In early April, Portlander Jennifer Shuch was biking across Northeast Halsey Street near the Hollywood Transit Center when she was struck by a driver running a red light. The impact, which was caught on video, left Shuch bruised and shaken up, but not seriously injured.
Despite a witness calling 911, no paramedics or police ever arrived on the scene. Shuch briefly talked to the driver, who claimed she couldn’t see Shuch crossing the street because it was raining and her windshield wipers were broken.
Later that day, Shuch called the police to directly file a report. But despite the driver having a documented history of traffic violations, the police didn’t cite the driver. As it turns out, in situations like these, police aren’t required to.
“This was a failure of a driver to reasonably stop and follow the rules of the road,” Shuch told the Mercury. “I don’t want people who are driving really recklessly to not face any consequences for that.”
Portland Police Bureau (PPB) officers are not mandated to report or investigate all traffic crashes. Per the bureau’s administrative rules, police do not necessarily need to investigate crashes caused by a driver who violated the law, unless it was fatal or resulted in a traumatic injury. Police are supposed to report and investigate crashes caused by intoxicated drivers, and those who flee the scene.
PPB’s policies require them to report and investigate crashes involving vulnerable road users like cyclists and pedestrians only if the victim is injured badly enough to require ambulance transport. They may report, investigate, and cite drivers for other incidents, but are not mandated to.
The lack of reporting mandate means reckless drivers who hit pedestrians and bicyclists are often not held accountable, as long as they didn’t cause serious injury. It also means cyclists like Shuch may run into trouble when trying to seek legal or financial recourse from auto insurance companies or the courts for damages or minor injuries. PPB says it doesn’t have the staffing to follow up on these types of crashes.
“We’re a significantly under-resourced police department and we’re always having to make hard choices about where to put our limited personnel,” PPB Public Information Officer Sgt. Kevin Allen told the Mercury.
Some Portlanders, including Shuch and others with similar experiences, question the narrative that staffing issues are the sole reason PPB often fails to cite drivers for violating the law. They note the practice may make it harder to collect data about how safe it is to walk and bike in Portland, giving a false impression about how many crashes are taking place on city streets. They also worry PPB is letting dangerous drivers off the hook, making it more likely those drivers will go on to seriously injure or even kill someone.
Portland City Councilor Sameer Kanal, a member of the Council’s Community and Public Safety Committee, told the Mercury his office has been hearing anecdotes like Shuch’s for some time. Kanal said he’s looking into potential solutions for the issue, noting that “when PPB is tasked with doing something, they generally do it.”
“It’s important for us to ensure that we are holding everybody accountable who is involved in an injury collision, regardless of if the person needs an ambulance,” Kanal said, pointing out there are other factors—primarily, cost—that might prevent someone from accepting ambulance transport from a crash scene.
“It doesn’t seem right that there are so many people getting hit by cars in Portland, and unless we die, we don’t matter,” Shuch said. “How many times does this have to happen before it’s taken seriously?”
Police crash protocol and practice
PPB cites two main challenges—a backlog of 911 calls and an arduous crash investigation process—that they say prevent officers from showing up to the scene of a crash or citing drivers for illegal and dangerous conduct. The bureau ties both of these challenges back to a lack of agency resources.
“We’re a significantly under-resourced police department and we’re always having to make hard choices about where to put our limited personnel.”
Sgt. Kevin Allen, Portland Police Bureau
Portland’s 911 response times are poor by any standard. Data shows that the average response time for low-priority calls, which would include situations like Shuch’s non-injury collision, is roughly an hour and 38 minutes. In the case of Shuch’s crash, it appears police weren’t even notified about the call until several hours after the incident.
Per PPB’s policy, police are required to investigate crashes caused by drivers who are intoxicated behind the wheel. But if they don’t show up to a crash, how would they know what state the driver was in?
Allen acknowledged that it would be “very difficult” for officers “to gather enough evidence of [a driver’s] impairment” if they were not able to immediately respond to the scene. He said with officers overburdened, it’s “not a stretch to assume that there are a lot of crimes committed that don’t result in an arrest.”
But even if officers do show up to a crash scene, it doesn’t mean they will conduct an investigation or cite an at-fault driver.
Late last month, Brandon Mullen was biking across NE Sandy Blvd at 24th Avenue when he was struck by a driver running a red light. Mullen was uninjured and declined treatment from paramedics who arrived after a witness called 911. The 911 call also summoned a police officer to the scene, who Mullen says was helpful. But, like in Shuch’s case, the police declined to cite the driver who hit Mullen.
Mullen followed up with the officer who responded to the crash, sharing a detailed account of the situation in an email. In response, the officer confirmed that he wouldn’t be filing a police report due to the lack of “notable injuries on scene” or ambulance transport.
After an insurance investigation, the driver was ultimately found responsible for the crash, and Mullen was able to recuperate costs for his damaged bike. But the police response left Mullen frustrated (and the lack of a police report in this case may have caused delays in the insurance company’s investigation, too).
“We have a society with rules, laws, policies, and disincentives that we say are, in part, to drive people’s behavior,” Mullen told the Mercury, reflecting on the crash and the police response. “If someone blows a red light and hits somebody, and not only do they not get a ticket, but there isn’t even a police report… are they encouraged to drive more carefully or not?”
Allen told the Mercury that in order for officers to cite someone for a moving violation, they must also complete a full crash investigation, which is a complex and time-consuming process. While any officer can do a crash investigation, traffic officers have the most experience doing it, likely making it easier to primarily make it their responsibility. But Portland doesn’t have very many dedicated traffic cops.
In 2020, citing understaffing and a lack of resources, PPB effectively disbanded its Traffic Division. Bureau leaders publicly discussed the lack of traffic enforcement on Portland’s streets, essentially spreading the message that reckless drivers were unlikely to face consequences. Later, a bureau leader admitted PPB purposefully framed the situation to “create a stir” and encourage the city to give police more money.
In 2023, PPB brought back its traffic enforcement team, though in a limited capacity. Allen said the department is a “shadow of its former self,” with zero full-time traffic officers on patrol most of the day.
“It doesn’t seem right that there are so many people getting hit by cars in Portland, and unless we die, we don’t matter.”
Jennifer Shuch, cyclist
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson has committed to adding 24 new investigators to PPB by the end of 2027, partially to address traffic crashes. The mayor says investigators would focus on “issues that harm the community the most,” citing human trafficking, child abuse, organized retail theft, serial break-ins, and elder financial fraud, as well as vehicular homicides and super speeders. It’s unclear if low-level crash investigations would be a priority for the team.
When Mullen and Shuch posted online about their crashes and subsequent interactions with the police, people responded with shock. Unintentional though it may be, PPB’s practice to let at-fault drivers off the hook in these cases appears to many as a sign the bureau doesn’t take the safety of vulnerable road users seriously.
Shuch said her experience trying to get answers from PPB about her crash was exhausting and dispiriting. She said she felt the police were upset with her for reaching out about the incident, treating her like she was doing something wrong by inquiring. (One moment of validation came in an email from PPB Chief of Staff Robert King, who told Shuch the video of her crash was “terrible.”)
To Councilor Kanal, such reactions emphasize why it’s important that police take bike and pedestrian crashes seriously. Kanal said he wants all Portlanders to feel heard by city leaders, particularly when they’ve experienced something as alarming as being hit by a car.
“It’s about making clear to the public that you are equally valid using a road as a pedestrian or a bicyclist… and that your life matters to us,” Kanal told the Mercury. “If your life is in danger, we’re going to care about that, and try to hold the driver accountable. Not in a punitive way, but in a way that’s designed to prevent it from happening.”
Consequences down the road
Shuch and Mullen say the motivation for pursuing their cases with police is twofold. Both were disturbed by the behavior of the drivers who hit them, but more importantly, they hope to deter other incidents by shining a light on PPB’s hands-off policies and the risks and legal landscape it creates for cyclists and pedestrians.
One major concern: Without more robust emergency response, crashes will go undocumented, which could skew data to make it seem like Portland’s streets are safer than they really are.
“We cannot make structural changes about the things that we do not know about,” Mullen said. “Data drives policy, budgeting, and infrastructure decisions. If we had better data about vulnerable road users being struck by cars, then we could make well-informed decisions to align with our Vision Zero goals. Without that data, we’re making decisions that are not as informed as they could be.”
Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) spokesperson Dylan Rivera told the Mercury the bureau knows “there is an undercount of crashes involving pedestrians and people who are biking,” but said it’s “not an issue unique to Portland or one that can be solely attributed to police reporting.”
Rivera said PBOT uses multiple sources of data to inform its decisions, including qualitative assessments gathered through community outreach, which helps transportation leaders “understand the public’s experience of navigating our streets, whether there is a crash report or not.”
Shuch and Mullen also both said that while they were lucky to walk away from their crashes without major injuries, they feared the drivers who hit them would cause more serious damage down the road.
“When I was talking to [the head of PPB’s Traffic Division], I said, ‘Did you ever think about the fact that fewer people would be getting killed if you caught these reckless drivers before they killed somebody?’” Shuch said. “He was like, ‘Yeah, obviously, but we don’t have enough people on this.’ To me, that’s a prioritization thing.”
