Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler: Police are authorized to end the 'Red House Autonomous Zone' (Update)

Yesterday a mob of Portland leftists harassed police and set up what is now being called the Red House Autonomous Zone or RHAZ for short. Here’s some video of what that looks like. As you can see, they’ve set up homemade spike strips in case police return.

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Surprisingly, instead of rolling over for the mob, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, who is also the city’s police commissioner, authorized police to clear out the RHAZ. He referred to it (correctly) as an “illegal occupation.”

Here comes law & order Ted:

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Hundreds of people on Twitter are letting Mayor Wheeler know it’s too little, too late:

This bit of understatement, given all that has happened in Portland, made me laugh.

He really has done a 180, albeit very slowly.

I’m starting to think Mayor Wheeler may have learned something from the experience of being forced out of his house and mocked as “Teargas Ted.” Or maybe it was the nightly riots and having someone beaten unconscious in the streets of his city. Maybe it was the “100% Antifa” murder that caused him to change his tune. Whatever it was, it seems the mayor is no longer bending over backwards to appease left-wing extremists the way he used to.

So will anything actually happen? It hasn’t so far and Antifa are clearly prepared for a street battle with police now:

I guess we’ll see if the new Mayor Wheeler is ready to send his cops in to be fire-bombed by this mob or if he’ll once again back down and let them have their way. As a final reminder, every place where an autonomous zone has been set up before, in Seattle, in Minneapolis and in Atlanta, the result has been increased violence. In Seattle, five people were shot. In Atlanta, an 8-year-old girl was killed. Now is the time to get ahead of this before Portland once again becomes home to anarchist violence.

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Update: The AP just published a story saying nothing has changed so far.

Several city blocks remained closed by a series of blockades Wednesday fabricated with wood, metal and wire fencing. Protesters dressed in black and wearing ski masks stood watch from atop a nearby wall.

The street behind the blockade in the residential neighborhood of homes, coffee shops and restaurants was laced with booby traps aimed at keeping officers out — including homemade spike strips, piles of rocks and thick bands of plastic wrap stretched at neck-height across the roadway.

What is the mayor waiting for?

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