Category Archives: US policing

Portland: 1,000 peacefully protest amid withdrawal of federal agents

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Overnight protest matches Thursday’s, with no major confrontations, as US government draws down forces

More than a thousand people showed up in downtown Portland early on Saturday to peacefully protest, about three days after the announcement that the presence of US agents there would be reduced – a deal that Oregon officials hope will continue to ease tensions as the city tries to move on from months of chaotic nightly protests.

Friday’s overnight protest mimicked Thursday’s, which was the first time in weeks that demonstrations ended without any major confrontations, violence or arrests.

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New York protester forced into unmarked van by plainclothes police – video

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Footage showing police officers in New York forcing a female protester into an unmarked minivan in east Manhattan has provoked an outcry.

Video shows plainclothes officers carrying the woman away while uniformed police stand guard, actions criticised as ‘abusive and indefensible’ by the American Civil Liberties Union.

In a statement, the New York Police Department said the protester was wanted for damaging police cameras during five separate criminal incidents in and around City Hall Park

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‘These are his people’: inside the elite border patrol unit Trump sent to Portland

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Bortac, a quasi-militarised outfit equivalent to the Navy Seals, has been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan

In January 2011, James Tomsheck, then a top internal affairs investigator inside US Customs and Border Protection, attended a meeting of about 100 senior CBP leaders in a hotel in Irvington, Virginia.

Amid the sanitized splendor of the hotel ballroom, he vividly recalls hearing the nation’s then highest-ranking border patrol agent, David Aguilar, laying out his vision for the future. Border patrol, the former CBP deputy commissioner said, was to become the “marine corps of the US federal law enforcement community”.

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Portland: protesters bring down fence as confrontation with Trump agents rises

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The confrontation between protesters and federal paramilitaries in Portland escalated early on Sunday morning, when demonstrators finally broke down a steel fence around the courthouse after days of trying.

Related: What is happening in Portland and what does Trump hope to gain?

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Portland protesters counter teargas with leaf blowers in standoff with federal troops – video

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Black Lives Matter protesters used leaf blowers to blow back teargas in clashes with federal troops in Portland, Oregon. On the 57th day of protests in the city, thousands of demonstrators marched on a federal courthouse where they have clashed with officers throughout the week. The troops, deployed by Donald Trump against the wishes of Portland's mayor, fired teargas and pepper rounds into the crowd, and some responded by throwing fireworks back

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America ‘staring down the barrel of martial law’, Oregon senator warns

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America is “staring down the barrel of martial law” as it approaches the presidential election, a US senator from Oregon has warned as Donald Trump cracks down on protests in Portland, the state’s biggest city.

Related: This is what happens when the War on Terror is turned inward, on America | Hamilton Nolan

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Trump is using federal agents as his ‘goon squad’, says Ice’s ex-acting head

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John Sandweg says the deployment of homeland security officials is a ‘manufactured crisis’ stemming from ‘a failure of leadership’

The former acting director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which works under the Department of Homeland Security, has condemned the Trump administration’s handling of protests in Portland by deploying federal agents into the city.

Related: Portland clampdown: why are federal agents there and what are they doing?

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DoJ to investigate federal forces’ tactics in US cities as mayors condemn Trump

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Watchdog to look at use-of-force allegations in Portland and Washington as other mayors say: we don’t need your deployments

The justice department inspector general said on Thursday it would conduct a review of the conduct of federal agents who responded to unrest in Portland and Washington DC, following concerns from members of Congress and the public.

Related: DoJ watchdog opens investigation into federal agents' actions in Portland – live

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Trump announces ‘surge’ of federal officers into Democratic-run cities

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Civil liberties watchdogs condemn plan to send hundreds of agents into cities including Chicago and Albuquerque

Donald Trump has announced a “surge” of hundreds of law enforcement officers into Democratic-run cities including Chicago, drawing condemnation from civil liberties watchdogs.

The US president’s move came after a crackdown by federal agents on anti-racism protesters in Portland, Oregon, and was consistent with his emphasis on “law and order” as a key component of his reelection campaign.

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Trump’s vow to send federal officers to US cities is election ploy, critics say

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Opponents warn of grave threat to civil liberties as observers say president seeks to build ‘law and order’ credentials

Donald Trump has vowed to send federal officers to several American cities led by Democrats in what critics say is an attempt to play the “law and order” card to boost his bid for re-election.

The president’s threat came after a federal crackdown on anti-racism protests in Portland, Oregon, that involved unmarked cars and unidentified forces in camouflage.

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Trump equates support for Confederate flag with Black Lives Matter

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Donald Trump has equated the Black Lives Matter movement with displays of the Confederate flag, saying: “I’m not offended either by Black Lives Matter, that’s freedom of speech. You know the whole thing with cancel culture – we can’t cancel our whole history. We can’t forget that the north and the south fought.”

Related: Trump's 2020 strategy: paint Joe Biden as a puppet for the 'radical left'

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Portland mayor demands removal of camouflage-clad agents detaining protesters – video

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The mayor of Portland, Oregon, has demanded that Donald Trump remove camouflage-clad federal agents deployed to the city after they attacked Black Lives Matter protesters and some detained people far from the federal property they were sent to protect

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Trump clashes with Fox News interviewer over false claim about Biden

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Challenged by an interviewer about his claim Joe Biden wants to defund the police, Donald Trump called for a copy of the policy charter Biden agreed with Bernie Sanders and released this week. The document did not prove his claim.

Related: 'The guy stinks and he’s a racist': Anthony Scaramucci on Donald Trump

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Trump twists stats on police brutality: ‘more white people’ are killed

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In fact, studies have found that Black Americans are up to 3.5 times as likely to be killed by law enforcement

Donald Trump has once again stoked racial grievances, telling an interviewer who asked a question about the police killing of George Floyd that white people also get killed by law enforcement in the US.

In an echo of his comments on white nationalist marchers and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when he said there were “fine people on both sides”, the president did not take the opportunity to talk about the problem of racially-motivated police brutality on Tuesday but switched to talk about white victims.

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Police shot Los Angeles security guard in the back five times, autopsy shows

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  • Andres Guardado was killed on 18 June during a foot pursuit
  • All five gunshot wounds were fatal, report said

The official autopsy report for Andres Guardado, an 18-year-old security guard killed by Los Angeles police last month, revealed that a deputy shot him in the back five times.

The findings from the Los Angeles county coroner, released on Friday, confirm an independent autopsy report released earlier this week by a family attorney. The sheriff’s department had faced intense scrutiny over its initial decision to request the findings be kept confidential under a security hold.

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Body-camera video shows police killing of Sean Monterrosa – video

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WARNING: SOME VIEWERS MAY FIND THIS FOOTAGE DISTRESSING. Body-camera footage released by the City of Vallejo shows the deadly police shooting of Sean Monterrosa on 2 June 2020. The footage, taken from three officers present, has raised new questions about why a Vallejo officer fired a round of bullets from inside his vehicle at the unarmed 22-year-old

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George Floyd told officers ‘I can’t breathe’ more than 20 times, transcripts show

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Derek Chauvin, the officer kneeling on his neck, replied: ‘It takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk’

Newly released transcripts of the minutes leading up to George Floyd’s death reveal he told officers “I can’t breathe” more than 20 times, only to have his plea dismissed by Derek Chauvin, the white officer pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck, who said: “It takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk.”

Floyd’s dying words have become a rallying cry at demonstrations around the world amid a reckoning with systemic racism and police brutality. The chilling transcripts of body camera video recordings that were made public on Wednesday provide the most detailed account yet of what happened after police apprehended Floyd on 25 May.

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Trump claims victory as US nears 130,000 coronavirus deaths – live

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Houston mayor Sylvester Turner has appeared on CBS’s Face The Nation to discuss the Covid-19 outbreak in his city. He says staffing at the city’s hospital is a particular problem.

“If we don’t get our hands around this virus quickly, in about two weeks our hospital system could be in serious, serious trouble,” he says. “... We can always provide additional beds, but we need the people, the nurses and everybody else, the medical professionals to staff those beds. That’s the critical point right now.”

New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, has appeared on NBC’s Meet The Press. New Jersey has been one of the worst-hit states in the US during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, and he says a national strategy is needed to combat Covid-19.

“This thing is lethal,” he says. “New Jersey’s paid an enormous price. We’ve [had] 13,000 confirmed fatalities from Covid-19. We’re starting to see small spikes in reinfection from folks coming back from places like Myrtle Beach and as well as in Florida, other hotspots.

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