Armed counter-protesters possibly aiming to disrupt an anti-racism rallies in Portland last week were stopped short by police who also stationed officers atop city buildings as spotters.
The Portland Press Herald reported that police Cmdr. James Sweatt told the Police Citizen Review Subcommittee Wednesday night that police had received “actionable intelligence” that the counter-protesters would demonstrate near the Black Lives Matter rallies and that two officers were deployed on buildings to protect the protesters, not intimidate them.
The disclosure, which varies somewhat from previous accounts, comes a week after at least eight largely peaceful rallies in Portland and, as the Herald reported, calls from city officials for internal or independent reviews of Portland police’s handling of them. Protesters nationwide are seeking a crackdown on police violence against minorities in response to the homicide of George Floyd, a black man who died after being pinned for nearly nine minutes under the knee of a white Minneapolis officer. More than 20 rallies have been held in Maine since Floyd’s death.
“They actually did show up. They were actually armed. We intercepted them before they made it there,” Sweatt said of the counterprotesters. “We also discovered other individuals in the crowd that were legally possessing firearms, but their intent was not known. I think that’s an important note to make.”
Held June 5, the last protest was the first in the city organized by Black Lives Matter Portland, a nascent collective of longtime racial justice activists in the city. The group surged on the momentum built by the week’s earlier protests, which twice lapsed into disorder after a series of escalations punctuated by otherwise successful protests Monday and Tuesday night.
In an email exchange with a Bangor Daily News reporter on June 5, Portland police spokesman Lieutenant Robert Martin declined to discuss the specifics of the police handling of the first seven rallies, but did describe a photograph of an officer atop the downtown Portland Hampton Inn as appearing to feature tripod-mounted spotting scope. Commonly used by snipers, such scopes are also used for birding, surveillance, hunting, and viewing landscapes, wildlife, ships and other distant objects.
“I will clarify that the officer photographed was using a spotting scope on a tripod or bipod to observe.There was never a rifle pointed at citizens protesting as was suggested,” Martin wrote during the exchange.
“They could be mistaken for a rifle and scope,” he added in another email.