By TIM RILEY
PORTLAND, Oregon -Portland’s OWS Thursday Call to Action named “N-17” ended with 48 arrests reaching a dramatic rush hour confrontation as mounted riot police rushed in pepper spraying demonstrators holed up inside a Chase Bank branch in downtown Pioneer Courthouse Square.
This was the culmination of a chain of events beginning at 8am Thursday with a rally across the city’s Steel Bridge where 25 were arrested, followed by hundreds of Occupy Portland protesters descending into the downtown area. By noon, they were protesting in front of a Wells Fargo Bank. Ten managed to be inside before the doors were locked. They were arrested without incident.
For the remainder of the afternoon protesters chanted outside other major banks in the downtown core including a Bank of America Financial Center, then got into a scuffle with police when they attempted to leave a sidewalk. A sign at a nearby Bank of America branch on Main Street read, “Due to circumstances out of our control, we are currently closed.” Far from the center of the action in southeast Portland, a protester chained the doors of a Bank of America branch shut from the outside. Firemen responded with bolt cutters to free the customers. A protester delayed the downtown MAX commuter light rail by sitting on the tracks during the afternoon rush. Although the protests snarled traffic for most of the day downtown there were no violent incidents by the Occupy protesters.
Throughout the Occupy Portland protests that began in on October 6th, Portland Police have exercised restraint not seen in other cities. Today’s pepper spraying incident came as a shock to the protesters. Police chief Mike Reese expressed frustration in the drain on police resources citing an incident in which a rape victim was forced to wait three hours before an officer was available to respond. The latest estimates show the police bureau incurring more than $750,000 in overtime since Occupy Portland began.
