Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler agrees with a local group of faith leaders that the city needs to do more to curb violence in its streets, and he is seeking $2 million from the city council to support that effort.
On Thursday, Wheeler appeared in a virtual meeting with members of the Inter-Faith Peace & Action Collaborative, or IPAC, where the Democrat announced that he was requesting a one-time appropriation to improve the city’s policing against gun violence, Oregon Live reported.
Wheeler’s ask comes after Portland recorded its 20th homicide of the year.
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In a letter addressed to Wheeler and to city commissioners, IPAC requested that the city invest more in its Office of Violence Prevention, that it reestablish a team to patrol the streets, and create an independent oversight committee.
“We understand why the previous Council voted to make significant cuts and changes to the Police Bureau,” the letter says. “We acknowledge the serious reforms and major changes that need to occur in policing. However, we also believe defunding the Police Bureau without replacement programs and interventions caused a vacuum and put many people at risk and caused others to assume there was no accountability.”
The letter continues, “Cuts to the Police Bureau created a vacuum that undermined public safety and the very communities whose voices the Council — and our community — seek to amplify. We are deeply concerned about the dramatic increase in violence on the street. People are getting killed, injured, and traumatized. The cycle of retaliation will continue until we intervene and address the root causes of such violence.”
The Portland City Council disbanded the city’s Gun Violence Reduction Team last summer following the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests in the city. Wheeler was prominent among those elected officials calling for police reform. He appeared with crowds of protesters, which were not always friendly to him, on more than one occasion and was even hit with police tear gas.
Wheeler, who, as mayor, is also the city’s police commissioner, later banned police from using gas to disperse crowds.
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In his state of the city address on Friday, Wheeler touted the city’s decision to redirect “millions of dollars from the police budget to community-based organizations for community services,” saying that the city has given the community “more power to shape the future of public safety in Portland.”
Wheeler will reportedly bring the funding proposal before the council in the next couple of weeks.
