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Survivors: Portland Police Misled Public about Normandale Park Mass Shooting
PORTLAND, OR, April 17, 2023—
Mass shooter Benjamin Smith will be sentenced on April 18, 2023, for murdering one person and attempting to murder four others at Normandale Park on February 19, 2022. The Portland Police Bureau (PPB), however, has faced no accountability for its misrepresentation of the mass shooting in its aftermath.
In the days after the attack, PPB made false and misleading statements it knew to be untrue at the time of publication. PPB has yet to acknowledge, correct, or explain the misinformation it disseminated. The implication that the shooting took place in the middle of a protest is believed as fact even now among Portlanders. This incorrect belief makes it difficult to detect other significant and damaging aspects of their false statements.
Survivors of the shooting—the only ones to witness the entire attack—want to expose the full extent of the false narrative woven by PPB in the crucial hours and days following the shooting, so that the public can more accurately understand the unprovoked attack and its circumstances.
PPB published the following statement on its website and shared it on social media on February 20, 2022:
***ORIGINAL MESSAGE BELOW***
A preliminary investigation into the February 19, 2022 shooting near the intersection of Northeast 55th Avenue and Northeast Hassalo Street indicates this incident started with a confrontation between an armed homeowner and armed protesters.
The scene was extremely chaotic, and a number of witnesses were uncooperative with responding officers. Most people on scene left without talking to police. Detectives believe a large number of people either witnessed what happened, or recorded the incident as it unfolded. This is a very complicated incident, and investigators are trying to put this puzzle together without having all the pieces. Detectives ask that anyone with information or video please contact Detective Scott Broughton at Scott.Broughton@portlandoregon.gov (503) 823-3774 or Detective Rico Beniga at Rico.Beniga@portlandoregon.gov or 503-823-0457. The case number is 22-47502.
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PPB reported a “preliminary investigation” and might claim that an expectation of complete accuracy would be unreasonable. But PPB’s word choices do not reflect a neutral or even minimally accurate account of a mass shooting event. Detailed below are PPB’s numerous departures from the facts in that text.
The “incident” did not "start" with a mutual "confrontation." The gunman, Benjamin Smith, aggressively approached a calm group of women who had neither reason nor interest to engage with him and who were more than 100 feet away from his residence. His victims, who had training and experience with de-escalation, urged him to depart peacefully. Smith shot them at point blank range.
Smith was not a "homeowner." He lived in an apartment, which did not immediately adjoin the area where the shooting took place, nor any area where protesters gathered. PPB officers visited his apartment as early as four and a half hours after the shooting; they knew that Smith was not a homeowner almost 12 hours prior to their false statements. Later, PPB replaced the word "homeowner" on its website with the words "area resident," but the statement still retains the subheading "ORIGINAL MESSAGE BELOW." PPB thereby obscured its original fabrication with a fraudulent archive.
At the outset of the attack, Smith was the only "armed" individual B chose to falsely portray this as a symmetrical conflict when it included the words “armed protestors.”
The shooting victims and survivors were not at Normandale Park as "protesters;” they were there to provide safety support for a protest. None held a sign, shouted a slogan, or engaged in activities most people would associate with the word "protester." Those who would be appropriately identified as "protesters" were, at the time, more than two full blocks away, out of eyesight, and separated from the scene by a fenced baseball stadium, a line of trees, and a field.
There was nothing “chaotic” about the scene prior to Smith's arrival. He approached five friends who were calmly preparing to work as traffic coordinators—a role entirely oriented toward preventing chaos. When police arrived at the park 15 minutes later, the scene was different; by then Smith had been disarmed and volunteer medics, arriving from the protest group, were rendering aid to all injured parties, including Smith.
When speaking with "witnesses" on scene in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, police officers asked questions about the size of the crowd they assumed to be present during the attack. Eyewitnesses clearly stated that the crowd was nowhere near the group when the attack happened. These witnesses later reported that the officers did not seem to believe them and persisted in asking questions following this false assumption. Despite having no evidence or testimony to support this assumption, detectives continued to “believe” it and falsely stated that a "large number of people witnessed" the shooting.
The small number of people who did witness the shooting were not "uncooperative." All but one of the witnesses were taken to the hospital or were in police custody. Some were medically incapable of speaking to police; others simply awaited their attorney before speaking in detail. The one uninjured witness to the entire attack remained at Normandale Park for nearly all of the following eight hours and proactively gave her contact information to officers on the scene. Other people were present when the police arrived, but those people had not witnessed the shooting. The police, however, incorrectly assumed that anybody present upon their arrival was a witness.
There was only one "recording" of the shooting—video from a helmet camera—which the police had access to within minutes of the attack. That evidence would prove crucial in securing Smith's guilty plea, as well as in debunking the misinformation spread by police.
The incident was not "complicated." One man attacked a group of women. Those women called for help. Another unarmed person approached, and another person shot back. The police had all the "pieces" necessary to reach that conclusion: the video and access to witnesses.
PPB's communications misled Portlanders and people around the world about the nature of, and motives involved in, this mass shooting. In the absence of overwhelming incriminating evidence, PPB's efforts—whether the result of incompetence, malice, or both—could have resulted in the acquittal of the gunman.
Victims and survivors deserve an explanation from the Portland Police Bureau about their misleading and deceptive statements. So does everyone who lives in or cares about Portland.
The sentencing hearing of mass shooter Benjamin Smith will take place Tuesday, April 18, 2023, at 1:30 p.m. at the Multnomah County Central Courthouse, Courtroom 9D.
Victims and family will make statements at the hearing.
Survivors welcome press inquiries for clarification or expansion. Requests will be considered after Benjamin Smith has been sentenced.
Email inquiries to: normandalesurvivors@proton.me
@dontgetkettled thank you for doing this upkeep on the truth of that night.