Mike Schmidt, the DA in Portland, takes a lot of shit (including death threats, probably from members of the police union!) for refusing to prosecute BLM protesters. When you dig a bit, his main reason is that he knows those cases are largely unwinnable. Cops violated protesters’ civil rights consistently; arrested the wrong people; arrested legal observers and journalists with credentials clearly displayed; attacked protesters following their instructions; and lied frequently and proveably about all of the above.
The few prosecutions he’s followed up on were cases where a protester clearly attacked police first, such as with lasers or molotov cocktails while police were simply in position, and not attacking protesters (yet).
So we will see how it turns out, but I wouldn’t exactly call him a hero for making those common-sense decisions, but at least he didn’t bow to pressure to turn police riots (in the real meaning of the term; riots started by police) into show trials of the victims.
