BACKFIRE: Portland defunds police, murders surge near 2,000%, and mayor suddenly wants to RE-FUND police again!

The socialist bastion that is Portland, Oregon has now seen a surge in their murder rate of nearly 2,000 percent after cutting police funding in the wake of the death of George Floyd in police custody last year. It’s gotten so bad that their sorry excuse for a mayor is now asking for some of that funding back for police:

DC EXAMINER – Last June, the city of Portland, Oregon, hopped on the “defund the police” bandwagon. Now, it is flooded with gun violence, and the mayor is already backtracking from his support for the cuts.

Mayor Ted Wheeler has requested $2 million in emergency funding for the police department, pointing directly to the surge in gun violence. At this point last year, Portland had seen just one homicide. This year, that number is 20, with 208 shootings in the city so far.

It’s only March and the murder rate is already nearly 2,000% higher than last year. I did a little checking and found the rate of shootings in the city, as of the beginning of March, has also skyrocketed to 93% higher than last year.

It’s no wonder that Wheeler has backtracked and is now requesting more money for police.

The article continues…

Wheeler backed the Portland City Council’s decision to cut $15 million from the police budget last June, which included disbanding police units that investigate gun violence. Predictably, that move backfired in a city that saw 100 consecutive days of violent rioting last year.

Riots are back once again in the city, thanks to Wheeler’s spinelessness. Rioters have once again targeted a federal courthouse in the city, a reprise of the violent storming of the courthouse last July. In June, it was reported that the city lost around $24 million due to the riots. Damage to federal buildings totals roughly $2.3 million.

Portland, like Minneapolis, doesn’t have and never did have an overpolicing problem. The city has an underpolicing problem, compounded by cowardly city leaders who pander to anti-police activists. Portland city leaders, just like their Minneapolis counterparts, humored these leftist ideologues while turning a blind eye to riots. Now, they reap the whirlwind in the form of a surge in violent crime.

As the author, Zachary Faria, points out, there are no Republicans to blame in Portland for this madness:

And this is Portland, so there is no Republican to blame for this issue. Wheeler is a Democrat. So are the city council members, with one independent who was endorsed by the council’s Democratic members. Gov. Kate Brown, who said that former President Donald Trump was “provoking confrontation for political purposes” by protecting the courthouse, is a Democrat. So is President Biden, who currently has federal agents trying to protect the courthouse.

This is exactly how radical socialism works. The government enforces ridiculous activist-based policies for the common good and it’s the public who has to pay the price, in this case with their lives.

Radical socialism does not work!


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