Authorities in Portland, Oregon, clashed with residents trying to rescue discarded supplies in a dump on Tuesday after power cuts occurred across the city due to winter storms.
About a dozen Portland police officers confronted a group of people at a local Fred Meyer, according to The Oregonian.
People began to gather around the dumpster at around 2:30 pm, according to the newspaper, and within hours the police began to keep the dumps.
Morgan Mckniff, an outspoken activist and critic of the Portland police, told The Oregonian that employees were guarding the bins before the police arrived. According to Mckniff, about 15 people gathered at the store to collect discarded groceries. The store manager ended up calling the police.
“After that, other people started to come up and ask, ‘Why are you keeping a dump?'” Mckniff told the newspaper.
According to a launch from the Portland Police Bureau (PPB), the authorities went to the supermarket because the employees there “felt that the situation was getting worse and feared that there could be a physical confrontation”.
“The position of store employees was that the food was spoiled and needed to be discarded due to lack of refrigeration,” added the PPB. “The food was unfit for consumption or donation. The officers also tried to explain this to the group of people. “
According to the PPB, the crowd eventually left, only to return after the police left. The police decided not to return to the scene, unless there was an “imminent threat of life or serious injury”.
“The people who were there were not there for selfish reasons – they were there to get food to distribute to hungry people around the city,” said Juniper Simonis, an activist and researcher who has been documenting the elimination. “There are mutual aid groups that have helped to feed people in the heating centers, because the city does not have enough resources to feed them.”
Winter storms covered large areas of the United States, causing widespread power cuts in states like Texas. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is planning to send generators and diesel to the state to assist in power supply.
As reported by The Oregonian, more than 300,000 customers in the Portland area lost electricity over the weekend due to snow and ice that fell on the city. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown
Kate BrownOregon to start vaccinating prisoners against COVID-19 following order by judge Overnight Health Care: Biden reveals vaccine plan focusing on mass inoculations | Coronavirus deaths worldwide exceed 2 million | CDC: New variant may be the dominant strain in the United States in March. (D) declared a state of emergency on Saturday.