Update, 4/4/2019: As the Oregonian reported, the charges against Mark Dickerson were dismissed by a judge in March.
Original Story: A man drove his car into a group of demonstrators this afternoon who had gathered downtown to protest a Multnomah County grand jury’s decision to clear Portland police of any criminal charges for the death of Patrick Kimmons.
According to the Portland Police Bureau (PPB), 55-year-old Mark Dickerson ignored officers’ efforts to divert traffic for the protest, held at SW 4th and Main. Instead, he drove his Chevrolet truck into the crowd and hit one protestor, identified by fellow protestors at the scene as Portland activist Teressa Raiford.
pic.twitter.com/xBhZ1wdkxI
— alyssa pariah (@alyssapariah) October 31, 2018
Police officers arrested Dickerson and charged him with assault in the fourth degree, reckless endangering and reckless driving. According to police, his victim did not require medical treatment.
This police response stands in contrast with PPB’s reaction the last time a group of protesters was hit by a car. In that instance, which took place at an earlier October demonstration also related to Kimmons’ death, police decided not to charge a man who drove through a much larger crowd.
Kimmons was fatally shot by two Portland police officers on Sept. 30. While police say that Kimmons was running toward them with a gun in his hand at the time, Kimmons’ family says that video footage released by PPB does not tell the full story. Protestors this afternoon chanted for PPB to release the full, unedited video.
“We’ve seen the footage ourselves… we can see his hands were up as he was shot,” said Sequoia Turner, Kimmons’ longtime partner and mother of his children. “The video they released was like a blurry version, and they cut it off.”
What are they protesting? This is a tragic situation all around, but when police are on scene in an active shooter situation, and the shooter is running around (and in this case right at the cops) with the gun that was just used to shoot two people in front of the cops, that person is going to be shot by the police to eliminate the threat of harm to themselves AND to stop additional civilians from being shot. This isn’t rocket science.