It has been almost a year since the radical left began acting out nightly in the city of Portland, Oregon. Last spring, Mayor Ted Wheeler tried to appease the mob by advocating for the defunding of police.
Now crime is surging, and many people who live there are out of patience.
The crime surge is serious. Zachary Faria writes at the Washington Examiner:
Portland cut police funding and got a 2,000% surge in murdersLast June, the city of Portland, Oregon, hopped on the “defund the police” bandwagon. Now, it is flooded with gun violence, and the mayor is already backtracking from his support for the cuts.Mayor Ted Wheeler has requested $2 million in emergency funding for the police department, pointing directly to the surge in gun violence. At this point last year, Portland had seen just one homicide. This year, that number is 20, with 208 shootings in the city so far.Wheeler backed the Portland City Council’s decision to cut $15 million from the police budget last June, which included disbanding police units that investigate gun violence. Predictably, that move backfired in a city that saw 100 consecutive days of violent rioting last year.Riots are back once again in the city, thanks to Wheeler’s spinelessness. Rioters have once again targeted a federal courthouse in the city, a reprise of the violent storming of the courthouse last July.
The city is a war zone. Meanwhile, the National Guard is protecting Washington, DC, from no one.
It’s amazing how long people have put up with this.
Brittany Bernstein writes at National Review:
Portland is ‘Sick and Tired’ of Anarchist Violence, Destruction, Officials SayElected officials and community leaders in Portland, Ore., joined together on Monday in calling for an end to the violence, destruction, and intimidation by far-left anarchists who have spent nearly nine months wreaking havoc in the city amid ongoing protests against racism and police brutality.“The community is sick and tired of people engaging in criminal destruction and violence and doing it under the guise of some noble cause,” Mayor Ted Wheeler said during a news conference, according to the Associated Press.While the city has been the site of a number of peaceful protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black man killed by Minneapolis police during his arrest in May, officials say small groups of anarchists have continued to break businesses’ windows, threaten residents and assault police.“The misguided and miseducated anarchists reject civility and instead intentionally create mayhem through criminally destructive behavior tearing up our city. This must stop,” former state Senator Avel Gordly said.“I say to them today, ‘Stop you are not helping, you are hurting black people,” added Gordly, the first Black woman to be elected to the Oregon State Senate.
There is no excuse for what we have witnessed in Portland over the last year.
If Ted Wheeler can’t put a stop to this, he should step aside.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY