BY JACK CROWE
July 27, 2020
One person was shot and six federal agents were injured on Friday night, the 58th consecutive night of rioting outside the federal courthouse in Portland.
Thousands of people descended on the courthouse shortly after dark, ramming their bodies into a steel barricade that had been reinforced earlier in the day and using power tools in an attempt to breach it.
Federal agents were shot at with ball bearings launched from slingshots, pelted with frozen water bottles, and hit with commercial-grade fireworks, one of which hit a federal agent in the head and left him with a concussion. Other federal agents have lingering vision problems thanks to roving bands of black-clad anarchists who milled about the crowd of “largely peaceful” protesters and women in yellow “summon momma” shirts pointing lasers into the eyes of anyone in uniform.
We no longer have to rely on shaky, selectively edited amateur video to understand the level of anarchy on display in one of America’s great cities. We now have a reliable account of the chaos, courtesy of Associated Press reporters Mike Balsamo and Gillian Flacus, who decided to abandon the euphemism employed by most of the mainstream press in favor of simply reporting what they saw during a night spent inside the courthouse with the officers.
Smaller Portland imitations cropped up in cities across the U.S. and Canada over the weekend.
In Austin, 28-year-old protester Garrett Foster was fatally shot after showing up to the protest armed with his legally-owned AK-47. The shooting occurred after a motorist was surrounded by a crowd of protesters who were blocking a city street. The as-yet unidentified motorist claims that Foster approached his car as he was being surrounded and pointed the AK-47 at him, at which point he drew his pistol and shot Foster three times. The motorist subsequently turned himself into police but has not yet been charged with a crime.
Some protesters who witnessed the shooting have disputed the motorists’ claim that Foster pointed the rifle at him before he opened fire and the police are urging more witnesses to come forward to help clarify the conflicting accounts.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler said guns were to blame for the lawlessness.
“In a split moment, three guns were drawn, eight shots were fired, and a protester was tragically killed,” he tweeted. “This is horrible as is all gun violence. There are too many guns. Our City is shaken and, like so many in our community, I’m heartbroken and stunned.”
