Portland Police Broke Up a Party in Lone Fir Cemetery

Police say a neighbor approached the group to complain. That didn’t go well.

Lone Fir Cemetery in 2014. (Ryan Harvey / Flickr)

Portland police say they're responding to a rise in calls that suggests some residents are no longer complying with Gov. Kate Brown's stay-home order.

Among those calls: a Friday night party in Lone Fir Cemetery.

The Police Bureau says it responded at 6:56 last night to the historic graveyard on Southeast Stark Street, where a group of 20 to 50 people were playing loud music and drinking.

"The outdoor gathering was inside of the cemetery," police spokesman Sgt. Michael Roberts tells WW.

Police say a neighbor approached the group to complain. That didn't go well: "When he asked the group to keep the noise down, an adult male pointed a gun in the neighbor's face," a bureau press release says.

When police went into the cemetery to break up the COVID-19 graveyard party, they say one man made a beeline for his car, drove away and nearly crashed. Police arrested Kneko T. Moore, 31, and found him with a Smith & Wesson handgun. He was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and with possessing a firearm as a felon.

The graveyard party probably tops the police breaking up a basketball game as the oddest criminal justice footnote of the Portland pandemic.

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