Due to unrelenting pressure from thousands of rioters, many of whom are armed with improvised projectile weapons, federal agents in Portland have decided to retreat to their main base: the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse.
Taskforce agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal departments believed that they were going to spend most of their night similarly to all the other nights. They would be assaulted by organized but relatively small groups of rioters throwing rocks, bottles, fireworks and other improvised projectiles while they, in turn, would fire back using tear gas and other crowd-control munitions such as flash-bang grenades and pepper balls.
For the federal agents, these running battles almost always occur at the Federal Courthouse. For members of the Portland Police Bureau (PPB), it's usually at the nearby Multnomah County Court House. Both these locations are at the downtown Portland neighborhood, right in the heart of the city. These nightly skirmishes have been going on without ceasing since May 28. (Related: Federal agents stand off with rioters in Portland who lit fires and tried to break into the Federal Courthouse.)
Listen to this breaking news episode of the Health Ranger Report, a podcast by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, as he talks about how the Chinese Communist Party is complicit in trafficking illegal firearms into the United States in order to arm the Black Lives Matter movement and their Antifa allies. Their goal is to sow enough chaos and destruction in the country that, one day, the nation will implode into a Second American Civil War.
Rioters gaining ground on outnumbered federal agents
On the evening of Tuesday, July 21, and the early morning hours of Wednesday, federal agents in Portland were forced to fight a new enemy. As they did their routine of pushing back demonstrators, many of whom have started arming up by wearing helmets and gas masks and wielding shields and improvised clubs, the federal agents were forced to retreat into the courthouse as the rioters found a new protector: middle-aged women.
The “Wall of Moms,” as they are called, are a group of mostly middle-aged women clad in yellow who show up to riots to form a human barrier so that law enforcement won't be able to reach the Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters they have been fighting for nearly two months without having to go through the Wall of Moms.
During that evening's rioting, this large group of women linked arms and began chanting slogan such as “Whose streets? Our streets!” This forced the federal agents to fall back.
The back-and-forth between the federal agents and the rioters and their supporters, the Wall of Moms, played out at least three times by the end of that night's battle. Like with most nights, it ended with a stalemate, as the federal officers were not only unable to make any significant progress in fighting back the rioters, but were also forced to retreat and remain inside the Federal Courthouse.
“The feds don't have control of the streets,” said a member of the Wall of Moms. “I think they're more scared than us. They're hiding in there. They don't know what they're doing.”
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The federal task force remained within the confines of the Federal Courthouse for the remainder of the night, except for several brief appearances wherein agents left the courthouse to fire tear gas into the violent mob. Otherwise, they remained inside despite the fact that the rioters were actively attempting to burn down the courthouse by lighting several fires.
Several fires were started inside the fence line that surrounded the courthouse building. While some of the rioters pried open sections of the fence and others lit fireworks and aimed them at the building, several groups were dedicated to stoking the fires and making them grow. According to the PPB, these would-be arsonists used flares and other improvised incendiary devices and threw them over the fence, which started small fires closer to the building.
The inability of the federal task force to quell the uprising in Portland heavily suggests that a larger presence is needed, and given President Donald Trump's willingness to send more federal agents into other crime-ridden cities, notably cities run by the Democratic Party such as Chicago, it's likely that, if the situation doesn't get resolved soon, the president will have no choice but to increase the presence of federal officers in Portland.
Catch up on the latest events in Portland and in other parts of the country related to the Black Lives Matter movement and their Antifa allies at Rioting.news.
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