Please consider reading this story about Craig Coyner, a former mayor who spent decades serving the less fortunate and shaping the city he loved before ending up homeless and frostbitten, surrounded by the prosperity he helped create.
Another huge crowd tonight in Portland, including a new "wall" on the front lines: a Wall of Vets.
Here's a look at the line of military veterans getting set up here in front of the federal courthouse. Behind them, the Wall of Moms and the Wall of Dads are arriving.
I have spent the past few days researching the training of Uvalde officers, including the tactics they were expected to use to halt school shooters.
The documents are jarring. Here’s a thread of our findings so far.
1/9
Student calls to 911:
12:03—whispered she's in room 112
12:10—said multiple dead
12:13—called again
12:16—says 8-9 students alive
12:19—student calls from room 111
12:21—3 shots heard on call
12:36—another call
12:43—asks for police
12:47—asks for police
The guidelines provide sobering clarity: The first officers may be risking their lives. But, it says, innocent lives take priority.
“A first responder unwilling to place the lives of the innocent above their own safety should consider another career field."
5/9
The protest crowds in Portland continue to grow in response to the arrival of the feds.
There are probably about 2,000 people here right now in front of the Justice Center, with moms in yellow lined up in front, stretching across a whole block.
Here is Marine Corps veteran Duston Obermeyer talking about the Wall of Vets.
He mentions Chris David, a Navy veteran that went up to speak with federal officers last week and got brutally hit with a baton.
That backstory/video here:
EXCLUSIVE:
For weeks, thousands of flu samples sat in Seattle as researchers sought to test and flag them for coronavirus. The C.D.C. wouldn’t allow it.
When testing did happen, it was too late. The virus was upon us.
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@sherifink
The Uvalde training session 2 months ago relied on guidelines that give explicit expectations for officers responding to an active shooter.
The training is clear: Time is of the essence. The “first priority is to move in and confront the attacker.”
3/9
The man in this Portland video is Christopher David.
A Navy veteran, he tells us he went to the protests for the first time to ask officers about the constitution.
He said his fingers are broken and he needs surgery.
MORE:
But how should officers confront the gunman? With a tactical team? The training says that's probably not feasible, because the urgency is so high.
A SINGLE OFFICER, the training says, may need to confront the suspect on their own.
4/9
I'm out in the Portland suburbs, where hundreds of Trump supporters are gathering for an event. They say they will be driving into Portland later tonight.
The training expectations are obviously in stark contrast to what we are seeing in Uvalde. Police officials have said that officers were reluctant to engage the gunman because “they could’ve been shot.”
6/9
The Proud Boys are ecstatic tonight about getting mentioned in the debate tonight.
"Trump basically said to go fuck them up! this makes me so happy," writes one prominent Proud Boy.
It’s clear that officers did not follow that scenario this week. 19 officers staged outside the classroom. 78 minutes elapsed before they entered. Children repeatedly called 911 from inside.
“It was the wrong decision,” top officer says.
8/9
A new threat reaches the United States: A massive hornet with mandibles that rip bees to shreds and a stinger so potent that one unfortunate victim likened it to "having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh."
We are continuing to scrutinize the Uvalde response. Meanwhile, here’s a look at nationwide training for active shooters.
“If you know children are being murdered, why do you wait? Get in there.”
9/9
The guidelines actually provide scenarios in which officers are shot, including one modeled after the Santa Fe High School shooting, also in Texas.
The scenario explains that if one officer is shot, the second “is expected to go on responding solo.”
7/9
In the past two years, the Uvalde school district has hosted at least two active-shooter training days. One of them was just two months ago.
The trainings included both classroom teachings and role-playing scenarios inside school hallways (below).
2/9
There are also a whole bunch of nurses who are here in blue scrubs.
The overall crowd appears to me to be the largest yet. With the caveat that I'm terrible at estimating crowd sizes, I would guess 4,000 people.
I have shifted up to Seattle today to follow a large demonstration that's in solidarity with Portland.
I'd estimate a crowd of 2,000 already. They just torched construction buildings at the site of a new youth detention center.
Meanwhile, feds are here
A distillery in Portland realized they had the equipment and alcohol needed to make hand sanitizer. Now they are producing it and giving it away to customers.
She applied to 15 baseball teams and didn't get a response.
So she changed her name on her résumé from Rachel to Rae and cut the word "softball" from the description of her as a Division 1 catcher. “I got a ton of responses."
Now she's with the Yankees.
A Black family in Seattle got their home appraised: $670,000.
3 weeks later, they took down their family photos and African art. A white neighbor stood in for the family when a new appraiser arrived.
New value: $929,000.
This morning, authorities in Portland arrested Proud Boys member Alan Swinney. He faces a dozen charges, including assault, unlawful use of weapon, and menacing.
NEW: Documents show that Uvalde had done extensive preparations for active shooters, including a training that brought together officers from five agencies who roamed hallways with their guns drawn, role-playing how to stop a killer.
It didn’t help.
Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of Oregon's attempt to clear a sperm-whale carcass off the beach. The method? Obliteration via 20 cases of dynamite.
It's an event that led to what is surely one of the greatest local TV news segments of the century:
Seattle: I hope you can step back and appreciate this moment... Not only have your communal efforts over the past month saved lives locally, those ongoing efforts are now helping save lives in other states.
Washington State received 500 ventilators from the national stockpile. The state is returning most of those so they can go to other locations with more dire needs.
There's another huge crowd out in Portland tonight. I'd estimate 2,000 right now.
To get things started, here's a sampling of some of the signs in the crowd.
Here's video of James Mattis wearing a mask, urging others to do the same and saying: "Over the course of my career, I’ve learned that divisiveness will never work in defeating an enemy."
NEW:
An autopsy has found that Manuel Ellis, a black man who died in police custody in Tacoma, was killed as a result of oxygen deprivation and the physical restraint used in his arrest.
"I can't breathe," he said before he died.
Emails and interviews show that after the weeks of C.D.C. rejections, researchers in Seattle decided to defy regulators and test anyway. They ended up finding and reporting the first case of community-transmission in the region.
60 people showed up for a choir practice earlier this month. 45 got sick. 1 has died.
A remarkable window into how contagious coronavirus can be, even when it appears nobody is symptomatic:
I spoke with Oregon Gov. Kate Brown. She said she spoke with Chad Wolf, the Homeland Security secretary, and asked that he remove federal agents from the streets of Portland.
She said he refused.
Earlier this year, the feds signed an agreement that let Boeing executives off the hook for the 737 MAX catastrophes, which killed 346 people.
The lead prosecutor, Erin Nealy Cox, then took a job with the firm that leads Boeing's criminal defense.
Hundreds of protesters are out in Portland tonight for the 100th night of demonstrations. Police have blocked the road. We are already seeing molotov cocktails from protesters and riot-control munitions from police.
This is absolutely breathtaking. There were 121,200 new coronavirus cases identified in the United States today alone.
That's more infections than Japan has found over the course of the entire pandemic.
After getting much of their own tear gas blown back at them last night, it looks like the feds went to the hardware store and got leaf blowers of their own.
BREAKING: The University of Washington, with more than 50,000 students, is closing classrooms and moving to remote learning amid the coronavirus outbreak.
NEW: After a federal task force gunned down antifa activist Michael Reinoehl last month, Attorney General Bill Barr reported that Reinoehl was shot after he had "produced" a gun.
But it turns out the gun was found in Reinoehl’s pocket.
NEW: After pushback from the mayor's office in Seattle and protests that stayed away from federal buildings, the feds have informed city officials that the CBP tactical team brought into Seattle last week has left town.
NEW: An internal Homeland Security memo warned this past week that tactical teams sent to control unrest in Portland had no training in managing such demonstrations.
w/
@KannoYoungs
and
@MrOlmos
Trump updates
• He fell asleep on Air Force One on Wed
• They learned of Hope Hicks infection Thur
• Trump still went ahead with in-person fundraiser
• At event, he seemed lethargic
• Now has coldlike symptoms
• Pence negative
• Biden negative
More:
An update from Seattle area:
• Hospitals still seeing "manageable" caseloads
• Data models suggest transmission rate has dropped from 2.7 to 1.4
• Deaths on slower trajectory than many states
• “It would be grossly irresponsible to stop" distancing
More than 4,000 (!) new cases in the U.S. today.
Total tally at end of each Thursday:
• Jan 16 — 0
• Jan 23 — 1
• Jan 30 — 6
• Feb 6 — 12
• Feb 13 — 15
• Feb 20 — 27
• Feb 27 — 60
• Mar 5 — 227
• Mar 12 — 1,667
• Mar 19 — 12,326
A man just drove through a crowd of demonstrators in Seattle and then appeared to shoot someone.
Authorities say the man is in custody, one person shot is in the hospital in stable condition.
Here's a capture from a FB livestream, via twitch
Stuck in a snowstorm with a batch of vaccines that would expire in 6 hours, a team of health care workers in Oregon began knocking on car windows, giving impromptu shots to stranded drivers.
There it is. Wow.
After being down EIGHT POINTS on election night, Seattle's socialist councilmember, Kshama Sawant, is winning later ballots by such a large margin that she's moved ahead.
What a remarkable rebuke to Amazon's effort to alter the council.
~140 police officers were injured in the U.S. Capitol siege, including brain injuries, smashed spinal discs and one officer who is likely to lose his eye.
"another was stabbed with a metal fence stake”
The decision not to tap the existing flu study for monitoring was just one in a series of missed chances by the federal government during the early days of the outbreak, when containment would have been easier.
Tonight, there are 973 cases in 37 states.
With the usual caveat that I'm terrible at crowd estimates, I'd say about 1,000 people are here throughout the parking lot right now and maybe like 1 million flags.
The current plan is to drive into Portland as a huge caravan at 6 p.m.
Here's our team's video investigation of the federal crackdown in Portland.
It includes some incredible footage, and the producers did an outstanding job capturing the scene here. I hope you take some time to watch it.
Just now: For the first time in Oregon history, lawmakers have voted to expel a colleague: Rep. Mike Nearman, who helped a far-right crowd breach the state Capitol in December.
59-1 vote. All Republicans (except Nearman) voted for expulsion. Background:
By that point, we now know, the virus had already spread undetected. Two people had already died. A nursing home now linked to 19 deaths hadn’t yet learned that their sickness troubles were coronavirus.
2 police officers in Seattle are under investigation for reportedly being in D.C. during the Capitol attack.
"If any SPD officers were directly involved in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, I will immediately terminate them," the police chief says.
BREAKING: Sources tell us that Michael Reinoehl, the man being investigated for the killing of a right-wing activist in Portland, has been killed by authorities in Lacey, Wash.
After getting tear gassed last night in Portland, a member of the protest's new "Wall of Vets" said the gas was so strong it was leaving burns on his skin.
He said it felt worse than the tear gas he recalled from his time in the Army.