Jordan Anderson was a former slave who was invited back to the plantation where had been forced to work by owner Col P. H. Anderson, who now faced labor shortages at harvest time. Anderson’s letter became a noted piece of literature for its deadpan sardonic tone. The now free slave told of his good life away from slavery, asked for 52 years back pay, and conveyed his thanks to a man named Carter for taking the Colonel’s gun away when he was “shooting at me”.
The tale, verified historically, can’t help but put us in mind of Portland Police Bureau’s recent invitation for separated officers to return to the fold.
Defunding, refunding, budget diversion, leadership changes, and riots as persistent as underground coal seam fires have ravaged public safety in Portland, Oregon. The latest embarrassment for the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) is their plea for retired officers to return to the fold because of a shortage of officers amid a recruitment and retention crisis. The underwhelming response was two inquiries known at the time of this writing.
During this writer’s ride-along during the long season of riots and wildfires in 2020, I observed the long-suffering PPB officers doing their very best to continue to serve and protect. In an NPA article, I described the scorched buildings surrounding the police station with protestors and homeless encampments overtaking public spaces.
Per my usual protocol when a guest of another law enforcement agency, I asked my host officer where the shotgun was and how to access it if he needed assistance. His response was that they were afraid to have shotguns in the cars since they couldn’t guarantee that the patrol vehicle would be under police control if overwhelmed in a riot zone. Not long into the shift, my officer observed a verified stolen vehicle and began a pursuit that lasted about two blocks. Letting them go was department policy. The schizoid politics included Mayor Wheeler criticizing a PPB Lieutenant for communicating with a protest organizer despite that strategy being encouraged by crowd control experts.
I watched the queue of calls for service lengthen through the night. There were no major disturbances during the hours I was with the officer, but he and his colleagues have been denied the right to use tear gas against rioters, denied the right to live-stream protests to let the world know what was really happening. Neither were body-worn cameras (BWCs) supplied to officers even in the midst of calls for police accountability.
Officers are only now beginning to be provided with BWCs and attendant policies after a prior effort was defunded along with $15,000,000 taken from the PPB budget, although $2,500,000 of that has been restored after disastrous results from the huge prior cuts. An additional $3,000,000 was offered to rehire officers who had retired. The Mayor has proposed another $7,000,000 for the PPD budget to include hiring unarmed “public safety support” positions to supplement staffing.
The City of Portland is now facing a lawsuit alleging unconstitutional force against lawful protestors. Perhaps the city fathers will regret not allowing its officer the tools to record and document the disruption and arrest violators that can testify to the destruction the officers and citizens faced during what is repeatedly referred to as peaceful protests. “A widespread campaign of violence” is the allegation against the police, not the rioters, in the lawsuit filing.
A public safety advocacy group protectportland.org cites a doubling of homicides and a doubling of traffic crash fatalities since PPB traffic officers had to be reassigned. Noting that police staffing is proportionately less than 20 years ago and has not kept up with population growth, “It’s time to reevaluate and make the data-driven decision to fully fund and staff our police bureau” There is a lot of talk about reimagining policing and implementing alternative responses to police. In the meantime, crime victims are paying the price every day.”