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“False Narratives & Knee Jerk Political Reactions…”
There is a price to pay when you pander to anarchists and engage in virtue signaling chest thumping. The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department will no longer provide police services to the City of Portland for holidays like May Day, or whatever the cause of the day may be that brings mayhem to the streets of Portland. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office made the same decision in February.
The email Sheriff Roberts of Clackamas County sent his deputies:
Sheriff’s Office Change in Services within the City of Portland
To all Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office employees: I want to give you an important update on changes to services we provide in the City of Portland.
As you know, our command staff and executive team have been actively assessing the risk of your work within the City of Portland.
Recently, Undersheriff Brandenburg met with many of our deputies assigned to answering routine calls for service in the City of Portland to listen to their concerns related to safety. I’ve also had conversations with other city, state and federal law enforcement leaders, including Portland Police Chief Outlaw. Lastly, I’ve taken into account the Portland Police Association’s concerns outlined in their April 8 statement, which you can read here.
I don’t make these decisions lightly. I appreciate and commend the difficult work Portland Police officers do every day, and I also commend Portland Police Chief Outlaw for her leadership in a very difficult environment. I admire her commitment to improving public safety and community relations.
As Sheriff, your safety and the safety of Clackamas County residents remain my top priorities. Our work is dangerous enough without adding unnecessary risk when responding to calls for services in the City of Portland.
I also want to make this clear: We will always respond to help any officer from any agency in immediate need of assistance.
Take care of each other and be safe.
Craig
The Mayor of Portland was disappointed that Sheriff Roberts made the decision before the May Day festivities, but Clackamas County has their own calendar to keep. The residents of Portland are no more or less friendly than the residents of any other city I’ve lived in, or visited. They are somewhat provincial in assuming that Portland is superior to other cities, especially when it comes to comparisons with Seattle. Seattle and Portland both have an out of control homeless problem, but downtown Seattle has always been rather seedy. The Portland Mayor and City Commissioner’s are working at a feverish pace to catch up with their northern neighbor in seediness, silliness, and politicizing their police departments.
The April 8th letter from the Portland Police Association:
Recruitment And Retention: Our Crisis in the Portland Police Bureau
Last week, Chief Outlaw and her staff sat in front of the Portland City Council during budget hearings and tried to explain why recruiting and retaining police officers has become a catastrophic problem for the Portland Police Bureau. At one point Chief Outlaw pointed out the elephant in the room: applicants would rather work at other police agencies for more or equal wages than deal with working under a microscope in a highly politicized city where police officers are vilified. This notion, of course, seemed to go right over the Commissioners’ heads.
Every day we can see the results of the anemic staffing levels and how it impacts the communities we serve. Residents and business owners are up in arms, not because the men and women who serve their communities aren’t doing their jobs, but because they know City Hall has put a stranglehold on proactive policing and enforcement and has been completely unsupportive of PPB and its officers. For example, Mayor Wheeler is quick to praise the work done by police officers until controversy stares him in the face. In recent weeks, he’s acknowledged that failure and promises to be more supportive in the future. It’s imperative that his actions reflect his words. And it’s imperative that the rest of City Council does the same.
False narratives, knee jerk political reactions, along with personal and political agendas have created a hostile work environment and made it an impossible task to effectively police in the City of Portland. Our police officers are frustrated. They deserve better. They deserve to work in an environment where they can perform their primary function — keeping our communities safe — with the support of City Hall. Similarly, our communities are frustrated. They deserve better. They deserve safe, clean streets. It’s that simple.
Our elected officials need to prioritize basic city services, the most basic of which is public safety and livability. They can start by doing three things: improving the livability of our drastically deteriorating neighborhoods; supporting the incredible work our officers do to keep our communities safe; and having enough police officers to satisfy our communities’ public safety needs.
Daryl Turner, President
Portland Police Association
It doesn’t help matters when a City Commissioner is asking that political advocacy groups be allowed to weigh in on the latest contract talks between the Portland Police Association and the city government.
Published in Policing
Portland: where the lunatics run the asylum.
Perhaps Baltimore is their model.
Only Portland’s been building at this for the last couple of decades. It’s only now reaching crisis mode and it’s still going to take a lot to get through the thick liberal skulls of the City Council.
Did something get left out of the original statement? It doesn’t specify what the “decisions” are.
But if every street in Porland were closed to traffic for the bicycles, and if there were enough affordable housing, and…if…Utopia!
Doug,
More news from the lunatic asylum that the west coast has become. When nobody wants a high paying solid career job with a good retirement package then you’d better take a look at just how crazy that job has become.
There is an old phrase from economics, “voting with your feet”. It means people just leave a place that has become unlivable and go someplace better. Portland, like most of the west coast, had better stop and think about this. They are spiraling down quickly.
Regards,
Jim
It’s true. I love the Portland area, but it’s gone so downhill that we can’t move back there on my single income and expect any quality of life like we have here. Moreover, Oregon is so under the Democrats’ collective thumb that the government there is running lefty policies like mad, while condemning anything like checks or balances and kicking the stool out from institutions that might support them in any fashion. The state will collapse under its own weight soon. It’ll be Trump’s fault of course.
Similarly, my lovely wife and I loved Santa Rosa, California, but that state is in a similar situation and it’s even more crazy expensive.
The Washington County decision not to provide police services to Portland is based upon this case. The WCSO was asked to help serve a murder warrant in Portland. A resident that was not involved in the warrant confronted deputies with a loaded pistol:
Washington County had to pay out about a million dollars after losing the case in a civil lawsuit. He was told by deputies that they were not there for him. He went back into the house and then back outside and confronted the deputies with a .44 caliber pistol.
Wait!
This guy knew “the shadowy figures in his yard” were cops? Lots of cops. And AFTER speaking to them, he went into his house, retrieved a pistol, and returned to confront them with a firearm in his hand?
That seems so utterly insane as to be unbelievable. Is there a lot more to this story that you haven’t told us?
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity, or chemicals.
Most likely that’s it. Portland is full of very poor judgment, both in the system and in the populace. It doesn’t help that for at least two decades, the City Council was ready to toss officers under the bus at any accusation of bigotry, whether true or not. As a result for many in the city it’s an “established” fact that the police are full of bigots who willfully mistreat average citizens. So you get stupidity as above, and a sympathetic judicial system towards stupidity.
I wish the weather was as pleasant in Baltimore as it is in Portland, so we don’t even have that going for us….
I think I see the problem…
My stepson lives in McMinnville, only 40 miles or so south of Portland. It is a different world. However, he is a contractor building custom homes for people moving into the “wine country” of Oregon so I expect things will change.