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Portland police say it took patience, surveillance and a lot of luck to apprehend three teens wearing masks and carrying replica guns without disrupting post-Thanksgiving shoppers at Lloyd Center and a nearby Black Lives Matter demonstration on Nov. 28. The three 15-year-old boys were released to their parents, the pellet guns were seized by police and no one was injured.

(Casey Parks/The Oregonian/File)

When Portland Police Officer Ryan Lewton spotted three men on surveillance cameras walking through Lloyd Center mall in hoodies and balaclavas pulled over their faces, he was almost certain they were planning to rob Black Friday shoppers.

His first thought was not to panic the hundreds of people seeking post-Thanksgiving day deals -- plus about

for a Black Lives Matter demonstration.

The men were dressed oddly, but didn't appear to be an immediate threat. Still, their appearance was alarming and it wasn't clear if they were armed.

"In a case like this, you just can't predict what's going to happen," said Lewton, a 14-year Police Bureau veteran. "But we knew that with that many people we had to keep the situation as calm as possible."

Lewton had been stationed in the mall's surveillance booth for the day when a call came in about 1:55 p.m. from a mall security guard. The guard reported the men, first seen near Sears on the first level.

Lewton and other guards in the booth continued to watch the men as they walked through the first level. They watched as security guards at least three times approached the men and asked them to lower their hoods and remove their masks. But the men appeared to ignore then and took an escalator to the next floor.

They soon ran out of the mall into the courtyard in front of Stanford's Restaurant near Northeast Ninth Avenue and Multnomah Street -- still in view of the surveillance cameras.

From Lewton's angle, it looked as if no one else was around the three in the courtyard. But then he saw one of the men reach in his pocket, pull something out and then quickly put it back in his pocket. Lewton thought it may have been a gun, but he wasn't sure.

Then another one of the men reached into his pocket.

"The cameras weren't the best, but I could clearly see it was a gun," Lewton said. The man was waving the dark semiautomatic handgun around, but had put it away by the time another mall security guard reached the trio and told them to leave, he said.

In the meantime, other officers from the bureau's North Precinct were called in to intervene.

The trio then moved west on Multnomah Street toward Holladay Park and the protesters.

Officers decided not to immediately approach the masked group in front of the crowd. They didn't want crowd members to get involved in any arrest or become targeted by the men. They also worried that the three could use the crowd to blend in and get away.

"It was a very serious situation that could have gone bad really fast," Lewton said. "It was already a very tense situation with the demonstration going on nearby and we felt a lot of pressure to make sure we ensure the safety of the crowd as well as our own safety."

There were enough officers in the area -- about 50 were monitoring the protest -- that police could respond immediately if something happened, he said. Hopefully, he thought, the trio would move away from the crowd without incident.

"You're sort of hoping they don't make the wrong decision," Lewton said.

The three men watched the crowd for a bit, then continued west on Multnomah toward the movie theater. By the time they walked to Northeast 16th Avenue -- about two blocks away from Holladay Park -- officers arrived and ordered the crew down to the ground at gunpoint, Lewton said.

The three followed with the officers' commands to take off their hoods and masks. It

. Lewton said he believes they all had replica guns.

"They were really apologetic and claimed they weren't aware of the seriousness of their actions," Lewton said. "Their parents were called and one of them requested their son spend the night in jail."

The boys were allowed to go home, but officers took away the pellet guns. In this case, the boys didn't appear to threaten anyone with the replica firearms, so escaped serious trouble, he said.

The case has been referred to the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office with a recommendation that the teens face disorderly conduct charges, Lewton said. A call to a prosecutor reviewing the case wasn't immediately returned Friday.

The police bureau denied a request from The Oregonian/OregonLive for police reports on the case, citing an exemption because the documents contain information on a child's "history and/or prognosis and the youth is subject to the jurisdiction of Juvenile Court."

Lewton said he's glad no one was hurt.

"I believe it was great police work and things were done in a safe manner and worked out in everyone's favor," he said. "Luck also was definitely on our side."

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey