People are all worked up about the feds but with the exception of taking and holding people for twenty minutes and letting them go they aren't all that different from the Portland Police Bureau. Portland will have to live with the PPB until there is meaningful police reform. I hope people care about what's happening here after the feds go home because if it's a problem now, Portland had the same problems two weeks ago. Two weeks ago there wasn't a tenth of the coverage there is now and the coverage was much less positive towards protesters. This is the kind of problem Portland has to live with. There is no real oversight or supervision of the Portland police force. It may have been 14 years ago that the police beat James Chasse to death but not much has changed.
People are worked up about the feds because whatever the PPB does, they still live in Portland, are paid for by Portland taxes, are bound by Portland municipal law, are subject to Portland legislation and have to live among the fine people of Portland. BORTAC shock troops are accountable to no one, will never face any repercussions for anything they do and are effectively extralegal. This doesn't make the cops the good guys, it exposes that there's no real mechanism in place to deal with stormtroopers.
A very good friend of mine has been battling with the Portland Police for many years, around the Alberta Street Art Walk. If you know anything about that situation, you know who I'm talking about. The Portland Police are a complete shitshow. Top to bottom. There's nothing salvageable there, sadly. And that's the biggest problem; you can't just exile everyone in the org and start over, and that's honestly what needs to happen.