Tear Gas Deployment by Portland

Police in 2020

Time Control:
May 29th to September 6th

Methods

-This map displays a data collection effort based on publicly available video footage from local journalists. In order for a data point to be included, there must be both a visual of the tear gas and spoken/written confirmation from the journalist. Because of this burden of proof, this map is displaying only publicly documented tear gas deployment, and does not claim to document all tear gas deployment.

-Additionally, each point represents at least one canister of tear gas, though more than one may have been deployed. This data set is therefore an underestimate of the actual amount of tear gas deployed.

Other notes:

-Tear gas was chosen as the focus of this map because the data is relatively easy to reliably collect. However, these tear gas deployments are often accompanied by rubber bullets, flash bangs, and bull rushes.

-There was no attempt to distinguish between OC, CS, or CN tear gas. Uses of pepper spray and other chemical agents were not included.

-This map only includes tear gas deployment by the Portland Police Bureau, and does not include tear gas deployment by other federal or state agencies.

-A copy of the underlying dataset can be found here.