Antifa-Aligned Group Supports Alleged Arson at Officer’s Home, Labelling Incident ‘So Cool’

Lorenz Duchamps
By Lorenz Duchamps
November 17, 2020US News
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Antifa-Aligned Group Supports Alleged Arson at Officer’s Home, Labelling Incident ‘So Cool’
Riot police stand before Antifa members and counter protesters during a No To Marxism rally at Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Berkeley, Calif., on Aug. 27, 2017. (Amy Osborne/AFP/Getty Images)

Detectives launched an investigating after an alleged arson took place outside the private home of a law enforcement officer in Oregon last week, authorities said.

A spokesman for the Washington County Sheriff’s Office told the Oregon Public Broadcasting the Nov. 11 incident is still under investigation but they believe the fire, which burned a vehicle outside of the officer’s home, was arson.

The Pacific Northwest (PNW) Youth Liberation Front, a group that is aligned with far-left anarcho-communist group Antifa, has since shared the story on Twitter, calling the alleged arson at the officer’s home “so cool.”

Investigators said they believe the people involved in the arson are linked to recent protests that have ravaged through the city of Portland and could be a form of intimidation. Washington County is located about 12 miles from Portland.

Fox News contacted Twitter after noticing the post, but the tech company did not immediately say whether the post violated its policies, the outlet reported.

According to authorities, there is a concern that “the officer was surveilled and followed home,” investigators with knowledge on the case told OPB.

For the past months—especially during the chaotic summer period when Portland officials have seen nearly daily protests that often turned into violent riots—stories have circulated from Portland Police Bureau officials being harassed online and their home’s getting vandalized, according to Portland Lieutenant Greg Pashley.

In the latest case dating back to early November, Portland protesters targeted the home of newly elected city commissioner Dan Ryan, who was the deciding vote on a failed proposal to slash police funding.

The group of about 60 people, including Black Lives Matter activists, initially gathered at Arbor Lodge Park in the northern part of the city before marching to the home of Ryan.

“Individuals broke a window, threw burning flares and paint filled balloons at the home, and broke potted plants. That criminal activity prompted police to declare an unlawful assembly,” the Unified Command said in an incident summary.

Intent on Establishing Socialism or Communism

PNW was created by youth and students and have described themselves as dedicated to the “liberation of all people through any means necessary.”

According to their website, the group wants Immigration Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security abolished, labeling them as “fascist systems” that “terrorize our community’s [sic].” They also want to defund the police and “put an intimidate [sic] end to the militarization of local police departments.”

National Police Association spokesperson and retired Sgt. Betsy Brandner Smith said Antifa is not just an idea, as Democratic candidate Joe Biden has said, but a dangerous organization with a similar structure to that of “an Islamic terror cell.”

“Antifa is more than just an idea, Antifa has quite a history, going back to the 20s and 30s and Hitler’s brown shirts and then we come into the anarchists of the 60s through to today,” Smith told The Epoch Times “Crossroads” program.

Members of Antifa group march
Members of Antifa march as the movement gathers for a “Demand Free Speech” rally in Washington, on July 6, 2019. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)
NTD Photo
Antifa members prepare to clash with Patriot Prayer protesters during a rally in Portland, Ore., on Aug. 4, 2018. (John Rudoff/AP Photo)

Smith said Democrats have struggled to identify Antifa due to their being “no head of the organization,” and “no real paramilitary structure.”

“The left likes to be able to go to a blue-checked Twitter account and say ‘okay, this guy’s the head of Antifa.’ That’s now how it works,” she said. “Antifa’s structure is really more like that of an Islamic terror cell, something like that. But just because we don’t have a paramilitary structure for Antifa, doesn’t mean they don’t exist and doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous.”

The retired sergeant said people in the United States “need to be able to engage in peaceful protests” and noted that while the country has seen many peaceful protests in the name of Black Lives Matter, the “radical Marxist arm of Black Lives Matter incorporated has now hooked up with Antifa and now they don’t peacefully protest; they burn, they loot, they riot.”

She also said that every police leader in the country needs to video tape and document the protests and show the American public what is really happening, after noting that law enforcement members were being put in danger during the riots which were being reported as “mostly peaceful” in the media.

“We have, depending on the area of the country we are talking about, we have a law enforcement that is afraid of Antifa, [the media] are in bed with the left, and so they don’t want to show these non-peaceful protests. The American public is being deceived, we all know that, by the legacy media. And law enforcement officers are the victims of it.”

Epoch Times reporter Katabella Roberts contributed to this report.

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