Will bike cops help at Dawson Park?

The recent shooting spree at Dawson Park on the north/northeast Portland border next to Emanuel Hospital led to the mandatory press event. The same old people got up and said the same old things, joined this time by some of the literally shell-shocked parents from the preschool across the street.

The problem with the park has been obvious for years. It's patronized mostly by Black people, and there are a lot of drugs dealt there. If the cops come for the drugs, they're accused, rightly or wrongly, of racist "over-policing." And so they long ago just decided to let the place go; they come back only to count bullets on the ground. Lots of little yellow plastic cards with numbers on them get photographed.

In the old days, the city used to run out and hire park rangers, and say that that was going to solve the gun-and-gang violence problem. That was a sick joke. More recently they would say that orange traffic diversion barrels were the answer. Another sick joke.

This time they've got something else they say they're going to try, and it might actually be beneficial. They say (paywall, sorry) that they're going to institute police bike patrols over that way, like the one downtown. 

[Mayor Ted] Wheeler, who also serves as police commissioner, pledged to consider all community recommendations....

He and [Police Chief Bob] Day said they’ll be adding bike patrols in the Boise-Eliot neighborhood in the next couple of weeks and hope to spend more on community-based prevention such as street-level outreach through a recent $2 million federal grant.

The presence of any police patrol would be a welcome improvement – the police don't patrol most places in town any more – but those bike cops are going to be walking a tightrope. If the past is prologue, they're going to have to look the other way an awful lot, or face some all-too-familiar music.