PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Police in Portland used pepper spray and arrested several people as more than 1,000 demonstrators roamed the city and blocked traffic Tuesday night while protesting a grand jury decision not to indict a Missouri police officer in the killing of an 18-year-old.
Officers finally used loudspeakers to tell the crowd to disperse. Protesters trying to get away from police met more officers, and the main protest dispersed by 8 p.m.
A smaller group of about 300 people marched across a major Willamette River bridge into east Portland after the downtown rally and march wound down. Bus and light rail traffic was disrupted.
“No justice, no peace,” protesters chanted, “no racist police.”
The protest was largely nonviolent, but confrontations briefly elevated into skirmishes. At one point on the Hawthorne Bridge, which police were blocking, a police officer on a motorcycle repeatedly ran his bike into the legs of a protester, who continued to stand in his way.
The incident drew a crowd of protesters who accused the officer of assault. The officer quickly left the area.
The protest had many elements of the Occupy Portland movement, which galvanized protesters in the city and formed a network of people who still communicate via mass text message.
As with Occupy, the vast majority of protesters preached peace, but a fringe group of people — some covering their faces with black bandannas — advocated violence and confrontations with police. And like Occupy, the original protest drew a disparate group of people together, not all of whom agreed with one another.
Military veterans called for peace, a communist group called for the overthrow of capitalism, and a group calling for a Palestinian state all held court during a series of speeches on the steps of the state Justice Center in Portland.
Portland is perhaps as primed as any city in the country to protest police actions. The Portland Police Bureau has endured scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has criticized the bureau’s treatment of the mentally ill.
The department has had violent, sometimes fatal, confrontations with the mentally ill and the black community, highlighted in the documentary “Alien Boy,” about the death of a homeless man in police custody.
In Salem, about 50 chanting protesters gathered earlier Tuesday at the city’s police headquarters. The police station in Oregon’s capital city is at City Hall, and the protesters walked in a circle at the building’s plaza.
In many parts of the country, it was the second day of protests.
For many, the shooting of Michael Brown, who was black, by Officer Darren Wilson, who is white, recalled other troubling encounters with law enforcement. The refrain “hands up, don’t shoot” became a rallying cry over police killings nationwide.
