming angry at the situation,
we decided to stay with the group and march the rest of
the way to Powell's. That turned into a nightmare when
the police were obviously trying to confuse us [by giving
us] different directions. We heard south, west and east
yelled to us on the bullhorns. We were luckily on the
other side of the street when the police started shooting
beanbags, but it made us very edgy nonetheless. After
that we were almost run over by a cop on an ATV (he drove
right at us!), and a cop on a horse backed right into
us trying to break us off from the rest of the group.
We were just trying to get back to our car!!
We ended up going to Powell's and taking part in the
rally there, which we suddenly felt a part of. We would
like to thank Mayor Vera Katz and the Portland Police
for making us once again active in our political beliefs!
We will not accept excessive force in Portland!
Bill Mitcheson and Kathy Loveday
Southeast Portland
NO HORSING AROUND
Two weeks ago I rushed to my
fourth-floor office window at the unfamiliar sounds of
the May Day crowd below. From my bird's-eye view, I saw
three police officers on horseback, struggling to control
their animals as they surrounded about 30 protesters marching
towards the larger crowd on Southwest 5th Avenue. The
horses were obviously terrified at the situation, and
their nervous actions were scaring both police and protesters.
The situation quickly turned ugly when the marchers attempted
to run from the horses, further exciting the animals.
One horse threw itself against an individual. These animals,
while a quaint sight on our city streets, should not be
used in potentially violent crowd-control situations.
Gigantic, nervous beasts do little to calm a crowd or
those charged with maintaining the peace.
Sonia A. Montalbano
Southeast Portland
EMERGENCY? WHAT EMERGENCY?
I was at the parade until it reached Waterfront Park,
carrying the hand of a giant puppet, and I was very afraid
of what the police were going to do. One cop grabbed my
arm and pushed me out of the way along the parade route.
When we got to the park, two friends and I decided we
wanted to leave. We asked some of the riot-geared cops
if we could cross the street and leave, and they said
no. The only way they left open was south along the waterfront,
and we were lucky enough to get by before they closed
off that way, too. The police there said a state of emergency
had been declared, but on the Channel 8 news the police
chief said it was not declared.
Toby Wickwire
Northeast Portland
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Willamette Week | originally
published May 10,
2000
