An Oregon police officer was acquitted of any wrongdoing after a video appeared to show him a “white power” sign during a Black Lives Matter protest on July 4.
The Oregon State Police Department announced that it launched an investigation into the troubling allegations after images were shared on social media.
The video shows at least six Oregon officers among Black Lives Matter supporters and a group of counter-protesters at a peaceful rally in Salem on Saturday.
The accused officer appears to be walking towards a counter-protester before making an ‘OK’ signal, joining his left thumb and index finger as he stretches out the remaining three fingers.
A counter-protester then gives the officer a pleasant pat on the back.
The gesture has recently been associated with the white power movement, but Oregon police chiefs now insist that the officer was checking to see if the man was okay after he had apparently been pushed by a fight.
The protester has been accused of being a member of Proud Boys on social media, but this has not been confirmed.
The video caption read: “Tell me again how wrong the police are when no one looks at a policeman in Oregon showing a white power sign to a proud boy who he is obviously friendly with.”
The once harmless hand symbol, which generally means ‘OK’, was initially associated with ‘white power’ as an online joke, but has since been embraced by marginal racist figures.
“ By 2019, at least some white supremacists appear to have abandoned the ironic or satirical intention behind the original trolling campaign and used the symbol as a sincere expression of white supremacy, ” according to The Anti-Defamation League.
An Oregon Department of State Police officer was charged with waving a white power hand during a Black Lives Matter rally in Salem, Oregon.
Social media identified the counter-protester as a member of the Proud Boys, but this has not been confirmed.
However, the ambiguous nature of the gesture is part of the appeal for extremists.
Joe Smothers, the 20-year-old man who captured the moment in the film, told NBC News that some of the counter-protesters may have been affiliated with the hate group, Proud Boys.
“Proud Boys and the armed militia planned to disrupt the protest and have been calling for arms for the past week,” Smothers said.
He added that the Proud Boys members had been showing the white hand gesture throughout the day.
Authorities said the incident was triggered after a counter-protester was pushed to the ground by another man during the demonstration.
Protests against racial injustice and police brutality have been unleashed in the United States after the death of George Floyd and other American blacks, including Breonna Taylor and Elijah McClain, were killed by the police.
As a result, the institution of law enforcement has become a crisis as Americans reexamine the role that police officers have and must play in policing communities.
Images of the alleged “white power” incident recorded more than 2.5 million visits, prompting officials to open a brief investigation into the matter.
The department, which The Oregonian reports is 93 percent white, later claimed that the “white power” hand sign was a misunderstanding.
Authorities released images from the officer corps camera in an effort to refute speculation.
They said the officer showed the sign by hand to make sure the counter-protester was fine after the fall.
“The OSP Trooper identified in the video did not engage in any white supremacist behavior, implicitly or explicitly,” the department wrote.
They said the incident started when two men fought during the demonstration and a counter-protester fell to the ground.
The officer was allegedly checking to see if the assaulted man was okay and showed the sign with his hand.
“An OSP agent approached the man and asked if he was unharmed, while simultaneously displaying the hand signal commonly associated with” it’s okay, “” the department wrote.
“ The best available evidence indicates that the soldier was simply verifying the man’s condition and used the universal signal to indicate this investigation, that the man made a gesture that was, then patted this soldier and a second soldier on his shoulders in a apparent sign of appreciation. ”
How the ‘OK’ sign was associated with white supremacy
The historical hand sign for OK (touching the index finger with the thumb with three other fingers raised) is a formerly innocent symbol that has recently been co-opted by the far right.
The racists’ co-opting of the symbol started as a joke on the far-right messaging site 4Chan, where users took an innocent gesture and pretended there was a hidden meaning behind it, hoping to mislead people from Left they were outraged.
But the joke escalated and the symbol was soon being widely used by far-right extremists, leading some people to conclude that its meaning has changed.
The ‘OK’ hand gesture (left) is now sometimes associated with white supremacy despite its generally innocent meaning. Brenton Tarrant, the Australian man arrested for killing 51 people in mosques in New Zealand earlier this year, is seen gesturing in court in March.
Conservative Viner Pizza Party Ben and former far-right pin-up boy Milo Yiannopoulos began gesturing at various campaign events for Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election.
White supremacist Richard Spencer also displayed the sign on election night 2016 in front of a Trump hotel with the title ‘Tonight is Night.’
The symbol has continued to be used, allegedly included by White House inmate Jack Breuer in 2017, photographed making the OK sign on his class photo, who claimed he was copying the President’s gesture of touching his index finger and thumb while she spoke.
The popular emoji has been registered as a symbol of hatred by the United States-based Anti-Defamation League, but the group warned that it is still ‘overwhelmingly’ used to show approval or that someone is fine.
Others use it as part of a “circular game” created on the American television show Malcolm in the Middle, which involves someone making the gesture and holding it below the waist. If someone else looks at him, they get punched in the arm.
Police body camera images show a counter-protester being shoved and falling to the ground.
Authorities said Christopher Davis, 50, of Salem, was arrested for disorderly conduct and harassment after the incident.
This is not the first time in recent weeks that a police officer has been accused of displaying the white power sign.
An investigation was launched in June after a New York City police officer was caught on camera making the “OK” sign.
In 2019, officials at West Point and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis opened an investigation after multiple cadets and midshipmen displayed the poster at the Army-Navy soccer game.
Pictured: Black Lives Matter supporters demonstrate in Portland, Oregon on the Fourth of July
Rita Castillo greets Black Lives Matter protesters as they pass her home in Springfield, Oregon on Friday June 27
Law enforcement has come under intense scrutiny in recent months. Several departments, including the Los Angeles Police Department and the New York Police Department, had their budgets cut by city officials.
The Minneapolis Police Department was abolished after city council members voted in a landslide 12-0 victory.
The focus on law enforcement, specifically police brutality and excessive force, has become a controversial debate among Americans.
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