The Portland City Council on Wednesday approved a $6 million plan to curb a rise in gun violence in the city, without adding funds to the city’s police department.
The plan will provide $4.1 million in grants to non-profit groups that work with Portland’s Office of Violence Prevention, as well as $1.4 million to the Parks and Recreation bureau to hire new park rangers, Oregon Public Radio reported. The new rangers would patrol city parks at least through the end of the year.
Portland has recorded 284 shootings since the beginning of 2021, compared with 100 over the same period in 2020.
The plan comes after the City Council voted last summer to disband the police’s Gun Violence Reduction Team, which some council members said disproportionately targeted people of color. Mayor Ted Wheeler was able to gain approval from the council to reassign officers to form a new reduction team within the police.
“What we’re doing today is giving these young people a sense of hope,” Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said of the new plan. “What we’re doing today is starting a pathway to making sure we’re investing dollars where they will make the most good.”
Portland recorded 858 shootings in 2020, in which 224 people were hit and 52 died. The number of shooting deaths was the highest in Portland since 1993, when 54 people died.
“In all the years I worked trying to reduce gun violence, there would always be spikes. This is an astronomical spike,” Sgt. Kenneth Duilio told a local NBC affiliate in December. Duilio was a member of the disbanded Gun Violence Reduction Team.
“I think some of these people involved in gun violence, they’re kind of rolling around the city looking for their enemies and there’s really no consequences,” Duilio added. “They’re not really, you know, afraid that the police are gonna stop them — that they might get arrested, they might get caught with a gun. And so they just kind of got a free pass.”
Portland saw weeks of riots over the summer following the death of George Floyd, an African American man killed during his arrest by Minneapolis police officers.
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“The plan comes after the City Council voted last summer to disband the police’s Gun Violence Reduction Team, which some council members said disproportionately targeted people of color.”
What does that even mean? “(D)isproportionately” to what? Overall population dispersal? Arrested shooters numbers? Absolute numbers of “colored” v. “white”? Bah. Nonsense semantics emanating from petty politicians who are so afraid of being “unwoke” they’re willing to allow criminals to take over the entire city. Portland is doing its best to emulate Tijuana or Ciudad Juárez. All the formerly lovely cities of the west coast are turning into mirrors of third-world $h!tholes, thanks to “woke” Progressive politicians. Voters get exactly the government they deserve.
I can’t see how it would work for Portland all you need to do is look at Chicago or New York.
Park rangers? And unarmed at that. Spineless Ted and Jo Ann ‘I hate the police and everything about them, Uber & Lyft drivers are racist, and there are people trying to smear me’ Hardesty are just throwing more gas on the dumpster fire that is Portland. And they wonder why apartments in downtown Portland can’t be rented out. Just wait until another spring, summer and fall of ‘peaceful protests’ a.k.a. RIOTS break out again, what good will unarmed park rangers going to do?
Hear that, BLM, Antifa? You have a continued license to loot and pillage.
I’m currently teleworking right now, and my employer’s office is in Portland. Unless I get a signed memorandum telling me I have to report, I will never again visit that city.
Portland civic officials are getting more stupid all the time. They truly have lost their minds. I have yet to hear our two senators, (Demos naturally), say one thing to address the violence in Oregon’s largest city. One that use to be as diverse as anyone could imagine. The antifa/blm have waged a constant battle against a once beautiful, and integrated city.
I hope those park ranger jobs come with good insurance and good pay
I worked for local city government in their Parks Dept. in California. It would have been nice to have had a division in our PD comprised of park rangers: sworn LEOs whose sole function was to patrol and enforce laws and city ordinances within the Parks system. Instead, they sent officers on periodic patrols through the parks, barely making a show; sometimes only once per week or every other week. Having a dedicated ranger spend more time at our parks would have cut down tremendously the problems I saw and experienced as a parks gardener.