Protesters clash with Seattle police in latest outcry over US feds
Police found in Seattle used flashbang grenades and pepper spray Saturday against protesters who have set fire to engineering trailers outside a good youth jail, amid a good wave of community anger over President Donald Trump's planned "surge" of federal agents into major cities.
The sounds of repeated small detonations rang out in the streets of metropolis in Washington state, and smoke rose from a location where demonstrators had set fire to trailers by a construction site for the youth detention facility, an AFP reporter observed.
Demonstrators slashed car tires and smashed trailer windows.
Police in riot equipment faced off against the demonstrators, a few of whom organized umbrellas against falling pellets of pepper spray.
The Seattle Times newspaper quoted police as saying 16 people were arrested on suspicion of assault against officers, obstruction and failure to disperse.
The most recent spasm of violence came after police and federal agents fired tear gas and forcefully dispersed protesters further south in Portland early Saturday, also in anger over Trump's heavily-criticized "surge" of security forces.
The city, the biggest in the state of Oregon, has seen nightly protests against racism and police brutality for almost two months, in the beginning sparked by the death of unarmed African American George Floyd as a result of police in Minnesota.
Portland can be a level for the highly controversial crackdown by federal brokers ordered by Trump - one which is not supported by area officials there, and which many say smacks of authoritarianism.
Civil unrest had not been only confined to Portland. On Saturday, three customers of a black militia had been shot in Louisville, Kentucky at a Black Lives Subject protest, local mass media reported, citing police. Their injuries were not life-threatening.
The protest, to demand justice for a black woman who was simply killed by police as she slept in her residence, drew members of the black militia and a rival far-right militia, with the heavily armed groups facing off while separated by riot police.
The groupings dispersed peacefully in the future Saturday afternoon.
In Portland, Friday's demonstration was mainly peaceful, with crowds using music and dancing, blowing soap bubbles and leaving fireworks.
Nonetheless it ended - like many before it - in a showdown between protesters and law enforcement, which escalated in a haze of tear gas and flashbang units.
One group of protesters shaped a series with umbrellas and makeshift shields to attempt to protect themselves, as at least several fires burned exterior fences around a federal courthouse.
Tear gas was first fired around 11:00 pm. By 2:30 am police and federal brokers were clearing the picture beyond your courthouse with tear gas, pushing protesters back.
Earlier, protesters who spoke to AFP complained of the federal agents' presence in metropolis and voiced their support for the Black Lives Subject movement, which helped drive demonstrations across the country for weeks after Floyd's killing.
"I can't stand what's happening down below, what Trump does," Mike Shikany, a 55-year-out of date aerospace engineer, said, adding he didn't "need to get anywhere nearby the little green males," meaning the federal troops.
Portland retiree Jean Mullen, 74, said that without pressure nothing would modification.
"It's time to end up being the country we always brag about being. And we can not brag anymore, about anything. We aren't primary in anything and it's really a terrible, terrible thing to see towards the end of my entire life," she said.
The inspector general of the united states Justice Section on Thursday opened the official investigation into the federal crackdown, but a federal judge in Oregon on Friday rejected a legal bid by the state to avoid agents from detaining protesters.
Trump, who's campaigning for re-election found in November on a program of "law and order," announced on Wednesday a good "surge" of federal brokers to crime hotspots including Chicago, following a rise in violence in the country's third-largest city.
Agents deployed there can partner with local police, not riot control forces seeing that seen in Portland.
Native officials have warned they would draw the line at any kind of Portland-style deployment. - AFP
