Off-script comments made by Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler during a City Council meeting last week have sparked concern. Wheeler said that since participants at a protest at Portland State University didn’t leave the area after being told to do so by the Portland Police Bureau, the protestors, “Shouldn’t whine, complain, and cry when there are consequences.”
The “consequences” in this specific instance were a reference to concerns shared by Christopher Olson in council testimony shared just minutes prior to Wheeler’s comments. Olson, who’s running for city council, was at a May 2nd protest on the campus of Portland State University when a man drove a car into a pedestrian-only zone and accelerated toward the crowd.
You can watch the exchange below.
According to video taken at the scene (also below), the driver of the white Toyota sedan didn’t hit anyone and stopped prior to making contact with a large crowd that was there to protest Israel’s bombing of Palestinians in Gaza. While he appears to have had second thoughts about hurtling his vehicle into the crowd, the driver clearly intended to cause a confrontation. Not only did he enter a carfree zone of campus (on SW Hall just west of Broadway), but prior to arriving at the PSU campus, the driver posted on social media, “On my way,” and a middle finger emoji along with tagging PSU’s campus newspaper. There was a metal baton on his dashboard and he was driving a rented car with a license plate cover that read, “We the people.”
Once on campus, the driver was confronted by the crowd and ran away from his vehicle while shooting pepper spray (see video above). He was later picked up by PSU campus police. I’m not aware of his current status.
At city council last week, Olson testified against giving the Portland Police Bureau $1.1 million to buy crowd control munitions and related training. Olson said in testimony he witnessed the driver, “barreling toward the crowd of students,” in an “attempted slaughter” that could have been “another Charlottesville.” In Charlottesville in 2017, a man drove his car into a protest and killed one person and injured 30 others and was later given a life sentence and charged with a hate crime.
The incident on PSU came just two weeks after U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) posted on X, “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way.”
Given the rise in vehicular violence at protests in Portland, heightened political tensions among Americans, and ahead of what is likely to be a busy protest season in Portland, Mayor Wheeler’s surprising comments shocked many observers. “Big yikes (at council today),” wrote Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter Alex Zielinski when she read Wheeler’s words.
Here’s the full text of Wheeler’s comments:
“I was interested in the public testimony we heard for the simple reason that the Portland Police Bureau had speakers asking people to leave [before the driver showed up] in fact, insisting that people leave for the better part of an hour, and they chose not to. That is an act of defiance, and you are entitled to that act of defiance. But then you shouldn’t whine, complain and cry when there are consequences for that act of defiance.”
You can watch video of Olson’s comments, followed by Wheeler’s response several minutes later, on YouTube.
Wheeler’s comments were picked up today by right-wing agitator Andy Ngô, who posted to X that, “In his final year in office, Wheeler has shown more willingness to push back against the extreme far-left.”
In 2020, when Donald Trump supporters descended on downtown Portland and maced protestors out of the windows of their vehicles, I shared my disappointment that Wheeler nor the former PPB Chief seemed to care. The use of vehicles as weapons is on the rise and it will very likely happen again. Elected officials should do everything in their power to address the issue instead of carelessly pointing a finger and blaming victims.
I’ve reached out to Wheeler’s office and PSU Campus Safety for comments and will update this post when I hear back.