Portland DA Dismisses Misdemeanor Charges Against Nick Sortor
Nick Sortor, who lives in Washington, DC, was slated to be arraigned on Monday afternoon on a second-degree disorderly conduct charge related to an incident outside of the ICE building on Thursday night. However, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said that while Portland police officers had probable cause to arrest Sortor, “after a careful review of the investigation, including reports and video, we do not believe the crime of disorderly conduct can be proven against Mr. Sortor beyond a reasonable doubt.”
On one hand, for a DA to drop or reduce charges is not unusual, as true crime shows on TV are careful to point out. On the other, there were allegations that Sortor had instigated the attack:
According to probable cause documents filed in the case of Angela Davis, [also arrested in the incident,] police relied in part on information from confidential reliable sources embedded in the crowd or CRS.
According to one CRS, they witnessed a white man in his thirties walking down the middle of the street on South Moody Avenue holding a cell phone with a bright light shined in peoples faces.
The CRS said the man, later identified as Nick Sortor, was attempting to elicit a negative response from people.
According to court documents, as Sortor was attempting to film more people, a person dressed in black jumped between Sortor and the group which caused yelling, pushing, and shoving.
At some point, Son Mi Yi was holding an umbrella with the letters "ACAB" on it, and was shoving the umbrella in Sortor's face, and in front of his camera.
. . . According to court documents, Davis, dressed like a bird covered in feathers, chased Sortor while swinging a large stick covered in feathers. Sortor then fell in the street.
Davis, 49, was scheduled to be arraigned Friday on a 2nd degree disorderly conduct charge. However, because she was released from jail the same day, jail staff tell KATU her arraignment was likely delayed.
Sortor and Mi Yi are both scheduled to be arraigned Monday at 2 p.m. on a charge of 2nd degree disorderly conduct. They also were both released from jail on Friday.
Although charges against Sortor were dropped, both Angela Davis and Mi Yi were in fact arraigned. Oregon Online cites a decline-to-prosecute memo in Sortor's case:
Sortor, who has 1.2 million followers on X, had approached black-clad demonstrators and was filming them with a “shining light” when a heated argument began and a woman, later identified by Portland police as Son Yi, allegedly pushed Sortor with an open umbrella, according to a decline-to-prosecute memo.
Sortor grabbed the umbrella, the memo says, citing video evidence, but a crowd swarmed and another woman named Angella Davis swung a stick at him, according to the memo written by Senior Deputy District Attorney Kevin Demer.
Sortor attempted to flee but Yi pushed him into a storm water collection basin known as a bioswale, the memo alleges.
“Any physical contact [Sortor] had with other persons was defensive in nature, reasonable under the circumstances, and therefore justified,” Demer wrote. “Attempting to video record and shine a bright light at the other side, while certainly provocative, is not criminal.”
The level of violence at Thursday's rally, when Sortor was arrested, appears to conflict with Oregon's claim that the protests are small and non-violent:
At a hearing Friday, Oregon lawyer Scott Kennedy blasted Trump’s public statements about Portland on Truth Social, saying they are not based in reality. In a post last week, the president called the city "a NEVER-ENDING DISASTER.”
Kennedy described the protests at the ICE facility in Portland in the days leading up to Trump’s post as "dwindling, relatively sedate.” The biggest protest was in June and was handled without federal troops, he said.
. . . In court filings, law enforcement leaders in Oregon argued that federal forces would probably create more problems than they would solve.
But in yesterday's post, I embedded a video from Sunday night's protest that was so violent that Blogger wouldn't accept it, and visitors were directed to go directly to YouTube. In it, angry demonstrators are pressing against a line of Homeland Security officers, shouting angrily, until one spits directly in the face of an officer and is taken down and arrested. In fact, these demonstrations appear to be little different fom those in other cities, with demonstrators frequently attacking agents while, as in Chicago, police decline to intervene. In addition,
An email from a Portland police sergeant appeared to criticize three people he described as "counter-protesters" after confronting anti-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protesters outside an immigration facility and getting assaulted.
. . . In the email, dated Sept. 21, Braun writes, "these 3 counter-protesters continue to be a chronic source of police and medical calls at ICE."
. . . "Despite repeated advice from officers to stay away from the ICE crowd, they constantly return and antagonize the protesters until they are assaulted or pepper sprayed," Braun writes of the three individuals in the email. "They refuse or are reluctant to walk away from these confrontations, even when police are in the area trying to meet with them."
Again, the reasoning seems to be, as it was with Nick Sortor, that merely by being in the area, the counter-protesters are provoking violence against them, when they themselves aren't violent.Sortor's attorney, Angus Lee, claimed that the DA dropped charges only after he filed discovery documents demanding copies of all communications between the Portland Police and antifa:
In the next weeks to come, that's when we will be pursuing a federal civil rights case against the Portland Police Department and we will be engaging in extensive discovery to get to the bottom of the relationship between antifa and the Portland Police Command Center.
The Portland city fathers must be aware of the continuing black eye these demonstrations have given Portland. Several major companies, including Nike and Intel, have reduced operations in the city, while Walmart, Target, Cracker Barrel, and REI ave closed some or all of their stores, citing safety and shoplifting concerns.All the episodes over the past months have, if anything, been an indication that Portland is a city in crisis, and its leadership is simply continuing its complacency.
