📉 Portland’s crime stats are fake comfort — the city looks “safer” on paper only because citizens are too burned out to bother reporting what never gets addressed.
Mayor Wilson talks about rebuilding the police with more funding and recruitment, but there’s no clear plan to put more patrol cops on the street. His public safety and homelessness strategies sound good at a high level but are light on specifics, timelines, and accountability.
Bottom line: The leaders elected to keep our community safe are failing the very people who voted them in.
When I chaired the Livability and Safety Committee of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association in the late 2010s, I investigated where Portland ranked in police officers per capita compared with other cities of Portland’s size, as our committee could not understand why the Pearl District neighborhood seldom saw a Portland police officer on foot or why the response time to non-emergency calls often took hours. The data showed that Portland ranked dead last in this category of police staffing.
That is incredible, clearly not a lean machine of an organization,. As a retired medium size company owner, I can tell you that the leaders of this PD have no formal organizational skills and very little imagination. It runs just like a non-for-profit org.; a lot of presidents, Sr. VPs, Jr. VPs, assistants to management, coordinators, administrative support staff, etc., etc., so, the little $ that's left to run on the on the ground the tasks for the most needed (and the main purpise of the organizatiin) is very skinny, and nearly invisible.
Thanks again Curtis excellent reporting!
I took a look for comparison to similar cities and here’s what I discovered:
Portland has by far the weakest patrol presence — about 3x fewer patrol officers per resident than Denver, and likely less than Seattle too.
• Portland: ~0.51 per 1,000 (316 patrol cops for ~615k people)
• Denver: ~1.47 per 1,000 (1,053 patrol cops for ~716k people)
• Seattle: ≤ ~1.24 per 1,000 (real patrol number likely much lower)
⚠️ No wonder Portland feels lawless. Fewer cops, more crime.
Crime rates:
• Portland: 7.23 violent + 59.76 property = 66.99 per 1,000
• Seattle: 7.77 violent + 51.10 property = 58.88 per 1,000
• Denver: 5.3 violent + 40.1 property = 45.4 per 1,000
📉 Portland’s crime stats are fake comfort — the city looks “safer” on paper only because citizens are too burned out to bother reporting what never gets addressed.
Mayor Wilson talks about rebuilding the police with more funding and recruitment, but there’s no clear plan to put more patrol cops on the street. His public safety and homelessness strategies sound good at a high level but are light on specifics, timelines, and accountability.
Bottom line: The leaders elected to keep our community safe are failing the very people who voted them in.
When I chaired the Livability and Safety Committee of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association in the late 2010s, I investigated where Portland ranked in police officers per capita compared with other cities of Portland’s size, as our committee could not understand why the Pearl District neighborhood seldom saw a Portland police officer on foot or why the response time to non-emergency calls often took hours. The data showed that Portland ranked dead last in this category of police staffing.
thank you for the great research and reporting Curtis, very greatful!
That is incredible, clearly not a lean machine of an organization,. As a retired medium size company owner, I can tell you that the leaders of this PD have no formal organizational skills and very little imagination. It runs just like a non-for-profit org.; a lot of presidents, Sr. VPs, Jr. VPs, assistants to management, coordinators, administrative support staff, etc., etc., so, the little $ that's left to run on the on the ground the tasks for the most needed (and the main purpise of the organizatiin) is very skinny, and nearly invisible.