Rioters left a bizarre message to police in Portland, Oregon, in the shape of a decapitated pig’s head wearing a police hat, set on fire and placed on an American flag.
The fiery anti-cop threat was left at the Justice Center on Thursday evening. Videos of the severed pig head were circulated on social media.
Antifa protesters dumped a bloody severed pig’s head on an American flag outside the Justice Center in downtown Por… https://t.co/IPCP28aLkA
— Andy Ngô (@Andy Ngô)1596178842.0
Journalist Andy Ngo noted that it was not the first time that a severed pig’s head was used by rioters in Portland to try to intimidate the police. “In the early weeks of the riots, a burnt pig’s head was left at the base of the now-gone elk statue. This was long before federal agents showed up outside the courthouse,” said Ngo, who tweeted a photograph of the previous pig’s head.
Portland has been one of the centers of continued protests that regularly turn to rioting and looting. Early protests were in response to the death of George Floyd by police as he was taken into custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Critics of the looting point out that many of the riots appear to have left-wing political aims far separated from the intent of the original protests.
Federal response
President Donald Trump warned local governments that if they did not do enough to quell the rioting and looting that he would order federal officers to stamp out the violence. He later sent troops to Portland, Chicago and other cities.
“The FBI, ATF, DEA, U.S. Marshals Service and Homeland Security will together be sending hundreds of skilled law enforcement officers to Chicago to help drive down violent crime,” Trump said on July 22. “And murderers and violent criminals are breaking a wide range of federal laws, we have that, it’s as wide as it can be. We will find them, arrest them and prosecute them, they will be in jail for many years to come.”
Democrats responded by questioning the constitutionality of sending federal officers into cities where the leadership rejected the help. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) went so far as to refer to the federal officers as “stormtroopers,” a term originating from the name for the military political police of Nazi Germany.
Others claimed that the president was floating a trial balloon so that he could gauge whether he could use a similar action to stay in power should he lose the presidential election in November.
Here’s more about the protests in Portland:
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‘A beehive of terrorists’: Donald Trump threatens to deploy national guard in Portland
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