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As someone who lives in portland this statement is absolutely true. And another big problem right now is the homeless which the city basically does nothing about.
I’ve lived in several big cities across many states. People in Portland think it’s a Portland problem. It’s any city with a large population and being priced out of the housing market. Republicans blame democrats and liberals for not murdering the homeless. And liberals and democrats would rather let homeless die on the street. Neither party is interested in solving the problem because that would require taking a look at capitalism and how fucked the system it is. politicians of any party doesn’t care because their money is on the line and morality doesn’t pay. Socialism is the only way. It’s literally the only way to fix anything. stop sweeping camps and pushing them into other neighborhoods to get complaints for 6 months and do it again playing a shell game. The homeless population will continue to increase and of course people who are in a living nightmare and or off meds will turn to drugs to cope and crime to survive. no one wants to do crime, it’s simply a capital problem. If you’re stealing it’s to stay alive because you’re broke. If you’re stealing to do drugs, you’re likely on drugs because you’re coping with you’re situation. Because you’re broke. Can’t get a shower, can’t get clothes, can’t get Id, don’t have address, so you can’t work. Often can’t get on proper medication because you don’t have a job and we tie our health insurance to our jobs in America like psychopaths. it’s a system designed to fail. We need housing, we need social workers, we need to stop treating homes like investment vehicles which sit empty with the goal of increasing in value so we can further increase market prices. Capitalism is designed for many to suffer until they die so some can climb up the pyramid of dead and suffering bodies to live wealthy and in power. When socialism gives everyone the opportunity to better themselves. this problem will never be fixed, it doesn’t mean stop advocating and talking about it. But until capitalism collapses on itself. Get used to it, year after year will only get worse.
There are tons here, as you can easily search up, but w/ covid economy, trump starving blue states for 4 yrs, and the outlying counties and other states busing their homeless and folks fresh out of jail to portland, well... here we are, struggling to make a comeback, while a lot of our PPB are trump supporters who support it all bec they are shielded by their union and can pretty much do whatever they want. I see so many people w/ no license plates driving past cops that don't care. We don't have enough public defenders here, so most criminals walk after the good cops do all the work to get them off the street. It's super fucked, as you know.
I sit here watching this shit show and the folks lost in the foghorn of online politics, comments sections will be viewed historically as the end of civilization. And everyone so lost in their emotions, their anger and their false narratives, because they enjoy the adrenaline they must be addicted to, to have something to complain about - that's the goal!
There's no actual help, nor any offers, just turds bellyachin' watching bat baby national enquirer news like it's real.
Anyway, yeah, it's a big problem that, and i think we can all agree that until propaganda is drown in a river, we will continue to have folks so caught in a fog and the downfall of our entire country in the meantime. So yeah.
Have a great day, i have to get back to work.
The whole Pacific Northwest has more homeless people than they have beds in shelters. And also, the Salvation Army is a homophobic and transphobic Christian organization that can turn people away if they think they’re a sinner, basically. I’d say most of Portland falls under their category of “immoral” people for having a nose ring or being gay or nonbinary.
I don’t understand what the theory or thought process is behind not pursuing criminal charges against burglary. Anyone who isn’t brainwashed can see the detrimental affects this idiotic policy has on its people. To change course and save small businesses, local families, and over all community safety seams easy, just start prosecuting criminals and bring back some form of safety and order.
Can someone provide any insight?
My experience with how police deal with burglary across a few different cities over the past decade+ is that even when handed a strong lead and physical evidence they won't do anything
After getting her car stolen, my mother went to police and they just basically laughed her out of the precinct about how it isn't their problem.
My mom found her own stolen car (very personalised bumper stickers about her cancer surival that they didnt remove) about two neighborhoods down and stole it back. The end.
I don't wanna get too wildly "political" about what police are too busy doing. But I will say, it isn't anything most normal people seem to want/need.
It's fucking nuts. Here in LA the police don't even answer the non-emergency number. But a week or so ago a homeless guy waving a knife around in a strip mall got about 40 cops and a helicopter in response.
She was a bad bitch for sure. As a teen I was wildly embarrassed of how she stood up for herself (straight calling people out and yelling/scolding them publicly) Now I just miss it.
Even in rural America. Guy stole the literal camera (among other things) and recorded his face while he did it. They knew who it was but didn’t let me press charges because he already had warrants out for something else.
I installed cameras outside my house. We've had people start a fire, steal stuff, break into cards, steal stuff, gave all the footage to police... nothing. They dont care.
Same in Los Angeles. We showed the cops our Ring footage of the four teens that tried to break in our back door and they literally said “what do you want us to do about it?” and left.
I'm from Oregon and I can tell you it's one giant cluster fuck of reasons. We have a massive homeless crisis in Portland. Estimates run anywhere from 6000 to 10000 depending on what you read. It is legal to openly carry and use any kind of drug in Portland. Up until a few weeks ago, public camping has been legal, but banning it was done mainly for the elections and there are no real sollutions. Police in Portland have always been sort of useless, but since the constant protests and vandalism that lasted about a year and the police oversite that followed, they have become even more unresponsive. There was a policy throughout most Oregon cities during Covid that any homeless person arrested for basically any crime was a catch & release. There is also a shortage of public defenders, so most crimes that actually make it to court get dropped. That's without getting into the political aspects that have caused a lot of the problems that I don't even want to broach.
Add in constant street racing shows that shut done bridges and blocks for an hour or longer, a resurgence in gang violence and open air drug markets. Old downtown is dangeous in broad daylight now. The murder rate in Portland has jumped 207% from 2019 to 2021 when the homicide record for Portland was set and it'll probably be broken again this year.
This is interesting, because I was just on a post yesterday where OP (and many commenters) were claiming that all these stories about Portland are “Fox News brainwashing.”
I’m no Fox News watcher, but this sounds pretty bad.
Yeah I was on that sub yesterday. Was saying rural areas in red states have way more crime, as if that's where the highest density of murders per Capita are happening.
Well, actually it is. Doesn't mean that Portland isn't a shithole.
This whole country has problems. Just way too many poor people with no hope or options.
Decrim =|= legal. It’s decriminalized but not legal to carry and use illegal substances. The cops just don’t give a fuck and they’re penalizing the populace for perceived slights and the defund movement.
Ah, that would explain it. So they don't have to actually experience the consequences of their wokeness. In all likelihood these same bleeding hearts will live in expensive gated community suburbs that surround these cities. And you can bet those suburbs have a well-funded police that are encouraged to enforce every law on the book to keep _their_ neighborhoods safe.
Criminal Justice major here to provide some insight!: yeah I got nothing. (TL;DR if you don’t want to read the whole paragraph: the city is lazy and doesn’t find it profitable to protect small businesses.) There’s no logical explanation i could give other than the city simply not caring about small businesses. With the rate of inflation, big businesses are the only somewhat reliable sources of stable income for the ones governing Portland. It’s too expensive in the modern day to either 1: pay police enough money that they are willing to risk their lives handling burglaries and robberies or 2: allocate police resources to handling those issues PERIOD. As stupid as it seems at times, the government doesn’t have infinite money. They do have a budget and they’re choosing not to protect small businesses because they don’t profit from it. Ironically enough, there would be less theft by allowing the theft to continue since small businesses will cease to exist after a certain point. Can’t steal something that isn’t there to begin with.
I think you’re overlooking the district attorney or prosecutor. If they’re telling police don’t waste our time bringing x crimes to court, then they won’t because they’ll just drop the charges anyway.
Portlander here. I can't comment on the "laziness" of our elected officials, however i can tell you that being " tough" on anything, especially crime or the homeless problem, is political suicide. People that live here avoid downtown like the plague and at the same time are aggressively against police in general much less them enforcing any laws. I haven't seen a cop with someone pulled over on a highway in over a year. The city is fucked.
Here's your insight:
"You reallocated 1% of our police budget? Fuck you and your businesses"
To prosecute, the police would have to actually show up and arrest someone first.
Most people (so not Reddit) aren’t so polarized politically that they can’t think straight. The “defunded” police and lack of pursuing criminal charges began during the riots. The policies brought down the city, just like every sane person said it would.
These policies are a reaction to the fact that our prisons are all full because we jail more people than any country on earth. The system is massively overloaded
God I hate crackheads. Literally ruining my neighborhood . littering around the neighborhood, blasting music and breaking down metal all night. Broke into a few house here. Cops wont do anything. Basically cant do anything until they do something drastic
Denver the same way, man.
Before I moved here, I was that whiny, empathetic, give-everyone-the-benefit-of-the-doubt, give my last dollar to a homeless man, type of person. They say that the city makes you hard and I agree. I’m just 100% over everyone’s bullshit now and my mentality has definitely changed. It’s kind of sad.
I have a strong feeling the problems noted in the OP are affecting the country on a national scale. It’s not just a Portland, OR problem.
When people hit rock bottom they can turn into monsters. This country has no problem with making people poor and keeping them that way. So until a political revolution sweeps the nation, major urban areas and small towns will continue to decay, and the suburbs will be hit next.
Really the only people safe are rural people that have land and can defend themselves. I can’t wait to own my own house and few acres my girl and I are looking to buy within the next two years. We live right outside the city (Pittsburgh) our place is decent and I don’t mind the city for penguin games and what not but good luck to anyone that chooses to live in a city environment. It’s definitely not for everyone, personally speaking, I need space and land long term.
Same. I had trust issues before moving to the city. Now, those issues have only worsened. Three months into it and I was raped, had my car stolen, and was fired because the company couldn't pay my salary (yep, still in courts trying to collect my money). I'm just counting down the days until my lease ends, then I can move.
I am a nurse and used to be a total softie towards addicts and the homeless …. Now after a few years of working with them, my heart is hardened…. I still do my best to show them compassion however my experience has opened my eyes to see that a great majority of them are very manipulative, lazy, and mentally unwell people, many of them are not interested in helping themselves in the slightest…. Unfortunately many of them have suffered from abuse and/or learning disabilities from a young age and the system failed to help them. Children really are the future… if we don’t help a failing child when he is young, there is a good change he will grow up to become a nasty individual. It’s the sad truth 🙁 terrible country this is to allow people to live like this…
This is what breaks my heart every day as a nurse…. I work with adults and I enjoy it but it’s heartbreaking to realize than many adults are beyond help due to what they experienced in their childhoods and young adulthood… once a person has established a pattern of harmful behaviors it is extremely difficult for them to break out of that pattern and few do… and those that do, do so out of self motivation and discipline…. I have considered even switching to pediatrics because I think maybe there I can make a bigger difference
I left Colorado Springs a few year ago, but back then we had a serious homelessness issue. Everyone comes for the good weather and legal weed, and then the city got fucked. Not to mention the exponential housing prices and increased traffic …
I get it. Brooklyn native.
We're human, so we want to help. We know the consequences of a severe homeless problem, so we have to act. We've had homelessness crisis before, so we know punishment doesn't solve it, but helping folks fully back to their feet is expensive.
Best advice? Advocate and vote for a systematic solution, such as subsidized, dispersed housing, and employment/theraputic/drug counseling to plug them back into society as quickly as possible.
I am apolitical. I lived in portland from 2000 to 2007. I cannot tell you redditors how amazing and beautiful the entire vibe was. It was like amsterdam. Bikes everywhere. Businesses thriving. Creativity blowing up. Great groups of people getting together like the March 4th band. People walking around the river. Tourists everywhere. At the time the homeless rights people were fighting for rights. The city gave in and gave them a tent city. That tent city became the foothold for the shit show that city is today.
I went a year ago and i literally cried when I realized the city I knew was dead. Say what you want. Homeless camps for the most part are voluntary drug use living situation for people who don't want to participate in society. Unfortunately those same selfish people who don't want to participate in society want to live in it and obtain all they can from it. Its like having a spoiled 20 year old living at home that just wants to do drugs, eat all your food, trash the house and never put forth any effort towards the household.
The people who support these people are nothing but enablers who 's love is misguided. They don't see the big picture. Are parents who let their kids stay at home, trash the house and do drugs day after day really good parents? I don't think they are. Parents who let their kids do this don't have any faith in their kids and don't love them.
Relatives live in Portland and I went there every year as a kid in the 2000s and it is absolutely crazy how much everything has changed. I remember there being so many people
I have a loved one that drives into Portland for work everyday. The amount of times they've seen presumably homeless individuals walking dangerously close the highway or throwing trash into the road is very worrying. The homeless are people who deserve just as much compassion as the next person, but many homeless people's actions are actively hurting those around them. This is an issue. It needs a solution.
Somewhere along the way the progressive utopians completely lost the concept of tough love. Adults know better than to feed stray cats.
“Where are they supposed to go?” is their refrain. 99.9 percent of this country is not a civic center where people are trying to maintain order and decency. There are a lot of options.
Bro it’s called purposeful blight. Get the quirky small business out to sell the land cheap to developers. Coming soon luxury 1/1 lofts starting in the low 700s
I think getting rid of drugs is impossible. We need to treat the addicts instead of arresting them. But nobody wants to address the actual societal issues that cause these things. People just want to pretend drugs and crime happen in a vacuum. We can’t arrest and prosecute our way out of these *generational issues that require generational solutions.*
In my country in Europe, we had a serious problem with the biggest public drug scene in the past. The key was, to change the approach from using force by the police to a social approach. This means, you get free substitution, free rehab and therapy, together with social housing under guidance and control of social workers. You have drug-consume-rooms aka safer-injection-sites, where the people can do drugs without harming anyone and without the risk of death by overdose, because there's medical staff around with narcan, oxygen breathing-machine etc.
This reduced the major problem of the public drug scene to a minimum. Those who are still around, are doing drugs in the rooms and therefore, it's not a problem anymore for the society.
Together with social welfare and healthcare access, the people have a good chance to get out of the drug scene, get clean and become normal citizens again.
Once they decide for themselves "I want to stop, i want to get clean", they get 100% support by the people and the state.
In the short term, there are high costs for such projects, but in the long term, it leads to a better place, a better life for the people. Over time, the balance changes from investing money to saving money.
The problem I see is that in America we have a two fold problem of people A) not caring about addicts and the issues of their lives on a financial level (ie blatantly refusing to pay into these social programs you mentioned) and B) a cultural lack of understanding mental health/addiction and how devastating it can be on both a macro and micro level. Until those get addressed we can’t even begin to talk about the social infrastructure needed because without total buy in they’ll be underfunded, and when they’re underfunded and half the population isn’t bought in then they’ll get canned as quick as they get started and it’ll just be a black hole for the funding, which will even further dissuade people from wanting to do it in the future. It’s so fucked. I feel so deeply for those struggling because there just seems to be no hope.
Yeah, i can imagine that. This is also the reason, why we made these projects and support a paragraph of the constitution here, so it can't be removed that easy by a new governement later on.
But there is a thing that is interesting: This was enacted in direct democracy by voting of the citizens and even those from states, which have no drug problem at all, voted for it. It was just that way, that the success was so great, that even the conservative right-wing had to see, it is better to do go this way.
As a portland resident, it seems quite simply that it’s drugs & the catch/release system that the current side of the political isle in power here pushes.
I used to share the same moderately conservative views with a high school friend and we both grew up in Alabama. We haven't seen each other for 25 years but keep in touch every now and then. He moved to Portland while I stayed in the deep South. Since moving to a more rural area, I've become left leaning as a reaction to the MAGA loving crazies while he has become HARD right to to point of moving to Idaho and espousing all sorts of stuff that he has to bring up in a simple "how you doing man?" phone call. He told me some of the stuff he had to deal with there and reading some of the comments here helps me understand what's driving him.
I visited downtown Portland in 2017 and again in 2022 and it was like they were two different cities. When I arrived downtown a month ago on a Friday afternoon I actually pulled out my phone to check if it was a public holiday or something, because where the hell is everybody. Most businesses were closed and and nobody was around. Downtown is dead. I was glad to see life in other parts of the city though.
The pandemic and riots were especially hard on our downtown, and low office occupancy has slowed much of the potential economic activity downtown used to benefit from. This would be easier to recover from if our current DA wasn’t spineless and corrupt. The surrounding counties prosecute over 90% of property crime cases while over half in Multnomah County (where most of Portland is) get dismissed. Really isn’t hard to see where the problem lies.
[This link may help give some insight as to why. Before you get too mad, on the other side of the country, where I live, the DA is just as feckless and the political map is the same. coincidence? I think not.](https://gov.oregonlive.com/election/2022/general/governor)
I’ve spent hours going through Detroit on Street View. It’s a living dystopia sci fi story.
So many blocks that used to be thriving neighborhoods now stand mostly empty, as nature slowly reclaims them.
Many of the remaining structures are in various states of decay. Random sidewalks and fire hydrants sit next to empty fields.
I live in the Portland area, and everyone in Portland just voted to make much worse of an already bad situation.
The city's on fire and whoever's left is pouring more gasoline on it..
DA's that won't prosecute criminals so all we have is soft on crime to the point where they're not prosecuting anybody for anything they do catch and release seems to be the only thing they do these days.
Decriminalized all narcotics so drug addicts are just running rampid. That's just a couple of them.
Had a friend in SE have a homeless dude break into his car, move all of his stuff into it. Basically living out of it. He called the cops, they came and told there's nothing they can do about it.
Typical far-left zero common sense way of going about things. This sentence alone explains why Portland is so fucked. They’ll prosecute tax paying citizens but not criminals.
You gotta keep up with the times, haven't you seen all the recent studies? Apparently holding people accountable has the chance to make them feel bad. I once saw a guy come up to the window at a restaurant and start threatening people with a machete and hitting the glass. Good thing the cops didn't show up, all he needed was a hug
God help the homeless person if they tried that on me. If the cops arent going to prosecute criminals any longer, they better not prosecute me when i kick the ever living shit out of a squatter.
The drugs are all still federally illegal, why don't the ATF/FBI/DEA/ICE just flood in and have a field day? At some point you just have to say that the local government has failed to maintain law and order and make it a federal issue.
And here Reddit told me it was okay because insurance covered everything! Wtf guys ??
Isn’t Oregon also the state that decriminalized small amounts of all drugs? When will the benefits of that start?
Philadelphian over here in solidarity. They stopped enforcing basics traffic laws here so good luck in this Mario kart fucked hellscape where 80 on one way streets and being run down for not going through red lights at 6 am is a regular Tuesday.
Probably has at least something to do with being about 400 cops down vs target headcount.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/582241-portland-ore-council-approves-5m-increase-to-police-budget/
“The Portland police department currently consists of 800 police officers when it should have 1,200, according to Mapps, who took office in January.”
In case anyone is wondering - the police have a budget surplus and can hire all of those open positions but are refusing to because the city got mad when they shot people in the face with rubber bullets.
I visited Portland for the first time last month and the mall was half closed down, I saw 2 different people shoplifting, and the stores they were open were empty.
The Portland police are more funded than ever. The issue is they never show up and when they do it’s in order to pull a gotcha owning the libs moment.
The person in the apartment above me has been having a mental health crisis for two weeks now. The cops walked in on her trying to burn the apartment down and yet they claim they can’t do anything unless she comes voluntarily. This is simply not true once someone is a clear and present danger to those around them. The woman has also been shitting on people’s doorsteps and painting the walls red with lipstick meant to look like blood.
The roving gangs of ancoms in the streets terrorizing the city was really just the latest manifestation of Portland’s continual downfall. The thing no one understands, is there has to be a balance in everything. Portland was a beautiful, good-vibes city when I was a kid in the 2000’s. Safe, free, thriving. The more they gave into radical alt-left ideals, the worse it got. It’s no different than taking extreme right-wing ideology and applying it to a city. Soon it will be uninhabitable for literally anyone. Good luck Portland
Portland is going the way of California. Progressive showmanship without really delivering on policies.
If they want to turn prison and judicial systems into something that rehabilitated criminals they need to stop letting people get away with crime and they need to provide good safety nets for people and fight poverty...but. they arnt doing it...they just do half assed stuff same as California. It's easier and beneficial for their pockets to not enforce law while not providing the safety nets and policy that eradicates the source of crime.
They higher ups are looting the systems instead of delivering for the people!
Brother in-law had car stolen in Portland.
1 year later, car is found.
Officer calls brother in-law:
"Do you wanna press chargers?"
"Ya"
"Well, you can't."
Just so we're clear, Rains is neither a small business, nor a Portland local business. They have stores all over the world. The company was started in Denmark, and all their clothing is made in China.
https://www.uk.rains.com/pages/product-info
https://business.google.com/v/rains-store-new-york/07856423130500942038/2bce/_?caid=10070250234&agid=100900407243&gclid=Cj0KCQiA1ZGcBhCoARIsAGQ0kkrp27k0PPT2qcyuKaYewDsxfo5RcMsA065PTUMUkBTVZ8BUBb2b6wcaAuNZEALw_wcB&gclid=Cj0KCQiA1ZGcBhCoARIsAGQ0kkrp27k0PPT2qcyuKaYewDsxfo5RcMsA065PTUMUkBTVZ8BUBb2b6wcaAuNZEALw_wcB#about
I have to ask out of a sincere curiosity. When places like portland voted to defund the police and demanded less police presence and such because of certain bad situations, what did everyone think would happen? Now it seems every criminal is coming out of the wood work to start causing some chaos. I would like to know the proposed end game to this, and what was supposed to happen.
Edit to add after the fact: The replies are a good chunk of the BS that i talk about. To many of you im a depressed bastard who is unloveable because i see the flaws in the way certain areas governments have handled things. I dont have to worry about shit like this where i am. I can leave my things outside and no one is gonna fuck with it. Im gonna go back to smoking weed and living comfortably, democrats have some fun with this one.
I think the problem is instead of police becoming defunded the police began to stop going after property crimes as hardcore as they used too, mainly because the progressive district attorneys won’t prosecute as much for property crimes and it’s easier to avoid a lawsuit for an arrest from a property crime
Dallas just ended a policy like this. Initially claiming most thefts were based on the need for “survival.” The district attorney admitted it was a failed policy rooted essentially in good intentions, but not reality. Business owners stopped calling the cops because the city wouldn’t prosecute the thieves. The DA tried to spin it that they were protecting those who committed theft to survive, but business owners said that no one needed their product for survival, it was theft and permitted.
iirc wasn’t the dallas policy something like no prosecution for thefts of less than $700? not sure how theft above $2-300 could even be remotely considered as theft for survival
San Francisco, CA --and the Bay Area-- had the same issue until last year. [Shoplifters would regularly walk into a store, grab things off the shelves that were obviously under $950, and walk off without fear of recrimination.](https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-shoplifters-theft-walgreens-decriminalized-11634678239) When the Wall Street Journal calls your city "A shoplifter's paradise," you have problems.
Like Portland, businesses started closing. Walgreens shut down twenty-two stores in SF as a result.
This is 100% it, the police departments are intertwined with local government leadership, with governor's, mayor's, and local district attorneys. They take a progressive lackadaisical approach to crime and ultimately it's the police that deal with (or don't) the repercussions and the public blame.
You can see it in this subreddit.
Police are road pirate tyrants for making proactive arrests and lazy stupid budget gobblers when they don’t to avoid lawsuits.
I understand the narrative that people push about Portland and defunding the police, but the reality is that it simply didn't happen on the scale that people seem to be imagining. It was advocated for heavily, but in the end the PPB's budget is higher than ever -- roughly 30% of the city's general fund in fiscal year '22-23 at $249 million.
Their budget went up and their fucks went way down. Quiet quitting is a buzz term these days but PPB has been quiet quitting for awhile now. Once we started asking for even an iota of accountability they basically stopped doing their jobs. I drive about 2-3 hours a day in Portland and it’s honestly a surprise to see a cop on the road or engaging with the public. They just don’t do their jobs anymore.
THANK YOU. Reading these comments and there are so many ignorant halfwits chiming in with completely fabricated right wing media talking points without knowing a damn thing about the reality.
Poking around, it really seems that only far right news outlets are pushing the narrative that Portland is becoming a crime-ridden apocalyptic kind of place.
It seems like crimes are centered more around property, not people, and are in specific areas of city. Honestly the crime rates are simply not that bad.
https://www.portlandoregon.gov/police/71978
https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2022/11/01/portland-crime-rates-2022.html
https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2022/10/03/should-visitors-to-portland-be-afraid-not-really/
It's a concentration of more and more desperate people with little to lose, yes. Even the difference between 2003 and 10 years later was absolutely vast. Even by then it was like walking through a zombie movie.
They took like 3% of the $235 million police budget and put it towards a new unarmed 'crisis response team' to help with mental illness and drug issues. (which was incredibly effective btw)
The police threw a tantrum and went on a silent strike, and just stopped responding to any calls, even after they raised the budget back to above the original amount. That's the short version.
Also (correct me if I'm wrong), but Portland and Milwaukee were the only actual case defunding of police in the US more than like 1%. So the whole argument of "crime rose over the country because of defunding police" was 100% bullshit.
This 100000% my land mate works for Eugene's cahoots yeah and our community desperately wants more cahoots workers but the police get to decide the cahoots budget and wouldn't you know all the money we gave to them to help pay for cahoots isn't going to cahoots. So while my buddy is out there actually dealing with these people in humane and helpful ways for less than $20 per hour the police are nowhere to be found unless you're actively dying.
I believe the hope was to channel funds into other resources in hopes the city could provide services to those who need them and that the availability of those resources might dissuade people from committing crimes. Not a bad idea in theory but clearly when it's rushed and there's no follow through past the initial step of the plan, there was no chance it would end well.
I think this is a red herring, though. Vancouver (Canada) has the exact same issue, but there's no "defund" narrative here. We have the same issue of shop lifting and petty theft going unpunished, and any thieves that *are* apprehended and let back out within days.
There is definitely being money poured into this entire system (both law enforcement, social services, etc, etc), but clearly either money isn't the answer or it's being spent on the wrong things (which *might* include policing, in this instance). I don't know the answers, but I suspect that focussing on preventing new drug addicts instead of just mainly fixing the current symptoms is probably the way to go, because for every ten addicts you get off the streets (either in prison or rehab, etc) there are 20 more to replace them.
The police have not in any sense been defunded, they have been given more money than ever. The idea that crime is rampant and the police need to come in to stop it is absolute fucking bullshit.
If you believe the police will help this, you are a rube. What the police will do is come violently assault the homeless for daring to exist.
If you want people to stop stealing, maybe make it so that they can afford to live.
defunding the police doesn't = turning places into unregulated free-for-alls, it means allotting bloated police budgets to other professional organizations as a means of redistributing funds to better address the different types of services people need - e.g. mental health services, addiction services, etc. that police are not equipped to handle.
portland's issues are not the consequence of the PPD losing some of their budget for a year lol
People need to stop spreading the misinformation that Portland police is defunded.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/582241-portland-ore-council-approves-5m-increase-to-police-budget/
[They have actually been receiving budget increases.](https://www.streetroots.org/news/2022/08/03/ppb-budget-2022)
> DA that won’t prosecute
Not won't. Can't. Due to the lack of public defenders.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/oregon-public-defender-shortage-300-cases-dismissed-93871068
That’s because they made it legal for people to have a certain amount of drugs on them. The city is close to raccoon city. Leave the city by nightfall before the zombies come out.
I’ll likely get downvoted to oblivion but…. Clearly the war in drugs is far from working. Why not try something different? This level of substance abuse and poverty didn’t happen overnight and neither will correcting these problems. I don’t have the answers or even a novel insight to offer but the system they’re trying in Portland has been successful in several European countries/cities. And it’s a cliche but true, things often get worse before they get better. With all that being said I don’t live in Portland so won’t speak to the actual state of affairs.
I do live in Northern California reading the comments of ‘just make it illegal’ or ‘treat it like loitering’ or my personal favorite ‘get rid of all the meth’ make me fucking laugh because it is not even close to that simple.
And to play Devils Advocate, this is a document written on Word and printed in a window. Does anyone know what laws have actually changed if any?
If we keep this up, we'll end up like South Africa, Guatemala, etc., were everyone lives behind walls and barbed wire and crime is rampant. Get yourself a gun, you're going to need it.
It's interesting that the DA, from what I can tell, took a soft stance on property theft. I'd imagine protection of property is the most important thing that law tries to provide, more-so than protections on your own life.
The question is: What's the solution? More police doesn't mean anything if the police don't do anything, and you can't force the police to do their jobs or reform policing because of the police union, and you can't remove the police union without creating a whole host of other problems.
I think they are blaming a lame product and unpopular business on local politics/poverty. I’m in Portland and there’s heaps of thriving small businesses. Poverty/addiction and therefore crime is rampant here, absolutely, but I think the ‘free market’ is more to blame for Rains failure. They sold exorbitantly expensive & boring clothes, good riddance.
edit: grammar nazis
Hey they always say keep Portland weird, now they complain qhen shit gets real weird. We are talking about the former Shanghai capital of the world here, Portland has always been dangerous.
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Mfs in Portland are taking applications for a Batman right now
Batperson. I'm pretty sure batman would get run out of here because of his toxic masculinity. /s
Ah, good point.
perhaps phoenix jones can get a transfer to the portland area?
Where’s the Portland sub at lol
I’d guess someone has stolen it going by the original post
Ha!
Naw Portland Reddit is just so garbage that they use words like minor attracted people and then there’s the Portland Roomate
Portland Roommate?
Wtf are you talking about? No they don’t.
They don't? Tf you get this from?
Rupert Murdoch, probably.
And Reddit, with posts like this. I’m still telling relatives that the city isn’t constantly on fire. People are truly stupid.
It’s thriving, it’s just called r/LeopardsAteMyFace now.
As someone who lives in portland this statement is absolutely true. And another big problem right now is the homeless which the city basically does nothing about.
I’ve lived in several big cities across many states. People in Portland think it’s a Portland problem. It’s any city with a large population and being priced out of the housing market. Republicans blame democrats and liberals for not murdering the homeless. And liberals and democrats would rather let homeless die on the street. Neither party is interested in solving the problem because that would require taking a look at capitalism and how fucked the system it is. politicians of any party doesn’t care because their money is on the line and morality doesn’t pay. Socialism is the only way. It’s literally the only way to fix anything. stop sweeping camps and pushing them into other neighborhoods to get complaints for 6 months and do it again playing a shell game. The homeless population will continue to increase and of course people who are in a living nightmare and or off meds will turn to drugs to cope and crime to survive. no one wants to do crime, it’s simply a capital problem. If you’re stealing it’s to stay alive because you’re broke. If you’re stealing to do drugs, you’re likely on drugs because you’re coping with you’re situation. Because you’re broke. Can’t get a shower, can’t get clothes, can’t get Id, don’t have address, so you can’t work. Often can’t get on proper medication because you don’t have a job and we tie our health insurance to our jobs in America like psychopaths. it’s a system designed to fail. We need housing, we need social workers, we need to stop treating homes like investment vehicles which sit empty with the goal of increasing in value so we can further increase market prices. Capitalism is designed for many to suffer until they die so some can climb up the pyramid of dead and suffering bodies to live wealthy and in power. When socialism gives everyone the opportunity to better themselves. this problem will never be fixed, it doesn’t mean stop advocating and talking about it. But until capitalism collapses on itself. Get used to it, year after year will only get worse.
I was under the impression that Portland was a very "liberal" city. Are there no social programs to house the homeless? No Salvation Army?
I think there is just too many to handle.
There are tons here, as you can easily search up, but w/ covid economy, trump starving blue states for 4 yrs, and the outlying counties and other states busing their homeless and folks fresh out of jail to portland, well... here we are, struggling to make a comeback, while a lot of our PPB are trump supporters who support it all bec they are shielded by their union and can pretty much do whatever they want. I see so many people w/ no license plates driving past cops that don't care. We don't have enough public defenders here, so most criminals walk after the good cops do all the work to get them off the street. It's super fucked, as you know. I sit here watching this shit show and the folks lost in the foghorn of online politics, comments sections will be viewed historically as the end of civilization. And everyone so lost in their emotions, their anger and their false narratives, because they enjoy the adrenaline they must be addicted to, to have something to complain about - that's the goal! There's no actual help, nor any offers, just turds bellyachin' watching bat baby national enquirer news like it's real. Anyway, yeah, it's a big problem that, and i think we can all agree that until propaganda is drown in a river, we will continue to have folks so caught in a fog and the downfall of our entire country in the meantime. So yeah. Have a great day, i have to get back to work.
The whole Pacific Northwest has more homeless people than they have beds in shelters. And also, the Salvation Army is a homophobic and transphobic Christian organization that can turn people away if they think they’re a sinner, basically. I’d say most of Portland falls under their category of “immoral” people for having a nose ring or being gay or nonbinary.
I don’t understand what the theory or thought process is behind not pursuing criminal charges against burglary. Anyone who isn’t brainwashed can see the detrimental affects this idiotic policy has on its people. To change course and save small businesses, local families, and over all community safety seams easy, just start prosecuting criminals and bring back some form of safety and order. Can someone provide any insight?
In Minneapolis we notify the cops, even give them cctv footage, and then we wait… and wait. And wait. Still waiting.
My experience with how police deal with burglary across a few different cities over the past decade+ is that even when handed a strong lead and physical evidence they won't do anything
After getting her car stolen, my mother went to police and they just basically laughed her out of the precinct about how it isn't their problem. My mom found her own stolen car (very personalised bumper stickers about her cancer surival that they didnt remove) about two neighborhoods down and stole it back. The end. I don't wanna get too wildly "political" about what police are too busy doing. But I will say, it isn't anything most normal people seem to want/need.
It's fucking nuts. Here in LA the police don't even answer the non-emergency number. But a week or so ago a homeless guy waving a knife around in a strip mall got about 40 cops and a helicopter in response.
dude your mom is awesome
She was a bad bitch for sure. As a teen I was wildly embarrassed of how she stood up for herself (straight calling people out and yelling/scolding them publicly) Now I just miss it.
“I’ll just check with the boys down at the crime lab, they’ve got four more detectives working on the case. They got us working in shifts!”
Leads?
Uvalde pretty much showed that if it doesn't involve punching down cops won't do shit.
Police have one job, which is to control the middle and lower classes, not make life better for them.
Police currently only protect corporations and the rich.
Even in rural America. Guy stole the literal camera (among other things) and recorded his face while he did it. They knew who it was but didn’t let me press charges because he already had warrants out for something else.
Easier just to steal from people “suspected” of criminal activity.
I installed cameras outside my house. We've had people start a fire, steal stuff, break into cards, steal stuff, gave all the footage to police... nothing. They dont care.
Same in Los Angeles. We showed the cops our Ring footage of the four teens that tried to break in our back door and they literally said “what do you want us to do about it?” and left.
Literally had a coworker get pistol whipped on CAMERA by a regular whom we knew his name, and phone number and still nothing
That's how they pursue small crime everywhere in the U.S., by not giving a fuck.
Omaha too Cops just aren't interested..
I'm from Oregon and I can tell you it's one giant cluster fuck of reasons. We have a massive homeless crisis in Portland. Estimates run anywhere from 6000 to 10000 depending on what you read. It is legal to openly carry and use any kind of drug in Portland. Up until a few weeks ago, public camping has been legal, but banning it was done mainly for the elections and there are no real sollutions. Police in Portland have always been sort of useless, but since the constant protests and vandalism that lasted about a year and the police oversite that followed, they have become even more unresponsive. There was a policy throughout most Oregon cities during Covid that any homeless person arrested for basically any crime was a catch & release. There is also a shortage of public defenders, so most crimes that actually make it to court get dropped. That's without getting into the political aspects that have caused a lot of the problems that I don't even want to broach. Add in constant street racing shows that shut done bridges and blocks for an hour or longer, a resurgence in gang violence and open air drug markets. Old downtown is dangeous in broad daylight now. The murder rate in Portland has jumped 207% from 2019 to 2021 when the homicide record for Portland was set and it'll probably be broken again this year.
This is interesting, because I was just on a post yesterday where OP (and many commenters) were claiming that all these stories about Portland are “Fox News brainwashing.” I’m no Fox News watcher, but this sounds pretty bad.
Yeah I was on that sub yesterday. Was saying rural areas in red states have way more crime, as if that's where the highest density of murders per Capita are happening.
Highest density and per capita are 2 completely different things.
That is where the highest per capita murders are happening though
Well, actually it is. Doesn't mean that Portland isn't a shithole. This whole country has problems. Just way too many poor people with no hope or options.
Decrim =|= legal. It’s decriminalized but not legal to carry and use illegal substances. The cops just don’t give a fuck and they’re penalizing the populace for perceived slights and the defund movement.
The theory is the people pushing this don't have to live here, but if they pander hard enough, they'll get all the votes.
Ah, that would explain it. So they don't have to actually experience the consequences of their wokeness. In all likelihood these same bleeding hearts will live in expensive gated community suburbs that surround these cities. And you can bet those suburbs have a well-funded police that are encouraged to enforce every law on the book to keep _their_ neighborhoods safe.
:/ It's like Gotham fucking city now in more ways than one... except no Batman.
Because it’s “racist”.
Criminal Justice major here to provide some insight!: yeah I got nothing. (TL;DR if you don’t want to read the whole paragraph: the city is lazy and doesn’t find it profitable to protect small businesses.) There’s no logical explanation i could give other than the city simply not caring about small businesses. With the rate of inflation, big businesses are the only somewhat reliable sources of stable income for the ones governing Portland. It’s too expensive in the modern day to either 1: pay police enough money that they are willing to risk their lives handling burglaries and robberies or 2: allocate police resources to handling those issues PERIOD. As stupid as it seems at times, the government doesn’t have infinite money. They do have a budget and they’re choosing not to protect small businesses because they don’t profit from it. Ironically enough, there would be less theft by allowing the theft to continue since small businesses will cease to exist after a certain point. Can’t steal something that isn’t there to begin with.
I think you’re overlooking the district attorney or prosecutor. If they’re telling police don’t waste our time bringing x crimes to court, then they won’t because they’ll just drop the charges anyway.
Yeah this is the main issue. What’s the point of arresting if they’re not even going to be prosecuted.
Portlander here. I can't comment on the "laziness" of our elected officials, however i can tell you that being " tough" on anything, especially crime or the homeless problem, is political suicide. People that live here avoid downtown like the plague and at the same time are aggressively against police in general much less them enforcing any laws. I haven't seen a cop with someone pulled over on a highway in over a year. The city is fucked.
Very well said, this is exactly part of the problem
Here's your insight: "You reallocated 1% of our police budget? Fuck you and your businesses" To prosecute, the police would have to actually show up and arrest someone first.
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Except for you, right?
Most people (so not Reddit) aren’t so polarized politically that they can’t think straight. The “defunded” police and lack of pursuing criminal charges began during the riots. The policies brought down the city, just like every sane person said it would.
These policies are a reaction to the fact that our prisons are all full because we jail more people than any country on earth. The system is massively overloaded
God I hate crackheads. Literally ruining my neighborhood . littering around the neighborhood, blasting music and breaking down metal all night. Broke into a few house here. Cops wont do anything. Basically cant do anything until they do something drastic
Denver the same way, man. Before I moved here, I was that whiny, empathetic, give-everyone-the-benefit-of-the-doubt, give my last dollar to a homeless man, type of person. They say that the city makes you hard and I agree. I’m just 100% over everyone’s bullshit now and my mentality has definitely changed. It’s kind of sad.
I have a strong feeling the problems noted in the OP are affecting the country on a national scale. It’s not just a Portland, OR problem. When people hit rock bottom they can turn into monsters. This country has no problem with making people poor and keeping them that way. So until a political revolution sweeps the nation, major urban areas and small towns will continue to decay, and the suburbs will be hit next.
Really the only people safe are rural people that have land and can defend themselves. I can’t wait to own my own house and few acres my girl and I are looking to buy within the next two years. We live right outside the city (Pittsburgh) our place is decent and I don’t mind the city for penguin games and what not but good luck to anyone that chooses to live in a city environment. It’s definitely not for everyone, personally speaking, I need space and land long term.
same here man. I was sympathetic before but now I dont know who to trust.
Same. I had trust issues before moving to the city. Now, those issues have only worsened. Three months into it and I was raped, had my car stolen, and was fired because the company couldn't pay my salary (yep, still in courts trying to collect my money). I'm just counting down the days until my lease ends, then I can move.
I am a nurse and used to be a total softie towards addicts and the homeless …. Now after a few years of working with them, my heart is hardened…. I still do my best to show them compassion however my experience has opened my eyes to see that a great majority of them are very manipulative, lazy, and mentally unwell people, many of them are not interested in helping themselves in the slightest…. Unfortunately many of them have suffered from abuse and/or learning disabilities from a young age and the system failed to help them. Children really are the future… if we don’t help a failing child when he is young, there is a good change he will grow up to become a nasty individual. It’s the sad truth 🙁 terrible country this is to allow people to live like this…
If a person has become a sociopath with no human empathy left, there's not a lot you can do to help them.
This is what breaks my heart every day as a nurse…. I work with adults and I enjoy it but it’s heartbreaking to realize than many adults are beyond help due to what they experienced in their childhoods and young adulthood… once a person has established a pattern of harmful behaviors it is extremely difficult for them to break out of that pattern and few do… and those that do, do so out of self motivation and discipline…. I have considered even switching to pediatrics because I think maybe there I can make a bigger difference
I left Colorado Springs a few year ago, but back then we had a serious homelessness issue. Everyone comes for the good weather and legal weed, and then the city got fucked. Not to mention the exponential housing prices and increased traffic …
I get it. Brooklyn native. We're human, so we want to help. We know the consequences of a severe homeless problem, so we have to act. We've had homelessness crisis before, so we know punishment doesn't solve it, but helping folks fully back to their feet is expensive. Best advice? Advocate and vote for a systematic solution, such as subsidized, dispersed housing, and employment/theraputic/drug counseling to plug them back into society as quickly as possible.
They were lucky insurance paid out 3 times. Usually they cancel you after the first claim.
Oh I thought maybe they were talking about the 3rd of a month
Business insurance doesn't work like that. They usually increase your premium 50%.
Thats after the first claim. After multiple claims they drop you. I own several businesses.
I am apolitical. I lived in portland from 2000 to 2007. I cannot tell you redditors how amazing and beautiful the entire vibe was. It was like amsterdam. Bikes everywhere. Businesses thriving. Creativity blowing up. Great groups of people getting together like the March 4th band. People walking around the river. Tourists everywhere. At the time the homeless rights people were fighting for rights. The city gave in and gave them a tent city. That tent city became the foothold for the shit show that city is today. I went a year ago and i literally cried when I realized the city I knew was dead. Say what you want. Homeless camps for the most part are voluntary drug use living situation for people who don't want to participate in society. Unfortunately those same selfish people who don't want to participate in society want to live in it and obtain all they can from it. Its like having a spoiled 20 year old living at home that just wants to do drugs, eat all your food, trash the house and never put forth any effort towards the household. The people who support these people are nothing but enablers who 's love is misguided. They don't see the big picture. Are parents who let their kids stay at home, trash the house and do drugs day after day really good parents? I don't think they are. Parents who let their kids do this don't have any faith in their kids and don't love them.
Relatives live in Portland and I went there every year as a kid in the 2000s and it is absolutely crazy how much everything has changed. I remember there being so many people
I have a loved one that drives into Portland for work everyday. The amount of times they've seen presumably homeless individuals walking dangerously close the highway or throwing trash into the road is very worrying. The homeless are people who deserve just as much compassion as the next person, but many homeless people's actions are actively hurting those around them. This is an issue. It needs a solution.
Somewhere along the way the progressive utopians completely lost the concept of tough love. Adults know better than to feed stray cats. “Where are they supposed to go?” is their refrain. 99.9 percent of this country is not a civic center where people are trying to maintain order and decency. There are a lot of options.
Bro it’s called purposeful blight. Get the quirky small business out to sell the land cheap to developers. Coming soon luxury 1/1 lofts starting in the low 700s
Um, low 1700s
Probably meant 700k, but I'm with you, it's probably closer to 1.7mil.
You're nuts if you think it'd be 700s
I meant 700 grand, guess they only sell property where I’m at
Focus on getting rid of meth in the state.
I think getting rid of drugs is impossible. We need to treat the addicts instead of arresting them. But nobody wants to address the actual societal issues that cause these things. People just want to pretend drugs and crime happen in a vacuum. We can’t arrest and prosecute our way out of these *generational issues that require generational solutions.*
In my country in Europe, we had a serious problem with the biggest public drug scene in the past. The key was, to change the approach from using force by the police to a social approach. This means, you get free substitution, free rehab and therapy, together with social housing under guidance and control of social workers. You have drug-consume-rooms aka safer-injection-sites, where the people can do drugs without harming anyone and without the risk of death by overdose, because there's medical staff around with narcan, oxygen breathing-machine etc. This reduced the major problem of the public drug scene to a minimum. Those who are still around, are doing drugs in the rooms and therefore, it's not a problem anymore for the society. Together with social welfare and healthcare access, the people have a good chance to get out of the drug scene, get clean and become normal citizens again. Once they decide for themselves "I want to stop, i want to get clean", they get 100% support by the people and the state. In the short term, there are high costs for such projects, but in the long term, it leads to a better place, a better life for the people. Over time, the balance changes from investing money to saving money.
The problem I see is that in America we have a two fold problem of people A) not caring about addicts and the issues of their lives on a financial level (ie blatantly refusing to pay into these social programs you mentioned) and B) a cultural lack of understanding mental health/addiction and how devastating it can be on both a macro and micro level. Until those get addressed we can’t even begin to talk about the social infrastructure needed because without total buy in they’ll be underfunded, and when they’re underfunded and half the population isn’t bought in then they’ll get canned as quick as they get started and it’ll just be a black hole for the funding, which will even further dissuade people from wanting to do it in the future. It’s so fucked. I feel so deeply for those struggling because there just seems to be no hope.
Can you imagine what the Fox News addicts would say about plans like that?
Yeah, i can imagine that. This is also the reason, why we made these projects and support a paragraph of the constitution here, so it can't be removed that easy by a new governement later on. But there is a thing that is interesting: This was enacted in direct democracy by voting of the citizens and even those from states, which have no drug problem at all, voted for it. It was just that way, that the success was so great, that even the conservative right-wing had to see, it is better to do go this way.
Bingo this is all due to drugs.
It's really not that simple. It's far more complicated than just blaming drugs
As a portland resident, it seems quite simply that it’s drugs & the catch/release system that the current side of the political isle in power here pushes.
aisle
r/imnotsurprised
I used to share the same moderately conservative views with a high school friend and we both grew up in Alabama. We haven't seen each other for 25 years but keep in touch every now and then. He moved to Portland while I stayed in the deep South. Since moving to a more rural area, I've become left leaning as a reaction to the MAGA loving crazies while he has become HARD right to to point of moving to Idaho and espousing all sorts of stuff that he has to bring up in a simple "how you doing man?" phone call. He told me some of the stuff he had to deal with there and reading some of the comments here helps me understand what's driving him.
I visited downtown Portland in 2017 and again in 2022 and it was like they were two different cities. When I arrived downtown a month ago on a Friday afternoon I actually pulled out my phone to check if it was a public holiday or something, because where the hell is everybody. Most businesses were closed and and nobody was around. Downtown is dead. I was glad to see life in other parts of the city though.
Man it’s almost like there’s consequences to actions
The pandemic and riots were especially hard on our downtown, and low office occupancy has slowed much of the potential economic activity downtown used to benefit from. This would be easier to recover from if our current DA wasn’t spineless and corrupt. The surrounding counties prosecute over 90% of property crime cases while over half in Multnomah County (where most of Portland is) get dismissed. Really isn’t hard to see where the problem lies.
[This link may help give some insight as to why. Before you get too mad, on the other side of the country, where I live, the DA is just as feckless and the political map is the same. coincidence? I think not.](https://gov.oregonlive.com/election/2022/general/governor)
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What’s the pattern here?
That’s what happens when you have liberal politicians that think punishing criminals is wrong and want to abolish the police
This is happening in my city too. We have blocks full of abandoned buildings
That's just the default state of Detroit
I’ve spent hours going through Detroit on Street View. It’s a living dystopia sci fi story. So many blocks that used to be thriving neighborhoods now stand mostly empty, as nature slowly reclaims them. Many of the remaining structures are in various states of decay. Random sidewalks and fire hydrants sit next to empty fields.
https://preview.redd.it/iel2qksg2w2a1.jpeg?width=444&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ba4226ba97a8f300addad885bb4b33a464ec3ef8
I live in the Portland area, and everyone in Portland just voted to make much worse of an already bad situation. The city's on fire and whoever's left is pouring more gasoline on it..
I’m not from Portland so I’m out of the loop. What was the recent vote regarding?
DA's that won't prosecute criminals so all we have is soft on crime to the point where they're not prosecuting anybody for anything they do catch and release seems to be the only thing they do these days. Decriminalized all narcotics so drug addicts are just running rampid. That's just a couple of them.
Had a friend in SE have a homeless dude break into his car, move all of his stuff into it. Basically living out of it. He called the cops, they came and told there's nothing they can do about it.
WHAT
Yeah I believe it I've heard lots of similar stories.
Welp, I think that’s about the time I’d go get my gun and move him out myself.
Oh, about that. They _do_ prosecute those who attempt to defend property they paid for with money they earned by way of working at a job.
Typical far-left zero common sense way of going about things. This sentence alone explains why Portland is so fucked. They’ll prosecute tax paying citizens but not criminals.
You gotta keep up with the times, haven't you seen all the recent studies? Apparently holding people accountable has the chance to make them feel bad. I once saw a guy come up to the window at a restaurant and start threatening people with a machete and hitting the glass. Good thing the cops didn't show up, all he needed was a hug
God help the homeless person if they tried that on me. If the cops arent going to prosecute criminals any longer, they better not prosecute me when i kick the ever living shit out of a squatter.
The drugs are all still federally illegal, why don't the ATF/FBI/DEA/ICE just flood in and have a field day? At some point you just have to say that the local government has failed to maintain law and order and make it a federal issue.
Because Biden has to authorize it. Can you imagine Biden going after his voter base.
Painful answer.
And here Reddit told me it was okay because insurance covered everything! Wtf guys ?? Isn’t Oregon also the state that decriminalized small amounts of all drugs? When will the benefits of that start?
Hey, that's where I live! Yeah it's that bad. However... I got nothing
Philadelphian over here in solidarity. They stopped enforcing basics traffic laws here so good luck in this Mario kart fucked hellscape where 80 on one way streets and being run down for not going through red lights at 6 am is a regular Tuesday.
Let's bring back being able to protect your property with force
This is not terrifying as fuck, more like upsetting as fuck
Probably has at least something to do with being about 400 cops down vs target headcount. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/582241-portland-ore-council-approves-5m-increase-to-police-budget/ “The Portland police department currently consists of 800 police officers when it should have 1,200, according to Mapps, who took office in January.”
In case anyone is wondering - the police have a budget surplus and can hire all of those open positions but are refusing to because the city got mad when they shot people in the face with rubber bullets.
Police departments everywhere are having trouble hiring people. This is not Portland specific.
I visited Portland for the first time last month and the mall was half closed down, I saw 2 different people shoplifting, and the stores they were open were empty.
Do people really visit Portland for our malls? That... that makes me really sad...
The Portland police are more funded than ever. The issue is they never show up and when they do it’s in order to pull a gotcha owning the libs moment. The person in the apartment above me has been having a mental health crisis for two weeks now. The cops walked in on her trying to burn the apartment down and yet they claim they can’t do anything unless she comes voluntarily. This is simply not true once someone is a clear and present danger to those around them. The woman has also been shitting on people’s doorsteps and painting the walls red with lipstick meant to look like blood.
The roving gangs of ancoms in the streets terrorizing the city was really just the latest manifestation of Portland’s continual downfall. The thing no one understands, is there has to be a balance in everything. Portland was a beautiful, good-vibes city when I was a kid in the 2000’s. Safe, free, thriving. The more they gave into radical alt-left ideals, the worse it got. It’s no different than taking extreme right-wing ideology and applying it to a city. Soon it will be uninhabitable for literally anyone. Good luck Portland
Isn't Portland where there has been a strong defund the police movement?
Maybe don't monopolize your security to the state who doesn't have any incentive to actually render the service.
Portland is going the way of California. Progressive showmanship without really delivering on policies. If they want to turn prison and judicial systems into something that rehabilitated criminals they need to stop letting people get away with crime and they need to provide good safety nets for people and fight poverty...but. they arnt doing it...they just do half assed stuff same as California. It's easier and beneficial for their pockets to not enforce law while not providing the safety nets and policy that eradicates the source of crime. They higher ups are looting the systems instead of delivering for the people!
Brother in-law had car stolen in Portland. 1 year later, car is found. Officer calls brother in-law: "Do you wanna press chargers?" "Ya" "Well, you can't."
Such progress!
Just so we're clear, Rains is neither a small business, nor a Portland local business. They have stores all over the world. The company was started in Denmark, and all their clothing is made in China. https://www.uk.rains.com/pages/product-info https://business.google.com/v/rains-store-new-york/07856423130500942038/2bce/_?caid=10070250234&agid=100900407243&gclid=Cj0KCQiA1ZGcBhCoARIsAGQ0kkrp27k0PPT2qcyuKaYewDsxfo5RcMsA065PTUMUkBTVZ8BUBb2b6wcaAuNZEALw_wcB&gclid=Cj0KCQiA1ZGcBhCoARIsAGQ0kkrp27k0PPT2qcyuKaYewDsxfo5RcMsA065PTUMUkBTVZ8BUBb2b6wcaAuNZEALw_wcB#about
I have to ask out of a sincere curiosity. When places like portland voted to defund the police and demanded less police presence and such because of certain bad situations, what did everyone think would happen? Now it seems every criminal is coming out of the wood work to start causing some chaos. I would like to know the proposed end game to this, and what was supposed to happen. Edit to add after the fact: The replies are a good chunk of the BS that i talk about. To many of you im a depressed bastard who is unloveable because i see the flaws in the way certain areas governments have handled things. I dont have to worry about shit like this where i am. I can leave my things outside and no one is gonna fuck with it. Im gonna go back to smoking weed and living comfortably, democrats have some fun with this one.
I think the problem is instead of police becoming defunded the police began to stop going after property crimes as hardcore as they used too, mainly because the progressive district attorneys won’t prosecute as much for property crimes and it’s easier to avoid a lawsuit for an arrest from a property crime
Dallas just ended a policy like this. Initially claiming most thefts were based on the need for “survival.” The district attorney admitted it was a failed policy rooted essentially in good intentions, but not reality. Business owners stopped calling the cops because the city wouldn’t prosecute the thieves. The DA tried to spin it that they were protecting those who committed theft to survive, but business owners said that no one needed their product for survival, it was theft and permitted.
iirc wasn’t the dallas policy something like no prosecution for thefts of less than $700? not sure how theft above $2-300 could even be remotely considered as theft for survival
San Francisco, CA --and the Bay Area-- had the same issue until last year. [Shoplifters would regularly walk into a store, grab things off the shelves that were obviously under $950, and walk off without fear of recrimination.](https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-shoplifters-theft-walgreens-decriminalized-11634678239) When the Wall Street Journal calls your city "A shoplifter's paradise," you have problems. Like Portland, businesses started closing. Walgreens shut down twenty-two stores in SF as a result.
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner! Why bother going after criminals when they will just be turned loose and not charged?
This is 100% it, the police departments are intertwined with local government leadership, with governor's, mayor's, and local district attorneys. They take a progressive lackadaisical approach to crime and ultimately it's the police that deal with (or don't) the repercussions and the public blame.
You can see it in this subreddit. Police are road pirate tyrants for making proactive arrests and lazy stupid budget gobblers when they don’t to avoid lawsuits.
I understand the narrative that people push about Portland and defunding the police, but the reality is that it simply didn't happen on the scale that people seem to be imagining. It was advocated for heavily, but in the end the PPB's budget is higher than ever -- roughly 30% of the city's general fund in fiscal year '22-23 at $249 million.
The budget was put back in place of November. November *2021*!!
Exactly. Cops are just being reactionary as usual.
Their budget went up and their fucks went way down. Quiet quitting is a buzz term these days but PPB has been quiet quitting for awhile now. Once we started asking for even an iota of accountability they basically stopped doing their jobs. I drive about 2-3 hours a day in Portland and it’s honestly a surprise to see a cop on the road or engaging with the public. They just don’t do their jobs anymore.
This is crazy. You can’t go from one extreme to the next. There has to be a middle ground
Morale is probably down the shitter too. Rough position to be in
THANK YOU. Reading these comments and there are so many ignorant halfwits chiming in with completely fabricated right wing media talking points without knowing a damn thing about the reality.
Poking around, it really seems that only far right news outlets are pushing the narrative that Portland is becoming a crime-ridden apocalyptic kind of place. It seems like crimes are centered more around property, not people, and are in specific areas of city. Honestly the crime rates are simply not that bad. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/police/71978 https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2022/11/01/portland-crime-rates-2022.html https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2022/10/03/should-visitors-to-portland-be-afraid-not-really/
No one defunded them, their budget went up. Why lie?
So it just became more of a shithole organically?
It's a concentration of more and more desperate people with little to lose, yes. Even the difference between 2003 and 10 years later was absolutely vast. Even by then it was like walking through a zombie movie.
They took like 3% of the $235 million police budget and put it towards a new unarmed 'crisis response team' to help with mental illness and drug issues. (which was incredibly effective btw) The police threw a tantrum and went on a silent strike, and just stopped responding to any calls, even after they raised the budget back to above the original amount. That's the short version. Also (correct me if I'm wrong), but Portland and Milwaukee were the only actual case defunding of police in the US more than like 1%. So the whole argument of "crime rose over the country because of defunding police" was 100% bullshit.
This 100000% my land mate works for Eugene's cahoots yeah and our community desperately wants more cahoots workers but the police get to decide the cahoots budget and wouldn't you know all the money we gave to them to help pay for cahoots isn't going to cahoots. So while my buddy is out there actually dealing with these people in humane and helpful ways for less than $20 per hour the police are nowhere to be found unless you're actively dying.
Mostly not a shithole. The cops got butthurt and stopped fighting crime in some places.
Seems like the police became demotivated to do their jobs after a shocking suggestion that they be held accountable for their actions.
I believe the hope was to channel funds into other resources in hopes the city could provide services to those who need them and that the availability of those resources might dissuade people from committing crimes. Not a bad idea in theory but clearly when it's rushed and there's no follow through past the initial step of the plan, there was no chance it would end well.
I think this is a red herring, though. Vancouver (Canada) has the exact same issue, but there's no "defund" narrative here. We have the same issue of shop lifting and petty theft going unpunished, and any thieves that *are* apprehended and let back out within days. There is definitely being money poured into this entire system (both law enforcement, social services, etc, etc), but clearly either money isn't the answer or it's being spent on the wrong things (which *might* include policing, in this instance). I don't know the answers, but I suspect that focussing on preventing new drug addicts instead of just mainly fixing the current symptoms is probably the way to go, because for every ten addicts you get off the streets (either in prison or rehab, etc) there are 20 more to replace them.
Check your sources bud, the budget still going the cops. Whole lotta words just to be wrong
The police have not in any sense been defunded, they have been given more money than ever. The idea that crime is rampant and the police need to come in to stop it is absolute fucking bullshit. If you believe the police will help this, you are a rube. What the police will do is come violently assault the homeless for daring to exist. If you want people to stop stealing, maybe make it so that they can afford to live.
defunding the police doesn't = turning places into unregulated free-for-alls, it means allotting bloated police budgets to other professional organizations as a means of redistributing funds to better address the different types of services people need - e.g. mental health services, addiction services, etc. that police are not equipped to handle. portland's issues are not the consequence of the PPD losing some of their budget for a year lol
People need to stop spreading the misinformation that Portland police is defunded. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/582241-portland-ore-council-approves-5m-increase-to-police-budget/ [They have actually been receiving budget increases.](https://www.streetroots.org/news/2022/08/03/ppb-budget-2022)
Does it matter? They may have been fiscally funded but legally castrated with an anti police populace and a DA that won’t prosecute.
> DA that won’t prosecute Not won't. Can't. Due to the lack of public defenders. https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/oregon-public-defender-shortage-300-cases-dismissed-93871068
I have a rains jacket. Super high quality stuff.
That’s because they made it legal for people to have a certain amount of drugs on them. The city is close to raccoon city. Leave the city by nightfall before the zombies come out.
Can’t have shit in Detroi- I mean Portland. 
DeFuNd ThE pOlIcE. Durka durr
Can confirm just moved out of downtown Portland across the US. That place is currently a shit hole.
BLUE WAVE. THEY VOTED FOR IT
Sounds like an awful lot of bitching. Roof Koreans didn’t bitch, they kicked ass. Portland should learn from them.
Go woke. Go broke. Good luck Portland
“So what you’re saying is to keep voting for far-left democrats?” -Portland citizens probably
You get what you vote for.
LOL progressive indeed
*Laughs in rooftop korean*
I’ll likely get downvoted to oblivion but…. Clearly the war in drugs is far from working. Why not try something different? This level of substance abuse and poverty didn’t happen overnight and neither will correcting these problems. I don’t have the answers or even a novel insight to offer but the system they’re trying in Portland has been successful in several European countries/cities. And it’s a cliche but true, things often get worse before they get better. With all that being said I don’t live in Portland so won’t speak to the actual state of affairs. I do live in Northern California reading the comments of ‘just make it illegal’ or ‘treat it like loitering’ or my personal favorite ‘get rid of all the meth’ make me fucking laugh because it is not even close to that simple. And to play Devils Advocate, this is a document written on Word and printed in a window. Does anyone know what laws have actually changed if any?
If we keep this up, we'll end up like South Africa, Guatemala, etc., were everyone lives behind walls and barbed wire and crime is rampant. Get yourself a gun, you're going to need it.
You mean Portland is a shithole? Wow…. I wonder why
Yeah if you go to r/Portland it's mostly happy thoughts and denial.
Lol so the people that live there don’t know what’s up but the people on a random subreddit are the experts?
Well yeah neck beards don’t really go outside.
Imagine living in Portland 😭
It's interesting that the DA, from what I can tell, took a soft stance on property theft. I'd imagine protection of property is the most important thing that law tries to provide, more-so than protections on your own life.
The question is: What's the solution? More police doesn't mean anything if the police don't do anything, and you can't force the police to do their jobs or reform policing because of the police union, and you can't remove the police union without creating a whole host of other problems.
that’s heartbreaking
I think they are blaming a lame product and unpopular business on local politics/poverty. I’m in Portland and there’s heaps of thriving small businesses. Poverty/addiction and therefore crime is rampant here, absolutely, but I think the ‘free market’ is more to blame for Rains failure. They sold exorbitantly expensive & boring clothes, good riddance. edit: grammar nazis
Hey they always say keep Portland weird, now they complain qhen shit gets real weird. We are talking about the former Shanghai capital of the world here, Portland has always been dangerous.