PoPo puts the kettle on

The Portland cops finally did something different last night in response to the ongoing destructive "protests" that are crippling the city. After just a couple of windows were broken, the cops surrounded close to 100-or-so black-clad marchers in the Pearl District, near I-405, and detained them for what seemed like a couple of hours.

By the time the show was over, 13 people, including one minor, had been charged with crimes. Most of the rest of the crowd were systematically photographed, and I believe the police collected identifying information on nearly everybody.

The police practice, known colloquially as "kettling" the crowd, is controversial, but it did limit the damage from last night's escapades. And it's at least some effort to deter the property damage that inevitably accompanies the nighttime marches by the Portlandian avengers of all societal wrongs. 

The games will conntinue, no doubt. The kettling episode will bring out more crowd members tonght, and they'll play better cat-and-mouse than last night's group. We'll see what the cops' next move might be.

It will also be interesting to see what the Boy Wonder district attorney will do with last night's charges. Most of them are for things he hasn't pursued until now. But if he has a political pollster on staff somewhere, he's heard by now that he'd better change his tune if he wants to stay on the public payroll beyond one term in office. He can't blame Trump any more for the appalling state of downtown, and pretty soon he won't be able to blame Covid, either.

So, a kettle happened. The police are building a database. Oh boy, will there be ACLU lawsuits. Oh boy, will there be outraged tweets from the lefty "freelance journalists." But at least somebody's trying something.

The O has a story up here. The official police version is here, including the roster of the dozen adult arrestees.