Christopher J. David had largely ignored the protests in downtown Portland, Oregon, but when he saw videos of unidentified federal agents grabbing street protesters and throwing them into rented minivans, he felt compelled to act.
David, a Navy veteran, said the use of violent tactics by federal agents against protesters, without the support of the mayor, governor, or local police, was a violation of oaths that agents take to support , defend and defend the Constitution.
And so on Saturday, he took a bus downtown to ask officers how their actions squared with that oath.
Instead of getting a response, a federal officer hit Mr. David with a stick while another sprayed him with pepper spray, according to video of the encounter. After walking away from the confrontation, Mr. David was taken to a nearby hospital, where a specialist said his right hand was broken and that he would require surgery to install pins, screws, and plates. He declined the pain medication.
“I wasn’t even paying attention to the protests until the feds came,” David said in an interview Sunday night. “It was then that I realized it.”
Protesters have been on the streets of Portland for more than 50 consecutive days, in response to the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. The arrival of federal officials in the city has revitalized the protests, which continued on Sunday night, with tear gas again deployed by US agents.
David, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and a former college wrestler who has lived in Portland since 2006, said he had only attended one protest before: a march for women’s rights in Washington, DC, in 1989. Like 53- One-year-old man with health problems said that the risk of coronavirus was reason enough to stay away from downtown Portland.
“It just didn’t seem worth it to me at the time, but it reached that threshold when I saw the Pinochet-like behavior of our own government,” he said, referring to the Chilean dictator.
Once decided, Mr. David grabbed a backpack with some essential items (migraine medicine, nicotine gum, his wallet, and ID cards) and took a bus downtown, arriving near the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse in the USA around 8:15 pm
The courthouse has become the focus of protesters, as well as federal national security agents who have been dispatched to protect it. But the response from those agents in Portland has sparked a backlash over whether officers are exceeding their arrest authority and violating protesters’ rights by arresting protesters in the area around federal court.
On Mr. David’s backpack were patches commemorating his time as an officer in the Marine Corps of Civil Engineering, serving with the construction battalions – the famous Seabees.
He also wore a heather gray sweatshirt with the word “Navy” printed in blue on the top and a cap for the Academy fighting team. He wanted the officers to know at a glance that he was a veteran and someone they could talk to.
“I identified myself for a reason, I want to pause them so we can talk,” he said. “So I wanted to go there to tell them that I thought they were not following their oath to the Constitution. That was my goal. “
At 10:45 pm, Mr. David was about to leave to return home, he said, when protesters began to remove the fence around the courthouse and federal officials emerged. He addressed a group of federal agents.
A video shot by Zane Sparling, a reporter for The Portland Tribune, captured what happened next. Officers in camouflage and gas masks beat Mr. David with batons and a squirt of pepper on his face. The shaky cell phone video shows him briefly nudging the officer’s hand with the aerosol can before turning, pulling away and defiantly flipping the middle fingers of both hands. He turned and looked at the officers again, raising his middle fingers even higher, though a blow from a cane had just smashed his dominant right hand.
Internet users quickly called him “Captain Portland” for barely backing off the blows. Observing how it stood 6 feet 2 inches above the officers, some people compared him to the “Game of Thrones” character known as The Mountain. On Twitter, he went from having a handful of followers before the incident to more than 52,000 as of Monday morning.
“My life has become dramatically strange,” he said.
Sergio Olmos, Mike Baker and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.
