According to the Oregonian, the liberal Pacific Northwest bastion topped off February with 22 murders thus far this year - up from the 19 in 2021 - and is on track to hit roughly 130 by December.
The city, which slashed its police budget in the wake of demonstrations over George Floyd’s killing, set a record last year with 92 homicides - the highest since there were 70 homicides in 1987.
The Portland Police Bureau suffered through a rash of retirements and resignations after Portland politicians welcomed calls to defund the police. A sum of $15million was initially cut from the city’s budget, with progressive Portland prosecutors further blamed for the spiraling crime for declining to charge 70 percent of people arrested by the city’s police.
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The record violence comes despite the police department introducing a new Focused Intervention Team that hit the streets in January. The team is designed to handle gun violence and the proliferation of deadly weapons in a city where roughly 75 percent of victims are killed through gun violence.
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The unit was initially met with backlash, as some thought the police were restoring the Gun Violence Reduction team, which was blamed for racial profiling, but Police Chief Chuck Lovell assured the public the team would focus on guns, not gangs.
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The police department has further partnered with community outreach programs to fight the violence, including a Crisis Response Team - a group of trainee individuals that react to critical incident calls involving death or other traumatic events, among others to "organize resources and to focus on chronic offenders and locations to address neighborhood concerns."
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"What we want to see is that people start getting the resources that they need, so they’re not turning to violence. And then hopefully, we’ll start to see not only our homicide, but also our shooting numbers go down," Assistant Police Chief Jami Resch told the Oregonian.
Different groups include Girl Strength - a self-defense class for girls 10 to 14, the African American Advisory Council, and the American Muslim Police Advisory Committee.
"We’re trying to take a holistic approach, knowing that we can’t just have a law enforcement, punitive answer," Resch announced.
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The holistic approach has yet to yield results.
In addition to the increasing murder rate, the city has furthermore seen a significant number of shootings in the first two months of the year, totaling 264, up from the 190 throughout the same time last year. Gun-related injuries are likewise up - 68 compared to 64.
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