ANTIFACIST ACTIVIST MICHAEL FOREST REINOEHL WAS KILLED BY POLICE AS THEY ATTEMPTED TO ARREST HIM NEAR SEATTLE. (VICE NEWS)
Antifacist activist Michael Reinoehl was killed by police as they attempted to arrest him near Seattle, hours after VICE News shared a conversation with him in which he appeared to admit that he shot a right-wing protester.
Reinoehl, 48, was killed in an encounter with officers when a federal fugitive task force attempted to arrest him, according to The New York Times. An anonymous official told the Associated Press that Reinoehl had pulled a gun during the incident.
The official could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymit
An arrest warrant had been issued on the same day VICE News published a clip in which Reinoehl said he acted in self-defense in the killing of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a member of the right-wing group “Patriot Prayer,” during a confrontation during a pro-Trump rally.
“I had no choice. I mean, I, I had a choice. I could have sat there and watched them kill a friend of mine of color. But I wasn't going to do that,” he said.
Since the shooting, Reinoehl said he’s gone into hiding, and moved his children to a safe place after shots were fired into his house just hours after the incident. He had not turned himself in, he said, because he believed right-wing protesters were collaborating with police, who would not protect him or his family.
Two weeks later, he said, he had no regrets about his actions. “If the life of anybody I care about is in danger, and there's something I can do to prevent it … I think that any good human being would do the same thing,” he said.
A French journalist who infiltrated the country’s police force has described a culture of racism and violence in which officers act with impunity.
Valentin Gendrot claims the violence was so frequent it became almost banal and describes one incident where he was forced to help falsify evidence against an adolescent who had been beaten by an officer.
“It really shocked me to hear police officers, who are representatives of the state, calling people who were black, Arab or migrants ‘bastards’, but everyone did it,” he says.
“It was only a minority of officers who were violent … but they were always violent.”
Gendrot also says he was shocked to discover how badly trained and paid police recruits are and how the constant stress and daily hostility and violence they face drives officers to depression and suicide.
A selfie of Gendrot. He says he was given his uniform and gun after only three months’ training.
The journalist spent almost six months in a police station in one of Paris’s tough northernarrondissementswhere relations between the law and locals are strained.
In his book, Flic (Cop) published on Wednesday, Gendrot reveals that he was given a uniform and a gun after just three months’ training, and later sent out on patrol.
He says he witnessed officers assaulting youngsters – many of them minors – on an almost daily basis. Gendrot describes a “clannish” system that ensures officers close ranks to protect their own, leading to a sense of impunity.
“They don’t see a youngster, but a delinquent … once this dehumanisation is established everything becomes justifiable, like beating up an adolescent or a migrant,” he writes, adding: “What astonishes me … is at what point they feel untouchable, as if there’s no superior, no surveillance by the hierarchy, as if a police officer can choose – according to his free will or how he is feeling at that particular moment – to be violent or not.
“In my commissariat there were racist, homophobic and macho comments every day. They came from certain colleagues and were tolerated or ignored by others.”
Gendrot’s police diploma. He joined the force under his real name and says recruiters did not research his background. Photograph: Supplied
Flic is published by Editions Goutte d’Or, a niche company that produces three books a year. It has been published in extreme secrecy. It was printed in Slovenia and bookshops inFranceordered it without knowing the details.
The Guardian is one of three publications – along with Le Monde and Mediapart – allowed to read the manuscript in the offices of the publishers’ lawyer and interview the author.
Gendrot, 32, from Brittany, worked on local newspapers and radio after graduating from journalism college and carried out several undercover investigations – including working on a Toyota production line and in a Lidl supermarket – before joining the police.
“I wanted to go undercover in a police commissariat so I could show what we never see. In France there are two big taboos: police violence and malpractice and police suicides. In France, people either like the police or detest them. I thought it had to be more nuanced,” he told the Guardian.
“This book is not anti-police. It’s a factual account of the day-to-day life of a police officer in a difficult district of Paris.”
A Google search reveals Gendrot has no great internet or social media footprint, but in any case, he says, the police recruiters did not delve into his background. He did change his round spectacles to look less “bookish”.
After three months’ training at police school in St-Malo, in Brittany – he finished 27th out of a class of 54 – Gendrot was posted to a police psychiatric unit for 15 months before landing a job at a station in Paris’s 19th arrondissement.
Here, as officer number 299145, he was issued his uniform and pistol. The station covers one of Paris’s grittier districts with 190,000 inhabitants and a particular problem with juvenile delinquency, drugs and prostitution.
On one of his first patrols, he describes how a colleague beat up a teenage migrant in the back of the police van. “Two weeks in uniform and already I’m complicit in the beating up of a young migrant,” he writes. The incident was never written up. “What happened in the van, stays in the van,” he notes.
On another occasion, Gendrot and his patrol were sent to investigate after a complaint about youngsters with a speaker. When his colleague humiliated one of the youths and the youth responded verbally, the youth was beaten, arrested and charged.
“We could have confiscated the speaker and gone. Or said nothing and gone. Instead, it escalated and he was beaten,” says Gendrot.
Worse still, when the beaten boy lodged an official complaint against the police, Gendrot’s colleagues concocted a story and insisted he gave false sworn evidence to internal investigators, exposing him to a charge of falsifying evidence, which carries a hefty fine and prison sentence.
Gendrot says he wrestled with his conscience before signing the false statement, but to have refused would have blown his cover.
“The officers made up an account of the event to explain his injuries. Then the kid lodged a legal complaint. Whatever happened, we had to close ranks,” he writes.
Gendrot said officers were often snowed under with form-filling and random “targets”, worked in decrepit offices, drove battered cars and often had to buy essential equipment from their own pockets, leading to high levels of depression.
In 2019, 59 police officers killed themselves, a 60% rise on the previous year. A Facebook group set up to support “distressed” officers had several thousand members in just a few days.
“I can only say what happened at that particular police station while I was there. I cannot talk about other police stations or the police in general. This book is a factual account of my time with the police,” Gendrot says.
“Everyone knows there is a problem, that the police service is not a happy place and it’s time to do something. Maybe the book will change things.
“As Montesquieu says: give power to a man and they will use it. The police have power. The uniform gives power. And they use it.”
MICHAEL REINOEHL TALKS TO FREELANCE JOURNALIST DONOVAN FARLEY ABOUT THE SHOOTING INCIDENT IN PORTLAND. (VICE NEWS)
Ever since a member of the right-wing “Patriot Prayer” group was shot and killed during a violent rally in downtown Portland August 29, the police investigation has reportedly focused on 48-year-old Michael Forest Reinoehl, an Army veteran and father of two who has provided what he called “security” at Black Lives Matter protests.
The Wall Steet Journal reported earlier that Reinoehl was a person of interest in the killing of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, who was taking part in a massive pro-Trump caravan that began in Clackamas earlier in the day.
In a conversation with freelance journalist Donovan Farley shared with VICE News, Reinoehl said he believed he and a friend were about to be stabbed, and that he acted in self defense. VICE News has not independently verified details of his story.
“You know, lots of lawyers suggest that I shouldn't even be saying anything, but I feel it's important that the world at least gets a little bit of what's really going on,” Reinoehl said. “I had no choice. I mean, I, I had a choice. I could have sat there and watched them kill a friend of mine of color. But I wasn't going to do that.”
Portland has been a flashpoint for protests since the 2016 election, but after the death of George Floyd in May, protests have gotten messier and increasingly dangerous. In August, a right-wing protester was arrested for firing into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters. Proud Boy Alan Swinney brandished a gun and pointed it at protesters, and a group of reportedly left-aligned protesters were seen on video dragging a truck driver out of his vehicle and beating him up.
The killing of Danielson is the first linked to an antifacist protester in recent years. It happened one week after 17-year-old pro-Trump protester Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly shot three protesters at a march in Kenosha, Wisconsin, killing two. Rittenhouse’s lawyer is claiming he acted in self defense.
Reinoehl had been a nightly presence at Black Lives Matter protests in Portland for months. In early July, he was arrested for carrying a loaded handgun at a protest and resisting arrest. The WSJ reports that the case remains open. Later that month, he was shot in the arm while attempting to wrestle a gun away from a right-wing protester during a skirmish.
Reinoehl said he became aware of the pro-Trump truck parade when he saw what he described as “hundreds of trucks with flags on them,” while driving around Portland earlier in the day with his teenage son.
“I notified my friends of what I had seen and finished what I was doing with my son, got home and then received a phone call that it might be a good idea to come down there,” he said. “Security may be needed not knowing what that would entail. I had no idea what I was getting into.”
“I’m seeing all these vehicles with hatred, people in the backs of the trucks yelling and screaming and swinging bats and sticks at protesters that are just standing there yelling at them,” he said.
At 8:45 p.m., Reinoehl said he went to the aid of a friend surrounded by trucks laden with armed pro-Trump protesters. “I saw someone that is a dear and close friend of mine in the movement by himself basically confronting all these vehicles,” Reinhoel told Farley. “And so I let him know that I'm here, parked my vehicle and joined up with him, found myself in the intersection in front of the food trucks surrounded by trucks and cars that had weapons.”
Reindoehl stressed that people participating in the pro-Trump caravan were heavily armed in those trucks, and that they carried “not just paintball guns,” as reported in the press.
He found himself in a confrontation with a man who he says threatened him and another protester with a knife. “Had I stepped forward, he would have maced or stabbed me,” Reinoehl said.
Bystander video from multiple angles show a man who resembles Reinoehl and appears to have the same neck tattoo fire two shots at Danielson and then walk away. “I was confident that I did not hit anyone innocent and I made my exit,” he said.
Since the shooting, Reinoehl said he’s gone into hiding, and moved his children to a safe place after shots were fired into his house just hours after the incident. “They're out hunting me,” he said. “There's nightly posts of the hunt and where they're going to be hunting. They made a post saying the deer are going to feel lucky this year because it's open season on Michael right now.”
He had not turned himself in, he said, because he believed right-wing protesters were collaborating with police, who will not protect him or his family.
He said at the time of the confrontation and the shooting, there were no police present to help. “There was definitely nobody in sight, no police officer, nobody at all that could intervene. It was a free-for-all. And the police were letting it happen,” he said.
Two weeks later, he said, he had no regrets about his actions. “If the life of anybody I care about is in danger, and there's something I can do to prevent it … I think that any good human being would do the same thing,” he said.
Reinoehl said he’s spoken to attorneys who say “I’ve got a viable case for self defense and protection because there’s a definite threat to my life.”
On Thursday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said the investigation into the incident is still in early stages. “We don’t even have all the facts yet. We haven’t been able to speak to all of the witnesses. We haven’t been able to process all of the video that’s come from local businesses,” he told KOIN 6 News.
“I feel that they're trying to, you know, put other charges on me. They’ll find another way to keep me in,” Reinoehl said when asked why he didn’t tell his story to the police. “Honestly, I hate to say it, but I see a civil war right around the corner,” he said. “That that shot felt like the beginning of a war.”
Watch Thursday Sept. 3 at 11 p.m. on VICE News Tonight on VICE TV.
The rush to immunise populations against Covid-19 could lead to the rollout of a vaccine that is not very effective and risk worsening the pandemic, leading scientists have said.
Politicians and commercial companies are competing to be the first to license a vaccine, but experts say the world would be better served by waiting until comprehensive results showed at least 30-50% effectiveness.
Ministers announced on Friday that the UK would take emergency powers to push any vaccine through the regulatory processes with unprecedented speed before the end of the year. Donald Trump wants to be able to announce the US has a vaccine before tthe presidential election on 3 November.
A vaccine is vital to stopping the pandemic, but Prof Sir Richard Peto of Oxford University and an adviser to the World Health Organization, said the first vaccine would be bought and used all over the world even if it had low efficacy.
Even if it protected only a minority of the population, it would be regarded as the standard by which later vaccines would be measured. That could even lead to inferior vaccines being approved, because they would not have to show that they were any better.
“I think there’s a big rush, a somewhat nationalistic rush and also somewhat capitalistic rush as well, to be absolutely first to register a vaccine, and it will actually make it more difficult to evaluate other vaccines,” Peto said.
“We do need a vaccine that works and we need it soon,” but “we really do need quite strong evidence of efficacy”.
There is huge political and commercial momentum in the UK behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, which is ahead of most other contenders in the world. Trials are taking place in a number of countries, including those with high levels of infection, such as South Africa and Brazil, where how well it works will become clear more quickly .
The Department of Health said on Friday that it planned to take emergency measures to ensure the UK could licence a vaccine this year if it had sufficient evidence of safety and efficacy. Until 31 December, the UK would otherwise have to wait for the European Medicines Agency to approve a vaccine. Next year, post-Brexit, the UK will license its own vaccines and drugs.
In its consultation document on changing the law, the government says the UK’s joint committee on vaccines and immunisation (JCVI) will be responsible for recommending that a vaccine that should go forward for licensing. That committee is chaired by Prof Andrew Pollard, the director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, who has said they may have enough data to give to regulators before the end of the year.
Peto is a member of the WHO’s Solidarity Vaccines Trial Expert Group, which is made up of leading scientists around the world who are advising on the establishment of the WHO’s trial to compare different vaccine candidates.
The group said in the Lancet medical journal last week that a poor vaccine would be worse than no vaccine, not least because people who had it would assume they were no longer at risk and stop social distancing.
“Deployment of a weakly effective vaccine could actually worsen the Covid-19 pandemic if authorities wrongly assume it causes a substantial reduction in risk, or if vaccinated individuals wrongly believe they are immune, hence reducing implementation of, or compliance with, other Covid-19 control measures,” they said.
They urged all regulators to stick to the WHO’s guidance, which says that no vaccine that is less than 30% effective should be approved. It recommends at least 50% effectiveness, but allowing for 95% accuracy that could mean 30% in practice.
The Food and Drug Administration, the US regulator, has said it will abide by the 30% guidance, but some observers think it may come under political pressure to license a vaccine that falls below that threshold.
The Lancet piece says trials such as Solidarity, which compare various vaccines, are a better way to proceed.
“In comparison with individual trials for each of the many different vaccines, a global multi-vaccine trial with a shared control group could provide more rapid and reliable results,” they write.
“High enrolment rates facilitated by flexible trial design and hundreds of study sites in high-incidence locations could yield results on short-term efficacy for each vaccine within just a few months of including that vaccine.”
Good results on safety and effectiveness do not guarantee there will be no long-term problems, they add. The vaccine’s protection may wane, for instance.
“The trial costs will be a fraction of the societal costs of Covid-19, and this global collaboration could rebut detrimental vaccine nihilism and vaccine nationalism,” they write.
