FBI says it will police violations of law, not ideology, in Portland protests

PORTLAND, Ore. — After more than 50 days of protests over police use of force and racial justice in Portland, the city’s independent police review board has received 76 complaints, largely about excessive force by officers.

Ross Caldwell, who heads the review board, said complaints against the Portland Police Bureau indicate the city had a problem with how officers use force on civilians long before President Trump dispatched federal agents to rein in local protests. But, Caldwell added, the agents who have been firing tear gas and less-than-lethal munitions throughout downtown on a near-nightly basis have only made the situation worse.

CHICAGO — A rally against police misconduct drew about 500 people Friday evening in advance of a march to also protest the presence of 150 federal agents that President Trump sent here this week.

With the city in budget negotiations with the Fraternal Order of Police, activists say they want the police department “defunded” by 75 percent. The extra resources, they say, should be used for public health, schools and mental health services. They question Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s assurances that she understands the pain of police misconduct given her support for keeping officers inside public schools.

PORTLAND, Ore. — More than a dozen Democratic members of Congress demanded on Friday that Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, resign immediately amid ongoing unrest and nightly clashes between DHS agents and protesters outside the federal courthouse in Portland, Ore.

In a letter addressed to Wolf, lawmakers accused him of abusing his power by dispatching federal agents to Portland. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who represents the city, asked that Wolf respond to his office by Monday.

A hunger strike in the name of Breonna Taylor has entered its fifth day in Louisville, as participants demand that city officials strip the badges and pensions from the officers who fatally shot Taylor.

“I know that we’re doing the right thing. That will really feed you,” said Tabin Ibershoff, a 29-year-old musician and Louisville community organizer. Ibershoff and three other protesters have been live-streaming the strike on Facebook from a house in the city.

A former Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice, Cynthia Baldwin, has made public an affidavit accusing Chief Justice Thomas Saylor of complaining about “her minority agenda,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Baldwin, the second black woman to serve on the state’s highest court, was formally reprimanded this week by Pennsylvania’s disciplinary board for legal errors related to her work as Pennsylvania State University’s chief counsel during the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal nearly a decade ago.

Inmates at Portland’s downtown detention center are complaining that tear gas is seeping from the streets into their cells, making it hard to see and breathe.

Women incarcerated at the Multnomah County Justice Center were hitting panic buttons in their cells earlier this week as they choked on the corrosive gas, the Oregonian reported.

Eighteen people face federal charges of criminal conduct after they were arrested at protests in Portland, Ore., this week, U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon Billy J. Williams announced Friday.

Federal law enforcement officers guarding the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse, which the Justice Department said in a statement has been a “nightly target of vandalism,” have clashed with Portland demonstrators in the ongoing protests of police brutality.

RICHMOND — Workers wielding power tools and huge rolls of bubble wrap carted a life-size statue of Robert E. Lee and busts of seven of his Confederate colleagues out of the Virginia Capitol late Thursday night and early Friday morning.

House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) ordered the removals from the historic Capitol’s Old House Chamber, the room where rebel lawmakers met when Richmond served as the capital of the Confederacy.