Was That A Sniper On The Roof Of A Hotel In Portland Tuesday Night?

Protest coverage has dominated the news cycle and social media for nearly a week now. Protests in Portland have been powerful spectacles, completely peaceful until tempers flared and arrests were made Monday night. That drew more coverage for the planned protest in downtown Portland on Tuesday evening, bringing reporters and photographers en masse out to cover the historic scene. But in the midst of major moments of solidarity between protesters and police, there was one image shared on social media that raised some serious concerns for people.

Shared on Twitter by Derek Davis, he happened to notice some peculiar on the roof of the Hampton Inn hotel in downtown Portland. Davis, a photojournalist for the Portland Press Herald, captioned his photo with "someone is on the roof of the Hampton Inn watching the protest". However, many commenters were quick to react with a fair question about that photo, "is that a sniper?"

One of Davis' followers on Twitter magnified the photo and it certainly appears to be a sniper watching over the protesting crowd below. Tiffany Bond, an independent Congressional candidate in Maine, tweeted to the Portland Police asking if this was one of their officers. They didn't reply via Twitter as of this writing, but a commenter on Bond's post confirmed that the police had placed officers at strategic high points of the city to ensure the safety of the protesters as well as businesses along the protest route, some of which had incurred damage on Monday evening.

There's hope that the moment of unity shared by protesters and police on Tuesday evening will calm tensions moving forward.