Well, you can’t say Portland City Hall isn’t predictable.
Thursday’s announcement that an internal investigation had exonerated a Portland Police Bureau liaison officer for his handling of Patriot Prayer, the group that had organized a seemingly endless series of far-right protests intended to provoke violent reactions from left-wing counterprotesters, was precisely in line with city officials’ defensive crouch about how they and police have handled the events. It surprised no one.
A public outroar erupted in February when reportage from Willamette Week and Portland Mercury revealed that Lt. Jeff Niiya, the liaison officer charged with handling communications with protesters on all sides, had developed a remarkably chummy relationship with Joey Gibson, the leader of Patriot Prayer, and some of his violent cohorts.
Police Chief Danielle Outlaw told reporters Thursday that the city’s Independent Police Review, a city auditing division, had ruled all the allegations “unfounded”: "There was no evidence to prove any of the allegations considered,” Outlaw said.
The audit did, however, point to poor training prior to the events.
“This investigation found Lt. Niiya received no training or guidance regarding how he was expected to carry out his work as a liaison. Simply put, Lt. Niiya was left to figure it out on his own,'' the investigative report said. “As a result, Lt. Niiya has faced personal criticism, and damage to his professional reputation, in large part because the Police Bureau failed to clearly describe Lt. Niiya’s job to him and failed to provide him training on how he should do it.”
For the most part, the report found that Niiya had not violated department standards, suggesting that he had been as friendly with left-wing protesters as he was with those from the far right. However, it also absolved him of more serious concerns: namely, that Niiya appears to have shared information about an ongoing investigation involving a key Patriot Prayer member, Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, with Gibson.
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 that Niiya 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."
Since then, Gibson has been charged with conspiracy to riot, along with other Patriot Prayer members. Toese and a member of the Proud Boys who marched with them, Donovan Flippo, were charged with felony assault in an earlier case; Flippo took a plea deal, while Toese remains out of the state in American Samoa.
The most recent of these far-right events, an Aug. 17 march by Proud Boys in downtown Portland, ended mostly peacefully, with only handfuls of skirmishes. Prior to the event, Proud Boys leaders had talked up the likelihood of violence in order to sell participation to others, but as the event approached, they began reeling in their rhetoric and adopting a less violent stance.
Portland has been targeted by far-right street brawling groups ever since a “free speech” event in June 2017 that followed a horrifying stabbing by a right-wing extremist named Jeremy Christian aboard a MAX commuter train. Gibson’s Patriot Prayer, which organized that rally (as well as one a month before in which Christian had marched), has subsequently arranged over a dozen similar events in which the street brawlers have invaded Portland intent on provoking violence.
Remarkably, Portland police have responded to counterprotesters with a heavy hand, while relatively few “Patriots” or Proud Boys have been arrested and held for any length of time.
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 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.
