Jonas Parker
Hooligan
Exclusive: Portland Cops Are Getting the Hell Out of Antifastan and Retiring in Record Numbers
By the time the month of August rolls off the calendar, there will have been a record number of Portland Police Bureau retirements. What that means is antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters’ dema...
pjmedia.com
Exclusive: Portland Cops Are Getting the Hell Out of Antifastan and Retiring in Record Numbers
BY VICTORIA TAFT AUG 08, 2020 12:26 PM EST
By the time the month of August rolls off the calendar, there will have been a record number of Portland Police Bureau retirements. What that means is antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters’ demands that civil society “defund the police” and get “the pigs,” appear to be working in Portland, Oregon.
The cops are tapping out.
Portland – Antifistan – is on pace to lose the most cops ever to retirement.
Cops are angry and discouraged, to say the least.
Chaos in antifastan as record number of Portland Police set to retire
So far this month, 15 Portland police officers have put in their official paperwork to retire at the end of the month. That sounds like a trifle, but there have been multiple appointments made to finalize the paperwork for more retiring cops that haven’t been counted in that number. The Bureau is on-trend to lose a “record number” of officers – maybe as many as 42 by the end of the month, and 100 by the end of the year, according to multiple knowledgeable officers who spoke to PJ Media.
An executive with the Portland Fire & Police Disability & Retirement department tells me that “this is probably the biggest [number of retirements] we’ve ever had.”
The situation is “fluid” and likely there will be many more retirements announced before the end of the month. The City of Portland executive told me that the retirements have been prompted by a multiplicity of things, including COVID-19, but, on balance, it’s the riots and attacks on police officers and budgetary “defund the police” antics that have demoralized the cops, causing them to get out.
Is there an uptick in retirements? I asked the city executive. “Oh, yeah,” was the easy and quick answer. Were they surprising? “No.” Why? Sardonic laugh. “Politics …”
Retired cop: ‘If citizens protest anyone it should be the mayor…’
A retired PPB cop told me it’s obvious that “both the City and the population are anti-police. They made it plain that we are wasting our time wishing we could help out in some way, because the goals have nothing to do with getting a police mission done or with stopping what is happening in Portland.”
Another retired PPB command officer wrote that he’d visited Portland and talked to the cops tending to the riots. He reported that he was impressed by their calm and poise. He said cops can always improve, but Portland’s leadership is responsible for this debacle.
Mayor Ted Wheeler, who doubles as the police commissioner, has knelt at the altar of political expediency and has thrown over his new white police chief in favor of a black male lieutenant to appease rioters’ demands. He’s had a new police chief every year of his tenure.
Wheeler disemboweled the police budget by a reported $7 – $15 million. He got rid of the gun violence reduction team (GVRT), which has resulted in a body count the likes of which hasn’t been seen in 30 years; hurting the very people he said he’d help.
Portland can’t help ‘communities of color’ if they’re not first safe
Wheeler cut school cops too, so look forward to more attacks on students, such as rapes in the restrooms and school shootings starting in the winter.
That’s because Governor Kate Brown has consulted the orb and determined that COVID-19 will have been vanquished by … exactly two days after the November election and is allowing government schools to open then. She needs the manpower on the riot lines until then, apparently.
The regional public transit system, which Portland touts in tourism videos, is no longer protected by police, either. “Max” light rail and buses are rife with violence when police and transit security are present. Bring legal pepper spray if you ride from the airport – if they haven’t outlawed you from defending yourself, I mean.
Mere weeks after Mayor and Police Commissioner Ted Wheeler announced the defunding of these key programs in the Portland Police Bureau, the literal body count has exploded in numbers. Murders haven’t been this high in 30 years.
It’s a hot mess.
‘Close to 100 retirements by end of year’
Daryl Turner, who’s the president of the Portland Police Officer’s Association, is on the warpath. He told me that there will be “significant retirements this month amidst the most volatile time” because of “nightly rioting” and COVID-19. Cuts in the budget, he said, have been “catastrophic,” and he expects there will be “close to 100 retirements by the end of January 2021.
January and August have extra pay periods and therefore represent a higher-than-usual retirement number, but 100? Portland’s never seen that number. Ever.
The Oregonian reports that in 2018-2019 there was a record number of retirements. That number? Forty-seven for the entire year. In 2021 Portland is looking at more than double that number.
In August of 2020 – one month – the number is reportedly 42, according to multiple police sources I’ve spoken with over the past week. That’s only two months into the official Portland fiscal year.
Disability requests are also up significantly due to stress, COVID-19, and riot-related injuries.
This isn’t a “problem,” it’s a catastrophe. And it was entirely foreseeable and avoidable.
Wheeler is reportedly considering reinstituting the GVRT. It turns out that it’s very difficult to help “communities of color,” where he said he’d put the money, if the “community” members aren’t safe or are dead.
Police, who know the difference between right and wrong, are leaving.
Cops don’t stay where they’re not wanted and supported.
