The protests in Los Angeles over immigration enforcement is drawing national attention after pockets of violence have been well documented.
Portland Mayor Mark Dion says the city’s Police Department has a lot of experience protecting the rights of protesters and counter protesters.
“If you’re going to have a protest of any size, you’re going to come to Portland, and we’ve done a lot of training, and it’s an accepted standard among the officers that our responsibility is to ensure the First Amendment can be exercised,” said Dion
There’s already been one protest in Portland in reaction to the unrest in Los Angeles as No ICE for Maine held an emergency rally last Sunday against the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops.
In the last day or so, protests against the ICE immigration enforcement and Trump’s actions have spread to numerous cities across the country, where there have been hundreds of arrests.
Dion says the training and experience of Portland Police has led them to avoid attempts to crack down on protest participants.
“I feel comfortable that if people want to come to the streets to express their political view, that they’ll be able to do so without the anxiety that the police will take an aggressive, interventionist approach,” Dion said.
As mayor, Dion has been noted for successful efforts to clear the city of large homeless encampments. He’s proud of the police department’s performance in physically removing people from those outposts.
“I was very focused on the idea that the encampments had to be cleared as a matter of public safety, but in clearing those camps and removing those individuals and transitioning them to some sort of shelter platform, we did it without a single arrest,” said Dion.
