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www.oregonlive.com
Portland police officers guard Fred Meyer dumpsters, face off with residents seeking discarded food
Updated 11:09 AM; Today 9:50 PM
Portlanders gather perishable foods from dumpster
By Jayati Ramakrishnan | The Oregonian/OregonLive and Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive
Updated Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2021.
Roughly a dozen Portland police officers faced off with a small group at a Northeast Portland Fred Meyer on Tuesday after people tried to take food that had been thrown away.
Workers at the Hollywood West Fred Meyer threw away thousands of perishable items because the store, like many others, had lost power in an outage brought on by the region’s winter storm.
Images on social media showed mountains of packaged meat, cheese and juice, as well as whole turkeys and racks of ribs that had been tossed into two large dumpsters near the store.
A few people gathered about 2:30 p.m. at the store, 3030 N.E. Weidler St., in hopes of salvaging the food.
But within a few hours, people seeking food from the dumpsters began to report police officers showing up to guard the dumpsters and prevent people from taking the items.
Morgan Mckniff, a prominent activist and outspoken Portland police critic who lives in the neighborhood, said employees were guarding the dumpsters when they showed up to get some of the discarded food. Mckniff began to film the employees and reported staff members threatened to call the police on them for doing so.
The store manager called police shortly thereafter, Mckniff said, and Mckniff began livestreaming the interaction on Instagram.
“After that, other people started showing up and asking them, ‘Why are you guys guarding a dumpster?’” Mckniff said.
Mckniff said about 15 people eventually gathered in an attempt to collect food.
At that point, Mckniff said, a dozen officers arrived at the scene. One officer wasn’t wearing a mask and refused to put one on until a supervisor arrived and brought him one, according to Mckniff.
On Wednesday, Portland police said officers were sent to the scene after employees said “they felt the situation was escalating and feared there may be a physical confrontation,” a police spokesman said in a statement.
Also on Wednesday, a Fred Meyer spokesman responded to what had become a deluge of criticism, noting the company donates more than five million pounds of food annually.
“Unfortunately, due to loss of power at this store, some perishable food was no longer safe for donation to local hunger relief agencies,” the company wrote. “Our store team became concerned that area residents would consume the food and risk food borne illness, and they engaged local law enforcement out of an abundance of caution. We apologize for the confusion.”
Juniper Simonis, a well-known activist and researcher who arrived to document the police presence, said officers showed up and threatened those on hand with arrest — at which point the crowd moved across the street.
Simonis, also an environmental biologist and data scientist, said they took out their press badge and went closer to take photos of the officers, who were standing in front of the bins full of food.
“I’m just interacting with officers and trying to get their information, and then they say, ‘We’re going to arrest you if you don’t leave,’ and threatened me with trespassing,” Simonis said.
Simonis was bewildered by the threat of arrest.
“I was documenting the police, not what was in the dumpster,” they said. “I wasn’t going over there. And the police got the store manager to threaten me with trespassing.”
For their part, police said they tried to explain to the group that the food was spoiled, but “no subject in the crowd was willing to have an open dialogue with the officers and continued to shout insults at them and store employees,” a spokesman said.
Simonis said police eventually left and those waiting to get food made their way over to the dumpsters. As of 6:30 p.m., about two dozen people were at the dumpsters, taking a few items each.
Simonis noted that all the food was still in good condition, given the cold weather. One person picked up a carton of juice with an expiration date in March.
Both Mckniff and Simonis said the immediate action to prevent people from taking the discarded food speaks to the value the city places on providing aid to those in need.
The run-in also came as the region reeled from a winter storm that brought on widespread power outages that left many people unable to salvage perishable items in their refrigerators.
“The people who were there weren’t there for selfish reasons — they were there to get food to distribute to hungry people around the city,” Simonis said. “There are mutual aid groups that have been helping feed people at warming centers, because the city doesn’t have enough resources to feed them.”
Multnomah County kept emergency severe weather shelters open Monday, taking to social media to ask for volunteers to keep the doors open an additional night. More than 300,000 people and businesses lost power over the weekend, with nearly all of the area’s hotels filling up as people tried to escape the cold.
Mckniff said many of the people police threatened with arrest and turned away are regular customers of the store.
“I live in this neighborhood. This neighborhood doesn’t have power,” Mckniff said. “And Fred Meyer is telling people in this immediate community who shop here that they can’t have these things they’re throwing away. Cheese, pickles, yogurt — things that are intentionally cultured and cured.”
Simonis said it’s hard to rationalize the actions by police and the store.
“None of this makes sense to me except through the lens of severely ingrained policing and a culture of disrespect for human dignity,” they said.
They noted parallels between the Fred Meyer incident and Portland protests.
Simonis, for their part, is one of several plaintiffs in a lawsuit that alleges local, state and federal officers violated the rights of people with disabilities through aggressive police responses to the protests.
“Here it’s not broken windows, it’s tossed away but otherwise completely fine food,” Simonis said. “It’s not a bad situation or vandalism, it’s literally the exact opposite — feeding hungry people. Yet they still use the same apparatus to prevent anything from being done.”
Portland police officers ‘guarding’ Fred Meyer dumpsters as residents seek discarded food
Roughly a dozen Portland police officers faced off with a small group at a Northeast Portland Fred Meyer on Tuesday after people tried to take food that had been thrown away.
www.oregonlive.com
Portland police officers guard Fred Meyer dumpsters, face off with residents seeking discarded food
Updated 11:09 AM; Today 9:50 PM
Portlanders gather perishable foods from dumpster
By Jayati Ramakrishnan | The Oregonian/OregonLive and Beth Nakamura | The Oregonian/OregonLive
Updated Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2021.
Roughly a dozen Portland police officers faced off with a small group at a Northeast Portland Fred Meyer on Tuesday after people tried to take food that had been thrown away.
Workers at the Hollywood West Fred Meyer threw away thousands of perishable items because the store, like many others, had lost power in an outage brought on by the region’s winter storm.
Images on social media showed mountains of packaged meat, cheese and juice, as well as whole turkeys and racks of ribs that had been tossed into two large dumpsters near the store.
A few people gathered about 2:30 p.m. at the store, 3030 N.E. Weidler St., in hopes of salvaging the food.
But within a few hours, people seeking food from the dumpsters began to report police officers showing up to guard the dumpsters and prevent people from taking the items.
Morgan Mckniff, a prominent activist and outspoken Portland police critic who lives in the neighborhood, said employees were guarding the dumpsters when they showed up to get some of the discarded food. Mckniff began to film the employees and reported staff members threatened to call the police on them for doing so.
The store manager called police shortly thereafter, Mckniff said, and Mckniff began livestreaming the interaction on Instagram.
“After that, other people started showing up and asking them, ‘Why are you guys guarding a dumpster?’” Mckniff said.
Mckniff said about 15 people eventually gathered in an attempt to collect food.
At that point, Mckniff said, a dozen officers arrived at the scene. One officer wasn’t wearing a mask and refused to put one on until a supervisor arrived and brought him one, according to Mckniff.
On Wednesday, Portland police said officers were sent to the scene after employees said “they felt the situation was escalating and feared there may be a physical confrontation,” a police spokesman said in a statement.
Also on Wednesday, a Fred Meyer spokesman responded to what had become a deluge of criticism, noting the company donates more than five million pounds of food annually.
“Unfortunately, due to loss of power at this store, some perishable food was no longer safe for donation to local hunger relief agencies,” the company wrote. “Our store team became concerned that area residents would consume the food and risk food borne illness, and they engaged local law enforcement out of an abundance of caution. We apologize for the confusion.”
Juniper Simonis, a well-known activist and researcher who arrived to document the police presence, said officers showed up and threatened those on hand with arrest — at which point the crowd moved across the street.
Simonis, also an environmental biologist and data scientist, said they took out their press badge and went closer to take photos of the officers, who were standing in front of the bins full of food.
“I’m just interacting with officers and trying to get their information, and then they say, ‘We’re going to arrest you if you don’t leave,’ and threatened me with trespassing,” Simonis said.
Simonis was bewildered by the threat of arrest.
“I was documenting the police, not what was in the dumpster,” they said. “I wasn’t going over there. And the police got the store manager to threaten me with trespassing.”
For their part, police said they tried to explain to the group that the food was spoiled, but “no subject in the crowd was willing to have an open dialogue with the officers and continued to shout insults at them and store employees,” a spokesman said.
Simonis said police eventually left and those waiting to get food made their way over to the dumpsters. As of 6:30 p.m., about two dozen people were at the dumpsters, taking a few items each.
Simonis noted that all the food was still in good condition, given the cold weather. One person picked up a carton of juice with an expiration date in March.
Both Mckniff and Simonis said the immediate action to prevent people from taking the discarded food speaks to the value the city places on providing aid to those in need.
The run-in also came as the region reeled from a winter storm that brought on widespread power outages that left many people unable to salvage perishable items in their refrigerators.
“The people who were there weren’t there for selfish reasons — they were there to get food to distribute to hungry people around the city,” Simonis said. “There are mutual aid groups that have been helping feed people at warming centers, because the city doesn’t have enough resources to feed them.”
Multnomah County kept emergency severe weather shelters open Monday, taking to social media to ask for volunteers to keep the doors open an additional night. More than 300,000 people and businesses lost power over the weekend, with nearly all of the area’s hotels filling up as people tried to escape the cold.
Mckniff said many of the people police threatened with arrest and turned away are regular customers of the store.
“I live in this neighborhood. This neighborhood doesn’t have power,” Mckniff said. “And Fred Meyer is telling people in this immediate community who shop here that they can’t have these things they’re throwing away. Cheese, pickles, yogurt — things that are intentionally cultured and cured.”
Simonis said it’s hard to rationalize the actions by police and the store.
“None of this makes sense to me except through the lens of severely ingrained policing and a culture of disrespect for human dignity,” they said.
They noted parallels between the Fred Meyer incident and Portland protests.
Simonis, for their part, is one of several plaintiffs in a lawsuit that alleges local, state and federal officers violated the rights of people with disabilities through aggressive police responses to the protests.
“Here it’s not broken windows, it’s tossed away but otherwise completely fine food,” Simonis said. “It’s not a bad situation or vandalism, it’s literally the exact opposite — feeding hungry people. Yet they still use the same apparatus to prevent anything from being done.”
