Portland police declare riot during protests after Breonna Taylor ruling

[September 24, 2020]    (Reuters) - Police in Portland, Oregon declared a riot late on Wednesday after protesters damaged a police building in unrest that followed the grand jury decision in the Breonna Taylor case.

"To those who have gathered outside of Central Precinct on Southwest 2nd Avenue. This gathering has been declared a riot," the police force said in a tweet. The crowd was told to vacate or face tear gas, other crowd control agents or arrest.

One of the protesters hurled a homemade firebomb or Molotov cocktail towards police officers outside of the precinct, a video shared https://bit.ly/3cuHMSi by Portland police on Twitter showed.

Upper windows appeared to be damaged and part of an awning outside the building was on fire, according to a photograph shared by the police, which said the building had suffered "substantial damage".

Two police officers were shot and wounded late on Wednesday in Louisville, Kentucky, during protests over a grand jury ruling on the fatal police shooting of Taylor, a Black woman who was killed in her home during a raid in March.

Earlier in the day, the grand jury decided that none of the three white officers involved in the police raid on Taylor's apartment would be charged for causing her death. One officer was indicted on charges of endangering her neighbors.

(Reporting by Aishwarya Nair and Rama Venkat in Bengaluru)

[© 2020 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2020 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.