Posted on 08/30/2012 7:01:17 AM PDT by marktwain
PORTLAND, Ore. – Portland police shut down the Burnside Bridge and detained 13 bearded men who said they were headed to a photo shoot to raise money for breast cancer research Wednesday evening.
According to spokesman Robert King, police received a report that a man on the bridge had an assault rifle. Officers shut down the bridge just after 7:30 p.m. while they investigated.
Police found 13 bearded men, many of whom wore military style uniforms. One of the men had an assault rifle, King said. They were taken to the Central Precinct.
It's unclear if the assault rifle was loaded.
Several of the men told KATU News they were on their way to take a photo under the "Portland, Oregon" sign near the Burnside Bridge to raise money for breast cancer research. The men said the photo was going to be part of a Beards for Breasts calendar.
"It's from Seattle," said Jedediah Aacker. "This girl, Sugar June, does it. She puts together a calendar for all the beard clubs around the nation. Beards for breasts."
Someone called police when they saw one of the men holding a rifle on the bridge.
"We were wearing camo gear and stuff walking up to do the shoot and sure enough police show up, boom, arrested us," said Aacker.
"We were just a bunch of dudes walking across the bridge wearing camo getting rad."
King said two of the men were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct for handling the rifle. It's unclear if any of the other men were charged with a crime.
The men told KATU there were 10 of them. Police said 13 were detained.
The bridge was opened at around 8:15.
"We didn't mean to shake up the community or shut down the Burnside Bridge," said Matthew Jenkins. "Just trying to save boobs, you know?"
If you cannot exercise your rights because you worry about being arrested or disturbing the politicians, you have already lost them.
Rights unexercised are rights lost.
I miss the good ol’ days when I would grab my model 12, load it up, and walk through town with it to hit the woods and go hunting.
No can do in ATL anymore.
I and 9-12 of my friends are going to go march (walk) in military fatigue uniforms across a critical choke point for your city, carrying guns, and I expect you to ignore me, and just think nothing of, ‘cause no matter how it appears, “it’s legal”.
Idiots.
Breast cancer research? Lame.
They should have uttered a word or two of Spanish, invoked the Dream Act and said “high school.” They’d be walking free.
Based upon what evidence?
Me too!
Every person's environment colors their judgment to some extent.
I live in Arizona. We have constitutional carry.
You do have to give pause at the pucker factor for the patrolman, or men that have to first approach and talk to the group, while assuming, or at least hoping that they are benign.
I think those ball shrinking approaches and interviews must be very common to Game Wardens.
I agree completely. I expect police to be alert and cautious, and they have my full respect for going up to armed strangers in these situations. However, when they go with an arrest for "disorderly conduct" over actions that are protected by the Second Amendment and are certainly not disorderly, I have a problem with their actions.
I agree fully and should have written more to make that clear.
I just wanted to comment on something that always gets me about mostly game warden stories, it would be amusing if it wasn’t so dangerous, but some approaches to groups of men, far out in the dark boonies, must be really unpleasant to game wardens.
Amish or angry Mets fans?
Watch the video from post 16. Those guys were on a mission to test the local police. The cop handled it like a real pro.
I don’t. The article clearly states why the disorderly charge was filed. You are totally speculating about alcohol, and it would have been mentioned because it would totaly run these guys’ images and they’d smear all gun owners as drunks like them. Further since when is it against the law to be photographed holding a gun.
Yeah, that cop was definitely a pro. No agenda or attitude. The dopes with the camera didn’t seem too bright, though.
How idiotic. You think exactly like a Marxist - a person is incapable of thinking outside their own circumstances, their own environment.
I think this is the second time you have mistaken what New Jersey state laws say about gun ownership with mine, as if all the things you disapprove of in those laws met my approval simply because I live here. That's the nutty kind of thinking Marxists use all the time. It may also be a reflecting of yourself, that you ate incapable of thinking outside your own environment, in as much as that's what you believe as others.
As for my comments, I made none in terms of any of the arrests the police made - we really were not given clear facts about how and why that occurred.
As for the initial questioning of what a group of a dozen or so men dressed in fatigues and armed on a bridge that is a choke point in and out of Portland, no one’s rights were hindered by the police stopping the group and asking what their group was doing.
The group could have avoided any public suspicion by admitting that what they were about might appear suspicious and simply alerted the city the day before.
You can so that by law nothing required them to do that, and that is true, and by law nothing was amiss by the police checking it out when to any sane person it could well appear suspicious. To check them out is not a claim they were doing anything illegal. It is only a claim that further investigation is needed to assure what was happening was legal. Why? Because "legal" or "illegal" is not just a matter of what is being done. It is also a matter of intent. If something appears suspicious, public safety requires that the intentions of the people involved be determined. That's what the police attempted to do. No one's rights are violated by that.
As to the arrests afterwards, that might be a different matter but it requires more facts.
"Open carry" may be legal. How that is being carried out sets how it appears it might be used. It is the responsibility of the gun holder to carry out "open carry" responsibly. Thirteen armed men in fatigues wlking across a birdge together rightly bears questioning as to their intent. That's not a challenge to their "open carry" right, it's legitimate challenge to their intent.
They seemed to have cleared up the intent. What took place while that was being done appears to have been what resulted in any arrests - not their initial walk across the bridge, but what happend while their intentions were being discovered.
They could have prevented their any arrests and possibly had assistance from local officials, had local officials known what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it.
Does "law" require it? No, common sense requires it.
Only one of the men was visibly armed, as far as we know.
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