The activist group Portland's Resistance no longer plans to march to Mayor Ted Wheeler's home Wednesday to protest police handling of street demonstrations with arrests, pepper spray and tear gas.

For the first time, the group had sought a city permit for its rally. But by Tuesday night, the city considered the permit request to be closed at the wish of its applicant, group leader Gregory McKelvey.

Mayoral spokesman Michael Cox said the parties couldn't agree on traffic safety precautions. McKelvey said, in a Twitter message, that he doesn't "agree with requiring police to facilitate a protest against police use of force."

The group was also planning to protest the mayor's decision not to relocate homeless encampment Right 2 Dream Too from Northwest Portland, the permit application said.

A copy of the permit petition from Portland's Resistance.

Wheeler responded Tuesday by asking Police Chief Mike Marshman and his command staff to "create a more positive space for expression and emphasize tactics that de-esclate tensions."

The mayor thanked officers for their work, which he described as often thankless and dangerous, but also calls for good judgment.

"Inevitably, mistakes will be made," Wheeler said in a statement. "It is my job as police commissioner to address them and make changes when necessary. This is one of those times."

Portland's Resistance requested an event permit Monday for a protest planned for 4 p.m. Wednesday near Portland City Hall followed by a march estimated to reach Wheeler's Southwest Portland home about a mile and a half away by 6 p.m. Neither will happen, McKelvey said.

McKelvey said he "was mostly trying to prove a point on the permit." The mayor, police chief and other city officials have repeatedly told protesters they must get event permits for demonstrations that occur in the street.

The march would have been the second time this week protesters trooped to Wheeler's house. A small group headed there Monday night and demanded the city separate from any companies with ties to the Dakota Access Pipeline construction, protested for months by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and others who fear a leak in the oil line could contaminate their drinking water.

Last year, protesters twice marched to Mayor Charlie Hales' Portland home. About 60 people gathered last August outside the then-mayor's home to protest clearing homeless campers along the Springwater Corridor. Demonstrators also camped overnight in October to protest police use of force against protesters who disrupted a City Council meeting over a new police contract.

Since November, police have arrested or cited more than 150 people, including at least a dozen teenagers, during anti-Trump protests. Some protesters initially blocked Interstate 5 and 84 through downtown and have consistently taken to the streets downtown and on the east side, blocking rush-hour traffic, trains and buses.

Police have responded in riot gear and shot pepper spray balls, flash-bang grenades and tear gas to clear the streets. Among those arrested include demonstrators accused of smashing cars and business windows. A 14-year-old is accused of attempted murder and an 18-year-old faces other charges in the shooting of a protester on the Morrison Bridge during an apparent traffic argument.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon has called on police to change their crowd control tactics, calling them "shameful" Monday when officers used pepper spray and rubber bullets to quell a crowd outside the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building downtown.

Boots on the Ground PDX, a homeless advocate group, also criticized Monday's police response saying they support the First Amendment right to free speech and to assemble.

"The violence incurred against the venerable and vulnerable, and the arrests of those clearly protesting under the conditions of being on the sidewalk, is not only appalling, it is disheartening, as it looks like not only a continuation of the previous administration's failed policies, but an aggravated escalation," the group said in a statement.

Activists are planning to attend Wednesday's Portland City Council meeting. That demonstration isn't organized by Portland's Resistance.

A Facebook event advertising the demonstration says, "It's time that our collective condemnation of this Mayor is heard."

-- Everton Bailey Jr. and Jim Ryan

ebailey@oregonian.com; jryan@oregonian.com