Portland Police Heckled While Arresting Man in Handsaw Attack on 2 Women
The anti-police culture in Portland has become pathological.
There’s no other explanation for it when police are arresting a clearly mentally disturbed man who has allegedly just attacked two women with a handsaw and bystanders make the situation worse by taunting them during the process.
It sounds crazy, but that’s precisely what happened Friday, the Portland Police Bureau reported, when a man carrying a handsaw assaulted his two victims in a laundromat.
Check out the video here. (Warning: It’s not clear how badly the two women were hurt, but the attack is shocking.)
After he left the business and was tracked down by police, he refused to drop the makeshift weapon and “told officers he was going to make them shoot him,” a police news release reads.
The man, identified as 58-year-old Shane Vordelmicha Green, then walked into traffic while still carrying the saw and yelling at police, according to authorities.
After officers used an unspecified “less lethal” munition, police reported, he dropped the saw.
Now, here’s the kicker. While the officers were dealing with a deeply disturbed individual, about the last thing anyone needs — including the disturbed individual — is heckling from the public.
But that’s apparently what took place as “several bystanders interrupted [officers’] conversation with him by screaming and taunting the officers, only increasing his level of agitation again,” police reported.
In the police statement, Portland Police Deputy Chief Chris Davis praised his officers’ handling of an obviously dangerous situation, but was not happy with the bystanders’ role in the events.
“Officers frequently deescalate situations such as this,” he said. “It is unfortunate that some community members chose to try to escalate the situation. These incidents seldom make the headlines, but illustrate the excellent training and restraint officers use to deescalate a person intent on forcing officers to use lethal force.”
From the wording of the police document — and reports on area news stations like KOIN-TV and KATU-TV, there’s no indication that the incident, or the crowd’s reaction, was connected to the city’s ongoing civil unrest (now nearing 60 straight days of rioting).
However, given the anti-cop sentiment currently in vogue in too many parts of the country — which very much includes Portland — it would be difficult to not to think the bystanders’ reaction was fed in large part by what’s going on in the city in particular and in the country as a whole.
What it indicates is that for a certain brand of cop-hater, no action by the police that aimed at protecting the public will ever be entirely acceptable.
If cops can’t arrest an unquestionably deranged man — who had just carried out an attack using a handsaw – without interference from a law-enforcement loathing public, there’s really not much they can do without catching some criticism for it. And there’s even less hope for respect for the law in general.
As it stands, according to the police statement, Green is charged with “three counts of Assault II, six counts of Unlawful Use of a Weapon, Attempt Assault I, Strangulation, four counts of Menacing, two counts of Attempt Assault II, Harassment, Disorderly Conduct II, Interfering with a Peace Officer, and four counts of Reckless Endangering.”
He was booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center.
In a sane city, cops would be cheered for taking a guy like that off the streets.
In Portland they’re jeered.
There’s not a lot more that needs to be said. It’s pathological.
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