Over the weekend, conservative pundit Max Steele published a Substack article that surfaced dozens of inflammatory tweets that Portland City Councilor Mitch Green wrote from before he was elected to the City Council in 2024.
The majority of the tweets were posted during 2020 and 2021. Green was elected to the council in November 2024 and took office in 2025.
The tweets, which Green deleted when he ran for office but which were archived online, included remarks that he hated Portland police and a post seeming to mock small business owners who had requested graffiti abatement services during the racial justice protests of 2020, some of which turned into riots that did considerable damage to storefronts. In one tweet dated Aug. 8, 2020, Green wrote: “No, police are shit and absolute monsters. Just the fucking worst type of people.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Portland Police Chief Bob Day released a statement saying he had lost faith in Green’s ability to “reasonably and objectively” evaluate the Police Bureau as part of his council duties.
“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,” Day wrote. “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.”
The Portland Fire Fighters Association and the Portland Police Association both requested that Green resign because of his old remarks online.
In a statement on Wednesday evening, Green wrote that at the time of those tweets, he was “outraged like so many Portlanders by the constant stream of anti-Black violence being perpetrated by police departments across the country and the Portland Police Bureau.” He said he was “part of a community that’s been troubled by the Portland Police Bureau’s response to our movement” that included tear-gassing protesters and using unnecessary force.
Green said he shouldn’t be judged by his tweets, just like Portland officers “do not want to be judged by their misconduct on the streets in 2020.”
He concluded by writing that his role on council is not to be a rubber stamp for the Police Bureau, but to “push for transparency and accountability,” adding, “I’m concerned that Chief Day seems to expect me and other elected officials to have sterile or supportive views of police as members of the budgeting body.”
Green, who is currently running for reelection, has had a difficult summer and fall. He forgot to pay a property tax bill of $7,328, The Oregonian reported this summer. And records exclusively obtained by WW in August revealed that he had lit a brush fire in the backyard of his Southwest Portland home despite layers of state, county and city burn bans in place due to high temperatures and an increased risk of wildfire.
Green said he had been unaware of the burn bans.
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