Portland Reavers

[Termite]

unverified rumors of Feds there acting on pipe bomb type intel. Waiting to see if that gets some verifiable sourcing -- vs just grapevine from friends in the area

Wondering when something like this will happen: Short story

[Jericho941]

unverified rumors of Feds there acting on pipe bomb type intel. Waiting to see if that gets some verifiable sourcing -- vs just grapevine from friends in the area

Wondering when something like this will happen: Short story

I'm sure Aesop had a good, long, one-handed time typing out that dreck, but major protests are surveilled by ISR aircraft these days. This very much includes Portland. The Air Force promises they've been good boys and there's nothing shady about their own spy plane wandering all the way over from Wright-Patterson to do sky donuts over Oregon.

Anyway, what's really been going on in Portland.

EDIT: I was going to leave it at that, but I can't help but notice that the overwhelming response to protests against police brutality is simply more police brutality. Reporters who've covered civil unrest in third world hellholes and even in Hong Kong have observed that the rules for the press are simple: Stay the hell out of the cops' way, record what they do, and they'll leave you alone. This hasn't been the case in the US for the last two months where even clearly identified press are fair game. Cops have attacked, beaten, pepper-sprayed and maimed clearly identified journalists, even those who are already lying on the ground in surrender.

There's a reason people have started joking that "30-50 feral hogs is called a precinct." It's becoming less of a joke every day, though.

EDITx2: Oh, and no, the feds haven't been merely defending federal property.

[Netpackrat]

If one does not wish to be treated like a rioter, it usually helps to try to look less like one.

[Termite]

Manned aerial surveillance is fine & good, but if there's low overcast, it puts a serious crimp in those type of aerial operations.

R/C small drones like quadcopters flying at a few hundred feet can stay below overcast, with minimal signature, but most any fixed wing such as a police Cessna or even a Predator isn't going to work in that situation.

Police helicopters can work down to 500 AGL or therebouts, but over crowds? Hmmm....

[randy]

Then there's the fact that you can purchase multiple drones for the price of an few hours of flying a manned platform. When talking something like a .mil platform you can also throw in multiple operators.

The manned platforms are good for wide area, situational awareness. I would think the small drones would be a better fit for urban tactical intel collection and surveillance.

[Termite]

The rioting in Portland is no longer about "Black Lives Matter". That went away some time ago.

It appears that the majority are white/caucasian; they are anarchists & Marxists, IMHO. They are making impossible demands, then protesting when those demands are not met. And even if those demands WERE met, there would soon be new impossible demands.

I wish I had a TARDIS......... so I could go back in time, find Engels and Marx when they were teenagers......and cut their throats.

[Langenator]

Then there's the fact that you can purchase multiple drones for the price of an few hours of flying a manned platform. When talking something like a .mil platform you can also throw in multiple operators.

The manned platforms are good for wide area, situational awareness. I would think the small drones would be a better fit for urban tactical intel collection and surveillance.

TX DPS has at least one drone of that type. I say at least one because I've seen the thing deployed over one of the BLM protests at Texas A&M.

[Jericho941]

If one does not wish to be treated like a rioter, it usually helps to try to look less like one.

What does a rioter even look like?

Manned aerial surveillance is fine & good, but if there's low overcast, it puts a serious crimp in those type of aerial operations.

R/C small drones like quadcopters flying at a few hundred feet can stay below overcast, with minimal signature, but most any fixed wing such as a police Cessna or even a Predator isn't going to work in that situation.

Police helicopters can work down to 500 AGL or therebouts, but over crowds? Hmmm....

That might've been true before modern synthetic aperture radars became a thing. Weather's a lot less of an issue than it used to be.

radar.jpg

The problem with commercial drones is that you can never tell who they belong to. Since police use small drones as well, and protests like these tend to be packed into a relatively small area, I wouldn't be surprised if cops decided to simplify the equation with some RF jamming. If they haven't already, then certainly in the near future.

As for helicopters, they saw some... interesting use in DC.

The rioting in Portland is no longer about "Black Lives Matter". That went away some time ago.

It appears that the majority are white/caucasian; they are anarchists & Marxists, IMHO. They are making impossible demands, then protesting when those demands are not met. And even if those demands WERE met, there would soon be new impossible demands.

The initial "impossible demand" was "hold cops accountable" and "stop killing black people so God damn much." The cops were deeply offended and responded with beatings, chemical agents and rubber bullets. And that's when it became "hey maybe we shouldn't be spending a massive portion of our cities' budgets on armed thugs who attend seminars exhorting them to kill, telling them that they're warriors chosen by God to go into harm's way and smite the wicked."

American law enforcement has become increasingly militarized for decades, on top of the underlying problem of police unions. Add to that, civil asset forfeiture allows cops to steal whatever they want, whenever they want. Even if you have a reform-minded mayor and police chief, if they fire bad cops, odds are those cops will be back in a few months, with back pay. If not, they simply get hired by a different department. Remember Philip Brailsford, the cop of "You're Fucked" dust cover fame, who shot an unarmed white guy on his knees, for losing at the worst version of Simon Says? He's not fired, he's medically retired to collect PTSD disability benefits from the incident to the tune of $2500 a month. All of that on the public dime.

It is an incredibly dangerous system to the public, one that politicians on both sides of the aisle have shown great reluctance in addressing.

As for Portland being mostly, white, well.

tpaine.jpg

[Greg]

I'll bite.

Are you fucking retarded? Well, yes. I refuse to 'secure my own liberty' by fighting to guard my enemy's ability to break the law, corrupt and destroy the institutions in place to secure everyone's liberty, and to oppress ME. Which they have stated is their end goal.

[Vonz90]

I'll bite.

Are you fucking retarded? Well, yes. I refuse to 'secure my own liberty' by fighting to guard my enemy's ability to break the law, corrupt and destroy the institutions in place to secure everyone's liberty, and to oppress ME. Which they have stated is their end goal.

I agree with both if you.

There are a lot of police departments with bad cultures and almost no accountability, but that means they need to be reformed and held accountable and not eliminated.

I fully support the right to protest, but rioters should be arrested, shot, whatever.

Anyway, the biggest problem now is bg city dems are using Antics and BLM as shock troop. That is not something the locak police are designed to handle anyway (and are being ordered not to).