Violent attacks against federal buildings and police in Portland, Oregon, have diminished in the week since the Trump administration and local officials reached an agreement to increase the state police presence and pull out most Department of Homeland Security employees.
“After weeks of rioting and nightly attacks on federal officers and property, activity in the vicinity of the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse continues in an overall trend of diminishing violence,” a senior DHS official wrote in an email Tuesday. “While violent criminal activity persists elsewhere in Portland, Monday night marked the second straight night during which rioters did not attack federal property or officers.”
The official insisted the decline in violence, which had included commercial fireworks being hurled at federal police, was “directly attributable to the long-awaited cooperation from state and local law enforcement, which assisted with clearing the parks where rioters daily staged their nightly siege.”
On Monday night, no major attacks or defensive counterattacks by officers guarding federal buildings were launched, according to DHS. The number of protesters gathered near the Hatfield federal courthouse peaked at 50 people, and those gathered cleared out on their own shortly after midnight local time. No one was arrested, and no law enforcement officers were injured. A couple of blocks away in a nearby park, state police responded to a fight involving 20 people.
DHS and Democratic Oregon Gov. Kate Brown separately announced last week that they had been settled a two-month clash over how to safeguard Portland amid protests that were turning violent in the early morning hours almost daily. Brown, who has described the federal police standing guard around federal buildings as being there to respond to rioting and protesting in general, said in a statement that the “occupying force” would be pushed out of town on Thursday.
Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf said the Trump administration was able to convince Brown to have her state police defend U.S. government facilities so that DHS did not need to send in its own additional personnel to do so. Wolf also said DHS would not leave the city until state troopers had proven their ability to do the job.
DHS’s Federal Protective Service officers guard federal facilities nationwide. At the onset of violence and riots in late May and into June, the federal officers were unable to secure the building from attacks, and the department sent in agents from a Border Patrol tactical team and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement team. The border and immigration personnel are leaving the city, but some will remain, though not at the courthouse, until DHS is confident that its additional staff are not needed.
Wolf said other states that have had attacks near or against federal facilities this summer did not see federal police sent in because DHS was able to work with state and local officials to boost local and state police to help the FPS protect those buildings.
