Things are now so bad in Democrat-run Portland, the far-left Washington Post has been forced to acknowledge not only how bad things are, but that the Defund the Police movement has proven to be a disaster (gee, what a shock), left-wing anarchists are causing havoc (no shit), and black people are bearing a disproportionate brunt of the fallout (which is always the case with Democrats in charge).
“Portland is a White city, overwhelmingly so — African Americans account for just 6 percent of the population,” the Post writes. “But it is Black people … who are dying at near-historic rates and filling churches with grief.”
Here are some other lowlights…
On May 12, Portland recorded its 30th murder of the year, which is “five times more than were recorded during the same period in 2020, a frightening pace that could see more slayings here by the end of the year than in the past four decades.”
By the end of April, the Portland police reported more than twice the number of shootings (348) as those reported during this same time in 2020.
After more than a year, the riots are ongoing. Just last Tuesday “police declared a riot when one of two groups that had gathered to mark the anniversary of Floyd’s murder broke windows, set fires, and threw objects at police.”
Downtown Portland, once the “the heart of a world-class food scene” is “marred” with “boarded-up windows and closed businesses.” The Post appears to partly blame the pandemic for this, but if left-wing terrorists weren’t looting, burning, and breaking windows, those windows wouldn’t need to be boarded up. I just spent a month visiting four Deep South states and didn’t see anything boarded up.
How bad are things downtown? “Over the past year,” Portland’s Democrat Mayor Ted Wheeler told the Post, “the city has recorded an 85 percent decline in downtown foot traffic. The result has been economic despair and more crime.”
“Over the spring,” the Post adds, a mob of “self-described anarchists, usually masked and dressed in black, has shattered windows at the Oregon Historical Society, at a Boys & Girls Club, at a public library, and at many small business, including some owned by Black merchants.”
Wheeler’s response? He’s pleading with citizens to “take the city back.”
Yeah, because it’s the job of citizens to reclaim the city from thugs and terrorists, and not the job of, say, the police.
So what’s up with Portland’s law enforcement, you might ask. Well…
The 1,001 sworn officers the Portland Police Bureau is supposed to have has shrunk to “about 900, a shortage that city officials blame on a lack of urgency in hiring and police leaders attribute to a lack of support and funding.”
Since June of last year, when the riots were at their peak, the department lost more than 120 cops.
Get this… Last year Portland’s Democrat-dominated city council gutted the police budget by nearly 15 percent, a loss of $27 million from a $200 million budget.
On top of that, proactive units dedicated to reducing gun violence were disbanded and the subsequent increase in shootings, according to the police chief, have had “an outsized impact on people of color.”
If anything is contributing to the ongoing riots and exploding violence in Portland it’s that the city’s new district attorney, who won 77 percent of the vote, chose not to pursues cases against some 550 charged with interfering with police officers during last year’s riots and protests.
He claims he is charging those accused of violence, but when you allow any kind of criminality to go unpunished, you get crime. There’s just no question the terrorists in Black Lives Matter and Antifa see Portland as easy pickings.
Oh, and of course, the Post never-ever-ever blames Black Lives Matter or Antifa for the violence. Oh, no, all this chaos is being caused by strange and unknowable “groups” and “anarchists” and “movements” and “protesters” … Which is another reason the chaos is ongoing … The corporate media are determined to protect these terrorists.
More than a year ago, as soon as the 1619 Riots and the madness of the Defund the Police movement took flight, the fallout, most especially in the black community, was ridiculously predictable, but these mindless elected Democrats went ahead and did it anyways.
But let’s not forget that 77 percent of Portland voted for a district attorney who allowed 550(!) accused criminals to waltz out the door.
It’s awful what’s happening to Portland, especially in the black community, but the sad truth is that Portland’s getting exactly what it voted for, and I honestly don’t know how to help people who refuse to help themselves.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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