It’s Friday, and you know what that means… Yes it is time for our weekly podcast featuring the wonderful Eva Frazier and I! We were graced with Eva’s presence before she jets off once again — this time to beautiful Kearny, Nebraska where she’s got a date with a few thousand sandhill cranes.
In addition to amazing bird migrations, here’s what else we talked about:
- Eva’s wife’s Robitussin-induced fever dream.
- What is Eva’s favorite place to ride?
- Albina Vision Trust and the highway caps.
- Eva’s idea to charge property tax for on-street parking spots.
- Sunday Parkways: The good, the bad, and the should.
- Weekend lanes and automated bollards are the Next Big Thing.
- Our big ideas for that sweet, sweet PCEF grant funding.
- Thoughts about Jonathan’s upcoming interview with Portland Police officer and city council candidate Eli Arnold.
- BikeLoud’s women biking survey aftermath.
- Bike Happy Hour Birthday party planning.
- And more!
Thanks to Brock Dittus of Sprocket Podcast fame for our fantastic theme music. Listen in the player above or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!
Thanks for reading.
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Yes! Car Piñata!|
Shame on Eva and her reference to the men and woman who serve our communities in law enforcement as “the enemy .” I’m third generation Portlander , progressive and cycling for 40 years in Portland. Have seen this city go to pot and part of that is the result of the polarized views toward police. Not to mention the horrendous outcomes from defunding. I no longer recognize my city or my progressive community. Or even your reporting.
Hi Tom,
I think she meant it in jest, but yeah I hear you.
Ah yes, the famous “defunding” that saw PPB’S budget go from 33% of the general fund to (checks notes) 29% of the general fund—amid citywide budget cuts affecting all departments (which has since been reversed and then some, with PPB’s budget outpacing population growth since 2012).
Also, cops are literally trained to see the public as a hostile enemy and to respond with aggression. The city has repeatedly violated its consent decree with the DOJ regarding cops’ use of force. Remember the “Prayer of the Alt-Knight”?
More gaslighting… this topic gets so old.
There are 100 fewer police in Portland now than 10 years ago.
A 10% cut in staff numbers despite 165,000 more residents.
The murder rate increase is staggering in the city in the last 3 years.
Bikeportland continues to allow the gaslighting but the general public doesn’t buy it.
Posts like this are a sick joke. Budgets only matter if the results are moving in the right direction and Portland clearly is not.
The faux progressivism of posts like this is becoming laughable when a simple bike ride around the city is all it takes to note the Lack of police in the city.
Ah yes, we give the police more money and homicides go up, so the logical thing to do is to give them even more money. Perfect system!
There have already been 18 murders in Portland since January 1.
I can’t imagine what kind of lame little activist is still moaning about cops while people are stepping over bodies on the East Bank esplanade.
So you admit the murder rate has nothing to do with the police budget? Because those are the facts.
Exactly. That makes more sense than “murders are up, so we’re cutting the police budget”.
It would make sense if more money for police actually meant less crime. Unfortunately that’s not the case.
I’m curious what you think the relationship is between policing and crime. Does the level of policing impact crime at all? Could we reduce the number of cops we have without increasing the number of crimes? Could we eliminate policing altogether and save a bunch of money?
How do you think the relationship works?
Interesting how you move the goalposts from the police budget to “level of policing” and “number of cops”. Those are not the same thing.
For what it’s worth, a group of independent researchers found that in Portland from 2016 to 2021, “additional officers do not correlate with a decrease in crimes.”
Obviously, the budget has some bearing on the number of cops, even if the linkage isn’t as tight as policymakers might want.
Do you think there is a relationship between the number of cops and crime?
You can spin it how you want, but it was also a cut amidst defund rhetoric. It’s also important to note that the cut was reversed in fairly short order.
It is clear that Portland has far fewer police than similarly sized cities, which suggests our police force is undersized, but a better metric might be whether there are enough cops to do the job we ask them to do. Personally, when I call the cops, I want someone to come sooner rather than later.
There does seem to be a general consensus that we are not getting what we want from our police department.
So rhetoric is more important than reality? Talk about spin…
The rhetoric was that we were defunding the cops; the reality was that we cut the police budget.
“Reality” is important. But in policy and governing, how you explain that reality matters a lot.
Can I get some fries with my podcast? : )