But you said in your OP that they were police officers.
How could they act like police if they are police?
Can you clarify what you are really complaining about here?
Mason66:
The paramilitary march security personnel were not police and did not have police powers through deputisation. They were private citizens appointed by the march organisers to act as security personnel. Many were armoured with protective ballistic armour, military style camouflage battle dress and some were armed with firearms. The security personnel were NOT police.
I reread my OP and it seemed pretty clear but I will try to clarrify. The issue was that private citizens, who were working as security personnel for an alt-right march in Portland, were ordering protesters and bystanders to move and then initiating physically aggressive arrests rather than asking the many police present to do so. The real police were standing by and not stopping this, despite the very large number of true police present at the march/protest. The true police then acted as an auxiliary to the march security personnel and aided the private security personnel who had initiated the arrests and had used physical force against non-compliant protesters and bystanders. However, when protesters called on the true police to arrest the security personnel who were physically and verbally intimidating them, the police did nothing. So the issues are:
1) The private security personnel overstepped their citizen's mandate and initiated pre-emptive and kinetic arrests which they carried out using physical force while real police watched on passively.
2) That the police did not initiate the arrests but rather that they acted as a defacto auxiliary to the march security personnel who had no police powers.
3) That the real police did not answer requests by protestors and bystanders to stop the march security personnel from using physical force against protestors, but that the true police did aid the march security personnel in making forceful arrests.
4) That march security personnel were applying restraints (Teflon ties) to arrested protestors which is beyond their mandate as citizens to do and that the police supplied these ties.
5) Given the allegations in points 1-4 above, did the real police show a bias towards the alt-right march security personnel by supporting their actions and was such an alleged bias the result of alt-right sympathies and sympathisers employed by the local, state and federal police forces present at the march?
I hope that clears things up for anyone who is unclear what I posted above.
Cheers.
Evilroddy.