Human, Frustrated But Still A Portland Police Officer

When they learned one of their “brothers” had been charged, they resigned. En masse. Much like their counterparts in Buffalo and Albuquerque did before them. They had enough.

A group of about 50 police officers who had served voluntarily on a specialized crowd control unit in Portland, Ore., have stepped down from the squad after a year of sometimes violent clashes with protesters, the city’s Police Department said on Thursday.

The resignations came just hours after a member of the unit, Officer Corey Budworth, was indicted on a misdemeanor assault charge that he physically injured an independent photojournalist during a protest in August.

Budworth was charged for an assault captured on video, leaving little doubt that his use of force was excessive and unwarranted.

Cop 37 shoves woman hitting her from behind in the head with baton, then hits her again in the face with baton while she is sitting on the ground pic.twitter.com/t4phwbWpsK

— John #FreePalestine (@Johnnthelefty) August 19, 2020

Nonetheless, the members of Portland’s Rapid Response Team, a voluntary assignment within the PPB quit the squad for what they perceived as a lack of support.

The officers, [Chief Chris Davis] said, had complained not only about the indictment, but about what they viewed as a broader lack of support after more than 150 nights of sustained protests, fueled in part by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.

“If you put a human being through what they were put through, that takes a toll,” Chief Davis said. “They’re not feeling like that sacrifice that they have made, necessarily, has been understood very well, and that’s their perspective, and I have to honor their perspective.”

There’s much about their grievances that is understandable. This has gone on far too long. The expectations, and condemnations, of police handling of the  inter-mingled mix of peaceful protesters and violent rioters has been untenable. Like it or not, cops are people too, and can be pushed too hard, too far, and react out of a toxic combination of fear, anger and frustration. Why should they treat kindly and gently people bent on committing violence and destruction night after night after night? Why do people expect them to do?

Much of the frustration stemmed from the city’s efforts to appease the mob, a mayor vacillating between apologizing for the use of force and then ordering more force be used, and a district attorney who refused to prosecute those arrested because were merely acting out of righteous frustration.

The officers’ union has denounced the indictment, calling it a “politically driven charging decision” against an officer who “worked to restore order during a chaotic night of burning and destruction in Portland.”

Except as the video shows, that wasn’t what Budworth did, even if it was a chaotic night of burning and destruction in Portland. And even if politics has driven anarchists and anarchist friends to return every night to burn it down again.

Cops will tell us, me, that we don’t get it. We’ve never experienced what they were living through night after night and we, therefore, cannot judge them for their conduct.

The Rapid Response Team members “do not volunteer to have Molotov cocktails, fireworks, explosives, rocks, bottles, urine, feces and other dangerous objects thrown at them,” [Portland Police Association President Daryl] Turner wrote in a letter. “Nor do they volunteer to have threats of rape, murder, and assaults on their families hurled at them.”

Mr. Turner said the officers had been caught between what he described as conflicting demands to “stand down” and to use force only when protests spun out of control.

“These officers find themselves in a no-win situation,” Mr. Turner wrote. “They can’t win because of the position others have put them in.”

While it’s somewhat disingenuous to argue that these cops don’t volunteer for the assignment to be subject to danger, which is pretty much the job description of police officer and the primary reason they give them guns, there is some validity to the argument that they have found themselves in a no-win situation. Given the way in which rioters and protesters, from the violent to the merely civil disobedient, have presented, there are only so many tactics available to the police to deal with the mobs.

They are charged with preventing the destruction, controlling people bent on destruction, without using more force than would look good on the  front page of the Oregonian. No matter what they do, how they handle the mob it will be wrong, bad and evil. And it’s been this way for 150 nights, because the mob realizes that it can act without constraint while the police have no way to stop them short of a massive use of force, which will prove the mob right by proving that the police must be abolished as a violent army of oppressors. It’s win-win for the mob, and no-win for the cops.

But that’s not why Budworth was indicted, and this is a critical distinction. He was charged for what he did to one person, Teri Jacobs, on that one night when his use of force against her was utterly without justification. This wasn’t about some cosmic sense of frustration, but a cop who lost his cool and needlessly battered a woman.

As for the mass resignations, perhaps that’s exactly what should happen. The city has demanded too much of them, and they have not been given the support they need to perform the impossible task expected of them. But mostly, if they’ve lost the point of their becoming cops, that they are not the counterpart to violent rioters but police officers who have chosen a job, a duty, to both enforce the law while respecting the constitutional rights of citizens and not indulging their worst impulses by become the criminals they oppose, then they shouldn’t be on the Rapid Response Team. They shouldn’t be cops at all.

It’s not any easy job, and can. as here, prove to be a near impossible job in many respects, but it’s still a job, and the job they chose. Cops don’t get the option of being frustrated and angry, and relieved of their obligation not to violently harm people. If they can’t hack it, then they should resign. And if the job can’t be done any other way, then Portland and other cities need to address their acquiescence in this untenable situation they’ve allowed to go on far too long.