By Debra Heine
The uber-liberal mayor of Portland is seeking $2 million in emergency funding for more police on the streets to prevent more people from dying in shootings following a dramatic spike in shootings and homicides in the city.
The Portland City Council cut $15 million from the Portland Police Budget and abolished a group of officers called the Gun Violence Reduction Team, last June, but after the city’s 20th homicide this year, Mayor Ted Wheeler decided enough is enough.
The rising gun violence affects mainly “young Black and brown people,” the Oregonian reported. The “one-time funding” will allow more police to patrol on city streets.
The mayor made the announcement alongside religious and community leaders, who urged city officials to take immediate action to prevent more people from dying in shootings, particularly young Black and brown people who have been disproportionately affected by the violence.
The interfaith group called for bringing back a dedicated uniformed police patrol team that would “act on criminal intelligence” to try to intercept and seize guns, work to prevent shootings and retaliatory violence in the city. The group also would respond to shootings, do follow-up investigations and engage with people who are at risk of gun violence, according to the group’s letter submitted to the mayor and city commissioners.
The interfaith group also seeks five more detectives to investigate gun violence, more money for the recently formed six-officer on-call team that responds to shootings around the clock and a new independent community committee to gather data on the officers’ stops and arrests and the effectiveness of their work.
The new police patrol group will differ from the former police Gun Violence Reduction Team in that a new “community oversight committee” will oversee “arrests, stops, and outcomes and help establish parameters for the police enforcement,” according to Wheeler.
The mayor’s proposal flies in the face of the city’s activist community, as they ramp up anti-police rioting to correspond with jury selection in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the ex-Minneapolis cop charged in the death of career criminal George Floyd.
Dozens of antifa and Black Lives Matter agitators descended upon Portland’s Mark O. Hatfield US Courthouse Thursday night, setting fire to the building while people were inside, as federal officers responded with tear gas and flash-bang grenades, the New York Post reported.
Gosh… if only someone had thought to warn these idiots what might happen if they cut police funding and left citizens unprotected. Shit.
Is there a lefty politician who’s IQ exceeds their shoe size?
Entirely foreseeable to anyone with more than two functioning brain cells.