Portland Police Budget Revealed – People Are Not Happy
In recent years, the relationship between the people of Portland and their police force has been strained at times. This often happens within most major cities, and is somewhat inevitable. At the same time, speaking from experience – it does seem that Portland does genuinely feel a little unsafe at times as well. Is this a regional issue or a national one? I’m genuinely not sure, and I’m not one to randomly bash the police either – as I know they can have a tough job at times.
However, this article shows the budget for the Portland police force for this year – and it is substantially more expensive than any other institution. For context, the police department had a budget of over $202 million, whilst the closest budget was for the fire department at $128 million. In third place was the parks and recreation budget at $76 million. As you can see, the police department gets more funding than any other group – which says a lot.
This comes as stuff like bike theft and general theft seems rampant. There’s also the growing homeless population of Portland which seems to be the cause of a lot of crime and social issues.
Interestingly, this also shows that the police are far from being ‘defunded’ which is a tag often associated with Portland. So, without being cynical or confrontational – this begs the question…what do the Portland tax dollars actually get spent on?!
With such a high budget, you would expect some kind of return on investment – however this seems not to be the case.
Fiscal year 2018, 2019 the Portland police budget was 238 million. Fiscal year 2000 2021 during the height of the mostly peaceful protests budget was 248 million And our city other than the mostly peaceful protest was generally under control then comes the defund the police movement the number that you were talking about this year 202 million represents a roughly 20% reduction in their budget was approved last year, while in the mist of the defund, the police movement under our previous governor and commissioner Joann Hardisty. The district attorney‘s failure to prosecute another and no cash bail is basically tying the police hands and doing their job with staff reductions and the massive wave of police officers that left the force due to the lack of support from the commissioners DA and the directives from government create an environment which allowed crime and homelessness to explode. So let’s not forget the effort to defund the police created the issue that we’re in now so the movement achieved it’s goal and now we want to complain that we don’t see the return on our investment in the police… Really? That’s rich. I have two relatives that were police officers in their prime middle aged, loved the work, and helping the community quit policing in 2021 & 2022 to do other things because of the lack of support. I had a conversation with my brother-in-law after he made his decision to quit the force. He actually told me I was chasing a suspect when I jumped the fence and I thought to myself he could be waiting for me on the other side, and I could lose my life. Why am I risking my life for a government And a bureaucracy that doesn’t support me. He turned his resignation the following week. Money was not the issue it was the leadership and government and county commissioners. I know that every year my taxes as Portlander my taxes keep increasing while I see the police budget and the fire department budget decreasing. Where is all the money going? It’s not going in the public safety population continues to grow homelessness continue to grow out of control crime out of control.
I’d like to see the police budget compared to the education budget. I’d like to have it broken down to salaries and benefits of police officers and administration at different stages of their employment just like the teachers have their pay scale based on years served and education.
So, where’s the list of items in the budget?