Crime has been down in Portland this year compared to highs it saw over the past couple years. But yet there are still stories of shootings, stabbings and disorder from around the city which continues to have a deficit of police officers going back to the defund the police days of 2020.
Recently, the city seems to be experiencing some serious problems at its central library. Last month there was a shooting outside.
The shooting happened around 3:30 p.m. at Southwest 10th Avenue and Yamhill Street, near the Central Library, and involved two people, police said. One person died, and the alleged gunman fled on foot...
Devan Pascale, the assistant manager at Grand Gesture Books, said she and other employees saw two men fighting outside the Southwest 10th Avenue shop when suddenly two shots rang out.
The wounded man seemed confused or incoherent as he lay on the ground, according to Pascale, while the suspected shooter ran off.
“He wouldn’t let anyone touch him,” she said of the injured man.
Paramedics arrived and took him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. The shooter was arrested a few blocks away. The library was closed temporarily.
But even before the shooting there were plenty of complaints about unsafe conditions from the staff:
Days before last week's shooting, a man pulled a knife inside the library, threatening the staff and patrons, while walking through the library with the knife drawn. Security called for everyone to get out of the person's way.
A viewer of KGW's "The Story," who chose to remain anonymous, said that staff are "loaded" with these kinds of incidents...
A Multnomah County Library spokesperson confirmed that the incident happened last Monday, saying that it began when a library patron reported someone was loudly directing homophobic slurs toward them. The library's "person in charge" eventually asked the person responsible to leave — but as they were escorting the person out, they pulled out a 6-inch blade.
This week there was another violent attack, this one involving people who were leaving the library. A 44-year-old man was stabbed 3 times and hit with skateboards by a group of three people, two of them teenagers.
The wounded man was walking out of the library with his partner around 5 p.m. when he noticed a “disturbance” between a group of people near the entrance and yelled at them to stop, a probable cause affidavit stated. Members of the group then turned their attention on the man’s partner, prompting him to intervene again.
After one person from the group brandished a box cutter, the man and his partner hurried across the street. “Are you really going to stab me over this?” the man recalled asking the group.
A library security guard witnessed the incident and heard one of the members of the group say, “Let’s jump em” before they ran across the street toward the man, according to the affidavit.
One person stabbed him three times and two others hit him with skateboards, including on the head, police said.
The three suspects were caught on a surveillance camera jumping on a train. Police stopped the train and had a group of teens, including the suspects, lay down on the ground. Someone in a passing train caught it on video and immediately suggested police were overreacting. The video was handed over to an activist with Don't Shoot PDX who posted it. The caption for this read: "Just went by this on Max near Lloyd center no idea what the 🤬 but cops were all pointing guns so outrageous …. Just a bunch of kids."
Just a bunch of kids who just stabbed and beat a stranger in the street. The same dummy activist later said “I don’t think every last one of them had a knife.” That's probably true but how are police supposed to know which one does have a kniife (or whether or not they have other weapons on them)? This is the same, dumb anti-police attitude that got Portland where it is now.
The Portland Metro Chamber president blamed the lack of safety around the library on Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson.
For his part, Portland Metro Chamber President and CEO Andrew Hoan is drawing attention to the site of the alleged crime, saying it has become “a hotspot for violence and drug use… in the heart of the Rose City.”
In a written statement, he also said the alleged attackers had been inside the library with their “undetected weapons” before the assault.
And he accused Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson of “persistent inaction” that has been “a direct contributor to these tragic incidents and the conditions that have enabled them.”
The increased use of fentanyl in the area is something that has been reported on going back to March of this year.
More lighting was scheduled to be installed outside Multnomah County’s Central Library on Wednesday in response to reports of increased drug use around the downtown branch...
Brighter lighting around the library is intended to discourage drug dealing and public drug use, said Ryan Yambra, a county spokesperson.
“We don’t believe the lighting will solve addiction, but it helps make a difference when it’s included with other impactful strategies,” Yambra said.
Central Library has also added a second social worker (the first one was hired in 2016), and it has unarmed security officers patrolling the property 12 hours a day and seven days a week.
Why does a library need two social workers? Because the area drug users prefer to do their drugs in the privacy of the library bathrooms.
Tree, as he introduced himself, said he has been homeless for about five or six years. He uses methamphetamine and fentanyl. And he's aware, at least, that the library bathrooms are a place where some people go to use drugs away from prying eyes.
"I think it's starting to be one of the only spots that's always open and available," Tree said, "and since usage is kinda up in this area, it's an easy option, you know what I'm saying? You're trying to hurry up and get yourself well."
"Every time I come down here, it's just packed with people out here using drugs, trading drugs," said one person who did not want to be named. "I see people coming out of there faded."
The drug use is so bad that the county called in the CDC to look into exposure levels for library staff members. It turned out more than a third of staffers had been exposed over the past year.
Last month I wrote a post about the ongoing battle among professional librarians over whether libraries should essentially be treated as homeless shelters. There is an active contingent on the left who say the answer is yes and who insist the libraries be open for people who want to do drugs or whatever else. It makes perfect sense that the library in Portland would be run along these lines.
There's an easy fix for all of this. Keep the drug addicts and homeless people out of the library and tell the dopey anti-police activists to stuff it. These changes would be simple to make but in Portland it would probably be easier to get voters to agree to have librarians hand out clean needles.
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