Retired Marine Corps officer Gabriel Johnson told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday many police officers in Portland, Oregon, are leaving the police department in droves due to lack of support.
Johnson was known for marching into the protests and riots in July outside the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse in downtown Portland carrying his American flag.
“I was being called the N-word by Black people. People were chasing me around with baseball bats.” Johnson told Fox News at the time.
Johnson told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday that “people in the city really have lost a sense of community and the community for everyone, including the officers that are out there serving night in and night out.”
Officers with Portland’s police department have become so disillusioned with the job that they decided to quit mid-career and look for jobs elsewhere.
The Oregonian reported that 115 officers left the department since July 1, 2020, in “one of the biggest waves of departures in recent memory.”
The paper said one retiring detective wrote in his reason for leaving was the community showed him “zero support.”
Portland was the epicenter of the nation’s most destructive protests and riots of 2020. The violent protests also coincided with the city’s largest increase in the homicide rate in 26 years, according to the Oregonian.
KOIN reported that homicide detectives are burning out because they cannot keep up with the workflow as the homicide rate continues to be high.
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