Public comment: Retire the county’s mounted posse
6 min read
Presenter: In public comments just after the end of the Lane County Fair, commissioners are asked to discipline fair officials and to retire the sheriff’s mounted posse. July 29, Rose Wilde:
Rose Wilde (Eugene Springfield SURJ): I’m here representing the Coordinating Council and 900 members of the Springfield Eugene chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice.
[00:00:21] We are outraged by the racially-biased crime perpetrated by current and former members of the Lane County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse and their associates during the illegal assault and detainment of Keviantae Hill outside the Lane County Fairgrounds in 2023, described in Mr. Hill’s recently released lawsuit.
[00:00:38] Mr. Hill was attending the fair when he was accosted by volunteers of the mounted posse, including the former sheriff, Byron Trapp, who were not dressed in law enforcement uniform. They did not identify themselves as law enforcement and attempted to take hold of Mr. Hill’s arm.
[00:00:53] Mr. Hill is a young Black man, and the fair security and mounted posse appeared to racially profile him as a suspect in a gun incident at the fair the previous day, despite not matching the description of the suspect or victims or attending the fair the previous day.
[00:01:08] Mr. Hill’s lawsuit also describes the racist history of the mounted posse. Mr. Hill was also intimidated by this encounter and left the fairgrounds but the posse members pursued him from the fairgrounds in a golf cart, tried to ram him, according to the lawsuit, and subsequently assaulted him offsite, pinning him to the ground with a knee while Mr. Hill was experiencing an asthma attack and begging for release so he could breathe.
[00:01:31] Sounds familiar.
[00:01:33] The mounted posse is only empowered to support traffic safety and on the fairground, so the pursuit and detainment of Mr. Hill were outside their authority, by my understanding.
[00:01:42] Mr. Hill did seek justice and repair for his injuries, and the FBI and Oregon Department of Justice investigated these claims. However, no local entity chose to investigate, nor held any individual or organization accountable for this egregious abuse of force.
[00:01:58] The Department of Justice did find evidence of a racially-biased crime, but the district attorney at the time took no action and destroyed the records, according to the lawsuit.
[00:02:07] Furthermore, the mounted posse was present at last week’s fair with no apparent corrections or oversight or training.
[00:02:14] SURJ members were also very disappointed to see the vendors selling those T-shirts celebrating the abduction and confinement of immigrants at a Florida concentration camp, immigrants denied basic due process or access to lawyers.
[00:02:27] The fair management claimed these were protected under free speech First Amendment protections, but protestors’ speech was not.
[00:02:35] So this seems to be a part of a pattern of exclusion, racism, and intimidation openly supported by fair management. We support calls to end the relationship with the mounted posse, to compensate Mr. Hill for the harm experienced, and additional financial and policy changes to assure Lane County will have no part in further racial terrorizing in our community. Everyone should feel welcome and safe at the fair.  
[00:02:59] Presenter: Drae Charles:
[00:03:01] Drae Charles (Eugene Springfield NAACP, executive director): My name is Drae Charles. I’m the executive director of the Eugene Springfield NAACP here in town, and I’m here to speak to you a little bit about our mounted posse.
[00:03:08] So the racial implications of a mounted posse are rooted in a long and painful history of racialized violence, white vigilanteism, and systemic oppression, particularly against Black communities and other marginalized groups in the United States.
[00:03:22] In the U.S., they came to describe groups that deputized civilians, almost exclusively white men, summoned by sheriffs to enforce the law.
[00:03:30] But in the antebellum South, these formations were inseparable from slave patrols: armed groups tasked with hunting, capturing, and punishing enslaved Black people seeking freedom and resisting control.
[00:03:43] Mounted patrols on horseback became potent symbols of racial dominance. These groups are not merely enforcing laws. They are maintaining racial hierarchy.
[00:03:54] After the Civil War, these formations did not disappear. They morphed into vigilante militias, including early versions of the KKK. They wielded the veneer of law enforcement to justify racial terror, targeting Black Americans, upholding segregation, and violently resisting civil rights progress.
[00:04:15] This history is not abstract. It is not remote. It lives in the American subconscious, especially in Black communities as generational trauma.
[00:04:25] When Lane County continues to operate and deputize in our mounted posse today, it invokes that legacy. It signals that you either don’t understand the weight of that symbolism or worse, that you’re willing to ignore it.
[00:04:39] We cannot claim the mantle of progress while preserving the machinery of oppression. A mounted posse, a name, structure, and function is not compatible with the vision of a just and equitable county. It is a relic of white supremacy masquerading as public safety and its continued operation is a betrayal of your stated values.
[00:05:01] It’s time to retire the mounted posse.
[00:05:03] Presenter: Chloe Longworth:
[00:05:05] Chloe Longworth: My name is Chloe Longworth, I use she/they pronouns. I’m a representative of Trans Alliance of Lane County.
[00:05:10] I would like to talk about the Lane County Fairground event that happened this past weekend. The Lane County Fair on Sunday, there was a booth set up by the Lane County Republican Party. That party was selling merchandise representing Alligator Alcatraz.
[00:05:25] Alligator Alcatraz is a concentration camp in the United States of America. They have inhumane housing conditions and people all over the country are being kidnapped and transferred to this concentration camp.
[00:05:36] Promotion of the concentration camp turns the topic into a laughing matter and allows for more and more people to be compliant with such a horrible facility. This is not okay.
[00:05:47] There was a protest to bring awareness to the evil that is being promoted within the Lane County Republican Party booth on Sunday, during which protesters wanted to use chalk to exercise their First Amendment rights. The Lane County Event Center staff made up a rule on the spot that said that the protesters could not chalk on the ground outside.
[00:06:05] The event organizers made multiple false claims that there have been a longstanding rule prohibiting the use of chalk on the ground. Members of the protest have verified that there is no such rule, and when confronting the event organizer, the event organizers doubled down on their false claims.
[00:06:22] The event staff need to face repercussions for their false claims and the restrictions of the First Amendment rights that they are encroaching on citizens, as well as repercussions for allowing the promotion of a concentration camp here in Lane County.
[00:06:39] Presenter: Sue Barnhart:
[00:06:40] Sue Barnhart: Hi, Sue Barnhart, I want to thank you all for all your service to our community and I would like to speak on the same topics as the people who’ve so eloquently expressed themselves before me.
[00:06:54] We’re a county that respects people. We’re a county that’s a sanctuary county. It’s in a sanctuary city, the city’s in the county, and we’re a sanctuary state. We need to respect all people. Of course, there’s the right to have free speech, but hate speech, which is what I think was happening at the county fair with the selling of those T-shirts, I personally am against that, and people certainly have a right to protest against something so awful going on.
[00:07:36] So I just wanted to have you take the time to figure out how to change policies at Lane County so that it’s respectful of all people. I mean, having, I know many people love riding horses, but that’s a little different than having mounted posses. And people have the right to express free speech, but that’s felt different than hate speech. Thank you.
[00:08:07] Presenter: Public comments ask commissioners to retire a symbol of racial violence and terror, and to discipline staff for allowing the First Amendment rights of some, while denying those same rights to others.
[00:08:20] Read the complete lawsuit online in our library of local government documents, and learn more about the local NAACP, SURJ, and TALC groups at their websites.
