Portland protesters cause mayhem again

PORTLAND: A crowd of about 200 people, some wielding homemade shields, clashed with police early Friday in Portland, Oregon for the third consecutive night as two other Black Lives Matter rallies proceeded peacefully elsewhere in the city, authorities said.

The demonstration with unrest came hours after the city’s Democratic mayor pleaded for demonstrators to stay off the streets, saying that those who barricaded the doors to a police precinct the night before and tried to set it ablaze were not demonstrators, but criminals.

Mayor Ted Wheeler said the violent protesters are also serving as political “props” for President Donald Trump in a divisive election-season where the president is hammering on a law-and-order message. Trump has tried to painted a picture of the Portland protesters as “sick and dangerous anarchists” running wild in the city’s streets. The chaos that started Thursday night and lasted into Friday morning in a residential neighborhood about six miles (10 kilometers) from downtown marked the 70th night of unrest in Portland since May 25, following the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis.

The demonstrations this week, however, are noticeably smaller than the crowds of thousands who turned out every night for about two weeks in July to protest the presence of US agents sent by the Trump administration to protect a federal courthouse that had become a target of nightly violence.