The Oregon city of Portland is increasingly becoming a dangerous, lawless place as violence and homicides spike after far-left Democratic city leaders essentially turned over public safety policymaking to Black Lives Matter and Antifa militants, writes Andy Ngo, a journalist who is from the area.
In a column for DailyMail.com, Ngo, who has been covering both groups for the past two years as they rose in prominence, noted that Portland’s homicide rate has skyrocketed as police staffing has shrunk and response times to emergency calls have increased by as much as 60 percent, all due to BLM/Antifa deference by city leaders.
“Portland turned over its streets to Black Lives Matter-Antifa rioters last year and allowed the far-left to dictate public policy,” he wrote, adding:
Elected officials in the ‘City of Roses’ condemned the police, defunded law enforcement and coddled violent criminals in the name of “anti-fascism'” and “anti-racism.”
Now it’s dealing with yet another year of surging murders, shootings, riots, homeless encampments, mass looting and violent criminality.
Earlier this month, Ngo wrote, the Portland Police Bureau, whose officers have literally been under siege by BLM and Antifa for years, announced that officers would only be responding to the most serious 9-1-1 calls that involved life-or-death situations.
“Due to critical incidents happening today and PPB’s staffing shortage, officers are responding to Priority 1 and 2 calls only right now and response times may be delayed for certain calls,” the PPB noted in an announcement as the department attempted to direct enough cops to respond to a violent carjacker in the northern part of the city.
Officers who did respond were forced to shoot out the windows of the suspected vehicle, driven by Brandon Keck, who was killed.
But that incident, which resulted in a major highway being shut down for hours, wasn’t the first time in recent weeks that police response to an emergency situation was delayed.
“When Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted on Nov. 19, Antifa rioters gathered to try and burn down the county jail in downtown as revenge,” Ngo wrote, adding that in response the PPB announced on Twitter, “Significant resources have been diverted to address this riot and it is affecting response times. While we have officers assigned to address emergencies citywide, lower priority calls will have to wait for a while.”
Two days later, he continued, a frantic woman called police around 3:30 in the afternoon begging for help after finding herself hostage to an armed assailant. As officers responded, they were fired upon from the residence, forcing them to retreat and call in a SWAT team.
“Ten hours later, officers finally broke inside and apprehended the armed suspect, 29-year-old Davonte Donahue. Mariela Gonzalez Rocha, the young Latina woman who called police for help, was already dead,” Ngo wrote.
But the department has had difficulty responding to priority calls for months. Before the daily rioting began following the murder of George Floyd thousands of miles away in Minneapolis, Minn., in late May 2020, police response times to life-and-death emergencies was around eight minutes, according to Ngo. “Now it takes 60% longer,” he noted.
According to Bureau of Emergency Communications records, he said, officers take hours to respond to lower-priority 911 calls, and often, they never show up at all.
He went on to blame Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler and the far-left city council for their decisions to defund the PPB and cater to the mobs. And interestingly, Ngo wrote, because of those policies, “more black and brown people are dying—and few are able to get the help they need when they call police.”
Ngo closed his column this way: “Mayor Wheeler now says he wants to add at least 300 new officers to the Portland Police. He also proposes rehiring retired officers and offering $25,000 signing bonuses to new recruits. But the efforts are too little and too late. The bureau has struggled for over a year and a half to find enough recruits.”
He added: “Meanwhile, a new year is around the corner and another spate of officers are expected to retire.”
Jon has over 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.
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