More than a dozen activists headed downtown last January, protesting what they said was brutality by the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) during Donald Trump’s recent inauguration and calling for then-Police Chief Mike Marshman to get canned.
“I think it’s an important issue that’s absolutely worth standing up for,” said one woman who was arrested that day. She and a few others were standing in front of a TriMet bus when a squad of cops dressed in riot gear sprinted toward them from behind. Video footage shows that as the woman slowly walked away, one officer grabbed her arms from behind and slammed her, face-first, to the ground.
Three months earlier, activist and police critic Jessie Sponberg was one of many protesters at City Hall raising hell about a new police union contract signed under then-Mayor Charlie Hales. Officers pepper-sprayed Spongberg, who was yelling at the cops and filming the chaos. Then one officer shoved Sponberg down a small flight of stairs.
“The cops knew who I was and that I had a press pass,” he says about the October 2016 incident.
In both instances, officers were cleared of wrongdoing by their supervisors, who found the use of force was allowed under bureau policy. But both incidents—along with others—are referenced in a scathing new report that calls into question whether Portland cops are being trained to properly defuse tense situations.