The Portland, Oregon Police Bureau has lost 115 officers since July 1, 2020 and according to KOIN News, detectives are up to their eyeballs.
The city had a violent year in 2020, with protests almost nightly combined with a spike in homicides. Last year, the Rose City racked up 55 murders—three more than its liberal rival Seattle—and there have already been several murders this year, with the bulk of 2021 still over the horizon.
According to Fox News, the Police Bureau “said it received an ‘unprecedented’ number of officers leaving their jobs midcareer to take lower-paying jobs elsewhere.” The Portland Oregonian ran a story about why so many have left, and it was not a good sign.
Liberal Mayor Ted Wheeler told the newspaper the city has a “laser focus on building a better public safety system,” Fox said. But how that will happen if lawmen and women are heading for happier environments is anyone’s guess.
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The city experienced almost nightly destructive protests following the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis, an event that rocked the nation. But with Portland being something of a Northwest base for Antifa, Oregon’s largest city became a battleground.
As if to compound the city’s tarnished image, journalist and author Andy Ngo, who made covering Antifa something of a personal crusade and he authored a New York Times best-selling book titled “Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy America,” has moved out of the country for his personal safety. A Portland native, Ngo is a second-generation Vietnamese American, according to Fox News, which reported on his current situation.
Ngo was attacked physically by thugs while working as editor-at-large for The Post Millenial. He has appeared occasionally on Fox News to report on the anarchy, but it was not widely known that he had apparently left the U.S.
According to KOIN, the city has already racked up about 25 slayings so far this year. If that continues, it might put Portland on a path to top last year’s body count.
Last summer and into the fall, Portland’s downtown was the scene of nightly protests that often turned violent, there were several attempts to start fires, and even Donald Trump offered to send in federal officers to protect the federal buildings.
Like Seattle 200 miles to the north, Portland has become a center for liberal politics in the Beaver State. The farther away one gets from the I-5 corridor, the more conservative the state becomes. There are growing populations in places such as Bend in east-central Oregon, but much of the state’s geography is rural.
How the Rose City will fare through the spring and summer months remains to be seen, but if police officers continue to leave, it becomes less likely the city will develop Wheeler’s “better public safety system.”
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