{UAH} PORTLAND AND OTHER "DEFUND'CITIES ARE DESTROYING THEIR OWN LIVABILITY

Portland and other 'defund' cities are destroying their own livability

by Washington Examiner,  

October 15, 2021 12:04 AM

Portland, Oregon, chose to jump on the politically correct bandwagon in 2020 and defund its police force. A rash of murders has since swept over the Rose City, which was once a pleasant place to live.

Until recently, Portland only had a quirky reputation reflected in the comedy show Portlandia. It was amusingly wacky and liberal — a place where the dream of the 1990s was still alive.

Today, Portland is looking a lot more like it did in the late 1980s, at the height of the crack epidemic. The city is about to set a new annual record for murders, and it’s only October. By the time this editorial is published, it may have already hit its highest annual homicide total since 1987.

Between the violent insurrection that leftist protesters waged against its federal courthouse, which lasted for weeks last summer, and the violence that petty criminals are inflicting on innocent citizens, the Rose City just isn't a nice place to be anymore. Its hip, urban environment has suddenly seen its average home price eclipsed by Boise, a remote and backward potato-growing hub in the middle of a neighboring state’s high desert.

Portland enjoys the consequences of treating its police force as a bigger problem than its violent criminals.

Although the murder of George Floyd illuminated how difficult unions make it to discipline police, it also gave rise to a completely false narrative about police brutality and racism. Amazingly, this fact continues to surprise people when they hear it, but most individuals shot and killed by the police are white, not black. In fact, whites are shot by police far out of proportion with their involvement in violent crime.

In addition, blacks are victimized by criminals in much greater disproportion than they are victimized by police. The new FBI data for 2020 released last month show the number of black murder victims growing to alarming levels, comprising 57% of them and approaching 10,000 for the year. In the same year, only 18 unarmed black men were shot and killed by police, according to the Washington Post’s police shooting database.

That discrepancy, a difference of four orders of magnitude, is exactly what you would expect to see if most police were just trying to do their jobs and there were a few bad apples among them.

Portland isn't even one of the worst horror stories among the many police-defunding cities that are destroying their own liveability. Between the Democrats' insane desire to defund police — and the election of soft-on-crime prosecutors supported by George Soros and other Democratic megadonors — cities such as Philadelphia, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and Baltimore are going down the tubes.

It was easy to laugh at Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign when crime was still low and he made getting tough on crime a major plank in his platform. Nobody is laughing now that the United States is experiencing a surge in violent crime.

The people of Portland, like those of many other major American cities, need to reexamine their political priorities. Governments exist to protect their citizens, not coddle violent career criminals who are too lazy to make an honest living.

The only systemic racism at work today is that of cowardly city leaders who make more and more blacks into the victims of violent crime because they refuse to crack down on violent predators, fearful of what others might think of them.

EM         -> {   Gap   at   46  } – {Allan Barigye is a Rwandan predator}

On the 49^th Parallel          

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"