Portland police clashed with a crowd of people trying to recover food that a Fred Meyer supermarket was forced to discard amid power outages.
Nearly a dozen police officers guarded a Portland Fred Meyer store as people tried to rescue discarded food. The warehouse was forced to throw away perishable food after a power outage. | Twitter / Juniper Leona Simonis
Nearly a dozen police officers guarded a Portland Fred Meyer store as people tried to rescue discarded food. The supermarket was forced to throw away perishable foods after a power outage. | Twitter / Juniper Leona Simonis
A group of Portland police officers clashed with people trying to recover discarded food at a local supermarket after the store ran out of power. Witnesses said the police acted aggressively and did not allow people to enter the store.
On Tuesday, photos of the Hollywood West Fred Meyer grocery store in Portland, Oregon were widely circulated, showing police officers guarding trash bins as people tried to take food that had been thrown away. According to police, the warehouse lost power due to the recent severe winter that affected most of the United States, and employees were forced to dispose of food.
Police said they reported Fred Meyer after an employee called twice to report “a group of people arguing with employees and refusing to leave the property”. Store employees told police that food could not be donated or consumed because of a lack of refrigeration and said they tried to explain it to the crowd. Police said the crowd had grown to almost 50 people.
According to Portland resident Juniper Leona Simonis, who was at the scene during the clash, nearly a dozen police officers were blocking a crowd of about 10 people in two bins full of discarded food and not allowing them to enter the store. Simonis said they were taking pictures of police officers when police officers “called a manager” and threatened to arrest them.
“[The manager told] I was invading and that they could arrest me if I didn’t stop, ”Simonis told NowThis on Wednesday. “I had to leave the property and move my car a block away. When I did, the police had already started to leave. ”
Simonis said that after the police left, a group of people returned to the dumps to save food for themselves or to donate. The crowd grew to more than 20 in an hour, said Simonis. Several photos showed that the bins were full of packages of meat, cheese, drinks, vegetables and more.
Simonis also said that the city “spent its precious resources” with several policemen to “threaten a crowd of less than 10 people” instead of investing that money in food, shelter and essential supplies. Portland was hit by a winter storm over the weekend, causing extreme damage, including power lines, cutting electricity to thousands.
“The store should have worked with the mutual aid organizations that helped them during this crisis to deliver food to those who have the capacity to distribute it to those in need,” said Simonis. “The police were smiling, [laughing]and chat. “
On Tuesday, Fred Meyer responded to people on Twitter saying that “some perishable foods were no longer safe to donate to local hunger-fighting agencies.”
“Our store team was concerned that area residents would consume food and be at risk for foodborne illnesses, and they involved local authorities as a precaution,” the company wrote. “We apologize for the confusion.”