Violent clashes erupt between far-right groups and racial justice protesters in Portland and other cities.

 

WASHINGTON POST

Far-right extremists and continued clashes between Black Lives Matter protesters and police this weekend renewed tensions in Portland, Minneapolis and other cities, pushing the country into its 80th day of consecutive demonstrations in some places.

A group with ties to far-right organizations that have long targeted Portland gathered downtown Saturday afternoon to wave American flags and push back against Black Lives Matter protests challenging police brutality. The event ended with two gunshots.

Protests in other cities also erupted into violence Saturday, as police grappled with small groups hijacking otherwise peaceful events, including far-right activists armed with pepper spray and wooden flagpoles.

One clash ended in fistfights after Proud Boys marched in Kalamazoo, Mich. Police intervened as the Proud Boys retreated into a parking garage, about seven minutes after a large brawl broke out between members of the far-right group and their opponents. Officers arrested some counterprotesters who had come out to oppose the right-wing group.

In Chicago, a protest also grew violent after people used umbrellas and skateboards to attack police officers, injuring 17. Twenty-four people were arrested.

And just before midnight Saturday, a group of roughly 50 protesters, most dressed in black and wearing full-face masks, descended on the 5th District police precinct in South Minneapolis.

The group lobbed rocks and fireworks at the building. The station’s front windows were sprayed with anti-police graffiti, and red paint was poured along the steps of the front entrance and the sidewalk.

“Blood on your hands,” one message read, while another referred to officers as “pigs.”

Early Saturday afternoon in Portland, far-right extremists walked around a few downtown blocks, trading barbs with antifascists. Video shows several people in the far-right crowd using pepper spray and pellets fired from paintball guns against the counterprotesters.

As the protest wrapped up, a car drove out of a parking garage, witnesses say, and one of the people inside the car pulled out a gun and fired two shots as they sped away. No one was injured.

“A blue Toyota Corolla came tearing out, and then out of the driver’s seat two shots were fired,” said Laura Jedeed, a freelance journalist who witnessed the shooting.

Video of the incident posted on social media appears to show two shots fired from the driver’s-side window of a blue car pulling out of a parking garage into the street. It’s not clear who fired the shots.

Some critics noted a disparity between how police responded to the right-wing group downtown and the left-leaning crowd that gathered outside a police building Saturday night. Officers did not intervene downtown despite reports of violence and gunshots, but they confronted protesters later that night after a small number of people in a large crowd threw fireworks at the police building and defaced it with graffiti. 

A disparity in police response was on display Saturday night, as hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters gathered outside a police building in southeast Portland.

The crowd remained peaceful for hours, but eventually a small number of people in the crowd began escalating tactics to draw out police. At least two fireworks were thrown into the driveway of the building. Two people dressed in all black approached the building and banged on the boarded-up windows, sprayed graffiti on the wall and damaged a security camera. A handful of people in the crowd threw rocks, eggs, glass bottles and plastic water bottles, which landed in the driveway of the building.

A short time later, police declared a riot. They deployed smoke and rushed the line of protesters, who had created a barrier at the property’s edge with shields. Officers then chased protesters into a residential neighborhood for almost an hour. They made 11 arrests, on charges including disorderly conduct, interfering with a peace officer and riot, among others.

Meanwhile, by Sunday morning, the bureau had not yet announced whether it is actively investigating social media reports of gunfire and a possible bomb at the right-wing event earlier in the day.

They Just Started Waling On Me': Fascism In Portland

 Federal law enforcement agents occupy Portland, Ore. U.S. Agents add "gasoline to the fire."

NPR


As federal law enforcement agents continue to occupy Portland, Ore., state and local officials are demanding that they leave. Protesters have demonstrated in the city's downtown for more than 50 nights since George Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck.

"There's absolutely no question that by having the presence of federal officers here, it's simply like adding gasoline to a fire," Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said in a weekend interview with NPR.
On Sunday, a new image of the stiff federal response in Portland went viral: a video of 53-year-old Navy veteran Christopher David being struck repeatedly with a baton wielded by a federal law enforcement officer.

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A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a former member of the Navy's Civil Engineer Corps, David told The Washington Post that he hadn't previously been to any protests, but he wanted to know how the federal officers thought about their oath to defend the Constitution.

"Why are you not honoring your oath to the Constitution?" he says he yelled at the officers. Video shows an officer dressed in camouflage hitting David with a baton and another officer spraying him in the face with a chemical irritant.

"I stood my ground at that point and just stayed there. ... I did nothing provocative. They just started waling on me with batons, and I let them," David told The Independent. He was left with a broken hand.

Oregon Public Broadcasting reported Friday that federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles in downtown Portland to grab and detain protesters.
In an interview Sunday with NPR, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler blamed the federal government for making things worse in the city.

"We have an already heightened situation. It's already tense," Wheeler said. "But after nearly five weeks of demonstrations, we are starting to see that small handful of people who were engaged in criminal activity — it was dissipating. It was calming down. We believed a week ago it would be over by this weekend. But what happened instead is the feds stepped in with a very heavy-handed approach, and it blew the lid off the whole thing."

"With the federal government, they won't even identify who they are," Wheeler said. "We don't know why they're here. We don't know the circumstances under which they're making arrests. We don't know what their policies are or what accountability mechanisms there are, to the point where even the U.S. attorney here in the state of Oregon is calling for an investigation, wondering, where was the probable cause to pull these people off the streets into unmarked cars?"

President Trump defended the federal response. "We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it," he tweeted on Sunday. "Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE."
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf brushed aside criticism that federal officers are inciting violence.

"I don't need invitations by the state, state mayors or state governors to do our job," Wolf said Monday on Fox News. "We're going to do that, whether they like us there or not."
He called the protesters "violent anarchists and extremists" and said they were "violent well before DHS surged assets into Portland."

Wolf said the Department of Homeland Security will defend Portland's Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse from destructive acts despite requests from state and local authorities that federal officers leave.

As Oregon Public Broadcasting's Jonathan Levinson told NPR's Morning Edition, Portland police initially reacted with force to the protests, using tear gas and rubber bullets. Activist groups and protesters sued the city and won a temporary restraining order, limiting law enforcement's use of tear gas and rubber bullets — but it doesn't apply to federal law enforcement.

The federal officers in Portland are from the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group, a SWAT-like unit from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Protective Service, Levinson said. They started taking a more active role clearing protesters from around the courthouse on July 1.
On July Fourth, the federal police made a show of force, dispersing the crowd but then continuing across the street and into the city for blocks, alongside the Portland police. Last week, a protester was shot in the head with a less lethal round and severely injured.

Early Monday morning, the Portland Police Bureau released a statement describing federal law enforcement's role in Sunday night's protests and making clear that local police had not played any part in engaging with crowds or releasing tear gas.

Trump has called the protests "totally out of control." Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy DHS secretary, seemed to blame the restrictions on Portland's mayor, telling NPR last week that Wheeler "holds back to a certain extent his own law enforcement."

On Friday, the U.S. senators from Oregon, Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, as well as U.S. Reps. Earl Blumenauer and Suzanne Bonamici asked the Justice Department and DHS to investigate "the unrequested presence and violent actions of federal forces in Portland."
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum filed a lawsuit Friday against the DHS and other federal agencies and alleged that they have "engaged in unlawful law enforcement in violation of the civil rights of Oregonians by seizing and detaining them without probable cause."

"The federal administration has chosen Portland to use their scare tactics to stop our residents from protesting police brutality and from supporting the Black Lives Matter movement," Rosenblum said in a statement. "Every American should be repulsed when they see this happening. If this can happen here in Portland, it can happen anywhere."