Posted on 08/07/2023 7:07:15 AM PDT by SJackson
For several years, Portland was the pinnacle of artistic community. Its oddball style appealed to many and drew thousands to the city. There was even a comedy series, Portlandia, that celebrated its diversity.
But…those days are gone. And you can blame anyone that supported the “defund the police” campaign.
A new report from Fox News reveals that the city, which was one the “crown jewel of the West Coast,” has now fallen into hard times, mainly due to rising crime within the communities.
In fact, police data shows that crime has dramatically increased over that of other states – including Chicago and New York.
Speaking with Fox News, Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton explained, “Each area has different challenges, but what we’re seeing in the metro area is absolutely rising crime.”
Spread across Multnomah County, Washington County and Clackamas County, the crime has reached astronomical levels, forcing both citizens and businesses to flee elsewhere.
“The increases that we’re seeing are nothing like the increases that we’re seeing in our neighbors,” Barton explained.
“What’s happening is with our de-carceration and elimination of bail culture, we’ve got all these people running around,” Kristin Olson, a trial attorney and host of the Rational in Portland podcast, added. “And it’s really scary because we also have this anti-police culture.”
So how did it come to this? It’s simple – Portland succumbed to those rioters that believed defunding the police would be the answer.
You may recall this heinous campaign that launched in 2020, following the death of George Floyd. Thousands got the insane idea that taking funding away from the police would be the definitive answer for his death, and would make this nation great.
But what happened from the fallout of that? Thousands of officers have left their jobs, either by retirement, simply being tired of their job or, in some extreme cases, suicide; millions of dollars have gone into other campaigns that have since failed to launch off the ground; and some politicians have become jaded, still believing that police officers are the problem even as their cities erupt into criminal chaos.
The biggest thing, however? The rise in criminal activity. It’s ravaged a lot of cities over the past couple of years, including Denver, Los Angeles and several others. And yet, these politicians still don’t have an answer when the clear one is sitting right in front of their faces – restore the police budget.
Oregon State Police data made it very clear that crime is increasing due to a lower police presence, with an increase over nine percent compared to the previous year.
So…why aren’t city officials doing anything about it? Because they refuse to admit that they’re wrong. They refuse to admit that “defunding the police” was the incorrect answer. Even as their Portland-based businesses fall apart and citizens move away for greener pastures, towards people that actually care about them.
It doesn’t help that President Biden is twiddling his thumbs as well. A while back – sorry, a long while back – he vowed to “fund the police” with a new campaign, after months of supporting “defund the police.” But you might notice that there’s been nothing introduced to Congress or the Senate, despite the best efforts of our Republicans to get something going. (You can thank the middling Democrats who still believe in “defunding the police” for that.)
Something needs to be done. Someone in the Biden administration (or perhaps someone who actually cares about what’s happening) needs to take a closer look at Portland and let it serve as an example of what will happen to these states if they don’t give the police the proper support they deserve. Otherwise, I fear where the next turn in this country will take. Imagine every city ending up the way that Portland is. Scary thought, isn’t it?
My heart goes out to the police working in the streets of Portland, as well as the citizens and businesses that continue to support them. They’re fighting a good fight when the people that can actually get anything done refuse to. And that has to be the most frustrating aspect of all.
Michael Letts is the Founder, President, and CEO of InVest USA, a national grassroots non-profit organization that is helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs. He also has over 30 years of law enforcement experience under his belt, hence his pro-police stance for his brothers and sisters in blue.
Maybe you should ask yourself why the same police officers who stood aside and let a bunch of mutants burn Kenosha to the ground never hesitated to go arrest Kyle Rittenhouse over a clear case of self defense.
Communism destroys everything it touches.
Crime increases, businesses and productive citizens leave, the tax base declines, and the downward spiral accelerates. Goodbye Portland!
Yep. Before an organized police force was established in NYC, vigilante justice was the call for the day. This the reason we have the 2nd amendment, to be free from tyranny.
The erosion of comity in Oregon has been going on for more than fifty years. It began when Californians who couldn’t get their kids into a good college there, and East Coast diaper babies looking for fertile territory and cheap tuition, started to invade Oregon. People don’t recall but on the West Coast the anti-Viet Nam war movement was stronger at the U. of Oregon than at Cal-Berkeley. By the nineteen seventies there were signs posted all over Oregon stating ‘Don’t Californicate Oregon.’
Because Oregon universities offered relatively cheap tuition, their administrators pandered to out-of-state students due to the differential between tuition in-state (cheap) and out (much more expensive).
By 2000 you could see the rot infesting western Oregon, and the Californication had its impact on Portland, Eugene and Salem. Voting patterns changed, because radicals will always vote radically, and wherever radicals are in the ascendancy you will find an attack on structured society. In the cities the student radicals matured and took control.
It is possible that if an investigation were made one would find that only a minority of Oregonians living in western Oregon were born in-state. And all the above accounts for why eastern and central Oregon have voted to join Idaho. (Which will never happen. The radicals in western Oregon will see to that.) Conclusion: Stay away from Portland and Eugene, they disseminate a destructive pox.
They are not communists by definition, the cities have devoted into Marxism. No one’s property is being confiscated, no gulags have even established, people aren’t being lined up against the wall and being shot or taken to re-education camps. Nope, right now it’s marxists in power using the old goon squad technique of bullying to get the result they want - total state power.
But…those days are gone. And you can blame anyone that supported the “defund the police” campaign.
So Portlandia wasn't a new equilibrium point in societal evolution, it was just a snapshot of a society in decline.
Just as we now realize that those movies of teenage hippies in the Summer of Love were not a glimpse into a new "Age of Aquarius," they were a snapshot of the process of destruction of civilization. Within a few years, you would have a sordid collapse into addiction and poverty, neglected children and venereal disease. Panhandling and people defecating on sidewalks.
The idea that it was an evolution into something better was utter poppycock, "boob bait for the bubbas," as James Carville used the phrase in a different context.
“...that they cannot forecast the outcomes of their misguided policies”
What policies would solve the problem? Kick the vagrants out of town?
You can be sure that the vigilante will get arrested. I hope they wear masks.
“Every normal person who can connect Cause and Effect saw this coming.”
Your analysis is 100% correct. The “normal person” are absent in these cities, or at such minority levels you would never know they were there.
It has been cause célèbre for decades for the radical leftards to come to Portland/Seattle so swinging the pendulum back the other way is going to take the constituents of both places to experience what the late Frank Rizzo said, “A conservative is a liberal who got mugged the night before.”
Even then, both places are so devout in their dogma, it might take more than a mugging to change, Hell, many of Portland & Seattle’s constituencies might never see just how screwed up their world view actually is.
Take a look at what the friends and family have to say about the punishment of a lowlife who killed an Oakland, Kalifornia baker…can’t fix stupid, right?
https://abc7news.com/oakland-robbery-angle-cakes-jennifer-angel-ishmael-burch-charged/13420441/
You forgot the sarcasm tag.
Gee, that’s a tough one. How about tough law & order policies. Massively increase presence. Unmask, infiltrate and subvert antifa. Throw BLM out. Get rid of Soros DAs. Get a serious Law & Order mayor. Long minimum sentences. Make drug possession and dealing a crime again. Serious penalties for defacing public property. Encourage gun ownership. Provide city-sponsored gun training. Outlaw communists and socialists on the city council. Get rid of laws that essentially make shoplifting legal. Have the city council and PD look after the tax-paying citizens for once and create a safe, clean, civic environment.
How’s that for a start?
Oh yes, throw the vagrants, bums and druggies into the Eastern Oregon high desert.
I remember that insane family arguing for the murderer. That was totally insane.
Thomas Sowell has addressed this in many of his works, but the root of the problem is that the people who enable this dysfunction are far removed from it, and do not have to deal directly with either the social or economic ramifications from their decisions and actions.
They should be forced to live in areas where their policies have resulted in these terrible conditions.
They should damn well be forced to suffer under them, directly, and for long periods of time.
I’ll be things would get fixed tout suit.
And this applies to all areas and situations in American life, not just the inner blue cities.
I’d add build more prisons, we’ll need them (after being left to their own devices, ferals have run wild since 2020) and bring back compulsory prisoner chain gangs to clean up the sides of the highways
Nor will they, ever. These are, by now, exclusively of the far left, with no skills whatever in city administration but Master's Degrees in blaming somebody else. The problem is much deeper than funding the police, it's systematic corruption of city funding to benefit radical causes, primarily of enriching the radicals.
There was a document long ago that posited that the purpose of government was to secure the inalienable rights of its citizens. Apply that standard to the city of Portland and laugh...or cry.
"the people who enable this dysfunction are far removed from it, and do not have to deal directly with either the social or economic ramifications from their decisions and actions"
National Bureau of Economic Research
https://www.nber.org/
“This crap is why I don’t want to hear anything about Trump’s personality or anything else. We need a leader at the top and fast.”
I am with you.
Ugh. I feel that I soiled my computer by looking at the “About” tab where it listed all the usual suspects.
Granted, I scrolled to the bottom looking for the “About” link and saw the address in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which obviated the need for me to actually look at them, but...I did anyway.
Ugh. A regular Murderer’s Row of Leftist Intellectuals spreading their poison while being insulated from their poison.
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