As power outages in Portland, Oregon continued in the wake of multiple winter storms, local police descended on a grocery store to stop people from handing out heaps of recently discarded food to those in need.
Major storms have covered the region with ice and snow in the past week, leading to hundreds of thousands of buildings and houses being shut down.
Workers at a Fred Meyer store that lost power on Tuesday filled two large dumpsters along the side of the building with packaged meat, spices, and other perishables that couldn’t be sold without refrigeration. Images posted on social media appear to show thousands of discarded items, including sliced packaged cheeses, packaged sausages, yogurt and dairy, vegetables, and large cuts of meat. People started to come together to save what they could.
Later that afternoon, however, agents from the Portland Police Department arrived on the scene. The department told HuffPost that it received a call from a Fred Meyer employee about 4:00 pm local time about “a group of people who argued with employees and refused to leave the property.” No agents were able to respond immediately, the department said, and an employee called back about 15 minutes later because “they felt the situation was escalating.”
“The food was not suitable for consumption or donation. Officers also tried to explain this to the group of people, ”the department said in a statement.
Local activist Morgan Mckniff told The Oregonian that employees of Fred Meyer called the police after trying to guard the container themselves. About a dozen officers eventually showed up, Mckniff said.
Fred Meyer, a chain owned by Kroger, said workers “were concerned that local residents would consume the food and risk food-borne illness, and they called in local law enforcement out of an abundance of caution.”
“We apologize for the confusion,” the company said a series of tweetsFred Meyer did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
The Portland Police Department said store employees called again later in the evening, but agents declined to respond due to a lack of “immediate life or serious injury threat.”
According to police, no arrests or citations have been made.
About 100,000 businesses and homes in Portland were without power Wednesday morning, joining the millions of people in Texas who suffer power outages due to problems with the state’s power grid in the wake of severe winter weather.
The Portland Police Department has recently been grappling with staffing problems and an increase in burglaries at local businesses.
The city’s police force was the subject of nationwide criticism last summer for its crackdown on protests against police brutality and racial inequality, which turned into protests against local and federal law enforcement itself.
In July, federal officers sent by former President Donald Trump were seized from the streets and put into unmarked vehicles, further sparking anger among residents after a protester was shot in the head by impact ammunition and required surgery. Protests began to subside after federal officers began to leave the center later in the summer.
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