CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
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 |  Subject: Idiot in Government: Oregon attorney general sues federal agencies for allegedly violating protesters’ civil rights  Sat Jul 18, 2020 9:48 pm | |
| PORTLAND, Ore. — The Oregon attorney general filed a lawsuit late Friday night alleging that the federal government had violated Oregonians’ civil rights by seizing and detaining them without probable cause during protests against police brutality in the past week.
The legal action comes after days of intensifying clashes between the Trump administration and Portland officials, who have accused federal agencies of heavy-handed tactics that inflame unrest and threaten citizens.
Department of Homeland Security agents have swarmed the city in recent days, arguing that they are needed to restore order after nearly two months of demonstrations. But local officials, including Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (D), have implored the agency to step down, with the mayor calling the police force President Trump’s “personal army” and suggesting its tactics are only making things worse.
The federal government is “overstepping their powers and injuring or threatening peaceful protesters on the streets of Downtown Portland,” according to a release from the Oregon Department of Justice Friday.
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum filed a lawsuit that accused several agencies of unlawful law enforcement, including the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Federal Protection Service.
“John Does 1-10” are also named as defendants because “they have made it impossible for them to be individually identified by carrying out law enforcement actions without wearing any identifying information, even so much as the agency that employs them,” the complaint says.
Rosenblum said her department was also seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent federal authorities from unlawfully detaining Oregon residents. That comes after Mark Pettibone, 29, was detained by several men in green military fatigues and generic “police” patches on their clothing as he walked home from a protest early Wednesday morning.
Pettibone said the men, later identified as CBP officers, searched him and then took him in an unmarked minivan to a federal courthouse, where he was held for several hours. Pettibone told The Washington Post that the federal agents did not tell him why he had been picked up or provide a record of his arrest.
One protester, Conner O’Shea, said he was standing on a street corner with Pettibone when he saw an unmarked vehicle pull up next to him. Men wearing fatigues and helmets jumped out of a van and started running toward O’Shea and other protesters, who quickly dispersed.
O’Shea said the men didn’t announce who they were. He ran several blocks before diving behind a barricade where he hid until a friend drove to pick him up.
“My brain was firing on every cylinder, ‘We’re getting taken by the government,’ ” he said. “I have never been more terrified in my life. I could not and am still not thinking straight.”
CBP’s tactics came under intense scrutiny after a video circulating online showed two men in apparent military garb take a young man wearing all black into custody in Portland in the past week. In a statement, CBP said that its agents were wearing gear that identified them as agency personnel and that they detained the man because they suspected he was involved in “assaults against federal agents or destruction of federal property.”
Rosenblum highlighted another incident as motivating the department’s actions. On July 12, a peaceful protester was hit in the head with an “impact weapon” and suffered severe injuries. The Oregon Department of Justice Criminal Justice Division has also opened an investigation into that incident.
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Oregon has also filed suit against DHS and the U.S. Marshals Service. The lawsuit seeks to block federal law enforcement from dispersing, arresting, threatening to arrest, or using physical force against journalists or legal observers, the organization said
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/18/portland-oreland-ag-lawsuit/
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