Katie Shepherd has been continuing to push today and gotten a bit more out of the Portland Police Bureau. We’ve gone from “quick-drying cement” in their tweet yesterday afternoon, to a “substance … similar to a quick drying cement” in their press release half an hour later, to “a cup which appeared to have material on it consistent with quick drying cement” in a statement to Shepherd twenty-four hours later.
(Not for nothing but thanks to Shepherd for accidentally managing my sanity today. After driving myself batshit yesterday watching the police’s tweet spiral out of control, I don’t know what I would have done today without someone out there trying to nail this down.)
There still is no source given for the original “received information”, nor any specifics about a lieutenant purportedly seeing this cup, nor about the oh-so-convenient anonymous email they received only after having tweeted the unsubstantiated allegation, making it inherently suspect as a source.
Meanwhile, as pointed out by Alex Zielinski of Portland Mercury, while the bureau made sure to tweet this rumor, somehow they never managed to warn anyone about “alt-right protesters wearing gloves w/ metal spikes on the knuckles, swinging flagpoles like baseball bats, calling on violence against Mayor Wheeler”.