As the deluge of protests in Portland shows no sign of slowing, police and Mayor Ted Wheeler are working to reduce tensions between the community and police by discussing protest responses, engaging civic leaders and pledging to keep communication flowing.

Since the November election of President Donald Trump, clashes have broken out consistently, with crowds disrupting downtown transit, blocking streets and shutting down City Council meetings.

Some have criticized the Portland Police Bureau's response as overly aggressive. Officers in riot gear have used pepper spray, tear gas and non-lethal shots on protesters and made scores of arrests. The ACLU of Oregon has been a vocal critic of police's enforcement tactics, most recently calling those used during a Presidents Day protest "indiscriminate violence" that was "shameful."

Wheeler last week called for police to "create a more positive space for expression and emphasize tactics that de-escalate tensions," and he and Police Chief Mike Marshman have begun meetings with community leaders.

Last Friday, they discussed police tactics and crowd control policies with the ACLU of Oregon, the Portland chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and Oregon Lawyers for Good Government. Wheeler met this week with Portland NAACP President Jo Ann Hardesty and plans to have more community meetings in the future, said mayoral spokesman Michael Cox.

The effort is a good start, said Mat dos Santos, legal director for the ACLU of Oregon, but more progress still needs to be made.

"The existence of (Friday's) meeting is not necessarily a sign of progress. Neither the Mayor nor the Police Chief committed to anything concrete," dos Santos said in an email to The Oregonian/OregonLive. "We remain hopeful about working with the Mayor and the Chief, but in order to get resolution we will need to see meaningful and sustained change."

Cox agreed, saying the community meetings are just the first step in the process to de-escalate tensions.

"It's an important first step," he said, "but it can't be the only step."

Protest leaders say police also need to have more open communication to hear their concerns and stop escalating situations by sending police in riot gear to protests.

Some tangible progress has already been made, Cox said. There was no police presence when a protest shut down a City Council meeting Wednesday.

Wheeler raised concerns to Marshman after a Presidents Day protest, questioning some of police's tactics during that protest, including arresting protesters after they were on the sidewalk.

"I didn't think that was the right time to do an arrest," Wheeler told a crowd outside the council meeting Wednesday. "I felt that was something that could have been done later. Things were de-escalating, and from my perspective, it looked like things escalated a bit."

For their part, police are constantly in the process of evaluating and re-evaluating their tactics during protests, said spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson. After each protest, officers discuss decisions and what could be improved.

Finding the right balance can be difficult, Simpson said. After protests in November resulted in more than $1 million worth of property damage, police were criticized for not taking more action, Simpson said. Now, they are being criticized for responding too harshly, he said.

"That puts us in a really tough position sometimes of having to balance the need for enforcement and the desire to protect and defend the free speech rights of people," he said.

Police are currently reviewing suggested revisions to the bureau's crowd control policy from the ACLU of Oregon and other community members, Simpson said. The suggestions will be reviewed by experts on crowd control before they can be implemented, he said. As part of a federal settlement agreement, the U.S. Department of Justice will also review the bureau's crowd control policy.

"It's a process, and it's not a fast process," Simpson said. "That doesn't lend itself to, maybe, faith that the bureau is really looking at it. But we do before enacting the policy."

Police have not identified any one solution to better handle protests because each situation is unique, Simpson said. However, officers are working to communicate more with organizers before the demonstration. If they are unable to do that, officers try to identify leaders and have conversations during the demonstration, Simpson said.

By communicating with organizers, the bureau hopes to find a solution so that police won't need a large presence at protests, Simpson said. The department understands that many protesters don't want officers at their events, and responding to protests is taxing for the already understaffed bureau, he said.

"If we don't have to be there because it's self-policed or well-managed, that's a victory for everybody," he said.

Activist leaders, however, say that they already self-police their demonstrations, but are still met with force.

Teressa Raiford, founder of the police accountability activist group Don't Shoot Portland, has seen its demonstrations met with pepper spray and police in riot gear, a reaction she said is unwarranted. Police presence is unnecessary at a protest organized by a well-known group like Don't Shoot Portland, she said.

"There's no need for excessive force at any type of public assembly, especially when they are by relatively well-recognized organizations," Raiford said. "It undermines our constitutional rights. To me, it doesn't make sense."

Gregory McKelvey, a leader for activist group Portland's Resistance, criticized police statements that if activists didn't block the street, officers wouldn't need to be there. Because his group's marches draw such large crowds, it's difficult for them to stay out of the street, he said. Marches on the sidewalk also do not draw the same attention as those in the street, he said.

McKelvey applied for a permit to march to Wheeler's house last week, but canceled the march after the city and he could not agree on traffic safety precautions. When the permit was approved, it only allowed the group to march on the sidewalk and not the street.

McKelvey likely will not apply for a permit again, he said.

"Oftentimes we're protesting our city government, and we can't just work with them to determine how we are going to protest them," he said.

Whether a group has a permit should not affect how police respond, lawyers from the group Oregon Lawyers for Good Government said.

"I think the city and police bureau are not adequately supporting and protecting free speech rights when a protest does not have a permit," lawyer Kimberly Mason said. "They are doing so more when it does. That different treatment is not justified."

Mason hopes the conversations with her group and others in the community will lead to improvements and better relationships between the police and the community, she said.

"We would really like to see our city fully supporting the speech and assembly rights of Oregonians to the fullest extent possible," she said. "We would also like to see the city and police make the efforts and have the chance to re-establish trust in the community that has been eroding over time here."

-- Samantha Matsumoto

smatsumoto@oregonian.com

503-294-4001; @SMatsumoto55