The city of Portland is continuing to pay out massive settlements to rioters who say they were injured during the violent and destructive 2020 Black Lives Matter unrest.
The progressive Portland City Council agreed last week to issue yet another payout, this one totaling $375,000 in a bodily injury lawsuit brought by “non-binary” activist Meghan Lea Opbroek.
Opbroek, reportedly known as a far-left agitator who frequents Antifa riots in the area, claimed that a Portland Police Bureau (PPB) cop used excessive force against her in violation of her First Amendment rights, causing her bodily harm and “emotional distress.”
Det. Erik Kammerer, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, had allegedly launched a flashbang grenade toward Opbroek, which is a non-lethal mob dispersal tactic typically involving a spray of rubber pellets that stun and disorient a crowd. As a result of the projectile’s detonation, Opbroek said she suffered “severe” physical and psychological pain.
According to written testimony, Opbroek was at the scene of a George Floyd riot overnight on June 25, 2020, ignoring repeated orders from law enforcement officers to disperse and causing damage to taxpayer-funded infrastructure. “A pay out to her for this would be a reward for unlawful behavior,” the testimonial statements said.
The city council ultimately decided that “in order to avoid the risk of an adverse jury award, it is prudent to compromise the lawsuit at this time.” All 12 councilmembers voted in favor of awarding the settlement to Opbroek.
At the time of the June 2020 riot, Antifa militants were attempting to burn down PPB’s north precinct, according to investigative journalist Andy Ngo. Near the arson attacks, leftists sprayed graffiti saying, “Protests are effective when they are expensive.”
Opbroek’s payout follows a multitude of other police-involved personal injury settlements granted to Portland rioters who were involved in the 2020 insurgency.
Leftist extremists often actively encourage one another to resist arrest and interfere with police operations in hopes that they can sue for a sizeable settlement, according to Ngo, author of Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy.
To date, Portland has dispensed millions of dollars to Antifa extremists who sought to cash in on the payday opportunity. Since 2020, the city has spent more than $3 million resolving such claims against PPB, local “social justice newspaper” Street Roots reported in 2023.
Of the 71 bodily injury cases resolved as of 2023, the complaints resulted in both lucrative settlements and offers of judgment. Some of those claims revolved around crowd-control police practice, such as indiscriminately firing off impact munitions and using tear gas. In contrast, others alleged individual injuries from being pinned to the ground by police or struck with batons.
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The city’s risk management department has noted that this riot-related lawfare is raising premiums and affecting insurance coverage.
“The City has faced significant exposure to, and increase of, protest-related claims and litigation, causing stress upon mainly the Law Enforcement Liability policy, with carryover into the main General Liability lines,” according to the fiscal year 2022 – 2023 adopted budget report.
A “longstanding concern is persistent underfunding” of major maintenance accounts for bureau-owned buildings, “a worry made deeper by the use of these funds to cover protest-related expenses that were not covered by insurance in 2020,” the city said.
Years later, more sums of money are still being disbursed to Antifa-affiliated complainants.
In November, for instance, the city paid out $400,000, the largest settlement yet for a single plaintiff stemming from the 2020 riots, to Dustin Brandon Ferreira, a disabled Antifa associate known by the alias “Wheels.”
Ferreira had filed a lawsuit claiming that an officer used excessive force to detain him during one of the riots.
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Ferreira, who has a history of harassing police officers and threatening political violence, was charged with interfering with an officer, second-degree disorderly conduct, and menacing after refusing to disperse from a riot in September 2020. Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt immediately dropped all charges against him, as he did for hundreds of far-left riot arrestees.
The hefty payout was due partly to Ferreira claiming to be a “vulnerable person” under state law, which triples the damages awarded if a jury were to find that there was, in fact, abuse of an incapacitated or elderly person.
“No amount of money will ever fix or solve the amount of trauma that my community and myself experienced throughout that protest,” Ferreira told KOIN 6. “But what it does do is it allows me to live a little more comfortably.”