Friends and neighbors. You're listening to Portland from the left. My name is Josh.
My name is Piper. And today we're gonna be talking about a neo Nazi meme that was in a PPB training deck.
Yeah. So back in September as a result of a lawsuit that Don't Shoot Portland has against the city, about excessive use of force with the police department during protests, I guess a slide deck came up in where they call it discovery. And Wheeler actually just announced it two days ago on Friday, today is Sunday, January 16. So we're talking about it immediately after. And the only reason he released it was was because he expected the lawsuit to actually make this public. So he was just trying to get ahead of it by a few minutes, and have a press release before the lawsuit actually made it public.
Really at the last moment he possibly could. And
it's a little bit funny, especially because the lawyers that are in charge of the lawsuit actually ran up against a deadline and ended up needing a extension. So Wheeler could have given himself a little more time. But because he didn't realize that the lawyers weren't quite quite ready with whatever they were, you know, filing or whatever. He still had to make this public and didn't have the extra cover of the lawsuit happening. Had the lawyers actually successfully filed in time, that actually probably would have been worse as far as media getting attention to the story, depending on what else is in the lawsuit, whatever. Whatever else is in discovery, I'm assuming there's more interesting things to be found.
That's a good point
To dig into this what we're going to do first, the whole presentation is really garbage, racist, lots of far right extremism and examples of bad police stuff in it. But specifically, the last side is really terrible. And that's both what Ted Wheeler said in his press release. And then also what at least the Oregonian said that like, specifically, it's the last slide. We're going to go through lots of the information in the in the deck, but specifically, we want to talk about the last slide to start with,
that's the part that seems to be making the news. And so this last slide, I'm just going to describe it. So it's a black and white photo of a person wearing tactical gear, they do not appear to be a police officer, it appears to be some other kind of person who wears tactical gear, with their arm just finishing a punch of another person who is not in tactical gear. There's text on top of it, that is a Lord's Prayer. Josh, would you like to read just like the end of it,
I think I'll just read a little bit of it. But it kind of starts at the top of the page and says, And the Lord said, I'll just read the last little paragraph here it says, "and once thou has been cuffed and stuffed, once thou has been stitched and bandaged, perhaps Thou shall learn, I'm tired of your shit. Amen" And the rest of it is just kind of bullshit. So we won't read it. But it's like talking about hippies and stuff. And particularly, what we found out in our research is that this is actually a chain letter that was apparently being passed around amongst conservative people and cops supporters and cops and stuff back years ago, during Occupy times, and that was repurpose sometime around 2014 or 2015. With this photo, you know, it was attached, actually, to Kyle Chapman, who is the guy that started the Fraternal Order of the alt right, which is basically the military arm of the Proud Boys. He's one of the people that started gathering groups of folks in California to then attack various cities or, you know, have far right demonstrations and go fight antifa. So he was a big name in that. So I'm not really sure if this is a photo of him or why his name's attached to it on the website, know, your meme. But it's clear. When we started to Google and find out more about this, it is clear that this is a far right extremist meme about assaulting leftists for you know, just just for performing the act of protest for being in public. You know, the stuff they're talking about here is not like, you stole something or you broke a law. It's just you exist and that's, that's enough for me to want to hurt you. And especially especially "I'm tired of your shit" is really something considering the relationship Portland Police has with the people of Portland, like I guarantee that the people of Portland are more tired of the cops' shit than the other way around. And so the idea of this particular meme from an you know, from neo Nazi backgrounds, we'll call it definitely from the far right is so explicitly antagonistic against leftists and and also from that culture of anti semitism, racism, homophobia, queer phobia. It I think that's why this gets so much attention. But as we'll talk about, I think the dynamics of the whole document really explained a lot about how the cops in town feel like they, you know, just have no one above them. There's no one to hold them accountable. And that's actually true. There's no one that can tell police in Portland what to do.
Yeah. I think that's something that is interesting in that, like how we reacted to this differently is, you kind of expected it a little more than I did.
I'm not much of a corporate person filters, which is why I don't work well in corporate environments. So when I saw this, I was just like, Well, yeah, of course, they would share this meme. I've seen this on I have seen, I don't think this one in particular, but other similar memes on far-right websites, it's right in line with some of the stuff I've seen cops say,
Well, I remember you saying something along the lines of like, oh, yeah, I would expect them to have something like this up in a locker. And so therefore, you know, I'm not surprised that would be in a PowerPoint. But like, when I put that in my frame of like a workplace, I was thinking about, like, when you create a presentation, right? Like, that's this, like, official thing you're creating, and you're like, showing other people you're getting up in front of them, you're putting on like a little show, there's a lot more intention than just like your own, like personal stuff, you know. And I was just thinking, like, Oh, my God, there are so many jokes, I would make like in my break room, or have like, up on the wall of a cubicle or whatever, in the old times, that I would never put in a presentation like, of course I wouldn't. Because of like, just the nature of the political environment and professionalism of a workplace like just a normal workplace where there's hierarchy there's, there's an HR there's, you know, you could get into, you can get in trouble for stuff for being outrageous in some way.
And I think the the feeling that you're having, there is a sense of really of authority and hierarchy that you know, that there's a boss, there's another boss or somebody else, and that they have expectations for you. And there are like, there are consequences for your actions. I think that's the fundamental thing that we kind of landed on talking about this is realizing that Portland Police Bureau, the person that wrote this document, and did this training, will face zero consequences.
And we know this
the pattern that we have so far is that nobody will be held accountable. And also, that there really isn't a system that could properly hold them accountable. Every system that we have has stipulations or rules, or some kind of boundary that stops them from actually doing anything to stop Portland police from acting the way they're acting.
And we have really good examples of that, right? Because I think about like, you know, if you were to be like, what are the like, really extreme things that if you crossed a line in any other sphere, like what would those be? And it's like, okay, well, if you like, if your views were so bad that you were literally a Nazi, and it's like, Okay, well, we have that we have we have Kruger who put up put up like Nazi shit in a public park had
to stop with Kruger for just a second because he made an alter to like a Nazi military hero quote, unquote, hero, right? For Nazis. What, like, they found out about this later. And not only like, did he face like, no discipline, at the time, it was something like he took a week off or something, they actually paid him back for it, and then reinstated him clearing them of any wrongdoing, as though it was totally fine.
He, as of his retirement was, which was, I don't know, like a year and a half ago or two years ago now was the highest paid officer,
right? They put him in charge of vice. After after the situation. So they said, Oh, this Nazi that's who we need in charge of like, you know, policing sex workers and stuff that's like, makes a lot of sense, that's really going to be helpful.
So that's like the worst like views you could hold example that I could think of. So then it's like, okay, well, what's the worst like action? If you're like, what's an extreme action someone could do that would get them fired? It's like, well, they literally murder people on the job, and don't get fired.
So the idea that they could put, you know, some, some meme like this, or whatever, that they could just blow off and be like, yeah, it was just a joke. No big deal. I honestly, like, if it becomes anything, I would be very surprised. Now. Looking at the rest of the training document, looking at the information here. I think it's very plausible that this will have impacts on other lawsuits, and certainly on Don't Shoot's lawsuit. Presumably, that's why it's like in discovery, and why it's been made public. But I just as far as the police actually getting held accountable, I just would be very surprised. It's not the pattern we've seen. And I don't know of any method where where they could be held accountable. It's not as though we have a structure and people just aren't using it. There's just no structure. So that's kind of what we're thinking when we see this document about the police. But then, of course, we've got our commissioners, a few of them had responses when this is made public,
Sam Adams reaction, which he posted on Twitter and LinkedIn, perhaps elsewhere. I just think it's funny he posted on LinkedIn.
You got to post on LinkedIn for all the business people
disgusting and reprehensible. There should be on place in city government for this kind of bigotry. Portland police (this is in quotes) Portland police training on protests ends with slide showing mock prayer for dirty hippies. Prompts investigation. Which is quoting the Oregonian headline.
And of course, we're reading Sam Adams impression because he's kind of like a surrogate, city council member, honestly,
proxy mayor
proxy mayor or whatever. Mingus Mapps, one of the actual commissioners said "I am frustrated and disappointed by the rapid response team training document." I'm just saying that slowly because we haven't actually acknowledged that I didn't know this is a rapid response team training document necessarily, just that it was about protests. But that's interesting. And again, rapid response team would be like basically the kitted out riot police in Portland that was that were voluntarily disbanded earlier this year. Actually, they chose to remove themselves from that voluntary role, I think is how it's described that those people are all still cops, but are lots of them are still cops. But they're no longer on that team, which is a volunteer position. Mapps goes on to say "This team was disbanded and we are reforming our approach to protests and rioting. The most unfortunate aspect of this is that it takes the attention away from the good work, the Portland Police Bureau is doing to address gun violence and increase public safety in Portland." Do you hear that? Oh, yes. So I guess the Portland Police Bureau is doing all this good work. And this old presentation 2018, which totally doesn't represent them is really going to distract from that.
And the most unfortunate aspect of it is that it distracts not that it existed.
Yeah, that's that's the biggest problem, not the years that this training was in place. And the like, Well, I mean, the scars that I have on my body as a result of this training, that's not the problem. The problem is that it distracts from Portland police good work. Does the sarcasm read? I think the sarcasm reads right.
I think it reads. And then what did Ted Wheeler say?
Ted Wheller had this to say, he said "I am disgusted, that this offensive content was added to a training presentation for our police officers. As soon as I was made aware of the incident, I reached out to Chief Lovell, who shared my deep concern, and assured me that a thorough and complete investigation was underway."
So that's interesting, because like one, okay, well, he's probably not disgusted right now. Because it's kind of like it happened a long time ago, that he learned about this.
Yeah, back in September. So he's known it for months. For months,
he reached out to Lovell, who presumably would know about this, or if not, it's not doing a very good job, in my opinion.
I'm interested in the chain of command with a document because like, as I mentioned, when Mapps mentioned, it was a rapid response team document, I'm like, well, not that this is any better. But it's it gives me a better perspective into who had access to it and who might have been looking at it. You know, this is still I don't know what the rapid response team was, was, like 50 or so people, still a good chunk of people. But it is interesting to note that there at least framing it that way, whether or not it was true. I think we'll find out later maybe if there's more to know. But it's interesting, at least to note that it might have been isolated just with that team. And also, when maps mentioned that the rapid response team was disbanded, quote, unquote, again, this is a voluntary like thing, they all chose to leave the team. It's not as though anybody decided the rapid response team was bad and disbanded, which we asked for. Yeah, in our demands.
I believe this happened right after one of them was charged with a misdemeanor for using deadly force on someone sitting down. Mike Schmidt did charge a single officer with a crime but it was a misdemeanor for misuse of deadly force is what they did, because they hit someone in the head with a baton who was sitting down on the ground. And there was video.
So basically, when they heard that one of them was just receiving charges, not even was being held accountable for anything, but just like was gonna go undergoing an investigation, they all quit, or they quit their volunteer positions. Again, still cops still get paid by the city and Mapps calls that disbanded. i That doesn't seem like disbanded for me. But also the thing is that Mapps is not the commissioner of the Portland Police Bureau. So you may just not know.
It's weird how much he's talking about it
Maybe other forums on cop stuff, you know,
so Wheeler knew in September, that's relevant for quite a few reasons. One of which is he didn't tell us the people of Portland, right? Like I mean
I didn't hear anything
But also what has happened in between then, and now Josh?
in November, during the fall budget bump, Wheeler actually had an amendment that included additional $5 million to the Portland Police Bureau. So this included money for staffing, but then also for $25,000 bonuses for new hires. So while Wheeler knew about this, he had already known about this for two months, he was negotiating with the other Commissioners for this additional funding for a police bureau that he knew had this training material, like in the books. This is not something that had been removed yet or dealt with yet as far as we know. They mentioned an investigation. We haven't heard anything about this internal investigation of the results of that. And again, he didn't even bother to mention that after he got his budget passed, and everything was secured, he continued to wait and delay it until the last possible minute when his hand would have been forced. And so I think that tells me a lot about Wheeler's relationship right now with the other Commissioners, at least, from my perspective, if I were a commissioner and I voted for additional police funding, when I knew that they were basically far-right, extremists training them, you know, I would have had some questions, maybe maybe put some stipulations on that money, maybe not given them money.
And you know, it's hard to believe. For me that Wheeler really is disgusted by this considering that until very recently, his like, main staffer, like one of his highest level staffers was Robert King, who we've seen in, you know, public records request documents would regularly like send Ted Andy Ngo content. So it's like, he's, he's definitely like, surrounded himself with people that are willing to interact with the far right. While Robert King isn't there anymore. It's just evidence that I just don't really believe that Ted Wheeler would care about this, like, we've never seen any evidence that this would be something that would concern him. He on law enforcement day made a tweet about how great they are like just recently,
the entirety of his actions were to reach out to the police chief who said, I'll take care of it, which is effectively all he's ever done. As far as I can tell, with regard to policing and trying to change how policing works in Portland,
there was also in some of the articles covering this event, um, someone in Wheeler's office, and anonymous person said that they're scared of the police, that that's that they're afraid that they'll do a slowdown or a strike. So that seems to be the tone of like, well, let's just ask, let's just ask Chuck. And that's about as far as he's been willing to go. It's just a Chuck.
And just to reiterate, in Portland, the different city council members, commissioners have different bureaus, and traditionally, the mayor runs or controls the Police Bureau. So the mayor is the police commissioner in town, the mayor is the boss of the police effectively, it just happens that at least with our mayor, you know that that relationship doesn't seem to work the way you would think it would, there doesn't seem to be the authority chain that you would associate with that. It really seems like the police run things.
He's even said openly like, oh, well, like, I don't believe him with this. But he's just like, oh, well, I can't fire officers because they'll just be reinstated in arbitration with their union. So he basically will admit, like, I don't have power here. Now. I don't believe him. Like, I think he could do more. But that's like the stance he's taken is that he does not have power to challenge the police.
Yeah, a lot of this has less to do with the actual legal situation, and more to do with how the politicians are presenting it. Because as you hear them talk, they're all dodging responsibility. It's all talking about well, this is back in 2018. Oh, can you believe this, we're really going to look at this hard. This isn't. This doesn't represent us in this kind of stuff, when the actual actions that they take beyond a press release or whatever is emailing the chief maybe, right? I don't even know if we'd necessarily find that if we FOIA'd the information, but
and then giving them more money
Right. Again, Wheeler's experience in September seeing this document knowing that this lawsuit was coming up about the use of extreme force, right, excessive force, I don't think extreme is the way they describe it. And then pushing for more money and saying, you know, I was actually tracking the local news outlets a lot, then, because the news outlets were also pushing for additional police funding and talking about, you know, crime and gun violence and stuff, excessively in order to kind of hype up the need in people's minds for more and more police. And so not only was it Wheeler doing this, it's also really in partnership with local media, pushing this narrative that number one wasn't true, right? Because police don't solve crime and police are going to help with a murder rate. They aren't gonna help with gun violence, all they do is hurt people. And then secondarily that our police in particular are some of the worst police that like, even if you accept that policing needs to exist, which we do not absolutely do not. Then the police that we do have are the worst possible version of that. And that like that, at least needs to be addressed. And I think that's, that's really I think that's something that we as a podcast and and that this political perspective bounces up against a lot is that like, we believe in abolition, and then also we exist in the material reality of Portland in 2022. So abolition isn't happening. So what can we hope for what can we push for what's the like potential here
and I I feel like it's a Very reasonable expectation for us to have as just Portland, I think, for all Portlanders to have that if you have a police department sharing neo Nazi memes in their training document, that you don't give them more money as a reward, that seems like a reasonable place to start that like most people would probably agree with who are not pro neo Nazi.
I say, you know, maybe if you find it, find Nazis in your org, maybe, you know, maybe remove them. That's one step.
See, it seems like a pretty normal level of accountability to expect of any organization. Let's talk a little bit about that vote. Because the way, the way the budget happens in Portland, is that the mayor can't do something like this all on his own. It does, in fact, have to be a vote with all the commissioners. So there are five total people voting.
Five total people voting. Yeah. Sam Adams doesn't get a vote
A question that remains is did any of them know about this at that time? So did Wheeler share this?
Yeah. And we have the the city council meetings, right, where some of the public negotiation was going on, clearly Hardesty was against any more additional police funding and was fighting for the Portland Street response funding that was attached to this fall budget bump. But you know, the vote was unanimous, everybody voted for the eventual budget that included the $5 million. And so whether or not Wheeler disclosed to the other city council members this information, you know, I don't know what the rules are.
If I was a commissioner, I would be bothered by the fact that I didn't have that information going into the vote.
Yeah, at least at least set the table, you know, at least give the information. And I think there's two things there. Of course, we're upset about it and spicy about it. But also, I think, you know, even a commissioner who's not a far leftist or whatever, would be upset about this, because this is information, they absolutely should have had it no matter what their position on policing and police in town, they should have had this information in order to make this decision.
If they did have the information, then I'm starting to be like, Oh, why did they vote for that extra funding? Because I mean, there's not, it's not that there's like zero accountability measures for police. And that's part of why the, you know, the language around defund the police has been so popular is like that usually is the part that is in civilian control. So in Portland, for instance, it's all part of the not all not 100%. But most of the police budget is the discretionary budget. So in theory, the commission could just be like, strike the whole thing in a vote, like in theory, they do actually have that power. So that's, that's why a lot of the focus is on that. And so like they had this have a moment when they're doing this, like fall Budget Adjustment, which if the police are out of control in some way, they have a tool to be like, well, you don't get as much money. Like, they can do that.
Legally speaking they could do that. Yeah.
So you know
Well so like we talked about before, right? That like the cops don't have a boss that, like what what our experience is that while they could do that, you know, our experience is that they don't do that.
I don't want to let them off the hook of like, I don't think they're using the tools they do have, basically. Yeah. So even though they don't have that much power, because there's not like this way of holding individual officers accountable, which like would be good, to be able to hold individual officers accountable. They do have a way to force the police themselves to do something, or at least punish them in some way. And they're not using that they're actually like, rewarding them for I mean, 6000 uses a force against Portlanders. Yeah. Right. So this made the news. You know, this is like the news of the weekend, which is a three day weekend. Not a great time to release information if you want it to be known by people.
It's a great time to bury things, right. I mean, we mentioned this a couple times, Friday, like in the afternoon is when releases go like that's when you fire your people. That's when you announced that you lost a bunch of money. That's like that's like the corporate time to put up bad news.
You hope they'll get buried by Monday. There's two outlets we wanted to talk about the way they covered this. So there's the Mercury and Alex Z's piece, and the Oregonians we want to talk about both of those. So here's the Oregonian headline. "Portland police training on protests, ends with slide showing mock prayer for in quotes. dirty hippie. Prompts investigation." Josh, what do you think about that?
The headline is terrible. Of course that is not specific enough and like equating it to like one slide. And also the dirty hippie thing is not the problem, like that they mentioned a dirty hippie. So like, yeah, the headline is not descriptive enough and not aggressive enough. But I want to mention also, because we were pulling this up to look at it, I went to the Oregonian's, like their homepage. And this link is like, you know, scroll, you have to scroll down to the middle of the page. And then it's one line is not even a graphic with another sports something story above it. It's like the smallest possible indication. And for us, this was so important that not only are we recording right now, two days after this happened, we recorded for three hours yesterday trying to do an episode on this. And just it wasn't very good. So this is like our second try. And we are a podcast that makes no money. And like is only at amateur best.
People will talk about oh, well, the editor. It's the headline, whatever the journalist isn't getting, I don't really care about that I care about the effect of it. So like when people are scrolling through information, people who aren't intending to read the article, the headline might be the only thing they get. And I already saw in comments on the Oregonian's Twitter when they shared the article. The people were like, well, who cares? Like a dirty hippy, making fun of a dirty hippy? Like who cares? Because
and nobody would care.
An anti hippie meme is not something to be upset about. Like it's just,
I'm sure we all have friends that might be upset, specifically because they're specifically hippies. Yeah, I think generally.
It's not something that I would make a podcast about.
We're like, you gotta get a load of this, they're talking about hippies.
I mean, you know, I make fun of patchouli,
hey, you know, I think I think a hippie is a perfectly fine sort of person to make fun of. As a counterexample. We're going to read the Portland Mercury's headline, it says, "Portland police use right wing meme threatening violence in training presentation," which I think is still maybe not as aggressive as I want. I've been saying neo Nazi because I want to attach it to something. Like the most outrageous thing I can honestly, you know, in order to describe how problematic I think this is, but I think right wing man is pretty close. Maybe? Why right wing extremist meme or something like that might have been better.
I do just want to add, just because I don't think we actually went into it very deeply that like the association with Kyle, he does have neo Nazi associations. People sometimes are like, well, proud boys aren't Neo Nazis.
Yeah, Kyle Chapman in particular is a is absolutely a neo Nazi. That guy is not good
as an example of that when Enrique Tarrio, there was a new story going around of him being a fat informant in the past, Kyle "based stickman" did was create an alternative proud boys that he called "Proud Goys". So
yeah, and specifically, if you're not familiar with the word goy, it's a way to refer to Gentiles or people that aren't Jews in Yiddish, and I guess in modern Hebrew, but it's a thing that Neo Nazis and other like white supremacist extremists, frequently used kind of self referential in irony,
what I think what I want to talk about at least a little bit, and maybe we'll just use one example we might do a couple is the presentation itself. And I think it's important because it's a training presentation, it's this isn't just any document they had. And a lot of what we hear from reformers is like, we need some new training, we need to just train them to not be racist, or we need to just train them to not be violent or whatever, whatever it is, they need de escalation training, that's one we hear a lot. So this is a training documents that they were you using, and it had to do with crowd control. So when we think about, you know, all the protests that happened recently, and all the outrageous use of force, and past couple years, this is something they saw right before that, you know, just a couple years before. So what kind of a message of training they were getting, and how like, when you call for training, what what kind of thing you're calling for, I think is relevant to at least go into a little bit. So one section that we thought was interesting to talk about is a section where they talk about the different strategies there are for dealing with protests. And they basically say there's two of them.
Yeah, the only name to one is the negotiated management model, which they seem to kind of present as the current and modern way to handle things. And they also mentioned an escalated force model, which they say it was mostly used before 1970 is not how they currently do it. So from from their perspective of what they're broadcasting, they're talking about, again, negotiated management versus escalated force. Negotiated management would be like, you know, the organizers of a protest get, oh, what are they called? I don't even know what they're called. That's funny. What do you get when you do a protest and you ask..?
A permit
Yeah. So you know, organizers would get a permit and they would like negotiate with the police about where to start their protests, where to end their protests, how many people they were allowed to have, all that kind of thing. So again, negotiated management really just means doing what the cops say? It's not a matter of negotiation. I mean, you don't have any chips. They're the bosses and they control things and have the guns. And they're saying that's now that's the modern way to handle policing. And, and from this presentation, at least the only alternative that's presented is the escalated force model.
And the escalated force model, the one that they say is outdated. So it's used to control protests before 1970, is confrontational and force is used, only riot police, many arrests, I would say the many arrests thing is maybe a little less common now. So that's probably the outdated part.
Yeah, the only outdated part we really see here is like a few changes as a result of the uprising and some changes in tactics on the path of protesters. You know, it's really interesting, the way they phrases that they try to say that, like escalated force was the way before 1970. That is all I have experienced in Portland from Portland police. Yeah, granted, the protests that I go to are frequently not permitted. They are frequently not the protests that are negotiating with the police, because they're, like, probably half the protests I've ever been to are anti police protests. So negotiating a location or, you know, tactics or whatever with the cops is absurd.
Here's what they say about when negotiated management works. So they say, um, it works well, with people willing to meet and cooperate with the police, does not work with anarchists, or radical groups who refuse to negotiate with the police does not work for spontaneous public disorder or riot. They don't say what the alternative is. So I have to assume it's just the only other system that they have, which is escalated force. So I, I'm stuck on this a little bit, because they only had two alternates. So Right. They're like, Oh, well, there's these violent, bad ones where we have to do the escalated force. And then there's the nice ones where they're permitted. But like, my framing for what happened in 2020, was that they were the city was demanding a budget cut for the police. Like this is like a this is not an anarchist demand. This is this, you know, there was a petition first
There was a petition. Many people like testified to city council. And forgive me, I don't, I don't mean to denigrate myself. But these were normal people. Like everybody was asking for this.
If they're creating this binary, where they have to use violence, if you're unwilling to negotiate with the police that inherently makes even like this, like budgetary demands, that would harm their power. So it's not even necessarily a very extreme thing. It's just the fact that they're the target of it, it makes it impossible for them to have a non violent reaction to it. Because why would you coordinate with the department whose budget you're trying to cut? There's no path
It seems like a like a mistake strategically.
You would think, although some have made it
No comment. Yeah, so So the, as Piper said, the dichotomy that they're setting up is already bullshit, right? They're setting up the table with garbage.
They're basically saying that if you're unwilling to do what we say to be in the place, we say, at the time, we say, do the things we say, then therefore, you're like this, you're illegitimate.
And we can use this escalated force model.
Yeah, we can't we have to throw up our hands, you actually are doing it wrong, that we have no choice, because our negotiated management model does not work.
Right. Right
which is the model that we use, so it's broken, you didn't do your end of the deal.
I get why it bothers you so much, but also like, given our experience, it's very like, Uh huh. Yeah, we knew this. Yeah.
Our experience is that they do these terrible things, right, that they actual, their actions are terrible, they're violent, they're harming all of Portlanders. But I think my point is that even their training is that, like, when we say they're being retrained to be better, oh, this didn't follow training. It's like, well, actually, it did follow training.
They were doing the training materials.
Yeah, the training is bad
Well, yeah, the training is bad. And also you can imagine, right? If they had a test or whatever, and they answer all the questions, right, the answers would also be wrong. Even if they like they would get they would test correctly for this material and like the information that they are learning is incorrect, and like inaccurate and not helpful.
And this is like going back to the timeline. The police were already under the DOJ settlement about excessive use of force now not specifically in relation to protests, but they already had like really heavy scrutiny. And were being asked to be retrained about force already.
That was already happening. Yep.
So and this is what we got.
So this is a the training material they got. And then we don't even find out about it until two years later because of a lawsuit. Right? So like, even in, well, three years, right, it's 2018 to 2022, or the beginning of 2022. I think that's what's hitting me the most is like how much like not only this is almost certainly not the worst thing. And then also, like, how much of that training has been implemented on the backs of my friends? Like, you know, like, this has, like, Well, I mean, a very, like, very concrete, very material impact in the lives of people around me. And so yeah, it's a lot to think about a lot to process. One of the things I wanted to mention, because it just came up so frequently, this is 100 slide presentation, we have a version of this podcast where we went through every slide, and it was a mistake,
we made it to 25. And it was like two hours.
But one thing we did notice is that frequently, in the slides, they mentioned stats and information about North America and Europe specifically, they call out North America and Europe over and over again. And the photos and the the the examples and places that they show are from all over the world, Australia, South America, they've got some things that look like they might have been in Africa, in the Middle East all over the place. But specifically, when they talk about stats, or when they talk about how to interact with people, they only talk about North America and Europe. So Piper, when someone only mentions North American Europe, when they're talking about stats, and they're trying to convince you in an argument, what do you start to think?
I mean, I start to think they're talking about white people.
Yeah, the thing is, North American Europe have some things in common, but it's particularly with policing actually have almost nothing in common, our policing systems are wildly different.
And we can, we can know that it's dramatically different just for the fact that like, the US stands alone, it's in its incarceration rate, the whole thing, the whole enterprise of criminalizing people is not what it is elsewhere, we're not in the same category as anyone else,
any example of another protest. I mean, and you can see this with radical protests in Central and South America, you can see this sometimes in some of the stuff from Hong Kong, they have a lot more leeway about what how they can interact with their police officers, because those police officers don't have like lethal weapons on their body. And so I, of course, would never recommend violence or attacking anyone. But as far as self defense, and trying not to get hurt yourself. The reason I'm pointing this in particular out is because of how different American policing is, and how, you know, getting some stats and stuff about other places, particularly if it's like all white places, and you're just a white supremacist and don't know it, the information they have is just not going to be useful. Just like if you're covering, like protests that are happening in Europe, or in Asia, or whatever. It's just like, not the same scene at all. Particularly when you're talking about anti police protests.
I also just want to say like as a person that interacts with data a lot. It's weird to say the US and Europe because most datasets will exist on a country level. So there's a lot of times where you will only see a single country.
Tell me more about that. What what happens, like if you have two different datasets for different countries, like what's the complication there.
So a lot of times the data, a data set will be collected on a country level. So when you're defining what the variables are, and the criteria for counting something, you know, you have a set within that country or like, here's the criteria needed to count it as XY or Z. They're not using the exact same criteria in another country. So it's a lot of times really hard to reconcile data sets. So it's not weird for it to be one country. It's weirder for it to be the US and Europe. That is weirder, and in fact, one of the statements said social scientists have studied protests in the US and Europe. And it's like, well, no, they study protests elsewhere. studied other parts of the world, there are social scientists in other parts of the world studying where they live.
That seems like a really reasonable conclusion Piper,
they could just leave that out and just say social scientists have studied protests, and it would have been far more accurate to put that in as very weird.
Yeah, specifically, this data thing that you pointed out was really interesting to me, because I have spent a little bit of time googling like crime statistics and homicide rates and stuff. And I know as an example, that the states because they track violent crime and crime statistics so differently, that it's basically useless. Comparing crime across states is like, it just takes forever. And you really have to get into the kind of the root data, whatever's underneath it, to do your own math. Whereas stuff like homicide statistics are a little easier because the FBI does like a layer on top of everything and kind of provides some data normalization I guess it's called
well, and even more than that, the CDC, um, like cause of death data is very good. Like, so that and that is a national source and, you know, it's the same criteria all over
totally. So just Just as an example for like, how ridiculous this point was, and like, since we're going at length about the fact that they put like the US / Europe a bunch, just like there's multiple problems with it, whether that's from the data side, or from the vibe side when it's just a little too white, a little too focused on white people
and saying like, the times they said it were like that less than 10% of protests involve property damage in the US and Europe. And then they showed a lot of pictures of property damage happening in other countries.
It's just it's a narrative and I wouldn't necessarily say that whoever put this PowerPoint really was even aware of what they were doing, but it's just clearly from a very specific viewpoint, that is not only wrong, but is also racist.