Portland riots
Demonstrators use make shift shields to protect themselves from federal officers, top, right, during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse Sunday, July 26, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Like so many large cities across the United States, Portland is currently engulfed in fighting a second pandemic on top of Covid-19.

“In the last year we have seen a stunning amount of gun violence,” [Portland City Commissioner] Mapps told CNN.

“Gang violence has caught fire like a wildfire. And now we are in a dysfunctional cycle of potentially revenge shootings,” he said.

[Police Chief Chuck] Lovell agrees that some of the reform from 2020’s sustained protests had a positive impact on their policing. But he says many of those positives are now overshadowed by the fallout, which he says is partly to blame for a significant officer shortage that continues to plague them.

He wrote in last year’s opening letter in Portland Police Bureau’s Annual Report that the force no longer has the “ability to provide service to our community in the ways in which they continue to ask for.”

— Jason Morris and Ryan Young in Portland, Oregon, police challenged in ‘really tough environment’ as violence spikes

71 COMMENTS

  1. Right now may be a good time to get into law enforcement. Once this crap starts affecting enough of the elites, they’re going to want special protection for themselves and will be willing to pay for it (second and third world style if you know what I mean).

    • If Portland were any more third world everybody there would be camped out under a bridge on the Rio Grande.

    • I agree completely. I’d just add “and even less of what you extort / punitively tax [hard work, innovation, productivity, achievement, personal responsibility, etc.] to subsidize their opposites.”

  2. Hmm… for some inexplicable reason there’s a shortage of law enforcement officers in Portland… I wonder what could have caused that?!? – CNN

      • Liberal is from Liberty which means Freedom.

        Which has been coopted and corrupted by the Democrat party much like homosexuals snatched up the word gay… It ain’t your Grandpas “liberal” party…

      • Liberal (in a political sense) means promoting change in existing institutions. When America broke from King George III the liberal change was for a democratic republic with constitutional constraints on government to ensure individual liberty. When the liberal Bolsheviks overthrew Czar Nicholas II the change was for an even more totalitarian state that repressed individual liberty far more than the one it replaced. In America the liberals are more akin to the Bolsheviks. Yes liberal and liberty are rooted in the same Latin word, but radically different meanings in political context. Just as applying a liberal dose of sunscreen at the beach has nothing to do with individual liberty.

    • I get a running account of Portland from a fakebook friend who lives in nearby Vancouver,Washington. Leftard lunacy land. No sympathy for dims…

  3. Civilization is a very thin veneer over our base selves and it takes very little to crack that veneer. The animals in Portland have proven this, but what is amazing is that the idiots that run the place don’t seem to realize that the zoo can’t control itself without zoo keepers. The consequences of city council and mayors actions should be no surprise to anyone, but there you have it, they are surprised.

    Idiots…

  4. Like almost everything else, humans overreact with ample hysteria.

    Here is the progression:
    1) Criminals cause harm–we need a brutal and powerful police force!
    2) Police force illegally brutalizes people–we need to eliminate the police!

    Here is a novel idea. Let’s create the smallest police force required to identify and capture thugs, thieves, rapists, and murderers. Let’s constrain/require that police force to respect our inherent human dignity. And when police officers violate our human dignity, we hold them accountable. Nothing more and nothing less.

    Oh, who am I kidding? That would be practical and useful and does not allow for hysterics.

    • Agreed, but that small police force you’re talking about starts with recognition that the “problems with the police” have little to do with the police and everything to do with the legislature.

      The only way to have a small police force that only goes after actual criminals is to repeal the thousands of criminal laws that have nothing to do with actual crimes.

      Let that police force respect decent citizens’ dignity by removing anything they’d bother us about in the first place, while empowering them to treat criminals like criminals.

      • problems with the police” have little to do with the police and everything to do with the legislature.

        Don’t suppose belligerent, combative POC and a media that sensationalizes ANY conflict between cops and poc while downplayiing/ignoring simiilar contacts (of which there are many more) would be a contributing factor?

        • I completely agree those are factors.

          They are major factors. They are the factors for journalists, professogandists, communisty organizers, D politicians, etc. It’s just that those groups aren’t the majority.

          The sheeple may bleat along with much of what they hear in the “news”, but form a much more receptive audience when practically everyone has been harassed by petty tyrants about regulatory administrivia or Karen calls at some point. It’s easy to get frustrated about “how they treat us” even if one wouldn’t otherwise care much about the feelings of criminals. Making everything illegal makes everyone criminals and makes it harder for anyone to root for the police.

  5. If only we’d gotten more gun control like Biden and these Dem Mayors are pushing for (of course, the desire for gun control is always a Republican one as Dems don’t want want that), then we wouldn’t need cops anymore.

    – Some Paid Troll, probably

  6. Defund the cops does not mean disband the police IT MEANS DEMILITERIZE THEM. Cops now for too long have been able to buy surplus and even new military equipment to mount an all out war against the U.S. Citizens with tanks, flame throwers (to incinerate 80 people at Waco), killer robots (that have already been used to blow people up), attack helicopters , battering rams etc.

    Originally Police work was based on community involvement and service and getting to know the people. Cops walked the beat and actually talked to the people. Today they brutalize them, intimidate them, torture them, and murder them for burned out license plate bulbs, and have even been caught raping street women in the back of their cruisers.

    Civilized European countries as in Germany and France have PROFESSIONAL WELL TRAINED POLICE who often train for 3 years before being qualified for service to the people. European police are vetted before being allowed to join a police force. In Capitalvania any sadist, bully, mental basket case or power mad hillbilly can become a brutal thug sadistic cop almost overnight with some only getting 4 weeks training before being turned loose on the public with the inevitable panic behavior of “shoot first and ask questions later”.

    Cops have been caught taking bribes from drug gangs for years. The movie “Serpico” exposed the vast corruption on the New York Police force where cops were putting their kids through college from kick backs from drug lords.

    Police reform is long overdue as well. Qualified Immunity is simply a license to kill and cops used it all the time. Until police are held accountable for cold blooded murders with swift prosecution the mass murder by cops will go on and on because this is what many of the cop thugs lust and live for. Cops kill on average a minimum of 1,000 people a year, most of which never should have been harmed. Contrast this with Germany that in 2012 killed only 12 people and China only 4 and China has 4 1/2 times the population of Capitalvania while in Capitalvania in 2012 mad dog cops killed 1,250 people that year.

    I have warned people that if you need help or are in trouble the largely untrained thug cops are the last people on earth you want to call for help. They are not coming to help you with their clubs beating you and bullets flying in your direction.

    Next time the far right points their fingers at other countries they must realized they have 3 fingers pointed right back at their own country.

    Quote—————“Gang violence has caught fire like a wildfire. And now we are in a dysfunctional cycle of potentially revenge shootings,” he said.—————quote

    In Capitalvania anyone who wants a deadly weapon can buy a second hand weapon day or night 365 days a year. No civilized nation tolerates such complete and utter madness. Second hand guns are bought with no vetting at bars, flea markets, gun shows, news paper adds and even at internet chat rooms.

    Blind greed rules and people meet on street corners in the middle of the fog and night and with a blind greed monger wink and a nod deadly weapons change hands for cold hard cash, no questions asked. Again its absolute pure insanity and no wonder gangs are often armed better than the police.

    Civilized Nations are shocked and appalled at the lawlessness of Capitalvania which is awash in deadly military weapons available to criminals, nut cases and right wing white supremacist revolutionaries.

    U.S. society is disintegrating as its educational system and retraining of workers has become either not affordable or not available to many working class people and wages have hit such an all time low that people often are forced to work 2 and 3 part time jobs and even with two people working its often not enough to pay the bills. There now have been at least 4 generations of people that have grown up in our large cities and never had a decent paying job while in the 40’s , 50’s and 60’s anyone could get high paying factory jobs to support a family and the wife could afford to stay home and properly raise the children.

    U.S. health care has become unaffordable with over 27.5 million people that have zero health care and over 150,000 people a year die like dogs in the street because they cannot afford preventable health care or health care for major operations or affordable drug care.

    Some years ago when I was visiting a very small, very poor East European country I became ill and without a doctors prescription walked into a pharmacy and bought life saving drugs for only a couple of dollars which in the U.S. would have required an expensive doctors visit coupled with outrageous sky high prices costing a wheel barrel full of money.

    The real tragedy is that the Gangster Criminal Republican Filth steal your tax money in the form of corporate subsides while they themselves pay no taxes into the system. Your tax dollars should be coming back to you in the form of Socialized medicine and health care and your tax dollars should not all be going to the Corporate C.E.O. greed mongers who laugh all the way to the bank after stealing your tax dollars.

    • Communist China approves your comment, as do the element of the Biden Admin that aren’t currently napping.

      • So every leftist carrying a sign that reads “Defund the cops” only says “Defund” because they can’t spell “DEMILITERIZE”

        Got it.

        And every leftist politician who says “Defund” is because they can’t pronounce “DEMILITERIZE”.

        Got it.

      • “Defund” isn’t a synonym for “demilitarize,” as convenient as that would be for all the leftists who said “defund” without thinking through even one single consequence of that idiotic rallying cry.

        The BLM movement had virtually all of America on its side at the start: a handful of obvious police abuses had primed the country to rein in the police, punish officers who overstepped their authority, and steer law enforcement back toward “friendly beat cop” mode and away from “streets of Fallujah” mode. Then BLM brought lies, looting, and fire to the party, screaming “defund! defund!” while robbing and assaulting people even less fortunate than themselves. I almost WANT the police to look like the military now, so… that worked I guess.

        • Napresto you get the usual Right Wing Racist of the year award. The majority of the BLM protests were peaceful. In Portland the Far Right Neo Nazi’s were caught impersonating the populous and they were the ones that busted up stores. This was verified by the FBI. It was discused on accredited news media programs not just in this country but around the world. Of course you being a one news media watcher, Foxy News said nothing.

          Sorry try again Herr Hauptman your BLM bashing blew up in your face.

        • Thank you for calling me a racist, absent any evidence whatsoever. You prove my point nicely. In the bargain, you’ve made it very easy for me to ignore you and dismiss what you have to say.

          Since this is the level of discourse you understand, I’ll reply in kind: you are a bigot and a liar, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Now go away.

    • RE: drama queen darcy “In Capitalvania anyone who wants a deadly weapon can buy a second hand weapon day or night 365 days a year. No civilized nation tolerates such complete and utter madness. Second hand guns are bought with no vetting at bars, flea markets, gun shows, news paper adds and even at internet chat rooms.”

      I’ll play along…Used guns are sold 24/7 365 days a years in case a son, daughter, grandpa or grandma sees a pervert who looks like alfred e. newman roaming around their neighborhood.

      Furthermore you insane pos…There are laws that cover anyone who sells, loans, gives a gun to an any individual, criminal, prohibited possessor whether they know that individual is a criminal or not and said firearm is used in a crime. In other words you stupid pos go educate yourself.

      And furthermore…Take your damned racist and nazi based Gun Control and shove it up your deranged, insane drama queen behind. And even furthermore democRat…stfu and cough up Monetary Reparations. After all…You and your Rat Party own the legacy of slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, the kkk, lynching, Eugenics, Gun Control and other race based atrocities.

      • RE: dacry drama queen…”Some years ago when I was visiting a very small, very poor East European country I became ill and without a doctors prescription walked into a pharmacy and bought life saving drugs for only a couple of dollars which in the U.S. would have required an expensive doctors visit coupled with outrageous sky high prices costing a wheel barrel full of money.”

        That’s the problem with trolls like darcy dodo who spew lots of garbage…They cannot keep up with all of it. On one hand darcy dodo wants Gun Control prohibiting individuals 24/7 365 from purchasing, loaning, giving a life saving firearm to anyone without Big Brother standing on their shoulders.

        On the other hand when darcy dodo was ill and his hypocrite behind was on the line in another country darcy dodo is all for the easy peasy access to cost saving 24/7 365 days a year drugs to save his behind.

        Now that darcy is all better and its illness is a memory he/she/it is perched high above the fray like the pompous, pasty mouth, hypocrite, worthless, Gun Control nazi buzzard he/she/it is.

      • Makes for great word salad bingo games at the office, also hilarious/sad when his talking points line up with the governor (old and new) otherwise just a recycled troll using a new name (again).

    • You really need to pare down your diatribes to something people might actually read. As it is I read the first sentence and found it to be complete BS and chose to read no further. It wasn’t a SWAT team that killed George Floyd, it was a regular beat cop.

      • Yeah, a regular beat cop without any of the Arsenal that dacien described as the problem. So dacien, how does it feel to constantly fall flat on your face?

    • dacian the dim,

      ” . . . activist and educator Mariame Kaba wrote a New York Times opinion essay titled, “Yes, we mean literally abolish the police.”

      “Defunding police means defunding police,” she said in a statement . “It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Education’s budget so that the exact same police remain in schools.” – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

      “It was a cemetery for freed slaves. Now it’s a parking lot at the center of a legal…
      ‘You guys believe all this?!’: Netflix’s spooky ‘Midnight Mass’ tackles religion…

      With policing back in the spotlight after the shooting in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, the socialist wing of the Democratic Party is reminding us once again: When they say they want to defund or abolish the police, they mean it.

      Rashida Tlaib wearing glasses holding a cell phone© Provided by Washington Examiner
      U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan is the latest to confirm that fact. “Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist,” she said in a tweet, “No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.””

      Any other stupid comments, you lying, ignorant, illiterate POS?????

    • It’s a fact. The Libertarians Liberals and the Left don’t want any police at all. I as a conservative just want to be able to shoot criminals dead on sight. When I catch them robbing, raping, stealing, breaking into, or vandalizing private property. Without the state interfering with me. Or when they become a general nuisance. Like blocking my way. Preventing me from exercising my right to travel freely about this country.

      The police should be at least completely disarmed. There is no reason for the police to have weapons. Anyone who needs killing can be killed by a law abiding citizen.

      It was Obama who supplied machine guns, grenade launchers, and armored fighting vehicles, to the nation’s civilian police departments. He also supplied weapons to the terrorists in Paris France. And to the Mexican drug gangs.

    • CTRL C and CTRL V. Saves a lot of typing. Unless the antifa’s little commissar wants to do all that typing.

      • Southern cross, let him do all that typing. Maybe he will wear out his fingers and we can get a few posts sans dacien.

    • Defund the police means to cut the police budget and allocate the money to somewhere else, such as suggested social services.

      To cut the budget, the first and most obvious is to reduce the number of officers on shift, especially during overnight when the rates are probably higher, and to cut overtime. Other common areas are training and range practice. And sometimes has gone as far as cutting the fuel allowance for vehicles. Administration staff may be cut which results in more paperwork being done by officers instead of actual policing.

      Those close to retirement may decide to use accumulated sick days and leave. Others will look for better options. Those remaining will be understaffed, under resourced, under paid, and increasingly demoralized only doing as little as possible for the paycheck.

      • Here’s the thing, the liberals call for defunding the police, yet if part of the downsized budget is reduced training, we will have cops with fewer hours of training on how to deal with certain situations. The dims are creating a vicious cycle. I can’t believe I’m actually going to say this, but I agree with dacien in only one thing he has ever said in all his egotistical and delusional rantings (part of the problem is that that one nugget is completely surrounded by the crap he pulls out from his butt), which is that cops need more training. Oh gosh, that leaves such a horrible taste in my mouth. Don’t think there is enough toothpaste in the world for me. But let’s be honest, more training is always a good thing, right. We train more to become proficient with whatever our weapon choice is and how to handle situations such as home break-ins. So having our police force spend more time training isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

    • When the unicorns have been corralled, the rainbow flight path has been cleared, and there’s enough pixie dust for fuel.

  7. Got a cousin that lives in Austin, they’ve cut their police budget 1/3 about 6 months ago. She’s worried about going out into the public because “crime has noticeably increased”. She also said she doesn’t feel safe anymore because police don’t routinely patrol as often as they use to. She also said the police won’t respond to calls they use to; ” like if someone has gotten into your back yard that has a privacy fence, walking around and looking into your car and house windows”. By she “still supports the movement”.

  8. Being a cop in LA after the George Floyd riots was the tipping point that made me move. The knee-jerk reaction was so great that cop shows were canceled, businesses were looted and shut down, and our guys were openly attacked. Rioters weren’t arrested, their exploits were openly celebrated. LA has great food, just way too many criminals, tweakers, and pro-criminal / anti-police commies.

    Lake Tahoe is beautiful once we finally got these massive fire under control. I don’t miss being hated or being falsely accused. A society gets what it promotes.

    • “Being a cop in LA after the George Floyd riots was the tipping point that made me move.”

      I’d wondered where you disappeared to, glad to see you improved your family’s environment…

  9. Go ahead a defund/disband/disarm “whatever”… THEN they will need to hire their own thugs when they decide to start confiscating guns… Much easier to shoot some dumbass federal employee than a local cop…

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  11. The white Libertarian, Liberal, and leftist residence of Portland. Got exactly what they have been asking for. They hate the cops. So they will have not a police force in 3 years. They all will retire. And the city won’t be able to pay enough money, to find anyone willing to work as a Portland city cop.

    I look forward to an American city of 800,000(?) NOT having any police at all. Perhaps Seattle will be the first to have no police at all in 3 three years? Because they are quitting too.
    The three L’s will have at least one major utopia city very soon.

      • Atlanta Ga will not have a police force in 3 or 4 years.

        Having a hard time trying to feel concerned, who cares what they do in Atlanta? Kinda comes under the heading of “their problem”..

        • I feel the same way. I’m not concerned about Portland or Seattle either. The blacks who control Atlanta can have the utopia they have dreamed of. Just like the white Liberals who control Portland.

        • I’m planning a 1600 mile motorcycle road trip in two weeks starting on the weekend of my 72nd birthday and I will be my own personal police protection… Like they say, play stupid games win stupid prizes and I’ve got hundreds of prizes going in my tour pac…

        • Always “careful out there” that’s how I made it this far… Put over 3,000,000 miles on my big rigs and hundreds of thousands of miles on my motorcycles.. One near fatal wreck in a car (their fault) and one near fatal wreck on a motorcycle (my fault)… “Learn and live”… and thanx for the reminder…

  12. “Tell Us Defunding the Police Was a Disaster Without Saying ‘Defunding the Police Was a Disaster’ ”

    How can something be a disaster, when you get what you asked for?

    I keep telling people, “the law” is the root cause of crime; no law, no crime.

    • Except that the article nowhere says that the Portland PD actually was defunded.

      “Lovell says his department is down to 793 officers, even though they are authorized to staff 916, and are consistently losing about three to four men and women a month to attrition.”

      • “Lovell says his department is down to 793 officers, even though they are authorized to staff 916, and are consistently losing about three to four men and women a month to attrition.”
        – – A positive outcome from pressure to “defund”. If even calls for “defunding” obtain the desired result, then “defunding” is happening (especially if Port-A-Pottyland decides to not fill the vacancies.

        However, lack of actual defunding does not invalidate…” ‘the law’ is the root cause of crime; no law, no crime.”

  13. I’m completely in favor of defunding the police, just not in my town. But go ahead and defund the police in every Democrat-run sh!th0le in the USA. Give the people what they want. I’ll make popcorn on the burning wreckage of their homes. I’ll even buy the beer.

    “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” – H. L. Mencken

  14. A reduced police department in an inner city plagued by crime may be a bad thing for that community, but it’s a great thing for the rest of the nation. Let’s find out what works and what doesn’t.

    Trolls can spin what “Defund the police” means until the cows come home. At the end of the day a reduced police budget, less training, fewer officers, and an “us vs them” mentality isn’t going to make the citizenry any safer or happier.

    Are there corrupt cops? Sure. Is it a shame when LE gets specific legal protections not granted to the general population? Absolutely. Will slashing the budget causing cops to retire early or outright walk away going to only affect the bad apple cops? Only in Far Left fantasies.

    • Are there corrupt cops? Sure.

      Are there corrupt politicians? CEOs? Judges? Lawyers? PEOPLE? Corruption rears it’s ugly head whenever and wherever there is an opportunity to grab power/authority, money and/or fame/infamy… It’s the nature of the human condition, just some are weak and more susceptible than others…

    • Not sure what your point here is; comment seems to imply that occult involvement necessarily means crime? If legalization takes the profit out of drug trafficking, weakening the cartels, wouldn’t that also weaken whatever supposed impact of the occult influence?

  15. Defunding is an unintentional way for virtue-signalling elitists to convince themselves of the value of public safety (or at least of private security details).

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