Over 2 ½ months last summer, two masked men sent waves of fear through Portland’s vibrant bar community.

Fourteen times, the robbers burst into local taprooms on warm summer nights and pointed guns or knives at people out to enjoy a beer with friends, police and prosecutors said.

They ordered the patrons onto the floor and demanded that they hand over their wallets, purses and cellphones. They yelled at the bartenders to hand over the night’s proceeds.

“When those victims didn’t move fast enough or maybe for kicks, they beat them,” Deputy District Attorney Laura Rowan said during closing arguments in a 3 1/2-week trial. "They made their victims wonder ‘Is this it? Is this how it all ends?’”

Prosecutors said the robbers were especially cruel, at times. When an unsuspecting patron at the Perch Tavern on North Lombard Street stepped out of the restroom into the middle of the heist, he got pistol-whipped. He fell to the floor, bleeding.

Police ultimately identified two suspects.

A jury acquitted both men Friday.

DEFENSE POKES HOLES IN CASE

Defense attorneys Alicia Hercher and Thomas Freedman argued that prosecutors had no reliable evidence tying their clients to the robberies.

Police collected no fingerprints and no DNA linking Deron Albert Dupre Crain, 32, and Johnta Durand Hammond, 34, to the bars.

None of the 47 victims who testified identified the men as the robbers from police line-ups.

Defense attorneys warned jurors not to assume that the two masked robbers shown in surveillance videos from bars were Crain and Hammond based on their blurry physiques and their race. Crain and Hammond are African American, and so were the robbers, police and witnesses said.

The two defendants were guilty only of “being black in Portland,” said Hercher, Crain’s attorney.

PROSECUTORS PRESENT CASE

While executing search warrants, police found clothing and other items that prosecutors used to try to prove their case.

For instance, they found two baseball caps bearing Milwaukee Brewers' logos in Crain’s car, prosecutors said. They looked similar to the ones worn by the robbers in one of the holdups, prosecutors said. Defense attorneys, however, argued that similar baseball caps doesn't prove Crain and Hammond were the robbers, because Brewers caps were mass produced.

Police also found a serrated knife in Crain's car that prosecutors said matched witness descriptions of the black-handled knife used in at least one of the robberies. Defense attorneys said the descriptions clearly contradicted what one witness said was a red-handled knife or another said was filet-style opposed to serrated.

“The state is saying over and over and over again, ‘These are the guys. These are the people,’” Hercher said. “(But) they don’t know.”

She added: "You can't convict people for being maaaybe guilty."

Rowan and fellow prosecutor Elisabeth Waner said police collected no DNA or fingerprints in the bars because the robbers wore gloves. None of the victims could identify the robbers because they wore masks and hats, the prosecutors said.

Rowan and Waner pointed to surveillance video taken near the Concordia Ale House that shows a robbery suspect that looked like Crain and cellphone tower data that indicated that the men were talking or texting each other in a seven-square-mile area of eight of the bars at the precise time of the late-night robberies.

Defense attorneys said that covers a huge swath of Portland and proves nothing.

JURORS UNCONVINCED

Jurors deliberated over four days before finding Crain and Hammond not guilty of first-degree robbery, second-degree assault and other charges.

After Judge David Rees read the verdict, Crain and Hammond hugged their attorneys and then each other.

The judge ordered Hammond released from jail immediately.

Crain will remain in jail. The judge found him guilty of a separate charge -- being a felon in possession of a firearm -- because in the course of the investigation, his DNA was found on a gun seized from his mother’s home.

He faces a prison sentence of up to 2 ½ years.

Crain is a felon because in 2002 -- as a teenager -- he was convicted of second-degree robbery.

Now the case of last summer's bar robberies remains unsolved. It's not clear what police and prosecutors will do now.

No one disagrees that somebody robbed those bars.

14 bars robbed

From June 2 to Aug. 18, 2017, a pair of masked robbers targeted the following Portland bars:

-- Lotsa Luck Bar & Grill, 2136 S.E. Powell Blvd.

-- Jolly Roger, 1340 S.E. 12th Ave.

-- Station Public House, 2703 N.E. Alberta St.

-- Bluefin Bar and Grill, 7317 N.E. Sandy Blvd.

-- The Lodge Bar & Grill, 6605 S.E. Powell Blvd.

-- Concordia Ale House, 3276 N.E. Killingsworth St.

-- Element Bar & Lounge, 5827 E. Burnside St.

-- Mousetrap Tavern, 2305 N. Lombard St.

-- Pappy’s Bar, 1144 N.E. 82nd Ave.

-- Mad Hanna, 6129 N.E. Fremont St.

-- Greeley Avenue Bar and Grill, 5421 N. Greeley Ave.

-- Sandy Hut, 1430 N.E. Sandy Blvd.

-- Hilt Bar, 1934 N.E. Alberta St.

-- Perch Tavern, 7505 N. Lombard St.

-- Aimee Green