Authorities in Portland, Oregon, on Tuesday clashed with residents attempting to rescue discarded groceries from a dumpster after a citywide outage due to winter storms.
According to The Oregonian, about a dozen police officers in Portland confronted a group of people at a local Fred Meyer.
According to the newspaper, people started to gather around the dumpster around 2:30 PM, and within hours police officers came to guard the dumpsters.
Morgan Mckniff, an activist and outspoken critic of the Portland Police Department, told The Oregonian that workers guarded the dumpsters before the police arrived. According to Mckniff, about 15 people gathered in the store to pick up discarded groceries. The store manager eventually called the police.
“Then other people showed up and asked them, ‘Why are you guarding a dumpster?’ McKniff told the newspaper.
According to a release of the Portland Police Bureau (PPB), authorities went to the supermarket because workers there “believed the situation was escalating and feared a physical confrontation would ensue.”
“The position of the store employees was that the food was spoiled and had to be thrown away due to a lack of refrigeration,” added the PPB. “The food was not suitable for consumption or donation. Officers also tried to explain this to the group of people. “
According to PPB, the crowd eventually left to return after the police left. Police decided not to return to the scene unless there was an “imminent threat of life or serious injury”.
“The people who were there weren’t there for selfish reasons – they were there to get food to hand out to hungry people in the city,” said Juniper Simonis, an activist and researcher who went on to document the cleanup. “There are mutual aid groups that have helped feed people in warming centers because the city doesn’t have enough resources to feed them.”
Winter storms have covered large areas of the US, causing widespread power outages in states like Texas. The Federal Emergency Management Agency plans to send generators and diesel to the state to help provide power.
As The Oregonian reported, more than 300,000 customers in the Portland area lost electricity over the weekend due to the snow and ice that fell over the city. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown
Kate BrownOregon Begins Vaccinating Inmates Against COVID-19 Following Judge’s Order Overnight Health Care: Biden Unveils Vaccination Plan Focusing on Mass Immunization | More than 2 million deaths worldwide from coronavirus | CDC: New Variant Could Be Dominant US Strain By March Governors Say No Additional Vaccine Doses To Come Despite Trump Administrator Promise MORE (D) declared a state of emergency on Saturday.