Shooting involving police near Portland motel leads to Antifa clashing with officers (VIDEOS)

A police officer fatally shot a man outside a motel in Portland, Oregon on Thursday. The incident infuriated some Antifa activists, who gathered to protest at the scene and then clashed with officers.

The disturbance outside Motel 6 in Portland’s Lloyd District happened on Thursday evening after a deadly confrontation in the hotel’s parking lot. The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) said officers were called to the hotel for a welfare check on a white man. The encounter somehow led to an “officer involved shooting.” The victim was transported to a local hospital, where he died, the statement said.

The PPB offered no further details of the incident, but local media reports said the police offered to take the man to hospital and wanted to pat him down before allowing him into the ambulance. He reportedly got agitated and came at the officers with a screwdriver. Some eyewitness accounts claimed the man was armed with a knife and was running away from the cops when he was shot.

There were also claims on social media that the police killed an unarmed person of color, which the police denied on Twitter. A group of some 50 people, who appeared to be Antifa, gathered at the scene, shouting angry insults at the officers and making noise with squeaky pig toys.

The stand-off soon escalated into clashes, with police deploying anti-riot weapons against the protesters.

The PPB seemed to blame the activists for triggering the outburst of violence, saying a female officer’s baton was grabbed by the protesters, who tried to pull her towards the crowd.

Chief Chuck Lovell said the shooting happened during “a very difficult and dynamic situation that no officer wants to face,” and pledged to conduct a full and thorough investigation of what had happened.

Portland has endured some of the most intense and persistent protests during and after last year’s nationwide movement against police brutality and racism in the US. Earlier this month, the city’s rapid response unit, which is tasked with managing riots, had to be disbanded after around 50 officers refused to volunteer for the job.

The mass walkout followed an indictment of one of the team’s members, Officer Corey Budworth, on fourth-degree assault charges stemming from an incident during a declared riot last August.

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