Wolf: Federal officers in Portland are not ‘Gestapo’
– Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf defended the federal response to the unrest in Portland, Oregon. He blamed local and state officials for failing to protect federal properties, saying officers and agents “were abandoned” as they were attacked nightly by violent instigators.
“Our law enforcement officers are not the Gestapo, storm troopers or thugs,” Wolf said Thursday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Wolf testified on his agency’s use of federal agents in response to weeks of protests in Portland after the death May 25 of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
Wolf and Republicans on the committee drew attention to vandalism and fires in the city, and some showed clips during the hearing. Oregon officials have said the federal government’s aggressive response fueled the violence, as officers clashed nightly with the crowds. Critics called out the Trump administration for sending federal officers to Portland against the wishes of local and state officials.
“Enforcing federal law is not by invitation,” Wolf said, maintaining that he reached out to officials to offer and ask for assistance, to no avail. “We continued to ask local and state police to help and get involved . ... If violence is directed (at the federal courthouse), they would not engage, they would not make arrests.”
The lack of action from police forced Department of Homeland Security officers to make their own arrests, Wolf said. He said they arrested 99 people at the federal courthouse or within two or three blocks of the building.”
The agency said 277 federal officers, tasked with protecting the federal courthouse in downtown Portland, have been injured. Officers were attacked with bricks, baseball bats, explosives and other violent weapons, Wolf said, and several may have had permanent eye damage.
There’s no comprehensive tally of how many protesters have been injured by federal or local officers in Portland. Five protesters who said they were attacked by police sued the city in June. Two advocacy groups sued Trump administration officials in July over federal officers’ use of tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets.
Wolf said his department’s officers do not use rubber bullets after he was asked by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., about an incident in which a student was shot with one.