Portland Police Officer Matt Jacobsen helped put a serial homeless attacker in prison for ten years after gaining the trust of those who needed him the most: those on the streets.
The suspect and his victims were both homeless, but none of the homeless victims spoke out about the attacks against them until Jacobsen stepped into the picture.
Jacobsen responded to a stabbing last November where the victim and everyone else around him were too afraid to cooperate with the police for fear of being attacked by the suspect.
That was when Jacobsen knew he had to intervene to gain the trust of the homeless community to put this guy behind bars.
“The fact is, it doesn’t matter if somebody’s unsheltered or mental health affected or drug affected or whatever their situation in life is. It’s not OK to be victimized like that and it’s not OK for somebody else to hurt them,” he told KGW.
Jacobsen won over the trust of the victims by getting to know the alleged attacker, who goes by the name of “Sin.”
“He was just known as Sin and everyone was afraid of Sin,” said Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Nathan Vasquez. While Jacobsen got to know the attacker, he also helped the victims find transitional housing and mental health care.
Sin, whose full name is Juan Sensational Dickens, would eventually plead guilty to several different counts of aggravated attempted murder and attempted murder for brutally attacking four homeless men in downtown Portland, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Dickens was responsible for the following attacks against people who were homeless, mentally ill, or drug addicts:
- August 17, 2015: Dickens approached a man under the Burnside Bridge and stabbed the man in the back.
- September 4, 2017: Dickens used a bicycle chain to hit a man in the head, which resulted in the man needing stitches to close the open wound.
- January 19, 2018: Dickens stabbed a man in the torso.
- November 17, 2018: Dickens used a knife to stab a man in the ribs, which resulted in doctors having to remove the man’s spleen.
Dickens, 34, was sentenced to ten years in prison on Monday after being convicted of the charges, KATU reported.