Protesters reoccupy longtime Black-owned N. Mississippi Ave. property after clashes with police trying to ‘re-secure’ house

Protesters who have camped for months to prevent a Black and Indigenous family from being forced to leave their longtime North Mississippi Avenue home took the property back Tuesday after morning clashes with police working to “re-secure” the foreclosed home for the developer that purchased it in a 2018 foreclosure auction.

By the end of the day, Mayor Ted Wheeler said he wanted police to stop what was turning into a large occupation around the property and arrest protesters who break laws.

“I am authorizing the Portland Police to use all lawful means to end the illegal occupation on North Mississippi Street and to hold those violating our community’s laws accountable,” he said.

The confrontation had begun hours earlier when law enforcement officers arrived about 5 a.m. at the home to allow the new owners to erect fencing and board up the house. Police said while officers were standing on the property’s perimeter, a crowd began to gather and officers were struck by projectiles such as rocks and paint-filled balloons.

Portland police said they arrested seven people after encountering numerous trespassers and one person with a gun, and officers recovered other guns on the property.

After fence and cleanup crews finished their work in the morning, officers left the area, police said. But the crowd pulled down the fence and entered the property, spurring police to return.

The crowd swelled to about 200 people, and violent clashes ensued. Law enforcement ultimately retreated as police vehicles were damaged, including at least one window smashed. Protesters threw rocks at officers and one sprayed a fire extinguisher at them, prompting an officer to deploy an impact munition.

One police vehicle hit a parked car while trying to leave.

The tense scene quieted after police left about 10:30 a.m. Demonstrators took the fencing erected earlier and built barricades around the property, known as the “Red House on Mississippi.” They piled up rocks and bricks, ostensibly as projectiles for any further clashes.

The confrontation came amid a Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office effort “to re-secure a home in which the occupants were previously ordered removed by court order,” the agency said in a news release.

Jim Middaugh, a spokesman for Wheeler, said the mayor’s office is “actively talking with the Portland Police Bureau about the best way to respond to the situation.”

Deputy Police Chief Chris Davis said Tuesday evening that the bureau plans a measured response but offered no details.

“I certainly am respectful of the issue that people are there to address, but blocking streets and chasing police officers out of the neighborhood is still not OK and really contrary to our values as Portlanders,” Davis said.

“We’re concerned for the safety of the neighborhood and we know this has a really big impact on the people who live there,” he said. “We have to balance the need for safety for everyone involved in our approach to something like this. Obviously, we’ll have to do what we can to address it, but we have to be thoughtful about it and do it in the right way.”

He described the strategy as “our approach is going to be to think our way through the problem and consider all the angles and do our best to resolve the situation as safely as possible.”

An acting North Precinct captain was in charge of the early police operation outside the house. Initially, several squads of Rapid Response Team officers were assigned to the location, but once contractors completed their work, the specialized squads were sent home, partly to avoid overtime spending. A much smaller East Precinct mobile field force relieved them and those officers were overrun by the large crowd.

The Police Bureau said it made its arrests outside the house and the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office made arrests inside, though the Sheriff’s Office hasn’t released any information on its involvement.

HOUSE HISTORY

Tuesday marked at least the second time law enforcement officers have visited the property in recent months.

Deputies served a court order at the home in September that said the defendants were unlawfully occupying the premises. The “writ of execution of judgment of restitution” gave the sheriff 120 days to serve the order to the occupants, and it was extended for another 120 days on Oct. 22.

The Sheriff’s Office said it gave the people there time to gather their things and offered them housing and shelter options, as well as other resources.

“We understand evictions are challenging proceedings even in the best of circumstances,” Sheriff Mike Reese said in a statement. “I believe everyone should have access to appropriate housing.”

The house, built in 1896, belonged to the Kinney family for about six decades, starting in the 1950s, according to the Red House on Mississippi website.

The Kinneys’ problems with the house, which had been paid off, began when they took out a new mortgage to pay defense lawyers after a family member was arrested in 2002, the website says.

In 2018, the lender foreclosed for non-payment and sold the house to a developer in an auction, public records show. But the Kinneys kept living in the home. They argued in court filings this year that Oregon’s moratorium on evictions and foreclosures amid the pandemic meant they couldn’t be forced out of the home this year.

But the red house foreclosure and sale occurred years before the moratorium went into effect. In September, a judge rejected the family’s argument and instructed law enforcement to turn the house over to its rightful owner, Urban Housing Development Ltd.

Activists and others have been camping at the property in an effort “to reclaim” it for the Kinneys since the September ruling.

Police said they have received numerous complaints from the neighborhood about the camp. From Sept. 1 to Nov. 30, the Police Bureau reported it had received more than 80 calls for a variety of issues, including fights, shots fired, noise and threats.

Community members created a “Save the Kinney Family Home” GoFundMe page in September, seeking $250,000. The effort has raised just over $41,000 so far.

Some protesters have said that, given the injustice they perceive toward Black and Indigenous people, they want to create an “autonomous zone” with no policing or other control by conventional laws and property rights similar to one that protesters in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood for all of June. Wheeler said Tuesday, “There will be no autonomous zone in Portland.”

“We all agree many of our nation’s systems and structures are fundamentally racist and require significant reform,” he said in his statement. “There’s a housing crisis, a health care crisis, an education crisis, an employment crisis, a mental health crisis, and an addiction crisis. All of these crises are magnified in urban areas, including Portland. And, these crises disproportionately impact Black people.”

But he said, “It’s also true that illegal trespassing, ignoring lawful orders from police, blocking sidewalks and streets and intimidating neighbors inflame these crises and make them more difficult to solve.”

The area in which the house is located, which historically was a Black residential neighborhood, has gentrified in the past two decades and become predominantly mixed-use retail and residential with the addition of larger-scale condominiums. Most single-residence homes along the section of Mississippi have been torn down or converted to retail.

— Jim Ryan

Douglas Perry, Maxine Bernstein, Jayati Ramakrishnan, Beth Nakamura and Brooke Herbert of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report. Catalina Gaitan also contributed.

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