Oregon’s Democratic governor pitched a plan to quell the violence across the city more than 90 days after it first started and in the aftermath of a fatal shooting of a Trump supporter over the weekend.
Gov. Kate Brown announced on Sunday a unified law enforcement plan to surge local and state police into the downtown area, where the violence has been focused, as well as prosecuting all rioters for “serious” criminal acts committed against people and property. Brown agreed to take some help from the federal government in the form of FBI resources out of the Department of Justice but refused to accept Homeland Security police that Trump and other administration officials offered last week.
The local district attorney’s office will also play a larger role in investigations and prosecutions after the state police complained that it was not prosecuting those arrested for rioting. Local police from nearby Clackamas, Gresham, and Washington counties, as well as the state police, who had left the city earlier this month, are being brought in to the city to help Portland police. Multnomah County Jail in Portland will free up adequate jail space to hold those arrested amid the coronavirus pandemic, Brown said.
Brown said she will hold a community forum with the city’s Democratic mayor, Ted Wheeler, for black protesters and community leaders to talk about racial justice and police reform.
“We all must come together — elected officials, community leaders, all of us — to stop the cycle of violence,” said Brown. “Change will not come overnight, and, as we have seen in these last months, it does not come easily either.”
Brown lambasted pro-Trump supporters for how she said they sought violence when they traveled into the city from the suburbs over the weekend and brought “more bloodshed to our streets.” However, one man killed over the weekend was allegedly shot by an antifa supporter.
“The right-wing group Patriot Prayer and self-proclaimed militia members drove into downtown Portland last night, armed and looking for a fight,” Brown said. “I will not allow Patriot Prayer and armed white supremacists to bring more bloodshed to our streets.”
Portland police have declared riots across the city more than 25 times since late May. Largely peaceful protests that wind down in the late evening are transformed into riots by primarily far-left groups, including antifa, in the early morning.
DHS employees were deployed to Oregon in late June following physical attacks to the Hatfield federal courthouse downtown, which federal law states must be protected by DHS’s Federal Protective Services officers. The FPS officers were unable to defend the building from commercial-grade fireworks and arsonists, prompting the deployment of additional federal agents.
[Read more: US courthouse in Portland would have been ‘burned to the ground’ if not for DHS: CBP commissioner]
The attacks worsened throughout July, which Oregon officials claimed was because rioters were upset that federal police had been sent there. On July 29, Brown and acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf separately announced having reached a deal that would result in pulling supplemental DHS personnel from downtown.
More than 100 surged DHS personnel remain on call in Portland. State police pulled out in mid-August over frustrations that the district attorney was not prosecuting rioters. The Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front, an anti-capitalist, anti-fascist group led by three teenagers, organized much of the early morning rioting that has resulted in millions of dollars in damage to the city.
