Summary List Placement
Police in Portland, Oregon, blocked people from taking food that was thrown away by a local supermarket on Tuesday, according to local news.
As Portland’s KOIN reported, a Fred Meyer supermarket located in Northeast Portland faced a power outage due to the winter storm. Sealed food items were discarded in dumpsters near the store, where people in the neighborhood who may have also lost power arrived to recover the perishable around 2:30 p.m., according to The Oregonian.
A local resident, Morgan Mckniff, who was filming at the scene, told the outlet that supermarket staff was initially blocking the dumpsters and even told people they would call the police.
According to the report, as people were still trying to gather items, a group of police officer s— including one who wasn’t wearing a face mask at first — responded to the area.
Another person who was there and made a thread on Twitter about the incident, Juniper Simonis, told the publication that the officers threatened to detain people. However, when the officers left the scene, those who were standing by were able to collect some food later that night, the Oregonian reported.
The officers were upset at my documenting them loafing and my asking for their names/ids/cards and went to retrieve a store manager to tell me that I wasn’t welcome and now would be considered tress passing.
that’s right, the cops got a manager (in hoodie iirc) on me.
2/ pic.twitter.com/hqtc0iczln— Dr. Juniper L Simonis; The Professor (@JuniperLSimonis) February 17, 2021
“The people who were there weren’t there for selfish reasons — they were there to get food to distribute to hungry people around the city,” Simonis told The Oregonian. “There are mutual aid groups that have been helping feed people at warming centers because the city doesn’t have enough resources to feed them.”
after not too long, the folks pulling food realized it would be helpful to open the doors, which from the looks of it, did help quite a lot.
and yes, those are boxes of frozen beef in the green dumpster
7/ pic.twitter.com/WSLGWCLDPV— Dr. Juniper L Simonis; The Professor (@JuniperLSimonis) February 17, 2021
In a statement to KOIN, a Fred Meyer spokesperson said that “some perishable food that requires refrigeration at our Hollywood store was out of temperature for a protracted period of time. This was due to a weather-related power outage and it is not safe for consumption. Out of an abundance of caution, we are disposing of the product to keep people safe. We engaged law enforcement, as the safety of our associates and customers is always our top priority.”
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: American Ballet Theatre ballerina Isabella Boylston shares her at-home leg workout