Here’s your Portland, Ore. dumb people math problem for the day. Raise your hand when you get your ans — wow, that was fast.
Defunding police + dissolving a police gun violence team + a woke prosecutor who doesn’t prosecute + pandemic panic = a record murder rate in Portland.
The other night in Portland, two shooters ran through a neighborhood and fired off 100 rounds of ammo into cars, houses, and a nearby restaurant in an apparent running gunfight. Shell casings of multiple calibers were found at the scene of the crimes, according to Portland Police. It was one of literally hundreds of shootings in Portland in 2021 amid a record rate of murders.
Press Release: Nearly 100 Shots Fired in Parkrose Heights Neighborhood (Photo)
Link: https://t.co/l1QwtOq2Bu pic.twitter.com/DXXo1AFYef— Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) December 29, 2021
Ninety people were murdered on the streets of Portland during 2021, the largest number of murders since the height of the city’s gang wars in 1987. Most of the murders and assorted shootings were committed by gun-wielding gang members, but the woke crowd at City Hall, who demanded the gang and gun team be dismantled because a fentanyl-addled George Floyd died in police custody, dismantled the very team keeping a lid on the violence.
Press Release: UPDATE: Portland Homicide Detectives Request the Public's Help (Photo)
Link: https://t.co/Kv6kGpe43g pic.twitter.com/F1JeJcw6DF— Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) December 29, 2021
After rioting Leftists forced anti-police changes, including de-funding, crime went up across the country. The Wall Street Journal reported that “the [record] 2021 figures follow a scary 2020, when the nationwide homicide rate (6.5 per 100,000) was the highest in 23 years.” Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles all suffered record numbers of murders. So it is with Portland.
Press Release: UPDATE: Old Town Homicide Victim Identified (Photo)
Link: https://t.co/Mpznfn8IaE pic.twitter.com/mZNyhzCPhq— Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) December 27, 2021
The rioting Antifa and Black Lives Matter mobs backed up their demands for fewer cops and less jail time with violence. Local officials, who should have known what would happen but were under the spell of mob celebrity, now claim, “Hey, it ain’t us.”
Lead mob cheerleader, Portland City Commissioner Jo-Ann Hardesty, says dismantling police units that addressed guns and gangs had nothing to do with the increase in gun and gang violence.
“It is a totally unrelated issue,” Hardesty told KOIN 6 News. “The police have a role, but their role is simply to solve crime. Their role is not to prevent crime,” she lectured, “their role is not to intervene.” This is the woman who tried to push flaccid Mayor Ted Wheeler out of his police commissioner role.
Related: Portland’s Cop-Hating City Commissioner, Jo Ann Hardesty, In Trouble With Creditors Again
Press Release: Mt. Scott-Arleta Neighborhood Homicide Victim Identified (Photo)
Link: https://t.co/HDMHWMZuux pic.twitter.com/aToig4iLLo— Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) December 22, 2021
In 2021, Portland reduced funding for cops by $15 million, dismantled the gun and gang team, and demoralized the police bureau. Local District Attorney Mike Schmidt chose not to bring cases against the rioters and let most of them walk. Days ago, the Merrick Garland Department of Justice set free a Portland Antifa rioter, who now identifies as a woman, and who pointed lasers in the eyes of the police and set the police union headquarters on fire during the summer of love.
Gee, wonder if that had anything to do with the spike in the crime rate?
Police Sergeant Ken Duilio told KOIN 6 News that he’s never seen cops laid so low. “We got defunded — school police, TriMet, GVRT [Gun Violence Reduction Team] — and then we see this rise in crime. It bothers every one of us,” he said. Oh, and he hastened to add that, during the riots, “we didn’t feel support from our elected officials.” Huh, you don’t say.
Press Release: CORRECTION: Eliot Neighborhood Homicide Victim Identified (Photo)
Link: https://t.co/N0tcszHbtL pic.twitter.com/bfQ4xSEDg1— Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) December 22, 2021
New day, new acronym. Duilio now heads the restorative justice unit called the Focused Intervention Team (FIT) that will work alongside another acronym group of citizens called the Community Oversight Group (COG). Portland Police are already subject to other citizen review boards, but, hey, what’s one more?
The city’s website says the goal of the 15-officer FIT team “is to deescalate and lower the tensions in the community that are feeding the contagious gun violence crisis.” I’ll tell you what’s contagious: Leftist mayors and council members and media narratives that push BLM and Antifa fairy tales of cops hunting black males to murder.
Stupid is as stupid does.
And here’s where more wokesters in government come into play. … Meanwhile, the prosecutor who didn’t prosecute mobsters and gangsters, DA Mike Schmidt, says the problem with the judicial system in Portland right now is “guns” and Governor Kate Brown’s extended COVID emergency powers that keep the wheels of justice from turning.
Schmidt told KATU-TV that “covid rules and extension of state of emergency has slowed our ability to bring cases to trial.” He said that in a typical week pre-COVID they prosecuted “20-30 cases” but now there are only four to five cases brought each week, because fewer defendants are pleading out, instead opting for what will be a delayed trial. “When cases aren’t brought to trial, that disincentivizes people to resolve cases with a plea agreement; that’s what drives a big backlog,” he says. Of course, he’s not prosecuting a lot of people anyway, because he’s a George Soros lackey. When George Soros sneezes, Portland gets chaos.
From the top down, Portland and Oregon’s leadership has allowed this existential crisis to flourish and worsen. People are afraid to let their kids out to play because of all the shootings. Between the mask scolds, inept city leadership, flying bullets, and the governor’s never-ending attempt to control Oregonians during the pandemic, more people than ever are in danger.
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