From Los Angeles to New York, protesters marched in a show of solidarity with demonstrations in Portland, Ore. In Seattle, they smashed windows and set fires. A shooting at a protest in Austin, Texas, left one man dead.
NY TIMES
A series of strident new protests over police misconduct rattled cities across the country over the weekend, creating a new dilemma for state and local leaders who had succeeded in easing some of the turbulence in their streets until a showdown over the use of federal agents in Oregon stirred fresh outrage.
With some demonstrators embracing destructive protest methods and police often using aggressive tactics to subdue both them and others who are demonstrating peacefully, the scenes on Saturday night in places like Seattle, Oakland, Calif., and Los Angeles recalled the volatile early days of the protests after the death of George Floyd at the end of May.
in Seattle, where a day of demonstrations focused on police violence left a trail of broken windows and people flushing pepper spray from their eyes. At least 45 protesters had been arrested as of early evening, and both protesters and police officers suffered injuries.
Carrying signs such as “Feds Go Home” and shouting chants of “No justice, no peace,” some among the crowd of about 5,000 protesters stopped at a youth detention center and lit several construction trailers there on fire. Some smashed windows of nearby businesses, ignited a fire in a coffee shop and blew an eight-inch hole through the wall of the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct building, the police said.
The police responded by firing flash grenades, showering protesters with pepper spray and abruptly rushing into crowds, knocking people to the ground. After a flash grenade left one woman with bloody injuries, police officers shoved people who had stopped to help her.
In Austin, Texas, the police said one man was shot and killed just before 10 p.m. during a protest in the city’s downtown. In a live video from the scene, protesters are seen marching through an intersection when a car blares its horn. Seconds later, five shots ring out, followed shortly after by several more loud bangs.
The man who was killed may have approached a vehicle with a rifle before he was shot and killed, Officer Katrina Ratcliff said. Ms. Ratcliff said the person who shot and killed the man had fired from inside the vehicle. That person was detained and is cooperating with officers, she said. No one else was injured.
In Los Angeles, protesters clashed with officers in front of the federal courthouse downtown. Videos showed people smashing windows and lobbing water bottles at officers after protesters said the police fired projectiles at them.
The federal courthouse in Portland has been the scene of nightly, chaotic demonstrations for weeks, which continued again into Sunday morning, as thousands participated in marches around the city, the 59th consecutive day of protests there. Earlier, a group of nurses in scrubs had joined an organized group of mothers in helmets and fathers in hard hats, all assembled against the fence of a federal courthouse where federal agents — a deployment that has been a key focus of the recent demonstrations — have been assembled.
Protesters in several cities said the smoke-filled videos of federal agents firing tear gas and shoving protesters in Portland had brought them to the streets on Saturday. In addition to marching in solidarity with the Portland protesters, the demonstration in Aurora, Colorado was also in response to the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist who died several days after officers put him in a chokehold last summer.
In Seattle, protesters in June laid claim to several city blocks, pressuring the police to temporarily abandon a police station in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood and establishing a free protest zone that endured for several weeks. When the city authorities finally reclaimed the zone, there was little resistance. And things remained calm. The Seattle City Council began embracing plans to make substantial cuts to the police department budget, restrict the use of tear gas and put the city on a path to reimagining policing.
Carmen Best, the Seattle police chief, stressed that a number of demonstrators also used violence. Some were tossing concrete blocks from a rooftop to the street below, she said. The coffee shop that was set afire had occupied apartments above it that had to be evacuated, she said.
Mr. Biden insisted last week that the president’s pledge to inject a federal law-and-order presence into the already volatile issue of policing shows that he is “determined to sow chaos and division. To make matters worse instead of better.”
The situation has left city leaders, now watching the backlash unfold on their streets, outraged and caught in the middle. Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle said in an interview Sunday that the city is in the middle of a self-fulfilling prophecy, with protesters infuriated by the federal presence in Portland smashing windows and setting fires, the very images of “anarchy” that the president has warned about.
Some cities had welcomed Mr. Trump’s offer to send additional law federal law enforcement agents in to help combat escalating gang violence and drug crime, but insisted they would brook no federal agents on their streets arresting and tear gassing protesters
.
Democratic city and state leaders pushed back against the new federal presence, but also expressed frustration that some on the streets were going too far and playing into the president’s gambit.
“No matter how many troops Donald Trump sends into American cities, it’s not going to distract them from their primary concern which is the coronavirus and their health,” said Jared Leopold, a Democratic strategist.
For city officials, the challenge is more immediate than the November election — it is bringing an end to nights of clashes on their streets.