Portland Mayor Wheeler Gets Tough On Trump (Not Anarchist Rioters)

From our friends at Fox News:

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler is demanding that President Trump remove federal agents deployed to the city amid criticisms of a heavy-handed response against protesters and journalists and reports that militarized law enforcement personnel have refused to identify themselves.

“Keep your troops in your own buildings, or have them leave our city,” Wheeler said at a news conference Friday. "This is part of the core media strategy out of Trump’s White House: to use federal troops to bolster his sagging polling data. And it is an absolute abuse of federal law enforcement officials.”

His remarks came on the same day the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the U.S. Marshals Service for allegedly violating the rights of journalists and legal observers. The suit adds the federal agencies to an existing complaint to halt crowd control measures and the use of tear gas, rubber bullets against the media and legal observers during protests.

Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell said that officers are in contact with federal agents, but that neither controls what the other does.

“We do communicate with federal officers for the purpose of situational awareness and deconfliction,” Lovell said. “We’re operating in a very, very close proximity to one another ... so it’s important for us to know if they’re going to take some type of action and it’s important for them to know if we’re going to take some type of action.”

Federal officers have detained 13 people for crimes related to the ongoing protests, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported Thursday. One video showed two people in helmets and green camouflage with “police” patches grabbing a person on the sidewalk, handcuffing them and taking them into an unmarked vehicle."

Here's more from National Review:

Protests and rioting in Portland have been nearly constant since the May 25 death of George Floyd that sparked national outrage and demonstrations across the country. On Tuesday, more than 200 people marched downtown for a mostly peaceful protest against police brutality, but some demonstrators who remain on the streets after dark have engaged in property destruction, throwing rocks at police, marking buildings with graffiti, and earlier this month briefly set a courthouse on fire.

As the violence continued, President Trump sent federal law enforcement agents to handle the situation, which he described as “out of control.” One demonstrator was critically injured and underwent facial reconstructive surgery after a federal officer fired an impact munition at his head, an incident that the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General is investigating.

Lovell appeared to suggest that city police officers are not coordinating with federal law enforcement as the local officers work to prevent crime and “establish order.”

“The federal officers have their objectives, and the Portland police has our objectives. We don’t direct federal officers’ actions, and they do not direct ours,” Lovell said Friday.

The president praised the work of federal authorities earlier this week at the White House, promising that the violence Portland would continue to be quelled.

“Portland was totally out of control, and they went in, and I guess we have many people right now in jail, and we very much quelled it, and if it starts again, we’ll quell it again very easily,” Trump said Monday. “It’s not hard to do, if you know what you’re doing.”

Well, Mr. Mayor, perhaps if you weren't letting these peaceful, defenseless protestors storm local police precincts and federal buildings, perhaps the Federal Government would not be intervening. 

By the way, it's not "your city," it is the people of Portland's city and you were elected to protect it-something you're failing at terribly. 

If you want to be another spineless panderer to the Marxist Left, move out of the way for real Patriot Americans.