An explosion of violence in Portland has forced police to resort to creative tactics in an effort to address increasing gun violence with limited resources.
City officials began earlier this month placing traffic barrels on streets where high-speed drive-by shootings have broken out in an effort to obstruct future ones.
Portland police are also no longer pulling over drivers for minor traffic violations, such as expired tags.
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Murders have proliferated this year against the backdrop of a police officer exodus that has left Portland, like several other cities across the country, struggling to combat more crime with fewer tools.
“With police officer shortages, in a lot of areas, crime prevention units are disbanded,” retired Sgt. Betsy Brantner Smith, spokesperson for the National Police Association, told the Washington Examiner. “They have to take officers out of specialty units, like homicide and motor officers and all that kind of stuff, because the No. 1 priority of a police agency is a police officer in a patrol car to be able to respond to calls.”
“If you don’t have enough police officers in patrol, you’re going to have to take police officers out of your homicide unit … and put them back on patrol,” Brantner Smith added.
Portland marked a grim milestone in recent weeks when it recorded its 67th homicide, breaking the city’s previous record of 66 homicides in a single year, which occurred in 1987.
FBI data suggests crime rose significantly in 2020, but not across the board. Nationally, property crime, such as theft and vandalism, dropped last year, while violent crime climbed.
The nationwide homicide rate jumped nearly 30% in 2020. But Portland has experienced an even more dramatic spike in murders.
Between 2019 and 2020, homicides climbed by 62%, according to police bureau data. Between 2019 and this year, murders increased by more than 90%.
“Some of that has to do with police officers [who] are leaving, police officers are backing off from being proactive because they just get maligned for it,” Brantner Smith said. “You also have an issue in the county there where their county prosecutor often lets the violent rioters go, doesn’t prosecute some of the violent crime cases.”
Portland experienced some of the most intense and prolonged riots in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder last year at the hands of a white police officer.
Riots in the city have continued, with a crowd of people smashing storefront windows and starting fires in dumpsters as recently as last week.
Frustration has grown regarding the dozens of accused rioters who evaded prosecution when prosecutors dropped their cases. Coupled with recent city reforms that limit the tactics police can use to quell rowdy protests, such as restrictions on the use of pepper spray, violence has continued to grip much of Portland as more and more officers exit the force.
Brantner Smith said many officers are leaving due to anger over widespread anti-police rhetoric and burnout from working through the pandemic amid civil unrest.
“From a general perspective nationwide, what’s causing officers to either leave the profession or go somewhere they’re more appreciated, you know, obviously is the last year and a half in a post-George Floyd United States — police officers are tired.”
The Portland Police Bureau is more than 100 officers short of the bureau’s authorized operating force.
The city’s police chief said in August that the bureau needs to hire up to 400 new officers to function properly, and Portland’s mayor has acknowledged the need to put funding behind police recruitment amid the shortage.
Portland city leaders slashed millions of dollars from the budget in the wake of protests over Floyd’s murder.
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Meanwhile, residents have reported long wait times for 911 calls as police and dispatchers struggle to handle the growing number of calls, with violence spreading.
Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell announced on Saturday that the city has endured more than 1,000 documented shootings this year.
That averages out to more than three shootings every day across Portland.
