The police protected buildings from being set on fire and their officers being attacked with lasers and fireworks. Dispersal orders were only given AFTER the protests turned violent.

Comparing 100+ nights of protests and riots with Jan 6th is ridiculous...one was night after night of the same thing and having a plan in place to defend and the other is a single day where the police lost control and they actually shot someone with real bullets.

> A major difference is that the police would issue dispersal orders, then attack the BLM protesters indiscriminately, or call curfews which basically declared open season on any kind of protester, journalist, civilian, doing anything outdoors after X o'clock. The police were shooting rubber bullets at people sitting on their own porches.

Whilst also advising Proud Boys and Three Per Centers of their "enforcement plans", texting them to "take cover" and that they'd be given an "all clear" when they come back out.

Or being advised that although their leaders had active arrest warrants, that they would not be arrested at any protests that were "supervised" by Portland Police Department, so they should "feel free" to come to protests.

They were in contact with both sides of the conflicts...only one side made their plans clear and also applied for permits. I'm not saying it was the right call, but one side was violent toward police and the other was not...not a huge surprise that the police would choose to work with them.

The Proud Boys applied for a small fraction of permits.

And if you are ordering a protest to disperse, you don't tell one side to go home. If you have a curfew (leaving aside opinions there), it's not a curfew for one side.

If you're telling people who have warrants for their arrest that you will actively not only NOT arrest them but protect them, that's not working with them, that's working for them. Which is unsurprising in PDX, given how many LEOs are members of those same organizations.

Nothing in what you said was a good justification. You're right though, it's not a huge surprise that police would choose to work with militant right wing organizations.

>this is not how January 6th was handled

January 6th police had real bullets and shot and killed a person. You could argue Jan 6th was handled more strictly than BLM.

Of the 3 fatalities during that riot 2 were self inflicted and the only remaining one was when a rioter breached the last line of defence between the people screaming "Hang Mike Pence!" and 60 to 80 members of congress. There's been speculation that the tunnel entrance down the hallway from where the shooting occurred was where Mike Pence was evacuated through. I was amazed at the level of restraint displayed by the capitol police in contrast to clearing of lafayette square in the summer with pepper balls, tear gas, flash bangs, etc. At that time the park police didn't even bother to order the crowd to disperse until after they had already started attacking the crowd.

They did all that for a photo op vs. Capitol police falling back as far as they could without risking the lives of members of Congress. Even in the aftermath once the building was evacuated and they were clearing the grounds they handled that with kid gloves compared to many of the BLM protests.