Portland groups freely battle in streets

In the latest twist to the unrest in Portland, Oregon, which has endured for nearly three months, right- and left-wing groups armed with an assortment of makeshift weapons clashed over the weekend as overburdened police monitored the situation from a distance.

Violent demonstrations have consumed the Pacific Northwest city following the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Portland police said they have declared a riot at least 18 times since May 29.

On Saturday afternoon, more than 100 right-wing activists, including the Proud Boys and armed militia, went to Portland to hold a "Back the Blue" pro-police rally in front of the building that houses the downtown police precinct. Hundreds of Antifa (antifascist) and Black Lives Matter protesters showed up to oppose them.

Some in the right-wing crowd were armed with paintball guns, metal rods, bats, fireworks, pepper spray and guns. Those in the left-wing group proffered rocks, fireworks and bottles with chemical solutions. Both groups also carried shields and wore helmets, The Washington Post reported.

They engaged for more than two hours, exchanging punches, lofting paintballs and dispersing chemicals into the melee. Portland police made several announcements over loudspeakers, encouraging the combatants to "self-monitor for criminal activity", the Post reported.

"Each skirmish appeared to involve willing participants and the events were not enduring in time, so officers were not deployed to intervene," the Portland Police Bureau said.

"PPB members have been the focus of over 80 days of violent actions directed at the police, which is a major consideration for determining if police resources are necessary to interject between two groups with individuals who appear to be willingly engaging in physical confrontations for short durations," the bureau said. "While the activity in the group met the definition of a riot, PPB did not declare one because there were not adequate police resources available to address such a declaration."

The PPB has labored to control confrontations between the diametrically opposed groups for three years.

The right-wing crowd chanted "USA! USA!" and chants against Antifa, the Post reported. The opposing leftists countered with shouts of: "Go home, Nazis".

Between 45 and 50 officers were reassigned from precincts to assist, delaying responses to other emergency calls in the city, the agency reported.

Shootings also are up in the city, as a man in Southeast Portland early Sunday became the eighth person shot in five days, the Oregonian reported.

Portland police reported in July that except for March, the number of shootings each month has been higher this year than in 2019. The totals in June and July have doubled from the previous year. Fifteen people were killed in Portland last month, the highest number in one month in the city of 655,000 in more than three decades, and 10 of them were fatally shot.

Political tempers also flared when US Attorney General William Barr sent in federal officers early in July to protect a US courthouse there. The federal presence was largely opposed by Oregon politicians and Democrats in Washington, who accused Trump of looking to score political points.

But the violence has persisted after most of the federal forces have left.

The Republicans, who will hold their national convention this week, are expected to highlight the trouble in Portland and other US cities such as Chicago and New York and criticized the Democrats for not denouncing it at their convention last week.

"Another bad night of Rioting in Portland, Oregon," Trump tweeted Saturday. "A small number of Federal troops there to protect courthouse and other Federal property only (great job!). Wanting to be asked by City & State to STOP THE RIOTS. Would bring in National Guard, end problem immediately. ASK!"

The county prosecutor, Mike Schmidt, who took office Aug 1, dismissed charges against more than half of about 600 people arrested in the protests, The New York Times reported.

The objective, Schmidt told the Times, is to balance "people's righteous anger and grief and fury over a system that has not really been responsive enough for decades and centuries" while trying to prevent property damage and violence.

Mike Reese, the sheriff of Multnomah County, where Portland is the county seat, told Schmidt that some protesters "may feel even more emboldened if there is a public statement that appears to minimize their activities", the Times reported.

The Oregon State Police, who withdrew after a two-week deployment in Portland this month, sarcastically said they preferred to focus on "counties where prosecution of criminal conduct is still a priority".

In a video that has generated widespread media coverage, Adam Haner was beaten unconscious a few blocks from a protest on Aug 16 in which he was kicked in the head. A suspect, Marquise Love, turned himself in Friday to Portland police, who charged him with felony assault.

"It's squarely the type of conduct that I don't want to see happening, and where we have the evidence to go forward on cases like that, we're absolutely going to do that," Schmidt told the Times.