Oregon has agreed to deploy state police to protect federal buildings in Portland amid violent racial justice protests, and once they have succeeded the additional federal forces deployed by Homeland Security will leave, the department announced Wednesday.
Acting Secretary Chad Wolf announced in a statement that he’d struck a deal with Gov. Kate Brown that includes “a robust presence of Oregon State Police” to help out.
“The department will continue to re-evaluate our security posture in Portland, and should circumstances on the ground significantly improve due to the influx of state and local law enforcement, we anticipate the ability to change our force posture, as we do everyday at our other 9,000 federal properties we protect across the country,” he said.
Ms. Brown, a Democrat, confirmed the deal on Twitter — though she saw the details differently, saying Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel will withdraw starting Thursday.
She did agree to deploy state police, though she cast their mission as protecting protesters, rather than the federal buildings that have been under attack.
“Our local Oregon State Police officers will be downtown to protect Oregonians’ right to free speech and keep the peace,” she said. “Let’s center the Black Lives Matter movement’s demands for racial justice and police accountability. It’s time for bold action to reform police practices.”
Despite the differing versions of what’s to happen, the deal represents a breakthrough after more than 60 days of protests that have increasingly targeted the federal Hatfield Courthouse in the city’s downtown.
Federal officers have been pelted with bottles, been blinded by high-intensity lasers, tried to duck attacks from commercial-grade mortar-launched fireworks, and dealt with Molotov cocktails and fires.
Protesters, meanwhile, say they’ve been tear-gassed and fired at with less-lethal rounds such as pepper balls and impact projectiles.
Federal officials say Portland officials had blocked their own police, leaving the situation to spiral out of control and forcing deployment of more federal officers and agents — the very thing Portland officials said they didn’t want to see.
Indeed, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has at times appeared to fuel the conflict.
Last week he took to Twitter to spread an unsubstantiated rumor that federal agents had been authorized to use live ammunition on protesters. He acknowledged that the U.S. attorney told him it was not true, but he still posted the rumor, saying he felt protesters should know it was out there.
Mr. Wheeler also joined the protesters, and said he ended up getting tear gassed along with them.
Portland police have described a nightly routine of large crowds of demonstrators gathering to listen to racial justice speeches, chant slogans, block traffic and bang on the fence surrounding the federal courthouse.
As the night progresses most protesters leave but a core group remains and grows more confrontational.
On Tuesday night, they fired commercial grade fireworks at the courthouse and threw bottles and rocks, and some attempted to climb the protective fence. A large fire was also set.
Federal agents allowed the activity to go on for a couple hours, then dispersed the crowd.
Portland police noted that they did not engage with the crowds themselves.
Attorney General William P. Barr told Congress on Tuesday that without the federal officers, he believes the protesters would have burned the courthouse to the ground.
He said there are protests in other cities but additional federal officers haven’t had to be deployed because local police have responded — which he said is how it’s supposed to work.
“Even where there are these kinds of riots occurring, we haven’t had to put in the kind of reinforcements that we have in Portland because the state and local law enforcement does their job and won’t allow rioters to come and just physically assault the courthouse,” he said. “In Portland, that’s not the case.”
