Kevin Neely - Can Portland Fix Its Police Crisis?

Portland ranks near the bottom in police staffing among major cities and the impact is showing in response times, crime rates, and public safety. With fewer officers and a growing population, the question is whether the city can realistically turn things around.

Kevin Neely, Executive Director of the Oregon Criminal Justice Truth Project, joins the program to break down what’s driving the crisis and what it would take to fix it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. It's a pleasure to be with you on a First Amendment Friday. I want to raise this question, and it has to do with what the purpose of government is. And I think simply stated, the purpose of our national government is the national security of the United States of America. I mean, before you get to anything else, the CDC or National Parks or Department of Interior, before you get to any of that, it's national security. And at the local level, meaning the state, city, and county level, the number one purpose is public safety. Now, you can sum that up as cops, sheriffs, medical help, and putting out fires. That's just for starters. Get that right. In fact, get that really right, and you've done about 90% of what the public expects of you before you've opened up a single public park or had a DEI conference or any of the rest of that garbage. So when you have major cities, and there are two in the Northwest, Seattle and Portland, that have done a lousy job of providing enough police officers to actually get the job done. Portland now ranks, for example, 47th out of 50 major cities in police officers per capita, and I believe it chose. And one of the people who knows it better than I do is Kevin Neely, Executive Director of the Oregon Criminal Justice Truth Project. Kevin, welcome back to the program. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

I'm great. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:24

I'm doing well, but I'd be doing a lot better if major cities in the Northwest actually staffed their policing adequately. And one of the things I always point out to people, I I don't have the exact math in front of me, but I'm going to be close. The City of Portland has an annual budget over$8 billion, and they spend well less than one-tenth of that amount on policing and public safety. Now, what does that say about the priorities of the City of Portland if the number one job of local government, which is not DEI and it's not public parks or anything else, it's public safety, and they spend less than a tenth of their budget on it?

SPEAKER_01 2:05

Well, we couldn't agree with you more. It should be the number one priority. It has been the number one priority in the past, and it needs to be the number one priority moving forward. And I think you've uh really hit the nail on the head. It if our community isn't spending money on cops, our livability is going downhill fast.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Yep. Well, and in fact, you can see that all over. I mean, it's not just downtown Portland, but downtown Portland ought to be the shining example of this represents the city. And yet downtown real estate, uh, the big buildings down there, because people have stopped going there and businesses have been fleeing, the the value is down, what is it, 70% in the last uh few years? So somebody who built bought a$10 million building about a decade ago now has a$3 million building and they can't find tenants to take. I mean, uh that that just sounds like the kind of you know crash that you see after a war.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Yeah, it is just a fall from grace, isn't it? And at that exact same time, we've seen this disinvestment in our police. And that's what we're really trying to highlight in this report is listen, here's what happens. If you don't pay to have safe streets, the livability is going to go down, and the economic vitality, particularly of your central city, is gonna collapse. And there's probably no better example than some of those cities here in the Pacific Northwest.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Now, I'm I cited that number that came out of your report, the Oregon Criminal Justice Truth Project, 47th out of 50. Do you happen to know where Seattle ranks in there by any chance?

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Uh yeah, I sure do. It's just a few short steps ahead of us. Uh they too are here in the bottom 10 with us. Seattle, it looks to me like is um, well, I'll give you I'll give you a sense. The bottom here, we've got Seattle, Minneapolis, San Diego, Portland. It's it's pretty good company we're with right now in the Portland area, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 4:03

All the usual suspects, isn't it? So how do we get that changed, especially when you've got in Portland, both Portland and Seattle, you've got a mayor in Seattle who's a socialist, doesn't sound like she believes in policing. You've got a socialist city council of 12 in Portland, and a feckless mayor who doesn't seem to care uh because you know he there's a story about him right now in the paper that he goes out on weekends and picks up trash and things like that. But his job was not to run the soup kitchen, his job was to run an$8 billion enterprise. And it sounds like he doesn't have the first clue how to do it.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Well, we sure hope when his budget comes out here in the near future that it protects and preserves the police officers that we do have. Uh but no doubt about it, right? This commission is gonna have to, you know, they're gonna have to invest some money here. And if they don't invest money in our police, I I think it's probably gonna end up falling back to the public, unfortunately. And and that's not where we should be, but it might be where we are.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Well, and and Kevin, one of the things I wonder about is are you putting individual citizens in the position where when they know that calling 911 means you might get help in a certain period of time, but it's gonna be a long period of time, you're basically telling citizens you're on your own. So act on your own behalf, because otherwise you may end up being dead or in the hospital. And and I think when people act on their own behalf, instead of I mean, I'm not faulting it. I'm saying if if that's the only choice you've got, then go ahead and take those actions. But it sounds to me like that's gonna leave a whole lot more dead or dying criminals out there. And and maybe that's what we need.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Well, you know, there's two ways to reduce crime in your communities. Way one is to have more prosecutions, way two is to have more police officers. And if you err on the side of more police officers, that means you're preventing crime. You just hit the nail on the head. That ought to be our goal. Back when we had over a thousand police officers in the Portland metro area, the response time on 9-1 was on 911 calls was five to eight minutes. Today, you could be waiting 30 minutes before you get a response. That's not the fault of our police departments. They're doing their absolute best. The problem is that our communities are not adequately funding our cops. And that's what needs to change.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Yeah, and and all I'm suggesting, and giving the numbers at the beginning, when you're spending less than 10%, what's the total police budget now? About$300 million or less? And it's that's right.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

It's it's right around$300. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

So if you added the police department, the fire department, and then even added in the component that is provided by the private sector for medical response, you'd be you'd still be less than$800 million, which would be one-tenth of the budget. And if you say, well, if you're spending less than one-tenth on public safety, what are you spending the other nine-tenths on? And and I think the answer is generally stuff. You know, uh they're spending it on stuff. Are they keeping up with parks? No. Uh are they keeping up with uh other infrastructure? No. You know, water, sewer? No. How about roads? No. So where the heck is the money going, Kevin? Do you have any any idea?

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Boy, we haven't done that examination, but I'm sure smarter people than I have. And you know, the one thing we do know uh uh is it's not going to the police department. It's not going to invest in that foundational need of our community, public safety, right? People just want to be safe before any of those other things come into play. It's really about creating a safe environment for us to thrive. We just don't have that right now in too many parts of our city, and frankly, in too many parts of the Pacific Northwest.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

You know, I'm I'm just convinced that with 8 billion plus out there in the city's annual budget, you could divert 100 million to more cops and and take it away from whatever you know, woke, fuzzy thing that they've allocated it to. And probably most people wouldn't give a damn, but they'd be very glad that when you call 911, you get quick response from a cop. That's Kevin Neely, who's director of the Oregon Criminal Justice Truth Project. Back in a moment, you've got the Lars Larson show.