The family of Aaron “Jay” Danielson, a Trump supporter murdered last year by Antifa member Michael Reinoehl during a rally in downtown Portland, is suing the city, its mayor and the county district attorney.
OregonLive.com reports that the suit, which was filed Friday in federal court, says the city’s “hands-off approach” to political protests led to a “culture of vigilante policing” between opposing factions to fill the void left by the policy, leading to Danielson’s murder last August.
The suit seeks $13M in damages.
In a statement, Christopher L. Cauble, the estate’s attorney, said, “We are seeking justice for the preventable death of a young man, gunned down in a city with a dangerous and deadly hands-off approach to public safety. Time and time again, City leadership and law enforcement have failed to find an effective response to clashing groups of protesters.”
In the suit, Cauble wrote that “Given the enormity of the press coverage over the past several years regarding clashes between left- and right-leaning protest groups in the downtown core of Portland, Defendants knew or should have known that violent clashes would occur.”
The estate also accused Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt of playing a role in the murder by saying his new policy would be not to pursue most public order crimes, such as “criminal mischief, interfering with an officer or a stand-alone riot charge,” and would pay more attention to “deliberate property damage and threats of force or actual force against others,” OregonLive.com reported.
