More than a dozen rioters were arrested late Saturday in Portland, Ore., as crowd members threw cans, bottles and other objects at law enforcement officers, authorities said.
The rioting was underway in the downtown area, with the state’s largest city now seeing more than four months of daily and nightly protests, vandalism and violence.
Crowd members became “hostile to officers trying to clear the street” for vehicular traffic, prompting the arrests, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office wrote in Twitter messages.
At one point in the evening, rioters were seen setting an American flag on fire.
At another point, a detainee escaped from a police van and ran off, according to a KOIN-TV reporter’s video on Twitter.
A protester burns an American flag while rallying at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (Associated Press)
Around 7 p.m. local time, Portland police posted on Twitter their account of confiscating firearms, paintball guns, baseball bats and shields from a vehicle leaving Delta Park.
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“At least one criminal citation was issued,” the tweet said.
Saturday’s unrest began hours earlier, around noon, with a planned event by the conservative Proud Boys, but an expected crowd of thousands for that rally failed to materialize, with only several hundred showing up, FOX 12 of Oregon reported.
