This is from the Willamette Week, so not exactly a bastion of Right-wing conservatism.

A Neighbor Describes What Happened When Law Enforcement Stopped Responding to an Armed Encampment in North Portland
He lives less than a block from the occupation, inside the blockades used to seal off neighborhood streets from police.

Few people had as closer a view of the occupation as a man living near the Red House. That neighbor reached out to WW to respond to our account of the eviction defense (“Beyond the Barricades,” Dec. 16, 2020). He asked not to be identified out of fear of political reprisal, but WW independently confirmed he lives less than a block from the encampment, inside the blockades used to seal off neighborhood streets from police.

All of this takes place after the police were blocked from serving the eviction on the Red House and were driven back by protesters.  I’ve posted video of that before.

Portland police attempt to serve an eviction notice during a pandemic.

Residents push them back. pic.twitter.com/SU65gCNLAp

— Benjamin Young Savage (ᐱᓐᒋᐱᓐ)  (@benjancewicz) December 9, 2020

Then the large group went back to the Red House, and more people came in and they began to rip down the fence on the property. They went inside the house themselves and started pulling stuff out to build the barricades. They started carrying out refrigerators and washers and dryers.

They blocked the alleys and they blocked the side street of my house. They wouldn’t allow us to move our cars because they had fully barricaded us in. They said they had basically claimed the area and we weren’t able to leave.

On Saturday last week, an individual went around and broke the Ring cameras off of people’s front doors, on their doorbells, with a crowbar.

It was just a huge, huge, raging party occupation: giant bonfires on the hill, bonfires everywhere in the street. They built the barricades. They had weapons behind it. They had bottles and rocks and Molotov cocktails and all that stuff.

They had sentries, essentially, that are posted up there. They had an individual with an assault rifle positioned right next to our driveway. They have people regularly back at their station, but they also patrol around the block with weapons and tactical gear and bulletproof vests. They watch us, you know, and they’re regularly standing around as we move in and out of our backyard.

I could go out front on foot, but there were several people outside, and they were armed and they would watch us. They’d follow us around the block. And they were very suspicious that we were coordinating with the police. Like I said, they had guns up front, too, in addition to everyone inside of the zone.

They got really hostile and told me to fuck off and that we were part of the problem, or that we were just another gentrifier.

This was brought down faster than the CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle, but that hardly matters.  These people were under siege for several days.  The police were driven out and this occupation and terrorism of the residents of the community were allowed to happen.

What should have happened is the second that the police were outnumbered by these people (rioters and protesters fail to be adequate descriptors of the bad guys), they should have called in SWAT to bag and tag as necessary.

With President Biden in the Whitehouse and violence having been proven to be an effective political strategy, expect more of this, and not just in Portland.

If some group doesn’t their list of grievances – no matter how outlandish – acquiesced to, they will form a makeshift army and occupy a neighborhood.

In the distant future, historians will write books about the downfall of America.  In those books will be chapters on how politicians and police departments simply let their cities become taken over by clans of warlords.