Another screw up by Trump??? Hey TEX Is Portland in America??
Napolitano: DHS can protect federal assets in cities, but can't enforce local criminal law
“The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own consciences.”— C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Serious issues are implicating personal liberty and public safety in Portland, Ore.
The police are not enforcing local and state laws. They are refraining from doing so because they have been so instructed by elected public officials.
The Supreme Court has ruled that state and local elected officials — not police — are empowered to determine the depth and breadth of law enforcement. And the court has also ruled that the police have no legal obligation to protect lives and property.
Stated differently, the police cannot be sued for their willful failures. The remedy for those failures — according to the court — is to elect different officials who will deploy police assets differently. Yet, the police have a moral obligation to protect lives and property. For what other purpose have we hired and empowered them?
OREGON LAWMAKER SAYS PORTLAND PROTESTS ARE ‘NOT OUT OF CONTROL’
All persons have a natural right to protect their lives and property, especially when the government fails to do so. If its failures are systemic and repeated, it is the duty of the people to alter or abolish the government. We know this from the Declaration of Independence.
More from Opinion
Portland has been the center of anti-police demonstrations this summer. The neighborhood around the state Capitol has endured nearly two months of nighttime demonstrations. Most of these are peaceful; some are destructive.
Last weekend, with no notice or local consent, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent teams of agents — untrained in crowd control and wearing military fatigues — onto Portland’s streets. Their uniforms bore no governmental, administrative or personal names, just the word “Police” on masking tape. They descended upon the city in unmarked SUVs and began grabbing people indiscriminately off the streets, without regard to the person’s lawful presence or personal behavior.
'THEY HAVE TO BE RESTRAINED': JUDGE NAPOLITANO ON WHAT FEDERAL AGENTS IN PORTLAND CAN AND CANNOT DO
According to the account of one victim, he was walking peacefully in the downtown area, observing the chaos, when five masked men in fatigues exited an unmarked SUV, grabbed him and pulled him into the car. They tied his hands with plastic behind his back. They pulled his cap over his face. They kept him for two hours and then released him. They filed no charges against him.
They had no basis for this kidnapping.
It was a kidnapping, not an arrest. An arrest is a lawful restraint by a legitimate government authority pursuant to a warrant issued by a judge specifically naming the person to be arrested, or pursuant to probable cause of crime personally observed by the arresting officers. Neither of these was the case in Portland.
And some victims were even less fortunate than those kidnapped. They were assaulted with pepper spray and hit with nonlethal exploding bullets that stun, hurt and disorient. The bullets can harm the eyes, heart and liver. I saw a video of a young man riding a bicycle away from the chaos. Yet, he was attacked by five of these feds.
An Annapolis graduate and Navy veteran asked a small group of the feds by what constitutional authority they were present in Portland. They responded by pepper-spraying his face and beating his hand with a baton, shattering numerous bones in his hand.
Portland is in America, right? What’s going on here?