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Oregon ACLU condemns police actions at Portland protest

By Associated Press
Published: February 21, 2017, 11:48am

PORTLAND — The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon has criticized Portland police officers for their crowd control tactics during a Monday protest, calling officers’ actions “shameful.”

Portland police arrested seven adults and cited six juveniles during the “Not My Presidents Day” protest, including a 66-year-old woman and a 14-year-old boy, reported The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Portland police said they used “limited deployment” of pepper spray during the protest and that officers fired non-lethal shots.

Those measures were necessary to keep unruly protesters in check, said police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson.

“We would much prefer things were different,” he told The Oregonian. “But we’re sort of forced to be there now because of the aggressive nature of the, ‘We’re going to show up, we’re going to block streets, we’re going to shut the city down’ attitude.”

The ACLU condemned the actions in a series of seven tweets, saying the “indiscriminate violence against Portlanders was shameful.” The nonprofit called on Mayor Ted Wheeler to revise crowd-control strategies, writing that most of the people were “gathered on public property on the sidewalk when they were shoved down and arrested.”

A video shot by protest documenter Mike Bivins and posted to Willamette Week’s website shows a woman angrily approaching a row of officers in riot gear. One officer appears to fire two rubber bullets into the woman’s torso at close range.

Simpson said the woman tried to spit at the officers.

Simpson also defended a confrontation that left a senior citizen with a bloodied face. He said the woman was trying to stop the arrest of another protester.

“She interjected herself in that process and tried to assist the person, to unarrest them, if you will,” said Simpson.

People who witnessed police interacting with protesters can contact the Independent Police Review Division with commendations or complaints, according to Simpson.

“If there’s something they saw wrong,” he said, “we want people to tell us.”

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