On full display

A small slice of the scene, as captured by Google last fall. It's a lot worse now.

The Kerby Avenue on-ramp to the Fremont Bridge and southbound Interstate 405 in North Portland is an absolute freaking disgrace, and it has been for many months. On both sides of the road, it's a "homeless" camp, and a particularly nasty one, with garbage and God-knows-what other human waste strewn everywhere and blowing onto the freeway. Some of the tent bums brazenly drive their dilapidated vehicles up onto the roadside grassy knoll to their squat-spots. Sometimes they park their cars on the shoulder of the on-ramp for hours on end, as if it were their driveway.

I travel that road a few times a week, and it never fails to disgust me. If you want to see what a failure state and local government is in Portlandia, take a ride over that way.

But go during the daytime, because now it's been confirmed that it's also a major crime scene. We had a murder there a couple of weeks ago, and now they're finding all sorts of stolen property, and not just cheap stuff, at that location. No arrests, of course. This is Portland.

Kerby is the main freeway access to Emanuel Hospital, a major regional medical facility and the home of the state's Red Cross chapter. People come from miles around to give and get medical services there. And this is what they are treated to as their taste of Portland.

Do you think Ted Wheeler, Chuck Lovell, Jo Ann Hardesty, Deborah Kafoury, Kate Brown, and Tina Kotek care? They couldn't possibly. In fact, the police precinct commander announced yesterday that "the conditions of the area were deplorable and a public safety hazard." And what did he do about it? Why, nothing, of course. What did you expect?