Home homeless Portland Pro-Crime urban model Escape from Portland
Home homeless Portland Pro-Crime urban model Escape from Portland

Escape from Portland

It was a big year in Portland where the murder rate rose 18.6%. That was the perfect time for Portland’s progressive politburo to spend over $1 million on unarmed cops armed only with pepper spray.

There was a little bit of excitement when it was learned that their 200 hours of training would include “Taser Orientation” suggesting that they might be allowed to carry tasers. But Mayor Wheeler’s office explained that the weaponless cops weren’t being trained to use tasers, but “how to avoid being tased”.

Portlanders aren’t waiting for officers to show up and shout, “Don’t tase me, bro”. Instead in a city overrun with crime, they’re increasingly taking matters and guns into their hands.

Of the 32 violent deaths in Portland last year, 5 were found to have been carried out in self-defense. That tops the 4 deaths that occurred as a result of shootings by those cops who still have their guns.

Richard R. Hanley showed up in the parking lot outside Timeless Tattoo. The California homeless bum had previously made the news when he was arrested for attacking his ex-girlfriend and her new beau with a metal chain. Hanley, already on probation for a domestic abuse and strangulation conviction, with six felony and seven misdemeanor priors, also pulled out huge clumps of a female deputy’s hair.

The repeat offender began setting up his tent in the parking lot. When a female catering manager asked him to stop, he attacked her. Joseph D. Vinci, a tattoo artist, intervened. Hanley pulled a knife and Vinci pulled a gun. And Hanley’s long reign of terror ended to the outcry of local pro-crime activists.

Portland's other homeless death had a much darker ending.

Dallas Boyd, a 29-year-old mother of a two-year-old, was strangled to death by a homeless man and her body was left to rot in his van. Like Hanley, the homeless killer had racked up nine felonies, six misdemeanors and 15 parole violations, including third-degree assault, and first-degree robbery.

Homeless crime has become both routine and terrifying. One Portlander described being threatened with a machete on a children’s playground, and it’s taken the city’s crime problem to new levels.

15% of Portland’s violent deaths in 2018 involved the homeless in some way.

Portland property crimes rose 15% in 2017. Its property crime rates easily outpace Boston and Denver, and put it on a par with dangerous cities like Atlanta. Its homeless blight has put Portland on the same path as San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles. Portland’s Downtown Clean and Safe had picked up less than 9,897 used needles in 2015. This year it's 39,000. Garbage and biohazards have also increased.

Car thefts are up 45% in two years. In Mayor Wheeler’s State of the City address this year, he mentioned a “97 percent increase in stolen vehicle calls” in 5 years. There was also a "64 percent increase in unwanted persons calls and a 32 percent increase in disorder calls."

But Mayor Wheeler emphasized Portland was working on a more “inclusive” and diverse” police force, even as he admitted that the city was caught in a crime wave where, “assaults, homicides, sex offenses, etc. – have increased and are rising at a higher rate than last year; property crimes have also increased and are rising at a higher rate than last year.”

“Chief Outlaw leads a bureau with fewer officers today than a decade ago, despite a 10 percent increase in Portland’s population,” Wheeler whined.

Mayor Wheeler had picked Danielle Outlaw as the first African-American police chief. Outlaw was meant to be the face of Portland’s new inclusive and diverse force. She inherited the thankless job of trying to control homeless crime, without offending homeless advocates, and reining in political street violence without offending Antifa. And soon white hipsters were outraged at Chief Outlaw’s contemptuous dismissal of Antifa as schoolyard brats who, “come with the intention to fight. And then you get mad because I kicked your butt. And then you go back and you wail off and whine and complain.”

Chief Outlaw had also cleared the Occupy ICE encampment without the mayor’s approval, after he had insisted that the police should do nothing to interfere with the harassment of ICE employees.

Portland’s white radicals soon began accusing the city’s first African-American police chief of being a white supremacist while campaigning to get her fired.

“The fact that I, as a very obvious African American female police chief, have been accused by those within that group or those who support that group, as being a supporter and protector of those who are believed to be white supremacists—if that's even the case—is ridiculous. Right?” she asked.

Ridiculous is the only way that anything works in Portland.

Mayor Wheeler’s virtue signaling is being ignored by his own police chief while citizens are taking the law into their own hands. The tattoo parlor was only one of five self-defense killings in Portland.

Self-defense killings made up a sixth of deaths by violence in the past year. These included a U-Haul employee shooting an armed robber, a transgender man shot by a homeless woman after he tried to stab her with a knife, and a FedEx driver who killed a man in a fight over racial slurs.

The U-Haul robber had 9 previous convictions, including robbery, burglary and rape.

These are the warning signs of a dysfunctional city spinning out of control.

Mayor Hale, Wheeler’s predecessor, who turned Portland into a homeless encampment zone by refusing to enforce laws against bums setting up tents on public streets, decided not to run for reelection. His predecessor, Mayor Adams, is enmeshed in a sex scandal which involved an underage boy, sexual harassment, blackmail, and allegations of using an employee for sexual procurement.

Mayor Wheeler won’t go out with a sex scandal, but like his predecessor, he’s unable to reconcile the demands of virtue signaling in a leftist city with the practical problems caused by its implementation. The leftist solutions he’s tried, spending more on homeless services, demilitarizing and diversifying the police, have only backfired.

Portland, like countless other Democrat urban strongholds, proved that the more money is spent on homeless services, the worse homelessness becomes. Disarming police officers leads to more people taking the law into their own hands. And black cops will enforce the law just like white cops. They’re also less cowed by political correctness and more willing to speak their minds than their white counterparts.

The city government has turned Portland into a miserable hellhole, but individuals are stepping up.

In the Montavilla area, the Montavilla Initiative has been organizing neighborhood watches, foot patrols and monitoring area crime. Pro-crime and homeless advocates have accused them of being "vigilantes", but area residents see them as filling a vital need. It’s one of eight patrol groups in the area.

The Initiative describes a neighborhood needle exchange program degenerating into “human waste in neighbors’ yards, a large vehicle hosting drug deals in the parking lot of the exchange, heroin users shooting up and passing out and then driving off intoxicated, people urinating and defecating in public, clients shooting up in neighbors’ yards, even having sex on a neighbor’s front porch.”

It’s no wonder that Portland’s formerly hot housing market is cooling off and home values are falling. As housing prices increase, not everyone wants to pay record prices to live next to a needle exchange.

The escape from Portland has begun.





Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine at the above link.

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Thank you for reading.

Comments

  1. It is sad. Portland used to be a beautiful city.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The city of course is still geographically attractive but tarnished by the people from everywhere in the US who rushed in because it is a left wing utopia. We see what this kind of attitude does to a city, and state, but how do you go back? Tooth paste back into a tube?

      Delete
  2. Anonymous10/1/19

    The liberal utopia....don't let it happen to your city.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous10/1/19

    There are plenty of cities that used to be beautiful, but once infested with liberals, turn into bonafide shit holes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. One of the commies of Portland is leaving the State of Oregon. Barbara Buono, (a sacrificial lamb of the Democrats), Mayor Ted Wheel's pick for his Senior Advisor is returning to the State of New York. This time she will be in NY city and not Jersey, where she unsuccessfully ran against Chris Cristy for Governor. So here is a "heads up !" to NYC. She's coming back! OMG

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous10/1/19

    Note: Outlaw is the SECOND AA Police Chief, the first was Moose, later of DC Sniper fame and whose son was busted pushing drugs, all the PDX Chiefs for the previous decades have been disgraced or busted on felonies IIRC

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mark Kroecker from LAPD was a real police chief and very popular with the rank and file but alas, he was too serious a chief for Portland's politicians. I know Mark and he is too good for most in Portland.

      Delete
  6. The major problem is that these people fleeing the disaster that they brought upon themselves bring their idiotic policies and ideas with them. Then they ruin wherever city is unfortunate to receive them. Arizona is a prime example.

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  7. People,we had better prepare to defend ourselves now, evil is on the ascendant and it's going to be full out war or suicide very soon in my opinion. You can't run from the spreading cancer forever. I honestly hope the tide can be turned but I'm getting more and more doubtful.

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  8. Anonymous10/1/19

    From Stumptown to Dumptown with piles of needles and feces

    ReplyDelete
  9. And when the Leftists move from the failed and failing States and cities they will continue to vote like they did whence they came; thereby ruining every place they migrate to.

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  10. Anonymous10/1/19

    This same thing is happening in Santa Cruz, CA. We've been overrun by homeless. They're openly "camping" all over town. Crime is on the rise along with deaths from drug overdoses. The police blotter is full of serial recidivists, "known to police" on probation/parole. In the meantime, the UCSC students just voted more clueless liberals into power in City government. It's a real mess. Read a few weeks of the http://www.santamierda.com/ and you'll get a sense of what we're dealing with.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Santa Cruz, California == Seconded!

      My chum Karl, immigrant from Poland, has a top-quality bakery and restaurant on Pacific downtown. Beggars constantly trespass to harass dining customers, then threaten staff asking them to leave. How do you run a business in this environment?

      2011 == Goofballs asleep on the sidewalks, asleep blocking doors to businesses. All day, every day. How do you run a business in this environment?

      2014 == near the Boardwalk, I was inside Taco Bell eating my meal. Three goofballs used a local form of 'food stamps' to acquire enough food for an army, then smeared their food on windows and across tables and counters, dancing through their mess. Two employees threw off their aprons, and walked off the job. How do you run a business in this environment?

      Free food wasn't good enough for them. [fingers form pistol, thumb drops hammer]

      Delete
  11. Anonymous10/1/19

    Sounds a lot like 'Frisco.

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  12. This is a great thing for the rest of the country. Portland's lax law enforcement and nice benefits for the homeless have made Portland a prison without walls or bars. All the violent homeless will be drawn there and will not be loose on the rest of the Republic's citizens.

    Instead of being known as the City of Roses, it can take pride in a new slogan: Portland: A Bed of Roses.

    Peace and Love to Portland.

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  13. looking forward to when the "homeless" try boise on for size...

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  14. When cities fall apart because they're poor and the jobs move out or white flight or public housing is a disaster then we all shrug and say well that sucks. So why are we shocked when many of the same bad decisions lead otherwise prosperous successful cities down the same rat hole? St Louis and Detroit were prosperous too.

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  15. Absolutely excellent articles Daniel.

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  16. Anonymous11/1/19

    Whoa. I last visited Portland in 1970- then it was known as the "City of Roses." Thank God my relatives died long ago- Then, all they had to complain about... was the rain.

    Now they have a different sort of Reign - a Reign of Leftist Idiocy. - Fr. John+

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  17. Yep.....Portland, Seattle, San Francisco....harbingers of things to come. You couldn’t catch me living within 100 miles of any American city with a population of more than 10,000 ever again.

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  18. Anonymous13/1/19

    My Schadenfreude is boundless. When the bums finally (or soonly) reach the point of interfering with commerce enough it will cause real economic harm to the Productive Sector and Seattle will look like Detroit and Portland will look like Mogadishu. Hahahaha!
    _revjen45

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  19. re:
    California bureaucrat Maxine Waters

    I heard her district is a garbage dump.
    I heard her us$6million estate is not in her district.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Anonymous19/1/19

    I have not checked in here for some time because I thought it was getting boring, but the last several posts are great quality so I guess I will add you back to my
    daily bloglist. You deserve it my friend :)

    ReplyDelete
  21. Anonymous20/1/19

    The Police Chiefs don't end up doing anything because the Mayor is in charge of the Police. Loony leftist mayors trying to police don't work.

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  22. VA Rancher21/1/19

    I grew up in Portland until I left for US Navy in 1982. I briefly lived there again 86-93, I moved to suburbs until mid-99, and left the state forever then. Portland is a Hot Mess and will soon look like Detroit... Very Sad...

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  23. Isn't Portland's homeless problem partially a result of their open invitation to the worlds "Refugees"? (As you mentioned in a later article?)

    ReplyDelete
  24. Anonymous8/3/19

    I am glad I dont live there but leftist Denver is not far behind.

    ReplyDelete

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