Montavilla coffee shop marked with anti-cop graffiti

Find out why some customers believe this minority-owned business was targeted for hateful anti-police graffiti …

The Mocha Express coffee shop is spray painted with graffiti two stories high, with a derogatory slogan acronym.

Story and photos by David F. Ashton

When employees arrived to open the Mocha Express coffee shop at 1951 SE 82nd Avenue of Roses, early on Wednesday, July 13, they were shocked to find their building covered with spray-painted graffiti.

While no other business or building nearby was targeted, this coffee shop was defaced with spray-painted letter, two stories tall. On the front of the building was scrawled “A C A B” – the acronym frequently used by Antifa-affiliated anarchists and said to mean “All Cops Are Bastards”.

The windows were easily cleaned; getting the paint off the siding will take the expertise of a graffiti-removal crew.

“Those coming to the Lents Neighborhood Livability Association (LNLA) Coffee with a Cop July meeting grasped the meaning of the graffiti,” said LNLA member Char Pennie, who at tended the event. “We learned from the workers there that the [co-owned] coffee cart on the northeast corner of SE Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard and Powell Boulevard, had also been covered with such slurs against police officers.”

When Portland Police Bureau officers who attended the neighborhood meeting were asked about it, they had little to say, remarked Pennie. “There was an on-duty district officer there, unrelated to the meeting, taking a police report [on the graffiti].

It takes graffiti-cleaning specialists the better part of a day to clean the building.

“It’s clear to many of us that this business was targeted because they allowed our ‘chat-with-a-cop’ to meet here,” observed Pennie. The Coffee with a Cop group told the manager they’d like to contribute to the clean-up effort; but the manager politely turned down their effort, telling them that the owner would come by with a pressure washer to clean the building.

However, cleaning off graffiti, stretching two stories high, proved to be to much of a challenge. Apparently the owner – who declined to speak with East Portland News – found it necessary to hire a professional graffiti-removal company.

Experts using specialized solvents, scrubbing, and power washing, manged eventually to get paint vandalism off this shop.

You can help out Mocha Express by visiting them, ordering a beverage and snack, and leaving a generous tip. Again, it’s located at 1951 SE 82nd Avenue of Roses. To see their website, CLICK HERE.

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