Occupy Portland, riot police face off

US: Riot police have surrounded demonstrators at an Occupy encampment in Portland after hundreds of people defied the mayor’s order to leave a downtown park area by midnight.

On Sunday afternoon, police officers besieged the camp in the 3regon city, where protesters were holding a general assembly” meeting to discuss their next moves after the police issued an eviction order to them, the Associated Press reported.

The demonstrators chanted that they were a peaceful protest, but policemen used nightsticks to keep them away from the encampment area and announced that anyone who resisted risked arrest and may also be subject to chemical agents and impact weapons.

Police detained at least one protester and another man was taken away from the park on a stretcher.

Elsewhere, police fired tear gas to disperse Occupy demonstrators in Denver and Salt Lake City. The riot police broke up the encampments and arrested several protesters. In Honolulu, Occupy protesters gathered at a local park and staged a march to express their opposition to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit being held in the city.

The Occupy Wall Street movement began when a group of demonstrators gathered in New York’s financial district on September 17 to protest against the unjust distribution of wealth in the country and the excessive influence of big corporations on US policies.

Despite the police crackdown and the mass arrests, the Occupy movement, which grew out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, has now spread to many major US cities.

Press TV