You know Your Survival Guy has been keeping a steady watch on cities where crime is rampant and Americans are just looking to escape. High on the list is Portland, OR, where murder rates have skyrocketed after the city turned its streets over to BLM and Antifa in the summer of 2020.
Giving criminals the go-ahead by defunding the police and then, and implementing draconian vaccine mandates for police forces, has led to an exodus of police from the Portland Police Bureau, and its inability to respond to crimes in a timely manner.
Reporter Andy Ngo writes of Portland in the Daily Mail:
Portland turned over its streets to Black Lives Matter-Antifa rioters last year and allowed the far-left to dictate public policy.
Elected officials in the ‘City of Roses’ condemned the police, defunded law enforcement and coddled violent criminals in the name of ‘anti-fascism’ and ‘anti-racism.’
Now it’s dealing with yet another year of surging murders, shootings, riots, homeless encampments, mass looting and violent criminality.
In early December, the Portland Police Bureau announced that it would only be responding to the most serious 911 calls involving life or death scenarios.
‘Due to critical incidents happening today and PPB’s staffing shortage, officers are responding to Priority 1 and 2 calls only right now and response times may be delayed for certain calls,’ wrote the PPB as the police department struggled to get enough officers to respond to a violent armed carjacker on a highway in north Portland.
Responding officers eventually shot out the windows of a fleeing car being driven by suspect Brandon Keck, who died.
The deadly incident that shut down an entire major highway in Portland for hours wasn’t the only time in recent weeks that Portlanders in need of emergency help were put on hold.
When Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on Nov. 19, Antifa rioters gathered to try and burn down the county jail in downtown as revenge.
‘Significant resources have been diverted to address this riot and it is affecting response times. While we have officers assigned to address emergencies citywide, lower priority calls will have to wait for a while,’ PPB wrote on Twitter.
Two days after the riot, a Portland woman called 911 at 3:37 p.m. pleading for help because she was in a hostage situation.
Responding officers were fired upon at the residence in question, forcing them to retreat and call in specialized units.
Ten hours later, officers finally broke inside and apprehended the armed suspect, 29-year-old Davonte Donahue. Mariela Gonzalez Rocha, the young Latina woman who called police for help, was already dead.
Even without an emergency crisis eating up immediate law enforcement resources, the city has struggled to respond quickly to high-priority 911 calls.
Before rioting began in May 2020, the average response time for high-priority life and death emergency calls was around eight minutes.
Now it takes 60% longer.
Lower priority 911 calls can take hours and police often never show up, according to public records from the Bureau of Emergency Communications.
Last month, Mayor Ted Wheeler, who also doubles as the police commissioner, ordered the director of Emergency Communications to provide him with data showing how long police were taking to respond following a surge of complaints by residents.
But the mayor should look to himself first for the situation Portlanders find themselves in today.
As 2021 comes to an end, the consequences of the political decision-making by Wheeler and those on the city council to defund and demoralize law enforcement after George Floyd’s death is clear: more black and brown people are dying—and few are able to get the help they need when they call police.
Action Line: The saying goes, “when seconds count, police are minutes away.” But in Portland, it might be “when seconds count, the police aren’t coming at all.” That’s not the fault of the police, that’s the fault of politicians who cater to criminals, and the radical “woke” left. Be your own first line of defense no matter where you live, get your gun and your training now. If you live in a city like Portland, start your search for a new home with my Super States on the map below:
