VIOLENT PROTESTS EXPLODE ACROSS NATION
Authorities declare riots in Portland, Seattle as weeks of unrest boil over
Protests in several major cities across the country turned violent this weekend as weeks of civil unrest and clashes between activists and authorities boiled over, sending thousands of people teeming into public squares demanding racial justice.
From Los Angeles to Richmond, Va., police and protesters clashed in another tumultuous night that saw scores arrested after demonstrators took the streets and police in some cities dispersed crowds with tear gas and pepper spray.
In Austin, Texas, a man was shot and killed in the midst of a downtown rally. In Richmond, a truck was set ablaze outside police headquarters. Outside of Denver, a Jeep sped through a phalanx of people marching down a highway when a shot was fired injuring a protester, police said.
The focal point of the protests continued to be in the Pacific Northwest, where a week of clashes between activists and federal agents in Portland, Ore., pumped new energy into a movement that began in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis in May.
In Portland, the authorities declared a riot after protesters breached a fence surrounding the city’s federal courthouse building. The “violent conduct of people downtown” created a “grave rise of public alarm,” the Portland police wrote on Twitter.
Early Sunday morning, federal
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agents and local police demanded that protesters leave the area and used tear gas to try to disperse them. But the activists stood their ground, blocking intersections. Several people were arrested.
A Marriott hotel in downtown Portland was shut down Sunday morning, and guests were asked to leave after hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside Saturday night because it was believed that federal agents were staying there.
In Seattle, police declared a riot on Saturday afternoon and used pepper spray and flash grenades in an attempt to disperse a crowd of roughly 2,000 people in the Capitol Hill neighborhood marching in the city’s largest Black Lives Matter protest in more than a month.
Nightly protests since Floyd’s killing had dwindled in Seattle. But they were reinvigorated in the wake of federal action in the Portland protests and after Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, tweeted that President Donald Trump had sent federal law enforcement agents to the city.
Portland’s Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler, who was tear-gassed last week as he joined protesters, has described the agents an “occupying force.”
But on Sunday, Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, defended the presence of federal agents there, saying they’re protecting a courthouse targeted by protesters.
“It has not only been vandalized, but they’re trying to burn it down,” he said on ABC’S “This Week.” “We can’t have this in American cities. You’ve got people there and fencing there, but they’re throwing Molotov cocktails, and doing all kinds of rioting.”
Richmond police tweeted a photo of rocks and batteries they said had been thrown at them, triggering them to declare the protest outside of police headquarters an unlawful assembly.
In Aurora, Colo., just outside of Denver, protesters were also marching in response to the death last summer of Elijah Mcclain, the 23-year-old man who died after being put in a chokehold by police. On Saturday, police said in a tweet that “while the majority of protesters were peaceful, a group decided to hijack the message & cause major damage to the courthouse and courtyard.”
The protesters marched down Interstate 225, cutting off traffic. But a Jeep sped through the crowd, sending protesters running for safety.
“A protestor decided to fire off a weapon, striking at least 1 other protestor” police said on Twitter. That person was in stable condition at the hospital.
On Austin’s Congress Avenue, normally a site for music venues and bars, police were monitoring a crowd of protesters Saturday night when shots were fired, killing a man. The suspect was detained.
Protesters in Omaha, Neb., marched to bring attention to the killing of James Scurlock, a black man killed by a white bar owner. Police came out in force Saturday night and detained more than 75 people who were marching downtown, obstructing traffic, according to local news reports.
In Los Angeles, police fired projectiles at activists protesting near a federal courthouse.
Seattle’s riot declaration came after protesters set fire to a construction site for a juvenile detention facility and as the Police Department reported that one person had breached the fencing surrounding the East Precinct, the site of nightly clashes in June that led to a nearly month-long protest occupation, and officers saw smoke in the lobby.
Police said protesters were throwing rocks, bottles and fireworks at the officers. As of 7:30 p.m., the department had reported 25 arrests and three police injuries, including an officer hospitalized with a leg injury caused by an explosive.
Protesters erected barricades and fended off police efforts to disperse them with homemade shields, umbrellas and leaf blowers, tactics borrowed from Portland protesters.