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Portland police chief offers to meet with protesters

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Portland Police Chief Frank Clark said Monday he has reached out to two protest organizers and wants to meet with them to discuss their concerns about police violence.
Portland Police Chief Frank Clark said Monday he is offering to meet with two organizers of demonstrations that brought hundreds of people into the streets over the weekend protesting institutional racism and violence by police.
Also Monday, Portland’s City Council passed a resolution condemning the recent killings of unarmed black men in other states and “all forms of racism and police brutality.” The resolution says city leaders pledge to protect the rights of all people and commits to “calling out hate and discrimination when we see it.”
Demonstrators marched and chanted through downtown Portland Friday and a large group assembled in front of the police station Sunday evening and demanded to speak with Clark about their concerns over racial bias in policing, although the group left without hearing from the chief.
Clark said he reached out on Monday to activists Hamdia Ahmed and David Thete, who organized marches on Friday and on Sunday. Clark said Thete eventually spoke with city manager Jon Jennings.
Thete has called for another demonstration Monday evening at 7 p.m. starting at the corner of India and Commercial streets. Ahmed is organizing another march Wednesday afternoon.
It was not clear Monday when, or if, the organizers would meet with Clark.
“My hope was to speak to both of them proceeding the event so we can have some level of conversation, communication that’s not in an atmosphere that’s polarized, emotionally charged,” Clark said during a brief interview Monday afternoon. “We want to know what their concerns are. We want to work with them and work through things to have a better understanding.”
Clark’s outreach to organizers on Monday came after he did not meet with demonstrators on Sunday outside the police station. Instead, Lt. Robert Doherty addressed the crowd from a staircase, telling them the department shared the goal of keeping people safe.
Doherty asked protesters to disperse for public safety during the coronavirus pandemic. He also asked that they would agree to disperse after Clark spoke, but they refused, and fanned out to neighboring intersections, where they formed human chains and lay on the pavement to block traffic.
Clark did not say whether officers would arrest protests en-masse, as they did in 2016 after Black Lives Matter protesters blocked traffic on Commercial Street on a busy Friday night amidst the bustle of the Old Port. Police arrested 18 people, but the charges were later dropped after a disputed restorative justice meeting fell apart before it could begin.
That demonstration was sparked by the police killing of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile, outside St. Paul, Minnesota. Castile’s death was captured on a live video taken by his girlfriend, who streamed on Facebook the traffic stop that preceded her boyfriend’s death.
Protests have spread to cities across the country in the past week in response to the death of George Floyd, who also was black, after a white Minneapolis police officer pinned Floyd to the ground by pressing his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes.
In other cities over the weekend, some police chiefs and sheriffs have embraced protesters and marched with them in solidarity, while other departments, facing severe damage and looting, have resorted to riot-control tactics, using armored vehicles and less-lethal weapons to try to get people to disperse.

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