Why are there never any state troopers on Portland freeways?
The occasional bust of a drug dealer does occur in Oregon. It's happened twice in the past week, as far as the news media tell it. One guy was taken into custody on Sunday near Salem and another last Friday in La Grande.
The two arrests had one thing in common: They started with traffic stops by state troopers on the freeway.
Why are there no state troopers on the freeways in Portland? Did the state cede control of the highways to the sad-sack City Hall, the way it has roadside trash and graffiti cleanup? What will it take for the state to take it back? Yoo hoo, Governor Kohoutek!
We need a lot of things to try to save this place, but one easy one would be to have traffic cops making stops, like they do everywhere else in the world. It would make a big difference right away. If there's some statistic out there that says too many people of color are being pulled over, then set up a quota and have a minimum of white people pulled over. But for God's sake, get on with it.
You seen Portland road shoulders and right of ways? Why on earth would a cop even try to make a highway stop through most of Portland? There's basically no room to safely physically operate in those spaces.
ReplyDeleteAdd to the mix the homeless camps right off the road inhabited by large numbers of unknown persons with unknown weapons and you're basically making yourself a shooting gallery.
Portland has a lot of city work to do before it's viable for significant highway stops IMO.
Why pay cops to do nothing?
DeleteMy comment was meant as specific to OSP and why there are not highway stops occurring in Portland. OSP being paid and delivering bigly, just not in Portland for reasons above.
DeleteIs it the urban federal/controlled-access freeways/highways that are super sketchy in pdx?
DeleteThere was that incident by the Barbur transit center pedestrian bridge and all along I5 along barbur behind the storage facilities is a tent disaster & caught fire once, though a neighbor called it in and heard the pops and crackles over the highway noise (light sleeper or just lucky?) & exploding propane bottles at 4am on a rainy March morning 2021.
Another neighbor heard someone rustling around his higher ground clearance modern cross-over smaller SUV Mitsubishi branded rav-4/Subaru forester competitor type thing trying to cut the cat converter off it in his sleepy SW / previously low crime upper part of tigard touching Portland (unincorporated WA co.) & at age 70 tangled with them and shot the dude with the shot gun full of rock salt even tho there was a a driver snd lookout with the (likely stolen?) get-away vehicle…impressive, but can’t say I’d be making that calculation and moving that fast at age 70 that early in the am. They said they’d been there 30 years, no issues with theft/sketchy stuff like that. Sad.
This all said, idk that the oregon highway patrol will do a ton for us? Oregon shitty (city) is near their HQ and training grounds & you really gotta watch out coming downhill from horrible west linn ( double triple check/verify all your trailer lights work and load to the dump is tarped & tidy?) harassment-.wise?
This all said, OC, Milwaukie, Gladstone & oak grove seem like about as much of a S-hole as ever?
So, while I agree that maybe we should get some use (if possible) paying these cops overtime to sit around the courthouse, cop (moral equivalent of?) kkkaffeeklatsch or sip martinis far out of danger on their fat PERS pensions, I’m skeptical that the state-trooper bandaid is likely to ‘help’ things much?
Funnily enough, in the days when crime was just picking up after the initial lockdown I saw a (Portland police) motorcycle cop pulling over a Prius with a couple pretty benign do-gooder bumper stickers with 4 people in it who looked like basically tax paying upstanding citizens, car all one boring green color, basically clean w/ uniformshiny paint, no lights out etc.
If they were speeding or driving erratically, I sure didn’t notice (I’m not claiming to be the the best driver, but pretty fearful/defensive these days /no wrecks in 20+ years and a lot of miles and bad weather, no tickets in 15 years?), being near them / following slightly slower from downtown onwards.
Motorcycle cop had them all lit at the Capitol Hwy. exit after rush hour after the slight downgrade from the multnomah blvd & Barbur exits and was just letting them go an hour later.
I just kinda shook my head;
-Dangerous to assume, but it struck as improbable they were doing anything dangerous or car was stolen?
-the whole city is going to shit snd nary a cop to be found anywhere & the police union whines there they’re broke, but on a nice dry day they have the time & $ to put a motorcycle cop at a time & place w/minimal traffic and stop a slow ~2004 basically well kept Prius that can barely speed w/4 people in it even if the driver wanted to?
So, having been harassed by the west linn & OR-state troopers in OC in my younger days (nice having cleaner cars and not looking 19 anymore in some ways?), idk on this, even if by the principled & (sound enough?) logic that we should get some ‘serve snd protect’ if we’re throwing so much money down the cop rabbit hole?
Someone once said that the USA won’t be conquered by an enemy war machine. It’ll be destroyed from within.
ReplyDeleteThey can work inside the city but they would have to switch to electric state trooper poopers....
ReplyDeleteI don’t know about the rest of you, but if I’m driving down the freeway with a car full of drugs I’m making damn sure that I’m going the speed limit or slightly below and before I leave I’m doing about 10 pre-checks to make sure all my car’s equipment is in good working order.
ReplyDeleteToday I drove from Boise back home to Salem. My cruise control was set at 80. I did not pass one stater (OR or ID) during the entire trip.
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