January 1, Where Are the Police? Frustrated Residents Say Cops Have “Disappeared”

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY…
2000: Controversial U.S. presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore is inconclusive; the result, in Bush’s favor, is eventually resolved by the Supreme Court.

Residents of Portland, Oregon, say police have “almost disappeared” as violent crime is increasing in their city at an alarming pace.

Violent crime in Portland outpaced the rest of the country — jumping 38% between 2020 and 2021, Fox News reported, citing FBI data. Property crimes such as vandalism and car theft also increased in that time period, according to data from the Portland Police Bureau (PPB).

“It’s like they almost disappeared,” said Loretta Guzman, owner of Bison Coffee House in North Portland.

Guzman’s coffee shop was vandalized early last month after she advertised a Coffee with a Cop event. The proprietor told Fox News that she decided to hold the event after hearing customer complaints about safety in the city over the last few years.

“A lot of people feel really unsafe,” she said. “They’re angry, they’re sad, they’re mad. They feel helpless. They feel they don’t have a voice.”

“They have questions like, ‘Where are the police? How come they can’t come?’” Guzman said. “We used to see them all the time.”

PPB data shows that October’s average response time for a high-priority call, in which people or high-value property are in immediate danger, was 20.4 minutes — the slowest it’s been in at least six years.

“We have felt that the police have, you know, checked out or failed us for a while,” said Michael Fesser, founder of Going Home 2, a nonprofit that supports men transitioning from prison back to civilian life. “It seems that they have just sat back and said, ‘We’re not going to do anything unless it’s a dead body.'”

In a poll released earlier this year, 51% of Portland residents doubted that a 911 would be answered quickly.

A PPB spokesperson told Fox News that staffing issues are plaguing the bureau, with 250 officers either resigning or retiring in the past two years.

“Every day we are still unable to staff shifts to minimums,” PPB spokesperson Terri Wallo Strauss told the outlet in an email. “That, coupled with increases in violent crime, traffic crashes … and other resource intensive calls, means people sometimes have to wait a long time for an officer to respond.”

Strauss noted that the police officers “got into the line of work to help the community, and it’s frustrating when they can’t.”

The PPB is slowly bringing in new officers, but it takes time. According to Strauss, it takes 18 months to fully train officers, so the staffing efforts likely won’t be felt for a while.

“We don’t know exactly what to do when someone’s in our backyard because we don’t want to take actions and go to prison,” Fesser said. “So we want them to do their job. And as a community, we want to do our job to be law-abiding citizens.”

Source: Fox News