It got worse

Sunday's dangerous street brawl and downtown shootout were bad enough, but as evening descended on Portland, the lawlessness got uglier. And once again, the cops were not around when the city needed them.

First, at a vigil that was being for Saturday night's weekly Old Town nightclub murder victim, a shooter pulled up and shot five more people. At least 50 shots were fired. It's a gang thing, apparently. 

We used to have a "gang enforcement team" on the police department, then we renamed it "gun violence" yada yada, but the whole concept is too racist for our woke City Council, and so we got rid of it. A lot of good that is doing the shooting victims.

It wouldn't take a law enforcement genius to figure out there was going to be more gunfire at a vigil like that one. But the police were not around.

Meanwhile, the crazies who race and do car stunts in the streets blocked Interstate 405 atop the Fremont Bridge for an hour or more Sunday night while they carried on. There was another such dangerous scene in the Cully neighborhood, and apparently a third one in the southeast part of town on Division. In all three cases, by all accounts, the police did nothing.

"We were busy," they say. Busy doing what? Getting paid, apparently. Can they walk and chew gum at the same time?

The shock of these events had not yet worn off yesterday when the mayor, Dud Wheeler, added insult to injury. He actually had the nerve to issue a statement patting himself and the cops on the back for the fine job they did at the steeet brawl and shootout. The grand "strategy" of having the police sit around and watch on Twitter while people beat and shot at each other worked great, according to Wheeler. No one died! And hey, we moved the battle out to the Argay Terrace neighborhood. Those people don't count.

Cars were overturned and trashed. People were clubbed and maced. "Patriot" goons were standing in the middle of busy 122nd Avenue pointing guns at people as regular Joes and Janes tried to run their errands.

Minutes later, shots were fired in both directions across a busy intersection, Second and Yamhill, downtown. In broad daylight on a Sunday afternoon.

But for Wheeler, it was a great success. Un-freakin'-real.

I'm done with that guy. He's got to go, and I mean yesterday. For months I've resisted calling for his resignation, because I have been afraid of the alternative. But honestly, he isn't holding anything together. Portland is completely unhinged now. It's bad, and it's going to get worse, either with him or without him. 

His tone-deaf self-congratulations starkly demonstrate what a delusional and dangerous person he has become. He should resign today, and take his hideous excuse for a police chief with him. The two of them are clearly running the most worthless police department in the country.