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Portland Police Bureau: Titanic Missing ‘Deck Chairs and a Band’
The following headline comes from an article published on the Oregonian’s website, Oregonlive. The article has been republished by Microsoft News. The original article is behind a paywall:
‘Overworked, overwhelmed and burned out’: Why Portland cops say they’re leaving in droves – Maxine Bernstein, March 4, 2021
The Oregonian obtained exit forms filled out by Portland police officers through a public records request. An exit form is not required from an officer when they choose to leave the Portland Police Bureau (PPB). 115 officers have left the PPB since July 1. According to the article, “to include 74 who have retired, and 41 who resigned.”
Some notable quotes from the exit forms:
In 31 exit interview statements, the employees who turned in their badges or retired were brutally frank about their reasons for getting out.
“The community shows zero support. The city council are raging idiots, in addition to being stupid. Additionally, the mayor and council ignore actual facts on crime and policing in favor of radical leftist and anarchists fantasy. What’s worse is ppb command (lt. and above) is arrogantly incompetent and cowardly,” one retiring detective wrote.
“The only differences between the Titanic and PPB?” he continued. “Deck chairs and a band.”
Some of the police who are leaving said they’ve found little to no support from City Hall. One training officer who retired in January also said officers are “de-policing due to fear of being accused of excessive force.”
“What the city council has done to beat down the officers’ willingness to do police work is unfathomable,” he wrote. “I have never seen morale so low. Officers leaving mid-career and sometimes sooner to go to other agencies. Officers retiring when they would have stayed longer if the situation were different.”
He said he knew it was time to go because he stopped looking forward to work that he once loved.
“It is no longer a fun place to work …There is no end in sight and the negatives far exceed anything positive … hate what Portland has become.’’
Portland is not the only city that is losing police officers. Portland was a lovely city at one time, it has become a dysfunctional mess, both visually and metaphysically.
From another Oregonian article:
Contemplating the 266 shootings and 25 homicides in just the first three months of this year, Antoinette Edwards was struggling to understand how Portland city commissioners could oppose the mayor’s proposal to restart a Portland Police gun-violence team.
What more do commissioners need to know to understand the trauma neighbors feel about repeated shootings on their street, Edwards, who headed the city’s office of violence prevention for 10 years, asked at a Thursday press conference. What daily data report can bring the reality of the threat home to commissioners? How many more loved ones need to die before commissioners match the urgency of this crisis with courageous action of their own?
Instead, City Commissioners Mingus Mapps, Dan Ryan and Carmen Rubio countered with their own plan to tap Portland’s former fire chief to lead the city’s gun violence strategy; hand out $3.5 million to unspecified community groups who work with communities affected by gun-violence in some manner; and add park rangers – armed only with the authority to ban those who don’t follow their rules – to patrol the city’s parks around-the-clock.
One has to wonder how many wounded, and dead unarmed park rangers will be acceptable human sacrifices to further Woke social engineering.
Published in Policing
If retaining personnel is getting to be so difficult, imagine what a lovely time they’ll have recruiting.
A recruiter is one of the officer’s that has left the PPB.
Probably one. After that, no one will agree to work as a park ranger.
May not be so difficult- just change the job description and hiring requirements.
Open it up to convicted felons.
I understand that’s already been done – at least for the oversight board.
But what’s really needed for reform is an infusion of those nice Antifa and BLM people in leadership positions. Notice that the worst cities are closest to Xi? I’m sure Beijing Biden is all over that.
Maybe they will, if on-the-job death means a permanent pension for their family. Until that all collapses too.
I don’t think the police should care about public safety, if the citizens don’t and based on the (lack of) protests about public safety, the citizens don’t care. My advice to the those in blue, wait for backup.
But maybe smart not to wait while still on the job. I can easily see them being blamed for increasing crime, even though it’s actually the mayors etc who are to blame. Smartest idea might be to quit for now, and then wait to be begged to return.
The last straw for me when I was managing apartments, was when I couldn’t get anything fixed etc because the places I was allowed to call (there was an approved list) hadn’t been paid by the management co. for previous work and they wouldn’t do any more, but as far as the management co. was concerned, that things weren’t being fixed was MY fault.
Perhaps it’s courageous or satisfying to slam your former employer in an exit form, but it might not be wise – particularly if it is a government agency and all records can be made available to the public. “A soft answer turneth away wrath.”
The Oregonian received the exit documents after officers name’s had been redacted.
Probably none. Who’s going to be dumb enough to take that assignment? I see a lot of resignations from the rangers.
Why should the police do anything other than wait for backup and process paperwork after an event? If they’re purely reactive and only in a post-processing role, then the potential for police-initiated violence is minimized. No confrontations, no taking prisoners, just note it and file it.
Let Portland serve as a warning to the others.
Best line in the article . . .
The large majority of citizens in Portland are getting exactly what they voted for.
I am trying to see the logic of park rangers. In my area park rangers are all sparse and far between, it is not like there are droves of them sitting around. So if you rope park rangers into this who is going to cover where the rangers normally patrol? Or is this a way to export the pain to people outside the city?
They need park rangers to stop BLM/Antifa from stealing all the pic-a-nic baskets.
In January of 2021 the city reported a “critical shortage” of personnel in the department.
From the same article, the department currently has about 290 officers on patrol. (For a city population of 664k, that’s one per every 2300 persons. What I don’t know is how that compares with other metropolitan areas.)
When I was working in Albuquerque, there were about 400 patrol officers for a population of 450,000. Of course, Albuquerque is a bit rougher than Portland. . .
Maybe not as rough as Portland has been lately?
Frankly, I’d rather work in Albuquerque.
I suspect those folks are not affected by the riots and crime and don’t care.
(spoken in a funny voice)