Portland police charged protesters on foot early Saturday after federal agents in camouflage unleashed tear gas and local leaders asked them to leave.
Nightly protests in Portland, Ore., that have devolved into violent clashes with police have prompted some soul-searching by residents.
Wyden and other Democratic members of Oregon’s congressional delegation called Friday for the inspectors general of the federal Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security to investigate the conduct of federal forces in Portland. He said federal agents had spent the previous 50 nights defending the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse and other federal property. Agents had been “met with an onslaught of commercial fireworks, laser strikes, glass, mortars, paint and anything else near at hand,” he said.
“There’s a beautiful national uprising against police brutality, and the response from law enforcement cannot be more brutality,” Vera Eidelman, an ACLU attorney in New York, said Saturday. “Let’s not forget that the president fired tear gas on protesters for a photo opportunity in Washington, D.C., and what’s happening in Portland and around the country is unconstitutional and has to stop.”On Friday evening, several hundred people held a candlelight vigil outside the downtown jail.
One of the protesters, a 28-year-old woman wearing a bicycle helmet and black mask, stood out of range, coughing and wiping a pair of swim goggles. The woman, who declined to give her name for fear of retaliation, said that after protesting nightly for weeks, she had stayed away and then recently resumed demonstrating because of anger at the federal agents.“We haven’t been more violent than any protesters in other cities, but because we’re a small city we make an easier target,” she said.
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