PORTLAND, Ore. — One person was killed and five others were wounded in a shooting on Saturday night during a protest in Portland against killings by police officers.
The Portland Police Bureau said a woman was dead when officers arrived. Two men and three other women were taken to a nearby hospital, the police said. Information on their conditions was not immediately released.
The shooting took place near a park in Portland that has been the staging ground for a number of protests against police killings in recent years. Neighbors said several shots were fired.
“I was sitting in the room talking to my wife, and all of a sudden you hear repeated gunshots,” said Jeff Pry, who lives in the area.
Few other details about the shooting were immediately available.
Portland has been a center for the racial justice protests that were touched off by the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. In Portland, the demonstrations have sometimes spiraled into violence between protesters and counterprotesters.
Information on social media indicated the protest Saturday was in response to the death of Amir Locke, 22, who was fatally shot by the police in Minneapolis when they were carrying out a search warrant early on Feb. 2. The killing of Mr. Locke, who was Black, stirred anger in Portland.
Mr. Locke was not the target of the police raid, which was carried out with a so-called no-knock warrant that does not require notifying residents. Minneapolis has since suspended the use of such warrants.
The police in Portland have acknowledged using force more than 6,000 times during protests in 2020, prompting a reprimand from the Department of Justice, which has said they were out of compliance with a previous settlement agreement.
The use of clandestine F.B.I. surveillance teams in response to the Portland protests, and militarized federal agents who were sent to protect federal buildings, stirred concerns about violation of rights and government overreach.
In 2020 the Portland City Council voted to partly defund the police bureau, but it later reversed course after an increase in shootings and murders. Last year, there were more than 90 murders in Portland, eclipsing the previous record of 66 set in the 1990s.
