Tense hospital scene after shooting increases alarm over Portland’s gun violence ‘crisis’
Updated 8:36 PM;
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A flood of Portland police cars responded late Monday to break up a report of a gang fight at the doors to Legacy Emanuel Medical Center’s emergency department, where four people with gunshot wounds had just arrived.
The scene was reminiscent of scenarios two decades ago when officers, street outreach workers and pastors routinely headed to the hospital to cool tensions between rival gangs.
Those days are back, say police, former gang members and community leaders.
The city is on track to shatter its record annual homicide count of 70 in 1987. So far this year, 33 people have died in homicides and about 130 have been wounded in more than 400 shootings. Four people have been killed in the city since a week ago Sunday.
Police union blasts proposed Portland budget May 13 2021
The Portland Police Association blames the increase in shootings on the elimination of the Gun Violence Reduction Team.
The head of the union representing most Portland Police Bureau employees criticized the City Council for considering cutting its funding hours before the scheduled vote on next year s budget.
In an email press release, Portland Police Association President Daryl Turner blamed the surge in shootings and killings that began last year on the council s elimination of the bureau s Gun Violence Reduction Team during social justice protests. The team had been accused of disproportionately focusing on the Black community.
It’s happened with such regularity that by now the reaction seems routine: police shoot and kill a Black person, and protesters gather in the streets of Columbus.
Twice in April, protests formed within hours of the news that police had first shot and killed 27-year-old Miles Jackson on April 12 at Mount Carmel St. Ann s medical center after he fired a gun in the emergency department, and then again when a Columbus officer shot 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant on April 20 in response to Bryant wielding a knife against a young woman.
But while the responses to fatal police shootings are swift, James Wynn contends that each killing of a Black person reopens wounds in communities of color that have been allowed to fester for much longer than any one protest can last.