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‘9-1-1. Please Leave a Message’
The residents of Portland are getting a look at the future of police services, and response time in Portland. It’s not going to be pretty, judging from this Oregonian headline:
“Intruder with knife, boy being held: No Portland police response for 1 hour, 36 minutes.”
The incident that the headline refers to occurred as dueling protestors were engaged with each other in downtown Portland. They numbered in the hundreds with only 30 officers on hand to deal with them, and another incident in East Precinct that required multiple officers.
The Police Bureau has about 310 officers on patrol, divided between the three precincts. In addition, 102 of the patrol officers don’t have full training, he said. The bureau hasn’t been able to send as many new recruits to the state’s basic police academy during the coronavirus pandemic.
Only 310 officers and I’m not sure the 102 rookies included in that number are allowed to work by themselves since they have not been to the state academy. They may not be fully certified by the state. 310 officers to cover 24 hours a day/7 days a week in a city that has an estimated population of 654,741 within its city boundary. The city itself covers 144 square miles, and the urban area around Portland has about 1.9 million residents.
Seattle is facing the same problem, as are a number of other cities around the US. I understand that the two victims and the residents featured in this story are upset, but it remains to be seen if they will change their voting habits, regardless of whether it is Portland, or some other city.
Published in Policing
Here’s a link to the article:
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/09/intruder-with-knife-boy-being-held-no-portland-police-response-for-1-hour-36-minutes.html
It won’t change their voting habits one bit.
And, still, people wonder why gun sales continue to climb.
Well, if the city defunds the police, the old saying (apologies if this has already been used online, or elsewhere in the media)will have to be changed to :“When seconds count, the police are only nonexistent away.”
The police-minutes away when seconds count….
I have some relatives and until recently had some neighbors (fortunately got out of a danger zone) whose typical (what passes for) thinking seems to be, “Wow the Democrats have really messed things up! Obviously we have to elect MORE Democrats to fix them!”
This is a problem. Soon those people with guns will have to start using those guns to defend themselves as police services deteriorate. It will be interesting to see how it goes then.
Will they be smart enough to understand it was the Dems who put them in that situation? I doubt many of them are that aware.
They will after the Dems lock them up for killing their favorite constituency
That sounds like too late. And once they have a criminal record, they couldn’t start voting correctly.