Shut Down

PORTLAND POLICE LAUNCHED an aggressive gang patrol last
weekend after the city experienced seven shootings in one week. And
while the crackdown will get some guns off the streets, long-term gang
prevention will require more than just police action, say community
activists.

Police view the citywide string of shootings as isolated
gang-related incidents—not as the start of a gang war. “This is
about people who are gang associates, they have guns, things happen,”
says Gang Enforcement Team leader Lieutenant Mike Leloff. The shootings
reached a fever pitch last week when two teens tried to rob a Fred
Meyer on SE 82nd and wound up shooting at police and security
guards.

“We used to just be able to put [gang patrol officers] out in North
and Northeast—now we have to be mobile,” says Leloff, who adds
that gang violence has been shifting around the city in part because of
gentrification in North Portland.

“We could hear shouting and then later some pops, but because of the
Fourth of July, we just assumed it was fireworks,” says Matthew Holm,
resident of a Northeast Portland condo building where two people were
injured during a shooting on Tuesday, July 21. “The cops were there in
seconds.”

Portland police tried the same mobile gang response tactics back in
January under the name Operation Cooldown, and also in 2007. Leloff
says the strategy was very effective for reducing violence short term.
But looking at the long term, gang activity has increased 12 percent
statewide in just the past four years, according to the Oregon
Department of Justice. Portland relies heavily on one-time funding for
gang prevention programs. That creates only sporadic outreach to
Portland’s 500 known gang members.

“We need to find a system that keeps us married to gang problems. We
have six or seven shootings, we have a press conference and suddenly
the money appears,” says Rob Richardson, program director for Emmanuel
Community Services.

“I do think we’re going to see more shootings before we start seeing
less,” says City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who rode along with the
cops’ Gang Enforcement Team on Saturday night, July 25. “But I was very
impressed with the cooperation between law enforcement and the outreach
folks. There has always been some distrust on one side or the other, I
think, but a lot of that seems to have been overcome.”

No further shootings were reported last weekend.