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In four days, the United States learns the results of a presidential election (some results, anyway). In Portland, that’s typically when trouble starts.
Civil unrest in Oregon commenced the night in November 2016 when former President Donald Trump won the White House. Over the following nights, demonstrators thronged the streets, some people blocking interstate lanes and trashing property. For much of the next four years, the streets of Portland were treated as turf for violent political factions to claim. On regular occasion, police used force—including tear gas and flash-bang grenades—to disperse crowds of leftists. The confrontations intensified during the pandemic shutdowns in 2020, when the murder of George Floyd sent thousands of people into the streets and Trump deployed federal agents into the city to quell the unrest, a series of events from which the city has yet to fully recover.
Most polls now show the odds of Trump returning to the White House amount to a coin flip—an unsettling prospect by any measure, but especially to a city still carrying the scars from the havoc that followed his first term.
Portland police say they’re prepared to handle any unrest. But how should they handle it? That’s a question WW has been asking candidates for City Council for much of the summer, as part of our series of “Entrance Interviews” introducing candidates to Portland voters. We didn’t present the question to all candidates, but we received a wide enough array of answers that we decided to collect them in a single post.
Eliza Aronson, Lin Lin Hutchinson and Veronica Bianco conducted the interviews.
We asked: How do you want police to respond to riots if Donald Trump wins in November?
Eli Arnold, District 4: “I took my daughters to the Women’s March in 2016—there’s a difference between protesters and vandals. I think the city can get ahead of this kind of thing by working with protest leaders to help set clear expectations and help them avoid getting their message hijacked by outsiders and vandals.
“We need the district attorney on board. We need predictable consequences for criminal behavior.”
Candace Avalos, District 1: “I was the chair of the Citizen Review Committee when everything broke loose after George Floyd’s murder. We know that if there are mass protests like there were back in 2020, all eyes are going to be on Portland and our police response. I believe the police need to take proactive steps before the election results are in, preparing for different scenarios and doing community outreach. If this outcome were to happen, police need to always follow the Constitution as well as Portland Police Bureau policies and procedures.
“I was not only the chair of this committee, but I was also the chair of the subcommittee on crowd control and new support, and we produced a 40-page report after the 2020 protests, explaining what we saw as best practices that were not met. Unfortunately, I think a lot of our recommendations were left in a drawer somewhere. I think the biggest issue that Portlanders had was the indiscriminate use of less lethal force on community members who were trying to protest and exercise their First Amendment-protected rights.”
Olivia Clark, District 4: “People have a right to express themselves, but they don’t have a right to destroy property, and when well-meaning demonstrations turn into riots, then we need real consequences. We can block off streets. We can provide protection in advance, but if it turns to mayhem, the police must act, and they need to use every legal means to stop the mayhem if that happens.”
Jamie Dunphy, District 1: “Trump is not going to win, but there’s still going to be a conversation about Portland being a protest city. We need to be intentional about working with businesses in places that we know will be most likely to have protest activity and not be caught flat-footed. We can do some built design, or build infrastructure, such as using fences around target points and blocking off streets.”
Timur Ender, District 1: “I don’t buy that Donald Trump is going to win or that everything’s going to be devolving into chaos. Speaking as a resident, I’ve noticed the posture of police and the tactics used can have a pretty strong impact on how an event ends up. I’m saying this as someone who has had tear gas on my property when I had nothing to do with a protest. The whole city is not participating in a protest. It just feels like this isn’t rocket science, and there are maybe some other proactive ways to look at crowd management.”
Mitch Green, District 4: “I think police should respect protesters’ First Amendment rights to assemble peaceably. I’ve seen firsthand the imbalance when you’re down there. You’ve got veterans, you’ve got a Wall of Moms, you’ve got people of color protesting for Black lives, and I’ve seen really violent repression from the police. Then I’ve seen police stand with their backs to Proud Boys and other right-wing agitators that have a history of violence. I think the police should use every tool they have to avoid violence, to avoid the use of riot measures, of tear gas.”
Terrence Hayes, District 1: “We have to clearly communicate that protesting in downtown Portland is not going to change anything that’s happening in that White House. We have to guarantee that we won’t allow that leadership in Washington, D.C., to change our narrative in Portland, Oregon. That being said, we can’t destroy our city. You don’t get to destroy property and get mad when police act like police. If it is peaceful, the police have to stay out of the way. But when we start breaking windows, we have to have the expectation that police are going to step in.”
Tiffany Koyama Lane, District 3: “I’m not assuming that there will be riots. I support people in coming out into the streets to voice grief and rage. There are ways to deescalate situations that are on the track for becoming violent.
“When I think about Portland in 2020 and the federal forces that were sent in—that’s not the way to deescalate. If you treat every movement of people in streets like it’s going to be a riot that needs to be suppressed, then I think that’s what it becomes. I think we do more outreach to these small businesses, especially central small businesses, and think about routes if protests were to happen.”
Chad Lykins, District 4: “We should learn from what Tom McCall did in 1970 at Vortex One. Start planning the logistics for keeping people and property safe. Go ahead and start issuing permits, renting equipment, scheduling medical and security staff, and planning street closures. If we do that, we can be a city that will respect our First Amendment rights without being a city in which every public gathering results in police beating protesters or protests devolving into riots.”
Stan Penkin, District 4: “I know that the police are preparing for potential riots. I want to see them respond with restraint, and the problem in those situations is, how do you distinguish between the protesters and people who are just there as innocent bystanders or protesting peacefully? I certainly want to see the police have restraint and only act when they absolutely have to.”
Elana Pirtle-Guiney, District 2: “I think that when we assume that a rally or a protest will be a riot, we set ourselves up for a violent response. The first thing that we need to do to prepare for any sort of rally or protest is to prepare for a peaceful response to make sure that we don’t have law enforcement inadvertently escalating interactions between protesters and police. If you have protests and law enforcement shows up in riot gear, that escalates everything—and that’s not safe for anyone.”
Moses Ross, District 4: “We have to be ready for any negative response that folks might have. I don’t think it’s going to be as dramatic as people think, especially with the Harris-Waltz ticket. I think we’re going to see Trump lose by large enough margins where it’s going to be indisputable. I don’t think it requires a special task force.”
Sarah Silkie, District 4: “I hope it’s not just the police. If there are protests in the streets, I’ll probably be out there with them, and if it’s safe enough, I want my whole family to join me. Nonviolent, nondestructive and even non-permitted protests should be allowed. I’m optimistic that Harris will win. I think we need more women in elected office, don’t you think? We should be thinking about, what if we are prepared with public events that encourage people to express themselves and in a nonviolent way—think, music and arts? For a big festival, you would have medical people available and you would have a police presence as a safety thing, not in riot gear but, like, we’ve got a lot of people out and we’re ready to have a lot of people out.”
Bob Weinstein, District 4: “I believe in the democratic process and in an orderly transition in power. I think people have a right to peaceful protest, and I completely support that. If some individuals decide to cross the line and engage in criminal behavior, as we saw in 2020 and again when the PSU library was recently ransacked to the tune of a million dollars in damages, I think the police should respond with an appropriate level of force to stop the behavior and arrest the individuals. We just elected a district attorney who will prosecute criminal behavior associated with riots, should they occur.”
Nat West, District 2: “I hate seeing local businesses being damaged and my friends losing customers because of protests or riots, but also because of the media narrative around protests just sucking up all the oxygen about what Portland is. I would ask protesters to determine their goals ahead of time and work towards those goals, and provided that we aren’t hurting each other, I expect the police to stay out of the way.”