Salem Police Department misleads about Proud Boys rally

I was already deeply irritated at the Salem Police Department, after learning that they stood by and did nothing on May 1 while armed members of the Proud Boys right-wing militia group forced people they didn't like to leave the public Riverfront Park, harassed journalists, and reportedly beat up someone who was taking a photo of them.

(See my previous post, "Salem police sit by as Proud Boys take over Riverfront Park.")

Now I've even more irritated at the Police Department after reading their attempt to make it seem like they did everything right and nothing wrong as the Proud Boys provided "security" at a gun rights rally that lacked a permit, so had no right to exclude either citizens or journalists from the rally area.

Here's the self-serving message from the Police Department that was released today. My comments and observations are interspersed in red. 

Good afternoon,

 

We understand that there is information circulating on social media that there was no police presence at Riverfront Park for the rally. That information is incorrect. The following is information we have updated to our FB timeline:

 

Several accounts of the police department response to the rally at Riverfront Park on Saturday, May 1, 2021 are circulating on social media.

 

More than several. And they're getting a lot of well-deserved attention. My humble little blog post has gotten about 7,000 page views so far. People are justifiably upset at the failure of the Salem Police Department to protect citizens from the Proud Boys.

 

Primary claims seem to be concerning the lack of police presence and allowing individuals to be assaulted or removed from the park by members of the Proud Boys group.

 

True. But you forgot another concern -- the fact, not a claim, that at least one journalist, and maybe more, was harassed by Proud Boys who told him that he couldn't report on the rally even though he had a perfect right to be there in a public park.

 

The rally was attended by approximately 150 to 200 people, including families with children. A stage was set for guest speakers and several tents were set up for the sharing of food and items.

 

Approximately 30 individuals dressed in Proud Boy attire were observed lawfully carrying pistols. No rifles were seen carried in the public space. No individuals counter-protesting were present.

 

Salem Police officers, some highly visible and others less visible, were present throughout the entire rally and actively monitored the event. Officers patrolled the area checking for violations of alcohol use in the park. No violations occurred.

 

I've read numerous Facebook comments from people who were at Riverfront Park and saw no visible police presence. So please provide photographs of uniformed Salem Police officers in the immediate vicinity of the rally -- the stage and auditorium-like seating. If you can't do that, I'll continue to believe the people who say no Salem police were present at the rally.

 

The dispatch center received only two calls for service at the park during the event and officers immediately responded to each.

 

This doesn't mean there weren't more incidents of Proud Boys trouble-making. For example, Les Margosian, one of those forced to leave the rally area by a group of Proud Boys, had no cell phone with him, so he wasn't able to make a call for service. And since he saw no Salem police around, Margosian couldn't go up to an officer and complain about how the Proud Boys were abusing him.

 

Dispatch also received two separate false reports. One caller reported intoxicated individuals terrorizing people near the carousel. The second caller reported Proud Boys group members with clubs, chains and knives attacking people in the middle of the park. Officers were in each area at the time of the calls and no such activities were occurring.

 

OK. So officers were in parts of the park away from the rally. My point remains: why weren't they at the center of Proud Boys harassment, the rally itself? Also, is the Salem Police Department denying the accuracy of a Reddit post by someone who says they were beaten by Proud Boys in the park, called the police, and was interviewed at their home by an officer who downplayed the beating?

 

We have also learned through social media commentary after-the-fact that two or three individuals may have been escorted out of the park by Proud Boys or their affiliates. We encourage anyone who experienced such actions to please contact the police department (503-588-6123, option 1) to file a police report.

 

"May" is an affront to the people who were forced out of the park by Proud Boys. There's a video of a man being escorted out of the park by a group of Proud Boys. Les Margosian, mentioned above, is a 78 year old man who was threatened by Proud Boys and forced to leave the rally area. Stop with the "may" and face reality, Salem Police Department.

 

We will investigate all reported incidents. Please remember, in any emergency circumstance where there is an immediate danger to person or property, call 9-1-1 when it is happening.

 

Lastly, the City of Salem did not issue a permit for the event due to pandemic restrictions. Parks, however, remain open for public use on a first-come first-served basis.

 

Untrue. Citizen activist Jim Scheppke has shown that a permit was required for the event up until the day before, when someone at the City of Salem changed the permit requirement date to begin at the end of May. So this was a conscious effort by city officials to accommodate the gun rights rally and Proud Boys by not requiring a permit for the gun rally.

 

Please remember, the City of Salem cannot stop constitutionally protected activities, nor can the Salem Police Department.

 

No one, or at least hardly anyone, was calling for this. So stop with the "please remember." The gun rally isn't the issue. Not requiring a permit for the rally is one issue. The bad behavior by Proud Boys with no evident police presence is the other issue.

 

We understand the concerns of those who read the social media commentary. We share those concerns because officers were in the area, and if those circumstances were occurring, any criminal behavior could have been addressed with immediacy.

 

To repeat, I'm not aware of a single report from anyone who was in Riverfront Park on May 1 that there were uniformed Salem Police officers in the immediate area of the gun rally. It appears that officers may have been elsewhere in the park, but not in the area where the Proud Boys were harassing people. So how could bad behavior be addressed if no officers were around to witness it?

 

For additional information about protests, rallies and assemblies in the city of Salem or for police response to such activities, visit https://bit.ly/protests-faqs.

 

Also, the Salem Reporter has a story out today, "Salem leaders say they're constrained by the Constitution when handling far-right events." 

As noted above, the headline is accurate, but the sentiment is a bunch of crap. People understand the Constitution. Free speech and carrying a gun isn't the issue here.

The issue is that a violent extremist group, the Proud Boys, were allowed to cause trouble at the gun rights rally with no attempt by the Salem Police Department to protect the rights of journalists, citizens watching the rally, and by one account, a person who took a photo of Proud Boys and was then beaten by them.

Here's an excerpt from the story.

Margosian, 78, sat down at the amphitheater to listen to the event’s speakers. He said 15 minutes later he was accosted by four men wearing Proud Boys attire, black shirts with a yellow “PB” on the chest and armed with handguns.

“They came and sat down next to me and said, ‘We’re going to escort you out of here. You cannot stay any longer,’” he said.

Margosian said he asked what would happen if he didn’t leave.

He recalled one of the men saying something to the effect of, “You can do it your way, or we can do it ours.”

Margosian took that to mean he would be assaulted if he didn’t leave.

He left the park feeling angry and “kind of a hopeless feeling.”

“Angry at City of Salem for allowing things to get to this point. Angry that people had kicked me out of my own city park,” he said.

As of Monday afternoon, Margosian said he hadn't pressed charges but planned to.

Margosian has said that the Proud Boy who told him he had to leave is the same man I featured in a screenshot of a video made by another person forced to leave the park by Proud Boys.

He should be pretty damn easy to find, since he wasn't wearing a face covering. Hopefully if Margosian does file a complaint, the Salem Police Department will locate this guy and hold him accountable for what he did.

Lastly, I found a quote from a Police Department spokesperson, Lt. Treven Upkes, in a Statesman Journal story, "Salem police respond to complaints of inaction at Riverfront Park Second Amendment rally," way off-base.

I want Police Chief Womack to confirm that it is department policy that telling people to leave a public park is perfectly fine. If this is true, that policy needs to change. Excerpt from the story:

Community members expressed concern the Police Department was showing favoritism by not having a heavy presence at the rally. 

Those concerns were further compounded by rumors that the Proud Boys' security teams were telling people to leave, escorting people out of the public park and had even assaulted someone for taking photos of the event. 

...Upkes also pointed to the nuance of whether escorting people out of the park was illegal. Simply telling someone to leave the public area — and even walking with them — isn't necessarily a crime. But pairing that order with the threat of violence, menacing or harassment is, he said. 

Comments

[Les Margosian]

I was glad to see you rebuking City of Salem officialdom for employing the "Strawman Argument" technique: that is, saying that their primary concern was protecting theProud Boy's constitutional rights of free speech and freedom to assemble. No one, and I repeat No One, has asked that Proud Boy's fascist drivel be muzzled. Rather, people are asking that their violence and criminality be addressed and hopefully curtailed. The profound dishonesty of using this constitutional rights gambit to deflect and discredit citizen's complaints is breathtaking. Another concern is the police insistence that they had a major presence at the rally. In fact they are now doubling down on their initial misrepresentations, saying that they had 30 policemen assigned to this event. Their statement that there were always uniformed officers present at the rally is simply untrue.
The SPD's primary spokesman for this matter appears to be Lt. Treven Upkes. Many of us will recall this same person alerting the Proud Boys to SPD's plans to enforce a curfew and urging them to hide inside a beauty saloon to avoid any possible problem with the police. One has to wonder whose side this guy is on! Thanks for your excellent coverage of this dreary business.

[Rob]

Can we please not be conspiracy theorists like the right-wingers? Pretty sure the permitting date change was a result of the governor moving Marion County into a higher level of covid, closing indoor dining effective 4/30, than it was an attempt to give comfort to the right-winger rally.

[Brian Hines]

Rob, it isn't a conspiracy theory to point out that the City of Salem changed its requirement for a meeting permit on the day before the gun rights rally was to take place. So far the City of Salem hasn't explained why this was done. Thus your theory about Covid is just a possibility, not fact. Changing the permit requirement date is a fact, by contrast.

[Rob]

It's always better to take the high road: innocent until proven guilty. Context matters and Occam's razor suggests the changing covid rules are more likely than a vast right-wing conspiracy. Because if it's not a conspiracy to bolster the gun nuts, you suggest it is, you risk delegitimizing your concerns.

[Brian Hines]

Rob, it's a fact that City of Salem officials frequently are found to shade the truth or, more bluntly, lying. I've experienced this quite a few times over the years.

Regarding the need for a permit by the gun rally, recently Councilor Andersen said in a KSLM interview that the reason the date a permit was required changed from May 1 to May 31 was that May 1 was a "typo" lacking the 3.

This morning I decided to use the Internet Archive Way Back Machine to see when the parks web page that has permit information was last changed. On March 27 the page said that permits are being accepted for outdoor events in parks occurring May 1, 2021 or after.

So for sure the change didn't have anything do to with Gov. Brown changing Covid risk levels, as you suggested. And in order to believe the typo story, we have to accept that no one applied for a reservation from March 27 to April 30 (the actual time span could be longer; not sure if the Way Back Machine has an earlier date to check).

I say this because if someone had applied for an event permit during April, someone at the parks department would have realized that the web page had the wrong date a permit was required. But instead, the date was changed only on April 30, one day before the gun rally. Thus this sure sounds like a CYA (Cover Your Ass) change at the last minute, not an innocent typo,

Very suspicious, I hope youi'll agree. So the simplest explanation is that a City official changed the date to avoid the gun rally needing a permit, which I'm virtually 100% certain they didn't have -- even though the City web page said that one was required after May 1.

[Kurt]

Ya know, I think that there are reasons for permits. One of those reasons may be that it could enable organizers to actually provide legitimate security. The subject of control over cordoned off areas was brought up elsewhere. In those cases, fees for entry may be charged and the organizers generally get special rights like the ability to check bags upon entry or to evict persons.

It seems that in these cases the power to enforce trespass laws comes with the permit. Permit requirements often include specific rules and requirements for security.

This should help to explain why what happened at the park was so unusual and unexpected.

[Rob]

Your conspiracy theory fell apart with this post on Facebook. Next time, verify before you falsely theorize:

Post by Susann Kaltwasser:
What I know for a fact is that the City did not actually change the rules about permits right before the May 1st deadline. The City Manager announced at a City Council meeting in early April while responding to a question about homeless people camping in the parks. He stated very clearly, you can watch the tape, that because the camping program was going to be extended to May 31st, he was going to extend the no permit process until then. He said they would be revisiting the whole situation to see if there was a need to adjust their plans...for camping, etc.
The fact that a page on the City website did not get changed until the end of the month, is not a conspiracy in my opinion. Someone did not realize the need to change the text to match the City Manager's policy decision. That is all.

[Brian Hines]

Rob, I've responded to Susann on Facebook, debunking her attempt to avoid facing the facts about TypoGate. You and she should keep in mind that under our system of government -- local, state, federal -- policies have to be documented in order to be legal, proper, and effective.

City Manager Powers can talk all he want at city council meetings about when permits are required for events in public parks. But if that policy isn't implemented by staff and communicated to the public, it remains just words by the City Manager.

So far the City of Salem has provided zero evidence in support of the contention that all along, permits weren't required until May 31. On the other hand, there is documented evidence that on March 27, the city web site was changed to say that the open use period ended on April 30 and permits were required as of May 1. Only on April 30, the day before the gun rally, was the date changed to May 31.

As I've noted, this obliterates the city's argument that a "typo" was the problem, since "April" is a totally different word than "May." Since city officials lied about this, why do you believe they always tell the truth at other times?

Thus solid evidence exists for my position. No solid evidence has been brought forth for the position of you and Susann, though I've asked City Manager Powers to provide it.

[Rob]

While I admire your devotion to bureaucratic rule following, that doesn't somehow magically make the evidence Susann presented -- videotaped evidence she referenced -- vanish into thin air unless now the conspiracy is that he said in early April he was delaying the permitting until May 31 in a planned effort to have cover for making a last-minute change that allowed the event to happen weeks later. Shine up that tinfoil hat! This is like dealing with a Trumpist who spouts the big lie. I'm out.

[Brian Hines]

Rob, I could flip your "Trumpist" comment around so it points back at you. Many times Trump said things that weren't true. He was going to build a wall and Mexico was going to pay for it. He was going to give the Covid drugs that benefitted him to everybody who needs them at no charge.Those verbal statements weren't true.

Likewise, City officials often say things in City Council meetings that aren't true. You trust a verbal comment over a written policy on the City of Salem web site.

You do realize, don't you, that very few people watch or listen to City Council meetings, right? When I need to learn about what the City of Salem policy is abut something, I go to their web site. Yet you keep on dismissing statements on the web site that remained there for over a month as being less believable than a comment the City Manager made at a council meeting.

How do you know that this comment about May 31 ever was implemented? What makes you think that the written policy communicated to the public on the web site is false, while a comment by a city official is true? Don't you think that if there was documentation that someone purposely edited the web site to say that April 30 was the end of the open use period, defying an order from Powers that May 31 was the correct date, city officials would have made that documentation public by now?

They don't like it when I catch them in apparent falsehoods. My habitual response is, "prove me wrong." Often or usually, they can't. In this case, I'm still waiting for that proof.