Reporters covering the series of rallies organized by the far-right street-brawling group Patriot Prayer that have plagued the Pacific Northwest for the past two years have frequently remarked on the clear bias displayed by Portland police officers in their handling of the two competing sides. Their observations have often corroborated the complaints of left-wing activists that police were more interested in subduing and arresting local anti-fascists at Portland rallies than going after the out-of-town agitators who were there to create violence.
Now, thanks to terrific investigative work by reporters at Willamette Week and the Portland Mercury, those impressions have been confirmed with startling clarity.
Text exchanges between Portland police officers and Patriot Prayer organizer Joey Gibson, published in the two papers’ reports Thursday, reveal a startling chumminess with the far-right activists and clear sympathy for their views. Even more disturbingly, the main officer involved, Lt. Jeff Niiya, appears to have shared information about an ongoing investigation involving a key Patriot Prayer member, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, with Gibson.
The revelations prompted an immediate uproar in Portland. Mayor Ted Wheeler vowed an investigation of police conduct in the case—to be led by Police Chief Danielle Outlaw. However, city commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty called for an independent investigation, in no small part because Outlaw’s previous statements suggesting an anti-leftist bias—she once boasted on a right-wing talk radio show that her officers had “kicked their butts,” referring to anti-fascist protesters—raise doubts about her fairness.
“The incidents we hear about are not ‘one-offs’ but everyday examples of a broken policing system in Portland that must be addressed,” Hardesty said. “I look forward to supporting actions of accountability. I ask that the Mayor and Police Chief Outlaw take swift action and I will also be here to demand justice if that call is not met.”
Many of the texts—only released after journalists filed a records request with the Portland Police Bureau, which had originally denied they existed when officials from the Council for American-Islamic Relations sought them—showed Niiya expressing sympathy for Gibson’s activism, including his quixotic campaign for the U.S. Senate in Washington state, which is where Gibson actually lives. Other exchanges show Niiya being protective of Gibson’s group in the middle of rallies.
"Heads up just told 4-5 black Bloch [another nickname for antifa] heading your way. One carrying a flag," Niiya texted Gibson during a December 2017 protest. "We will have officers nearby but you may want to think about moving soon if more come." Niiya also coached Gibson before Patriot Prayer's August 2018 rally: "As you march we move to keep you both separated. No patriots going to them no Antifa to you. If they get close we will be in between."
“I want you to know you can trust me. Don't want to burn that," Niiya told Gibson in a September 2017 message. Later, Gibson apologized to Niiya for making a public announcement that "Portland police has our back."
The most disturbing text, from Dec. 8, 2017, shows that Niiya asked Gibson about an active warrant for Toese’s arrest, wondering if Toese had "his court stuff taken care of." The text noted that officers ignored the warrant at a past protest, and then informed Gibson he saw no need to arrest Toese unless he were to commit a new crime. "Just make sure he doesn't do anything which may draw our attention," Niiya replied to Gibson on Dec. 9. "If he still has the warrant in the system (I don't run you guys so I don't personally know) the officers could arrest him. I don't see a need to arrest on the warrant unless there is a reason."
In other instances, Niiya appears to have been the source for misinformation that may have affected Patriot Prayer’s violent behavior at rallies. Prior to the Aug. 4, 2018, Portland rally that attempted to bring in far-right demonstrators from around the country, Gibson told his supporters that police intended to treat the event as “mutual combat,” meaning they would not provide police protection for people engaged in violence.
“Mutual combat is a law that states that, it’s something that happens in a lot of bars and stuff, if two guys go outside and they both agree to fight, kinda like training or whatever, no charges can be pressed, which I understand, I get that,” Gibson explained, incorrectly. “So basically if you want to be able to march in Portland, and the Portland citizens disagree with you, and they choose to use violence, you’re going to have to defend yourself.”
Portland Police officer Jeff Niiya’s correspondence revealed that Joey Gibson came to believe his police contact had misled him about ‘mutual combat.’
Some of Patriot Prayer’s supporters interpreted all this as a kind of carte blanche for violence. “[I]t means that if you show up to a fight that means your [sic] willing and there is no law broken,” posted one of the group’s coordinators on Facebook. “So either you stand up and take that dam [sic] green light you’ve been given or stay home and let it spill over to your own city.” When the Southern Poverty Law Center inquired about the “mutual combat” narrative being bandied about before the event, Portland Police spokesman Christopher Burley sidestepped the question: “Crowd management events are complex incidents that require a balance of many different interests and factors,” he said.
After that Aug. 4 event, when a number of issues arose about how police handled the inevitable violence after several hundred right-wing extremists, particularly a large knot of Proud Boys bent on fighting, first taunted and goaded the city and then descended on Portland from outside the city, Sgt. Burley peculiarly blamed the SPLC for the alerting the public to the looming protest. “I think it is disheartening that an organization outside the City of Portland is making a statement that could potentially inflame an already intense situation,” he told the Washington Post.
Patriot Prayer/Proud Boys demonstrators talk to Portland police at the violent June 30, 2018, protest.
Much of the criticism focused on the extent of force that police used on anti-fascist demonstrators on Aug. 4, included “flash-bang” devices that severely injured at least one person. The question, as Monique Judge at The Root observed, became especially pointed when the arrest records were reviewed afterward, showing that four people were arrested—all of them counterprotesters. This corroborated “what many said on social media—that the police appeared to have purposely targeted the counter-protesters while mostly ignoring the Patriot Prayer group and their allies.”
It later emerged that Portland police had caught a group of heavily armed “Patriots” who had stationed themselves on a nearby rooftop overlooking the protest scene with a cache of guns, including several long guns. Police seized the weapons, but no arrests were made, and the guns and ammunition were eventually given back to their owners. The men reportedly told police they only intended to act as a “quick extraction team” in the event of violence.
Ethan Nordean—aka “Rufio Panman”—a Proud Boy who earlier in the day was recorded punching an anti-fascist protester in a video that later went viral, was arrested by Portland Police near the end of the June 30, 2018, protests. He was released a short time later.
An earlier city review of police on the scene found they tended to believe that the Patriot Prayer protesters were “much more mainstream.” When journalists and activists have raised the issue of apparent bias in the behavior of Portland Police, both police and city officials have denied that any such issue exists. When city commissioner Chloe Eudaly asked the bureau a series of questions about their behavior, the police refused to answer.
Portland is not the only city grappling with how police have treated far-right protesters in the melees that have erupted in locations around the United States since Donald Trump’s election. In Charlottesville, Virginia, where dozens were injured, and a woman was killed by a car used as a battering ram, police were sharply criticized in an independent review of the department amid questions of how the violence of Aug. 11-12, 2017, was handled.
Similarly, California Highway Patrol has been questioned for its handling of a similar clash in Sacramento in June 2016, which resulted in a number of hospitalizations for the combatants. The Guardian recently reported that state police coordinated cheerfully with the event’s neo-Nazi organizers, and then afterwards worked closely with them to identify counterprotesters whom they went on to charge with assaults. No neo-Nazis were charged.
The waters have been muddied by the kind of “both sides” narrative that has surrounded the coverage of far-right events around the country. Far-right figures like Gibson have successfully sold an image of political legitimacy to much of the media, bolstered by his failed 2018 Washington state campaign for the U.S. Senate—which was normalized by a state Republican Party that declined to either endorse or repudiate him. Now, with Portland in an uproar over the revealed police texts, Mayor Wheeler has shifted gears to call for an independent investigation, noting that Chief Outlaw agreed with him on the need for the probe. He’s also agreed to provide training to police so they can better identify the presence of white supremacists.
And the people who began raising those questions a year and a half ago may finally get their questions answered.
