At least three federal officers could be left permanently blind after they were attacked with lasers by protesters in Portland this week.
The officers, part of the Federal Protective Service, were injured during rioting in the city on Monday night as they attempted to keep anti-government demonstrators from gaining entrance to a federal courthouse in the city’s downtown area.
“When officers responded to put out these fires, glass bottles were thrown and lasers – which can cause permanent blindness – were shined in their eyes,” said Deputy Director of Operations Richard Cline. “We have three officers who currently have eye injuries and they may not recover sight in those eyes from those laser attacks.”
Demonstrators set fires near the property, broke windows, and spray-painted the barricades outside the courthouse.
Cline said the FPS has purchased anti-laser glasses that officers are now wearing as they guard the federal complex.
Seven people were arrested during the demonstrations Monday night, police said.
President Trump last week deployed federal officers to the city to protect the area from what he described as “anarchists” who “hate our country.”
“The governor and the mayor and the senators out there, they are afraid of these people. That’s the reason they don’t want us to help them,” Trump said on Monday, hours before the officers were injured. “They’re afraid. … I really believe they’re actually, maybe even physically afraid of these people because what they’re doing is incredible.”
The mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, said Trump’s deployment of federal forces to his city violates the Constitution, and he wants them to leave.
“They are sharply escalating the situation,” Wheeler said on CNN this week. “Their presence here is actually leading to more violence and more vandalism. And it’s not helping the situation at all.”
Congressional Democrats have also criticized Trump’s decision to send federal police officers to Portland, accusing him of fostering a police state in the country’s largest cities.
“That kind of activity is the activity of a police state, and this president and this attorney general seem to be doing everything they possibly can to impose Gestapo activities in local communities, and that is what I have been warning about for a long time,” said South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn. “I do believe that this election is all about the preservation of the greatest democracy that this country has ever known.”
Trump has said Democrats are responsible for a rise in anti-police sentiment since the death of George Floyd and has vowed to be an advocate for law enforcement if elected to a second term.
“I strongly oppose the radical and dangerous efforts to defund, dismantle and dissolve our police departments,” Trump said during a speech on police reform last month. “Americans know the truth: Without police there is chaos, without law there is anarchy, and without safety there is catastrophe.”
