video: Don’t Shoot Portland Distances Themselves from “Dead Cops” Caroling Protest

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Cornelius Swart, GoLocalPDX Director of Content

Screen Grab of Dec 27 protest

Organizers for the police accountability movement known as Don’t Shoot Portland distanced themselves Monday from a Dec. 27 protest in Portland in which demonstrators chanted “Deck the Halls with Rows of Dead Cops.”

“We had nothing to do with that,” said Don’t Shoot Portland Spokeswoman Teressa Raiford on Monday.

Raiford said that her group was not part of the action and that there were divisions in the movement between black activists who urged for greater restraint and more militant, mostly white activists who want the movement to take a more radical direction.

“We know that we are a mostly white city,” Raiford said. “It’s probably the only city where white allies are telling black people they are doing it wrong. I don’t think that’s doing it better.”

But she did say that others African Americans around the country have had problems with white provocateurs at Ferguson protests.

On Dec. 27, demonstrators protesting police violence in Ferguson, Portland, and other cities marched throughout Portland in an event labeled A Cop Free Christmas.

Protestors joined in a “direct action protest and march starting at the Moda Center and ending with the singing of "police accountability carols" at Peacock Lane,” according to a release posted by Jessie Sponberg on FB.

Demonstrators blocked traffic in Southeast Portland outside Peacock Lane and got into shouting matches with drivers and other passersby.

Some chanted “Deck the Halls with Rows of Dead Cops,” according to video taken on the scene and posted to YouTube by a user named LaughingAtLiberals.

Raiford said the event was not organized by Don’t Shoot Portland, but by activist Hart Noecker.

Noecker could not be immediately reached for comment.

Don't Shoot Portland has organized a dozen protests around the city since Michael Brown was shot and killed by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, MO in August. The group has called for reforms ranging from gun control to allowing a third party to investigate police shootings and in-custody deaths.