More than half a dozen police officers were injured by fireworks shot or thrown at them over the Independence Day weekend from Connecticut to Oregon, various reports noted, including one in Amarillo, Texas, who was hit with what was described as a "mortar shell."
Saturday night saw three officers hurt Saturday in Hartford, Connecticut, another in New York City on Saturday, and the one in Amarillo and an undisclosed number in Portland along amid 13 arrests Sunday.
The officer in Texas was transported to a nearby hospital and treated for "non-life-threatening injuries" after responding to a report of a large group of individuals detonating fireworks, the Amarillo Police Department said on its Facebook page.
"When the first officer arrived, a mortar shell was shot through his open driver side window," Amarillo police said. "The firework exploded on the officer causing injuries to his upper and lower body and damaging the interior of the vehicle. Other officers responded but could not locate the suspect due to the large number of fireworks being shot at them by the crowd."
The situation was similar in Hartford, New Britain's NBC affiliate WVIT reported, with several officers responding to disturbance of a large gathering of people with fireworks.
"As officers attempted to address the large gathering, unidentified individuals began throwing large scale mortar fireworks directly at officers," Hartford police said in a pair of tweets. "This resulted in 3 injured officers. One officer was struck directly in the chest with a large scale firework that exploded upon impact. He was treated for injuries."
The incidents come amid continuing although declining protests over the death of a Black man, George Floyd, in police custody in Minneapolis on Memorial Day.
"These fireworks are large explosive devices, and this was a serious assault on multiple police officers," Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said. "The individual or individuals who threw these fireworks should be arrested and prosecuted, and an investigation is ongoing. Our officers showed remarkable restraint under the circumstances and deescalated a tense and dangerous situation, but this attack was totally unacceptable and outrageous."
In New York, just before midnight Saturday, an officer was injured by shattering glass when his police cruiser in the city's borough of Brooklyn was fired upon, with the bullet penetrating the windshield. That was about an hour after an officer in the Bronx suffered a hand injury when a lit firework was tossed into a police vehicle.
The New York City police union in a tweet blamed the incidents on an "environment" created by Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city council, which last week passed a budget with $1 billion in cuts from the police department in response to "defund the police" protests as part of the Floyd demonstrations.
And in Portland, an undisclosed number of officers were injured in what was deemed a second night of riots that resulted from protests against police brutality, NBC affiliate KGW reported.
Commercial-grade fireworks were used and shot into broken windows at the federal courthouse. Protesters were told to stop their actions, did not, and a riot resulted with bricks, mortars, M-80s, and "other flammables" toward police.
KGW reported police responded with tear gas and crowd control munitions with "several officers" being injured, mostly due to fireworks and mortars exploding on or near them.
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