Portland Police Chief Loses Confidence in Councilor Over Resurfaced Tweets

The Tech TL;DR:

• Operational Risk: Chief Day stated that a baseline of good faith is missing, noting that Green sits on the elected body that sets the bureau’s budget, shapes policy, and votes on personnel tools and staffing.
• Enterprise IT Impact: Public sector digital infrastructure and municipal oversight rely on functional governance.

Resurfaced Social Media Data and Political Fallout

The controversy centers on dozens of inflammatory remarks posted on the website then known as Twitter during the height of global racial justice protests in 2020 and 2021. Mitch Green was elected to the Portland City Council in November 2024 and took office in 2025, deleting the posts prior to his election run. However, the archived digital footprint remained accessible online until published by Max Steele over the weekend, as detailed by Willamette Week.

Among the archived material, a post dated August 8, 2020, stated: “No, police are shit and absolute monsters. Just the fucking worst type of people.” Other posts mocked small business owners requesting graffiti abatement during protests that caused considerable damage to storefronts.

Chief Day released a statement on Wednesday afternoon explaining his loss of faith in Green’s ability to evaluate the police bureau objectively. “What concerns me is that this Councilor sits on an elected body that sets the Police Bureau’s budget, shapes its policy, and votes on the tools and staffing our personnel rely on to do the jobs safely,” Chief Day wrote, as reported by Willamette Week. “That profound responsibility requires a baseline of good faith: that the Bureau’s work will be judged on its merits rather than beginning with the predetermined conclusion that law enforcement should be dismantled. That is why I have a responsibility to say that I no longer have confidence that this Councilor is evaluating the Police Bureau reasonably and objectively.”

Councilor’s Response and Broader Context

Mitch Green did not immediately respond to a request for comment, telling a reporter for Willamette Week that staff were handling inquiries related to the tweets. Green previously told The Oregonian that his tweets were “not a good look, especially for a sitting elected official. And that’s not how I engage in discourse today.”

The controversy arrives during a difficult stretch for Green, who is currently running for re-election. The Oregonian reported this summer that Green forgot to pay a property tax bill of $7,328. Furthermore, records obtained exclusively by Willamette Week in August revealed that Green had lit a brush fire in the backyard of his Southwest Portland home despite state, county, and city burn bans due to high temperatures and wildfire risks. Green stated he was unaware of the burn bans.

Systemic Implications for Municipal IT and Governance

# Check municipal service uptime and API endpoint response
curl -I https://api.portlandoregon.gov/health
# Verify container cluster status for emergency dispatch nodes
kubectl get nodes --selector=role=emergency-services