SEATTLE – After weeks of intense clashes between protesters and federal authorities in Portland, Oregon, a crowd of about 2,000 people mobilized in Seattle on Saturday, marching through the streets and clashing with police.
Three police officers were injured, including one who was hospitalized with a leg injury caused by an explosive, and 16 protesters were arrested in the early afternoon, police said.
With signs like “The feds are going home” and shouts of “No justice, no peace,” protesters stopped at the site of a future juvenile detention center and torched buildings there. Some broken windows of nearby businesses.
Police confronted the crowd in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, deploying flash grenades and pepper spray before they began arresting people.
Bipasha Mukherjee, 52, of Kirkland, Washington, said she has been protesting on the streets since May and said she was concerned about such aggressive tactics by the police.
“This is not the country I migrated to,” said Mukherjee, who came from India more than 30 years ago. “It appears that we are rapidly becoming a fascist state and a police state.”
Michaud Savage of Seattle said the protests were aimed at both local authorities and the deployment of federal officials who have launched an offensive against a long-standing protest in Portland. Savage said the law enforcement tactics in Portland, which have included the use of tear gas and crowd control ammunition, were dangerous and inappropriate.
“It is a very hard slide in an extremely violent direction,” Mr. Savage said as he washed his eyes with pepper spray and healed an arm wound with a grenade.
George Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis in May sparked mass protests that took millions to the streets in dozens of cities, but those protests have decreased in most cities.
Seattle and Portland, however, have seen widespread protests. Seattle protesters at one point claimed several blocks from the Capitol Hill neighborhood and declared an autonomous zone. After a series of shootings that led police to clear the area, protests had subsided.
Portland, meanwhile, has continued to protest, with some of the strongest protests surrounding the city’s federal buildings. After President Trump issued an executive order to protect the statues and federal property, the Department of Homeland Security deployed tactical teams in the city, beginning a series of clashes that resulted in injured protesters, investigations by the inspector general, and calls from local leaders to federal agents to get out.
The protest crowds in that city have grown to thousands, and the protests there continued. This week, federal officials deployed a tactical team in Seattle, and protesters cited that development as one of the reasons for Saturday’s protests.
While Portland’s protests have focused on the city center, Saturday’s protests toured areas east of downtown, where the city’s federal court is located.
