After accurately labeling Demetria Hester a snitch during the Jeremy Christian trial, it might surprise some to read that I am speaking out against the wrongful arrest that she appears to have been the victim of last night. Demetria was at a Black Lives Matter protest last night when she was taken into custody. She was then officially booked on charges of disorderly conduct and interfering with a peace officer before being released earlier today after the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office declined to press charges. Usually when anyone is arrested and the charges are dropped the next day, those charges lack merit.
Demetria Hester has been doing some excellent work supporting the Black Lives Matter movement in recent weeks. So much that I hate having to point out her history as a cooperating witness in a recent trial that ended with the defendant receiving multiple life sentences. It is a frustrating position for me to take because on the one hand I support Black Lives Matter, I support her recent activism against law enforcement, and I admire her for starting the advocacy group Moms United for Black Lives (https://www.facebook.com/groups/291983945248461/), but I am also a jailhouse friend of Jeremy Christian's and I don't believe that Jeremy committed the crimes against her for which he was convicted. This puts me in a tough spot sometimes because I'll go from speaking out in support of recent protests organized by Antifa and blasting the police for brutalizing them, only to find myself speaking out against their conduct in Jeremy's case the next day. When Jeremy was sentenced I recall one critic saying that he wished my efforts to expose bad cops would be more successful than my efforts to defend Jeremy on some issues. I felt the same way, which I admit is one of my reasons for taking a proactive role in support of Demetria in this case. I don't consider my opinion of her conduct in Jeremy's case relevant to whether or not she should have been arrested last night. I hope that she reads this and appreciates having a critic that is willing to set aside differences and support her when she deserves it. It is always the support of opponents that people should value most anyway because now she can say that even the guy that called her a snitch throughout the Jeremy Christian trial thinks her arrest was unjustified.
Video of Demetria taken in the minutes preceding her arrest show her with a speaker leading a chant of "hands up don't shoot!" She and other protesters were clearly exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble (https://twitter.com/cdsupriyadi/status/1292856968785215488). In the next video (https://twitter.com/cdsupriyadi/status/1292717276047671297), police can be seen entering the crowd for the purpose of extracting Demetria and taking her to jail. It was clearly what the police call a "targeted arrest" which takes place when the police decide they want to kidnap one specific person in a group. None of the video footage shows her doing anything wrong in the moments leading up to her arrest. Had she done something wrong, the charges probably would not have been dropped the next day, but it could also be that the MCDA wanted to stick by their witness too and didn't want to be seen as arrested someone they consider to be a "hate crime" survivor, but absent any footage that clearly shows her doing anything wrong and the history of the Portland Police wrongfully arresting black people, I believe that the evidence points in her favor.
I could not say that the evidence pointed in her favor when I saw the video of her interactions with Jeremy Christian. The surveillance video in that case (https://copblaster.com/blast/3378/demetria-hester-has-a-criminal-record-and-assaulted-jeremy-christian) had no audio, so there was no proof of what was said. The video in that case showed an argument between Jeremy and Demetria that I assume Jeremy started because I know him. Then it showed the two to them get off the train, Jeremy walked up to her saying something, he then turned away to leave at which point she maced him, then he continued walking away from him while she followed him with the mace, and then he threw a plastic bottle full of booze at her. It was obvious from the tape that she assaulted him with the mace and that he was just trying to stop her so he could continue to leave unmolested. She was also exposed on cross examination as having lied about the incident to the media (https://copblaster.com/blast/3388/demetria-hester-admits-to-prior-felony-convictions). She had told the press that she maced him after he threw the bottle at her, but despite that Jeremy was still convicted of "assaulting" her. In my opinion he was wrongfully convicted of the charges involving her because of the video evidence and the jury cared more about nailing the infamous Max killer than what the evidence really showed in her case. I wish I could say otherwise. When I was in jail with Jeremy he showed me a lot of the evidence in his case and that was enough to make me questions the official narrative, so I told him I would follow his case when I got out and call it how I saw it. It would have been a lot easier for me if I were not a man of my word because I have yet to catch Jeremy in a lie, so my coverage of the case often earned me a lot of hateful and at times threatening criticism from leftists that wrongfully assumed that I was a white supremacist on the grounds that only a Nazi would defend a Nazi. My problem with that belief is that I don't believe Jeremy Christian to be a real white supremacist and he certainly is not a real Nazi, but most people don't have the time or interest to hear me out. As an ex-con that did time at a United States Penitentiary, I can tell if someone is really a neo-Nazi as people have accused Jeremy of being and I can say that he is not one or if he is then he is not like any other neo-Nazi I have ever done time with.
When Demetria finally got out of jail she put on quite a show for the cameras (see video below). She turned on the waterworks in a way that might have convinced me had I not already been aware of her history getting arrested in worse places (https://copblaster.com/blast/3389/news-media-finally-reporting-demetria-hesters-criminal-record). She is no stranger to jail, but despite the fake tears I believe the substance of her statements. The deputies at the jail probably did threaten to put her in isolation cell number seven as she describes. All she had to do was argue with them and they probably would have put her in there if they didn't know who she was. They probably left her in the fish tank for several hours, told her she would not be released on recognizance, and gave her the option to post bail, but being the smart cookie that she is, she probably realized that it is better to hold off on posting bail until after you are arraigned because if you post and the charges are dropped you still lose 15% of the security. After not posting they probably put her up in 8B for her own safety because she is high profile and answered "yes" when the classification deputy asked if she had ever testified against anyone.
Is Demetria Hester a Snitch or a Victim?
I get this type of question a lot when putting people on blast for filing police reports or testifying against people in court. They will argue that Demetria is a "hate crime" victim and therefore she should not be labeled a snitch for testifying. The problem I have with that argument in her case is that she appeared to have committed a violent crime against Jeremy, Jeremy appears to have thrown the plastic bottle in self defense or at the very least in response to extremely provocative activity on her part, and then she went crying to the police. Those types of setups are absolutely 100% snitch work. When Jeremy was sentences he said to her:
"I agree with a lot of what she said about the criminal justice system. I don't like it either, but you can't get up here and snitch and talk about the criminal justice system that you're using to prosecute me while you sit there and snitch on me. Ok, that's hypocrisy plain and simple." - Jeremy Christian (https://copblaster.com/blast/25804/jeremy-christian-sentencing-lwop-fails-to-consider-diminshed-capacity)
I couldn't have said that any better myself. When someone engages in criminal activity themselves and gives information to the police when it suits them that person is a snitch. That is not to say that there is room in the criminal code for someone to testify without being a snitch, but that person has to be squeaky clean and not take it upon themselves to get people into trouble unnecessarily. A former cellmate of mine that is a career bank robber and hit man said it best:
"I never once considered any of the bank tellers that testified against me a snitch because they were just unsuspecting law abiding citizens that did not know better." Anthony Digiosaffatte
The above exception to the snitching label does not apply to Demetria Hester.
Antifa's Snitching History
Snitching is also a well known part of the Antifa playbook, which is why even though I support their efforts in the fight against police brutality, I could never fully support them as a group. Antifa says that their purpose is to fight fascism by any means necessary. Any means necessary includes snitching on people they believe to be fascists. I am against fascism in general, but I do not support snitching for any reason. So, when someone with Antifa is called out for being a snitch I reject the counter argument that the person they told on is a Nazi. Assuming the person they told on was a Nazi, that just provides a motive for snitching. If an Antifa member were to walk onto any active prison yard in this country and counter an allegation of snitching by calling the person they told on a white supremacist they would be laughed at and smashed off. When I was in USP Victorville with a member of the American Front he told me about how Anitfa had setup Jacob Laskey in Eugene, Oregon. What he described sounded like a stalking campaign organized by Antifa snitches for the purpose of getting Laskey's supervised release revoked. If I recall correctly, he said that they would follow him around in public, take pictures, and do the same with all of his online activities. I forgot about the story until someone asked me recently if I knew Laskey, so I Googled him and confirmed that I don't know him, but in the process I recognized my former fellow convict in a picture with Laskey (https://eugeneweekly.com/2019/08/08/local-white-supremacist-resentenced/) and the story came flooding back to me. According to Eugene Weekly, Laskey's probation officer filed a petition with the court saying that Laskey was associating with white supremacists in violation of a special condition that prohibited him from associating with white supremacists, but the petition did not list any specific incident or individuals (https://eugeneweekly.com/2019/08/08/local-white-supremacist-resentenced/). Normally, probation has to provide some evidence to support such a claim, but they probably declined because Laskey was being violated for at least two other reasons that included a stabbing and collecting royalties from books he wrote on the grounds that he had to associate with people that promote white supremacy in order to collect royalties from books he wrote promoting white supremacy. According to my former fellow convict, the information about the other associations came from Antifa snitches that had been following him around and caught him associating with white supremacists.
That is of course just one incident of snitching that people associated with Antifa are believed to be involved with. I've seen a bunch of examples recently when people have accused alt-right people of committing crimes against protesters and people in the Antifa circle can be found online complaining about the cops not doing anything. Some also appear to be soliciting information online for what appears to be the purpose of sharing that information with law enforcement. One incident was caught on tape where a Blue Lives Matter snitch ran into the 711 in downtown Portland where she called the cops and told on the protesters she had attacked with mace, but then protesters can be heard telling on her (https://copblaster.com/blast/25812/blue-lives-matter-snitch-caught-on-tape-attacking-antifa-protesters). It is not a defense to a charge of snitching that the person you are telling on told on you first. Most recently, a man by the name of Garrick Fernbaugh was caught on camera fleeing the scene of a bombing in Laurelhurst Park, now the police are investigating, and Antifa keeps crying "why hasn't he been arrested yet?" Who do you think told the cops about Fernbaugh?
This website has also been targeted by snitches believed to be associated with Antifa for reporting the truth about Jeremy Christian. Back in February at least one Twitter user publicly snitched on us by sending a public Tweet to the Portland Police calling us "rw radicals" running an "extremist blog." Ironic since we are frequently targeted by right wing radicals for reporting the truth about police officers that target Antifa with unjustified violence.