Mayor Ted Wheeler would not commit to a date when Portlanders should expect to see the gun violence plaguing the city’s streets slow down, though he said his priority remains getting resources and money to the right city bureaus and community organizations working to address the violence.
“It’s not going to happen instantly. It will require continued support and continued investments, and as the mayor, I’m 100% committed to all of the above,” Wheeler said during a press conference addressing gun violence in Portland.
Wheeler commitment comes over five months after the city approved a nearly $6 million plan to stem shootings, though several key parts of it are still being rolled out. Meanwhile, Portland is surging towards another record-breaking year of gun violence, just one year after the city saw its most violent in decades.
In 2021, Portland has seen nearly as many shootings as all of 2020. Community safety director Mike Myers criticized how the city has handled public safety issues, like violence, in the past.
“The reason that we’re all here in this emergency today, and we’re talking about the police being overwhelmed with call volume, gun violence off the hook, while call wait times, is because we have not been managing it to this point,” Myers said Thursday in a council work session.
KATU Investigates asked Wheeler if he agreed with that assessment from Myers.
“No, I don’t agree that we have failed to manage the violence specifically. What we’re in is a new environment where we have multiple public safety crises taking place at the same time,” Wheeler said. “I don’t see this as a time for us to sit around on and lick our wounds and complain about the way the world is. I see this as an opportunity for us to refocus and be energized and make the changes we need to make in order to be successful in protecting the community safety in this new environment.”
Though Wheeler said he disagreed that the city has failed to manage the problem, he acknowledged in a later response that the city’s plan for gun violence was largely being built “from scratch.” Wheeler said a lot of the work being done at the city level to address violence goes unnoticed.
"It’s disappointing. There is a lots of good work that’s happening at the council level, certainly the bureau level, certainly within the police bureau, within the office of violence prevention, the collaborations we have in place with our county partners and others - there is a lot of work going on in the community," Wheeler said.
Wheeler’s optimistic tone comes as at least one fellow city commissioner said the city council needed to set a goal of reducing gun violence by 20% in the next 15 months.
“Effort and good intentions are not enough. We have to set a goal and hold ourselves accountable for meeting that goal,” Commissioner Mingus Mapps said.
Wheeler did not share that same commitment.
“It’s very easy to say, ‘I want to reduce gun violence by 20% in 15 months.’ The hard part is actually deploying the strategies and the resources to make it happen,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler pointed to millions of dollars in grants approved in April to address gun violence, but several KATU News investigations have shown how long it's taking to get the funding out. Wheeler admitted the process could be sped up but said organizations need to be vetted.
“I realize that takes some time, and we have to balance that against the sense of urgency all of us feel around reducing gun violence, but again, people expect results, and ultimately, we’ll be held accountable by the results we get, not by how quickly we shovel money out the door,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler and Portland Police Chief Chuck Lovell provided an update on the bureau’s new patrol unit for gun violence, dubbed the Focused Intervention Team and approved in the April plan for gun violence. Lovell said the goal is to have the team be on the streets by the end of November.
The bureau closed applications for the two sergeant positions and received five applications. It will now post the applications for the 12 or 14 officer positions before selecting them.
Wheeler also outlined two plans to address staffing within the bureau, including a controversial retire-rehire program that allows the city to pay officers who would otherwise retire to stay. That could impact as many as 80 officers eligible to retire next year. Wheeler said he would propose funding that in the Fall Budget Monitoring Process, though it’s unclear what kind of support Wheeler will get from other council members.
Finally, Wheeler said Chief Lovell and Community Safety Director Mike Myers are working on a data-driven staffing review to determine how many officers the bureau needs to handle its workload. Wheeler said the plan is to have that finished by the beginning of the budget process for the next fiscal year so the community and other commissioners can debate it.
“I have said many times, I believe our police bureau is under-resourced, but I want an evidence-based approach to how many officers we need to hire and what gaps we have in the bureau that currently need to be filled,” Wheeler said. “There’s plenty of time for us to get this right, and I’ve directed that it be an evidence-based approach to staffing.”
As with everything, Wheeler and his colleagues will be judged by what they do, not what they say.
“I think the frustration on the part of the public is they need to see results,” Wheeler acknowledged. “Ultimately, accountability means reducing the gun violence in this community.”