Portland Police Crowd Control Unit Resigns After Grand Jury Indicts Oregon Cop

The entire Rapid Response Team unit, roughly 50 officers, resigned this week following the fourth-degree assault charge of an Oregon officer.

June 18, 2021

portland cops — Image via Getty/Nathan Howard
Getty

Every member of a Portland Police Bureau crowd control unit resigned following the indictment of an officer.

An estimated 50 officers voted to resign from the Rapid Response Team, a unit that’s dispatched to protests, during a meeting on Wednesday night. According to the Associated Press’s Friday-published report on the move, the officers said they were not getting enough “support” from City Hall and the district attorney.

In a news release, the Portland Police Bureau confirmed the resignations, noting that the officers had “left their voluntary positions and no longer comprise a team.”

The officers’ vote to collectively resign (while still continuing with their regular assignments) was preceded one day earlier by the announcement of a Multnomah County grand jury indictment of Cody Budworth, a Portland cop who’s accused of hitting a photojournalist in the head with his baton in 2020. Budworth has been charged with fourth-degree assault, which is a misdemeanor.

Acting Portland Police Chief said on Thursday that he didn’t believe that the indictment was the sole inspiration behind the officers’ decision to resign. Instead, Davis claimed, the past 14 months have seen the officers involved in what he described as “a very long complicated history of things.”

The use of force against protesters in Portland last year was widely condemned by activists and political leaders, though many Republicans used the stories coming out of the Oregon city to further their Trump-inspired “law and order” rhetoric. In July of last year, House leaders called for an investigation into the Trump administration’s use of federal law enforcement agencies against Portland protesters.