Trial lawyer Kristin Olson thinks local authorities are failing in managing homelessness and crimes in Portland, Oregon. She lamented that fact that homicides in the city are out of control.
During an interview with Fox Business' Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, Olson said Portland is the only city in America where a third of homicides are committed by and against homeless people.
"We are an outlier, in terms of cities in the United States, for the amount of homeless that are being killed and shot at with guns," Olson said, adding that this was brought about by numerous factors.
"It is a confluence of decriminalization of drugs and guns everywhere because we've got this lawless and free-for-all culture," the lawyer said. "We've got open-air drug markets and the police have pulled back after being defunded to the tune of $27 million."
Meanwhile, the cartels and the drug and gun runners have moved in. And now homeless encampments are everywhere, giving a venue for "open-air drug markets" and "open-air insane asylums." (Related: Squatters occupy Portland homes as helpless homeowners desperately try to sell.)
A spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) said "homicide numbers are way down" this year after seeing an increase over the past three years. According to PPB data, there was a total of 101 confirmed homicides in 2022. By March 1 last year, the city had already seen 19 of them. As of March 1 this year, the city has only recorded nine homicides – representing a 52.6 percent decrease in homicides year-over-year.
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However, Olson pointed out that crimes will still thrive in Portland as long as no drug recovery programs are being done. "We did not open up detox and rehab centers. We seem to have no interest in addiction recovery in Portland, instead what we have are heroin leaders," she said.
Portland public safety collapse could be politically triggered
The public safety crisis in Oregon's largest city could be politically triggered, analysts say.
Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt received campaign contributions from groups linked to liberal billionaire George Soros. Fox News reported that Schmidt took office during the height of Portland's 2020 protests and later announced a policy presumptively declining to prosecute the most common riot-related charges.
According to data, the district attorney's office filed charges in just 47 percent of all cases it received in 2020. The rate has been steadily increasing since then and was up to 60 percent in 2022, but the police have also sent 43.5 percent fewer cases to Schmidt than they did in 2019.
"Their hands are tied because of politics," addiction counselor Kevin Dahlgren said of local police. "If a cop knows it's not going to be prosecuted, why are they going to waste their time on two hours of paperwork and drive him down just to get released an hour later?"
Neighboring Washington County's District Attorney Kevin Barton commented that the justice system needs to "have a balance where we let the police do their job and we incentivize them to arrest people by prosecuting the people they arrest."
Barton's county filed more criminal cases than Multnomah County in 2021 as per Oregon Judicial Department data. Clackamas County, which has roughly half the population, filed more misdemeanor charges than Multnomah County.
Check out Violence.news for more stories about rising crime rates.
Watch the full interview of Fox Business' Lisa Kennedy Montgomery with Kristin Olson below.
This video is from the NewsClips channel on Brighteon.com.
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Rioters are burning Portland down, and cowardly politicians are to blame.
Antifa smashed Democrat headquarters in Portland, but Republicans were blamed.
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