Police incident in Astoria, OR
At around 7:30pm on August 4th, Izzy and I were walking in Astoria. We decided to eat dinner at Fort George Brewery, so we walked over. As we were entering, we saw a homeless man across the street walking down the sidewalk and a cop was following him asking questions.
We entered the restaurant and realized it would be a long wait, so we ended up leaving fast. By the time we exited moments later, the cop was yanking on a shirt that the homeless man was partially wearing. Izzy and I both immediately started filming and got closer to the incident.
As we were filming, the homeless guy kept saying ‘help me’ as the cop was still yanking on his shirt, seemingly accomplishing nothing but antagonizing this homeless guy. It was confusing what the cop was doing and why, because if he wanted to handcuff the homeless man, he easily could have. The homeless man wasn’t resisting arrest, because he wasn’t being detained, he was just being yanked on by a cop.
At this point, I heard someone from the restaurant shout ‘quit filming and help him'. I felt confused by this, because I first assumed the person was shouting to help the homeless guy, but then realized he was shouting about helping the cops.
Then a guy approaches the situation from the restaurant and said ‘don’t worry, I’m an off-duty cop’. The guy then begins aiding the cop in handcuffing this guy. Then, a third guy comes out and offers his help detaining this guy.
As this was happening, a lady, who seemed connected with the 2 guys approached me and said, ‘excuse me, what did he do?’
It seemed immediately clear she had ulterior motives about asking, so I said ‘why are you asking?’
She said ‘oh, I’m just wondering’
I said, ‘well, this cop was harrassing this dude, and then 2 random guys came up to gang up on him.’
The lady replied, ‘well, my friend told me he harassed her'. Her response did not surprise me at all, as she did what I anticipated she would do to begin with. I suspected she was affiliated with the men aiding the arrest, because I don’t know why else she would have interjected herself.
So I said, ‘…what’s your angle?’
She said, ‘I just didn’t know what was going on'.
Izzy, who had been nearby, said ‘it sounds like you think you know exactly what went on.'
At this point, we began leaving. It became extremely apparent that poor people aren’t allowed to exist in a weekend getaway town for Portland’s liberal rich. If the homeless guy was rich, and was harassing women on property, rather than on the street, the cops would have never came. The cops would have never been called.
It was an extremely bothersome situation, that a cop would harass a homeless man, and then people would vocally oppose and confront us filming it. It made clear to me the type of adversity poor and homeless people face in America.
