PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Demonstrators marched to the Portland Police Association Monday night, the 81st night of political unrest in Portland. By 12:30 a.m., though, most people had left the area without any major clashes between the crowd and police — aside from one attempt to flood the PPA building.
A group of protesters gathered outside the PPA building blocked traffic for about an hour on Monday night. Around 11 p.m., police were alerted that people were attempting to break into the back of the building. Police then discovered somebody had broken through the plywood and one of the building’s windows.
A running hose was placed in the window as an attempt to flood the building. The amount of damage resulting from the water is unknown at this time. The PPA building has been the target of multiple arson fires and substantial graffiti over the course of the protests in Portland.
Despite the flooding attempt, no arrests were made overnight. Officers disengaged from the situation in order to deescalate.
The crowd remained in the area for several hours but were otherwise peaceful, police said. The night ended with no arrests, no injuries and no force was used.
Earlier in the night
Participants first organized at Kenton Park for a “direct action march,” and left around 10 p.m. with a destination of the police union headquarters, which has been targeted with vandalism and fire on numerous occasions. As recently as last Friday, demonstrators tried to march to the building, but police cut them off before they reached it.
A couple hundred people made it to the PPA building shortly after 10 p.m. and occupied the street, blocking traffic. Some people started spray-painting the building. Portland police issued a traffic warning via Twitter.
Around 10:45 p.m., Patriot Prayer’s Joey Gibson was seen in the area, surrounded by a crowd of angry demonstrators. Gibson tried to talk about Sunday night’s assault on the driver of a pickup in downtown Portland, but the crowd shouted over him.
Just before Gibson showed up, a few people broke off from the crowd on Lombard Street and appeared to climb over a fence and enter the PPA building through a a broken window. They took baseball caps from inside and handed them out to other demonstrators. Police issued a warning over the loudspeaker, addressing the behavior.
Police and protesters briefly came face to face when officers emerged to check the damage from the broken window, which we later learned was the aforementioned flooding attempt. As officers retreated, at least one person in the crowd threw a small object toward them. Police responded by firing what appeared to be canisters of smoke.
Crowd sizes continued to dwindle after that, and by 12:30 a.m. only a few dozen remained outside the PPA building.
Follow digital reporter Hannah Ray Lambert for the latest on tonight’s demonstration:
Sunday night’s protests downtown ended without police deeming the assembly unlawful, without the use of crowd control munitions, and without arrests. A crowd in the low hundreds of people gathered outside the Justice Center to listen to the mother of Patrick Kimmons, a Black man killed by police in 2018. The crowd size shrank throughout the night, with the majority of people leaving by 1 a.m.
Several blocks away from the main protest, the driver of a pickup that crashed into a tree on the sidewalk was beaten unconscious in the street near SW Broadway and Taylor. Social media videos show the driver get pulled from the truck, punched, and then while sitting in the street, kicked in the head by a man who ran up from behind.
That assault, police said, may have been sparked when the driver tried to help a robbery victim near SW Fourth and Taylor. The driver took off but, people chased him. Once the truck crashed he was pulled out and attacked, according to authorities.
Portland police said the driver was taken to the hospital with “non-life-threatening injuries and is recovering.”