How's it going in the Pacific Northwest these days?
Seattle:
At a crucial moment during 2020’s racial justice protests, Seattle police exchanged a detailed series of fake radio transmissions about a nonexistent group of menacing right-wing extremists.
The radio chatter about members of the Proud Boys marching around downtown Seattle, some possibly carrying guns, and then heading to confront protesters on Capitol Hill was an improper “ruse,” or dishonest ploy, that exacerbated a volatile situation.
(This was right before CHOP/CHAZ was set up, and in fact probably helped lead to it, since the lies actually encouraged protestors to stay put and stay together.)
Kent:
Kent Mayor Dana Ralph says her administration badly underestimated the public outrage that would spring from the decision not to fire an assistant police chief who posted Nazi insignia on his office door, embraced the rank of an officer in Adolf Hitler’s murderous Schutzstaffel, or SS, and joked about the Holocaust.
(They gave him two weeks off, which he could take as paid vacation... and all the complaints on Kent's social media accounts were deleted by the city staffer in charge of those accounts: his wife.)
Portland:
A slide show designed to train officers in Portland, Ore., on methods of policing protests concluded with a message that celebrated the use of violence against demonstrators, suggesting they would end up “stitched and bandaged,” according to records released by the city on Friday. [...] The concluding slide was of a meme that mocked protesters as dirty hippies, celebrating that officers could “christen your heads with hickory, and anoint your faces with pepper spray.”
(
Speaks for itself.)
