SALEM, Ore. (KGW) — Over the last 10 years, Oregon had the sixth-highest number of domestic violent extremism incidents of all U.S. states, a new report says, despite the state ranking 27th in the nation by population.
A report released Wednesday by the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office found the state can and should do more to prevent future domestic violent extremism incidents.
The report, titled “Oregon Can Do More to Mitigate the Alarming Risk of Domestic Terrorism and Violent Extremist Attacks,” focuses on five areas of review and outlines potential improvements or fixes the state can put in place.
Oregon has a long record of domestic violent extremism. Some of the more recent incidents include the The Dalles in 1984, when members of the Rajneesh movement contaminated the salad bars at 10 restaurants as they tried to throw an election. In the 1990s, the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front burned research facilities and toppled a BPA transmission tower. In 2016, Ammon Bundy and supporters of extremist antigovernment movements took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon for five weeks. In 2020, a far-left activist shot and killed a right-wing activist at a rally that turned violent in downtown Portland. In December of the same year, far-right rioters entered Oregon’s closed State Capitol after a Republican lawmaker let them in. Former Rep. Mike Nearman was later expelled from the legislature, a first for Oregon, after video revealed he conspired with the group in advance to let them in a side door.
There were many arrests along the way, but none were charged with a state crime in Oregon for domestic terrorism because the state has no such law, something state auditors highlighted in the report.
Oregon is one of 16 states in the U.S. that has no legislation at all defining or specifically criminalizing domestic terrorism or domestic violent extremism at the state level. Enacting laws doing so could “provide the state with mechanisms to mitigate future risk,” the report says. It points to state laws in Georgia and Vermont that Oregon lawmakers could use as baseline examples: Georgia’s law defines and criminalizes domestic terrorism, including actions against a person or critical infrastructure; Vermont’s law criminalizes any act “taking a substantial step” toward committing a violent extremist act.
Billy Williams, the former U.S. Attorney for Oregon who prosecuted the Malheur Wildlife Refuge occupation, believes a lack of specific domestic terrorism laws emboldens bad actors.
“I think the criminal violence on the street level — in Portland and other major cities in the United States — has ramped up again because of positions taken around the country in not enforcing the law,” Williams said. “The rule of law matters. People need to be held accountable and if they know they are not going to be, well, we see what the result is.”
The report calls for the Oregon Homeland Security Council to establish a statewide strategy to thwart violent extremism threats. It also suggests law enforcement agencies receive more training and create a formal policy for when jurisdictions overlap in domestic terrorism cases to avoid inefficiency and potential confusion.
It also highlighted how law enforcement agencies can work to prevent and respond to extremist threats through coordinated networks like the Terrorism Intelligence and Threat Assessment Network (TITAN) Fusion Center and the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). The Portland City Council voted to withdraw from the JTTF in 2019 over concerns about racial profiling and civil rights abuses.
The report points out state critical infrastructure is a high-risk target, and suggests the state revise its infrastructure protection plan to “consider the evolving threat of domestic extremism.”
“There is a lot of activity on the internet that is of concern,” Williams said. “People have First Amendment rights to believe in whatever ideology they want to believe in.”
The report suggests the state do more to create public awareness of the threats and risks of extremism and the methods extremist groups use to recruit and radicalize people online, potentially making people less susceptible to misinformation or disinformation online.
“The rise in domestic terrorism is an immediate threat to Oregonians and we cannot simply wait for the next incident to occur,” said Secretary of State Shemia Fagan in a statement. “We can and must take immediate steps to prevent individuals at risk from being radicalized and becoming violent.”
Read the full report:
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