Here’s the photo The Oregonian will undoubtedly submit for various awards. It captures a second in time of the November 17th when the Occupy Portland and their union backers attempted take over of bridges and banks in Portland, Oregon and came up against Portland Police.

A woman is pepper sprayed in front of the Chase Bank in downtown Portland.

Why was she sprayed?

Here’s a photo from KPTV from their helicopter:

Photo Credit: KPTV Screen Shot

There’s also something else that former Sheriff and Police Chief (and Blogforce member) Bernie Giusto notes about the above photo. The cops’ backs are almost against the wall of the bank. They’ve got nowhere else to go. They’ve got to protect the space or be overwhelmed.

“Police officers with nowhere to go and faced with an overwhelming number of demonstrators who are outwardly aggressive, need to push back and push back hard.”

Police say the protesters were pushing on the cops in unprecedented fashion as Officers tried to keep them from rushing the bank:

Photo Credit: KPTV Screen Shot Here’s another overhead from the KPTV chopper to give you more context.

Photo Credit: KPTV Screen Shot

This woman who could be the one pictured told KPTV she washed her eyes out and her skin burned a bit but it obviously was not that big a deal to her.

Photo Credit: KPTV screen shot

This woman is not a victim and the cops weren’t wrong to deploy the pepper spray. She asked for it.