Federal officers have remained in Portland for more than a week after a negotiated agreement between the state and the Trump administration to pull them back. The officers have stayed largely out of sight as hundreds of racial justice protesters have gathered outside the Mark O. Hatfield federal courthouse some nights.
Ken Cuccinelli, the senior official performing the duties of the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, spoke to OPB’s “Think Out Loud” Monday. Here are highlights from her conversation with host Dave Miller. To listen to the entire thing, use the audio player at the top of this story.
Dave Miller:
According to many assessments, the protests were losing steam when the federal surge happened. Why did many more federal officers come when they did in early July?
Ken Cuccinelli:
Yeah, those weren’t assessments. That was a narrative, and I mean, the reason additional officers were sent to Portland is because they were requested by the Portland local commander of the ... FPS. Federal Protective Service protects over 9000 federal facilities, and most people don’t ever notice FPS. But they’re the ones actually responsible for protecting those federal buildings when it’s also courthouses. We share that responsibility with marshalls, and they added officers through June as attacks increased. They were increasing, not decreasing. And so and when our of officers first arrived in early July, the outside FPS officers, CPB officers, ICE agents — other people from other parts of Department of Homeland Security because FPS had run out of officers in that region — they stayed inside the courthouse for the first couple of days. And the damage continued. And so the idea that their presence, which was not visible at the time somehow spiked violence is just belied by the facts. So much like the other end of the month when the same people said, all we have to do is see the federal forces leave around the courthouse and everything will calm down. Well, we’ve had seven nights in a row of riots declared by the local police, so that obviously wasn’t correct either.
Dave Miller:
Has there been another time when something like 170 Customs and Border Patrol personnel were sent to a city for a reason like this and a city that doesn’t have an international border?
Ken Cuccinelli:
So Federal Protective Service has existed since 1971. They handle on average of about 900 protests of various forms a year. And they have never in their entire history experienced anything like Portland ever. And so there’s never been a need before July of this year to see the kind of addition, the deputyization of other law enforcement officers from the Department of Homeland Security to serve as FPS officers to bolster their numbers. They have never needed it before. The violence was that bad.
Dave Miller:
You told members of Congress last week that rioters are not protesters and protesters are not rioters. How do you justify the use of crowd control measures that don’t make that same distinction?
Ken Cuccinelli:
Well, the tactics used when you talk about crowd control measures that were used in Portland by the Department Homeland Security, were all intended to be the lowest level of force available. That’s what those lower-level things like tear gas, for instance, are for. They’re to avoid having to skip that level and engage in a closer way with people who are being violent and rather dispersed them to achieve a peaceful outcome, even if it is by moving people out of the what you might call zone of protests, but not when there’s violence going on.
But there’s no question that when you have large scale violence going on and you’re using tactics to deal with those who are violent to move the crowd, to reduce the level of violence, using these sorts of tactics that everybody else who is there, you know, this is a statement of the obvious. They’re in the same place. We also have seen extensively used tactics where you have sort of a front that doesn’t engage in physical violence. They may hold up a wall of umbrellas, for instance. And they do it to shield those who are violent behind them.
Dave Miller:
So the deal between the governor and the Trump administration basically is that if state and local officers could maintain the security of the federal courthouse, the extra contingent to federal officers would leave. Things have been quiet at the courthouse, if not in some other parts of the city since state police ago lead. Will you take the extra federal officers out of Portland?
Ken Cuccinelli:
Certainly when we’re confident that kind of continual, riotous violence wouldn’t simply be redirected at the courthouse or another federal facility than that is absolutely our intention.
Dave Miller:
Just briefly, how would you make that determination?
Ken Cuccinelli:
When riots stop.
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