Violence directed at police after latest shooting
By Michael Leighton
A protest against police brutality turned violent Monday night when ball bearings were used to break windows at the Penumbra Kelly Building, a multipurpose facility for police and other city services on East Burnside Street. Projectiles were also thrown at police. PHOTO COURTESY PORTLAND POLICE BUREAU
Portland police are adding up the damages from new protests against police that turned violent Monday night.
Police said people from a crowd of about 200 people shot off fireworks, set fires, broke windows, slashed tires and threw projectiles at officers outside the Penumbra Kelly Building, a police and city of Portland multipurpose facility on East Burnside Street.
Windows were also smashed at a church nearby, while across town police vehicle windows were smashed at a police parking lot in the St. Johns neighborhood of north Portland, next to the historic building that once housed the North Precinct.
The violence erupted after demonstrators, many dressed in black attire, gathered in response the death of Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man killed Sunday in Brooklyn Center, Minn., killed by a police officer who told authorities she mistakenly fired her live ammunition handgun instead of a stun gun during a struggle to make an arrest during a traffic stop.
At about 10:20 p.m., Portland officers said they began moving protesters away from the Penumbra Kelly building as people in the crowd were stealing rocks and landscaping bricks and other property and using the materials as weapons against police.
Authorities said the conduct of the crowd did not improve, and the incident command declared a riot. A few minutes later, when most of the people starting moving away, police said they were able to disengage with the crowd to allow people to begin acting lawfully and peacefully.
At the police parking lot in St. Johns, responding officers arrived to find that a group of suspected protesters had cut through a chain link fence to gain access, then broke out windows of several police vehicles and slashed tires. The suspects fled prior to police arrival.