Portland police officers confronted a group of residents on Tuesday who were trying to rescue food that had been thrown away by a supermarket, officials said.
A power outage caused by a winter storm forced workers at Hollywood West Fred Meyer in Portland to throw thousands of perishable items into two large garbage cans outside the store, police said.
The police said the officers responded to a call at about 4 pm from a Fred Meyer employee saying they felt the situation was “getting worse”. When the officers arrived, the official told the police that the food was spoiled and unfit for consumption or donation, according to the police.
Videos and photos showed mountains of food, including packaged meat, large boxes of juice and dairy products.
The police asked the group, which “grew to about 50 people,” to leave or run the risk of being arrested for trespassing on private property, the police said.
Police kept watch over the bins to prevent people from taking the discarded grocery items, resident Morgan Mckniff told The Oregonian.
Juniper Simonis, who appeared to document the police’s presence, said that after the police threatened to arrest, the crowd dispersed and crossed the street, the newspaper reported.
After showing his press badge, Simonis said the police responded, saying, “We will arrest you if you don’t leave.”
“I was documenting the police, not what was in the trash,” said Simonis.
Portland police did not immediately answer a question about Simonis’s press badge on Wednesday.
Fred Meyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
The police said the officers ended up leaving, believing that “there was no longer any threat or damage”.
Simonis said his departure allowed people waiting for food to return to the dumps, the newspaper reported.
Fred Meyer workers called the police again, but the police determined that there was no imminent threat and did not return to the scene, the police said.
The people who were picking up the food that was thrown away at the supermarket “were not there for selfish reasons,” said Simonis. Some were part of mutual aid groups that provided food and resources for people in the heating centers, according to Simonis.
“None of this makes sense to me, except through the lenses of strongly entrenched policing and a culture of disrespect for human dignity,” said Simonis.
“It is not a bad situation or vandalism, it is literally the opposite – feeding hungry people,” they said.
