The City of Portland in The Peoples’ Republic of Oregon ended 2021 with a record high year in shooting deaths. The city saw 90 murders over the past year and, as of the first day of 2022, added two more fatalities to the list.

The 90 murders in 2021, (according to figures released to Willamette Week by the police bureau) shatters the previous record of 70, set in 1970 when the population of Portland was 46% smaller. But wait, there’s more. Around 385 Portlanders were injured last year by gunfire. Portland police also say they responded to 1,287 calls about shootings, according to Willamette Week. Shall we go on? Fifty-nine traffic deaths. Fifty-nine deaths due to overheating in June’s 116-degree heatwave. Twenty five people killed by cars just trying to cross a street in Portland.
Let’s not even go there with the increase in opioid use and overdoses in the Portland metro.

Why am I picking on the Rose City? Because of its leadership-a feckless Mayor who lobbied to defund his police department and is now in the process of trying to rebuild it by luring potential officers in with sign-on bonuses this past year to no avail. Then, there’s city commissioner, Jo Ann Hardesty who thought traffic barrels-or-ehhh-“traffic calming devices” would deter shooters on the streets. Apparently, these brainiacs thought big, traffic barrels were going to prevent a gun-toting criminal from shooting up a neighborhood? Those traffic barrels are as useless as “Gun-Free Zone” signs at our local schools. But it bears repeating, Portland did not only keep things weird in 2021, they kept it deadly. And, sadly, 2022 does not look much better.

Portland has had more homicides in 2021 than some larger cities, including San Francisco, and twice as many slayings as its larger neighbor, Seattle. Other hard-hit Western cities include the Albuquerque, New Mexico, metro area, which has about 679,000 residents and has had a record 97 homicides this year.”-U.S. News & World Report

It’s not just Mayor Ted Wheeler’s fault, though. We also need to raise our glass to Governor Kate Brown for her stellar leadership in making Portland the murderous little sh-thole that it is. What did Kruella de Brown have to say to Oregonians going into the new year?

2021 was a challenging year, but I am proud of how Oregon persevered and all that we accomplished together. We withstood ice storms, wildfire, heat, and drought, passed historic legislation to tackle the climate crisis, and got shots in the arms of over 2,749,000 Oregonians.

— Governor Kate Brown (@OregonGovBrown) January 1, 2022

Wow, Kate. 2,749,000 Oregonians got a shot in the arm. But how many just got shot?

You’ve got to be kidding me! You didn’t name anything that other states haven’t been through except non-stop destruction and violence in your biggest city, Portland. How about that for uniqueness? What did you do about it?

— Raina Weiser (@RainaWeiser) January 1, 2022

The streets of Portland are littered with rioters and looting. Businesses throughout the state of Oregon have not been able to sustain-or as Kate Brown says, withstand (her) draconian lockdowns and mandates. People are getting shot in Portland? News to Kate Brown. But she knows just the thing to make everything all better. Yep. That historic legislation to tackle the climate crisis will make Portland and the state of Oregon the land of rainbow-puking liberal unicorns it once was. And, at least if you do venture into Portland and get shot, you’ve got the ol’ Pfizer, Moderna or J&J in your arm thanks to your buddy, the Governor….that shot makes people bullet-proof these days, right?

And, with news of the continued shootings in Portland, we cannot help to harken back to a certain cringeworthy tourism advertisement Travel Portland plastered on full-page ads this past summer:

We’re a place of dualities that are never polarities. Two sides to the same coin that keeps landing right on its edge. Anything can happen. We like it this way.”-Travel Portland

Sure, anything can happen. You can get shot. They, the Democrats, the liberals, like it this way. They all but voted for this violence. They encouraged it.

This is the kind of place where new ideas are welcome — whether they’re creative, cutting-edge or curious at first glance. You can speak up here. You can be yourself here.”-Travel Portland

New ideas welcome, they say. Possession of hard drugs? Well, apparently, that’s also welcome on the streets of Portland. But, don’t fear because you can have curious, cutting-edge and creative ideas in Portland, too. Speak up on the streets of PDX, go get some VooDoo Doughnuts and just be yourself, man. Even though it might get you popped.

If there were ever a time for new ideas in the city of Portland and in the state of Oregon as a whole, I would say it is now. Until sludge like Wheeler and Brown are flushed out, the death toll on the streets will sadly continue.

Photo Credit: Christopher Michel/FlickR/CC BY 2.0/Cropped

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