Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Oregonians wary outside Portland
Small-town residents voice fear of protests, snap up firearms
SANDY, Ore. — Barely a half hour from the Portland streets where racial-justice protesters Saturday were marking 100 consecutive days of tempestuous, sometimes violent demonstrations, there are plenty of communities where people dismiss the demonstrators as lawless hooligans.
“Portland is an island in Oregon,” said Stan Pulliam, the mayor of Sandy, a more conservative town of 10,000 people about 30 miles southeast of Portland. “We are scared to death that what’s happening in Portland will ever come out to where we live.”
At Rapid Fire Arms, a gun shop along the main road in Sandy, owner Brian Coleman has sold 4.5 million rounds of ammunition since March, when the arrival of the pandemic drove up sales. Demand for guns and ammunition soared even further, he said, when the protests in Portland turned violent in the weeks after George Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis.
“There’s panic buying every once in a while but nowhere near like this,” Coleman said at the entrance of his shop, fortified with steel bars. “There’s such a massive rush, people are taking anything they can get.”
Coleman, who has sold thousands of guns this year, estimates that 70% of customers in recent months are firsttime gun buyers.
In the town of Gresham, Ore., 15 miles from the urban canyons of downtown Portland, Bonnie Johnson, a member of a Republican precinct committee, is on a waiting list for her first firearm, a Smith & Wesson revolver.
“I didn’t even want a gun,” said Johnson, who grew up in the neighboring town of Boring, Ore. “But when you see all that’s going on in Portland, it scares you.”
Johnson took part in a flag-waving demonstration Wednesday evening, joining a group of 50 or so people, many of them wearing hats and T-shirts in support of President Donald Trump. They gathered at the Gresham civic center to show their patriotism and mourn the death of Aaron Danielson, a supporter of the far-right group Patriot Prayer who was shot Aug. 29 during clashes between demonstrators from the right and left.
As a line of people beside Johnson waved American flags on a sidewalk, passing motorists honked in support, or in some cases raised a middle finger and shouted insults.
The ideological divide between Portland and its environs can be stark. Conservative groups outside Portland have held demonstrations in support of the police. Protesters in Portland have called for police forces to be abolished altogether.
The Portland protests began in reaction to the killing of Floyd in May but came to represent a more general campaign for racial justice and opposition to the presence of federal agents in the city. Conservatives in the Portland area say authorities have allowed demonstrators to hijack the downtown. When they visit, they say, they feel unwelcome and have been harassed.
Rebecca Crymer moved to the Portland area two years ago and although she leans conservative she says she was never particularly interested in politics.
In late August she was walking through the protests in Portland wearing a Captain America T-shirt. She said she was called a Nazi and followed by a man who threatened to throw dog feces at her. On Wednesday, Crymer, who grew up in a military family, joined the flag-waving demonstration in Gresham.
“I’m a normal person and I don’t have extremist views,” Crymer said. “Normal people should be able to feel like they can fly an American flag and not get hunted down for it.”
FATAL ENCOUNTER
Meanwhile, authorities released additional court documents late Friday detailing the moments before the slaying of Danielson last weekend in Portland.
The documents included shots of security footage that showed the suspect, Michael Forest Reinoehl, ducked into a parking garage and reached toward a pocket or pouch at his waist before emerging to follow Danielson. Danielson was holding bear spray and an expandable baton and had a loaded Glock handgun in a holster at his waist, according to the documents.
The shooting happened moments later and wasn’t captured on security video. Witnesses told police that just before they heard gunshots someone said something like, “wanna go,” which is frequently a challenge to a fight. Danielson was shot in the chest and died at the scene.
Authorities have said they believe Reinoehl, who was fatally shot by law enforcement officers late Thursday in Washington state, killed Danielson. The court documents were filed to support second-degree murder charges against Reinoehl, who was a supporter of antifa — shorthand for anti-fascists and an umbrella description for the far-left-leaning militant groups that resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations and other events.
Late Friday and early Saturday protests continued in Portland, with police declaring an unlawful assembly and arresting 27 people.
Law enforcement officers used smoke devices and shot impact munitions and stun grenades while trying to get the crowd to disperse, The Oregonian reported.
The Portland Police Bureau issued a statement Saturday morning, saying some officers reported that rocks, a full beverage can and water bottles had been thrown at them, prompting police to declare the gathering an unlawful assembly.