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Police responded to find a naked man on the Portland waterfront Saturday.

(Portland Police Bureau)

A 911 caller reported that a man had jumped over the seawall railing on Saturday morning next to Portland's Saturday Market in Waterfront Park.

If that weren't odd enough, the man was naked.

It was about 9:30 a.m. And although it was sunny, the temperature still hovered in the 40s. Not exactly skinny-dipping weather.

Portland Fire & Rescue rushed a rescue boat to the scene. But by 9:40 a.m., rescuers had called off that effort because dispatchers reported that the naked man was safe.

The man had apparently been wearing something before he jumped over the railing: a backpack. He told police that the backpack had dropped onto a dock, and he had hopped over the railing in an attempt to retrieve it.

This all happened right in front of gawking bystanders, on a crowded morning along the river.

Dispatchers had described the man as a "possible shopper at Saturday Market," although the market didn't open until 10 a.m. It was the market's opening day of the season.

Police also were called to the Waterfront Park area Saturday morning to investigate a trail of "bloody footprints," according to dispatchers. Police didn't -- at least initially -- think that the footprints were linked with the naked man.

Sgt. Pete Simpson, a police spokesman, couldn't say why the man was naked. But Simpson said drugs and possibly mental-health problems led to the man's decision to go out in public without clothes.

Simpson said it appears that police spoke to the man, but didn't take him into custody.

State law allows public nudity -- as long as it isn't done to sexually arouse oneself or others. A Portland city "indecent exposure" ordinance, however, makes it unlawful for "any person to expose his or her genitalia while in a public place or place visible from a public place, if the public place is open and available to persons of the opposite sex."

But some Multnomah County Circuit Court judges have refused to find defendants guilty under the city's ordinance if defendants were found to be engaging in a form of free expression.

-- Aimee Green

503-913-4197