Law enforcement agencies in our region teamed up for a special mission over the weekend. They called it the Metro Area Traffic Enforcement Collaboration (MATEC) and for the four nights between Friday and Monday (which was St. Patrick’s Day), they pulled over 1,213 people.
The partnership includes the Portland Police Bureau, Washington County PD, Oregon State Police, and about two dozen agencies altogether (including the Portland Bureau of Transportation). Across the region they wrote 730 citations, issued 925 warnings, and arrested 85 people. 58 of those were driving while impaired by drugs and/or alcohol. According to a PPB statement, most of the tickets were given for speeding violations (416 citations) and the second most common infraction was “lane misuse” (289 citations).
Officers fanned out from Lake Oswego to Gresham looking for people running afoul of their “SOLID enforcement priorities” which PPB defines as, “Speed, Occupant Safety, Lane Usage, Impaired Driving, and Distracted Driving.”
At a news conference hosted by PPB on Friday prior to the enforcement action, Officer Chase Fullington, a member of PPB’s Major Crash Team that responds to fatal and serious collisions, laid out the human toll of all this dangerous driving:
“The hardest part for me is the very end of the call-out it’s after the scene’s been imaged it’s after the evidence that’s been collected after the vehicles have been towed and after the person that died in the crash has been taken by the medical examiner it’s when I have to go to the residence where the person lived and tell their loved ones that they’re not coming home and the sad thing about it is that these crashes are entirely preventable.”
This effort underscores just how many people drive illegally and increase the danger for everyone else on the road at any given moment in neighborhoods across the region, but it’s also a reminder that at least police agencies are trying to do something about it. Beyond these special missions however, it validates my belief that we need different enforcement approaches that don’t rely on armed officers. This is very resource-intensive, risky for everyone involved, and highly inefficient given the scope of the problem. In the future I hope to see more automated cameras, traffic enforcement by non-sworn city staff, changes to the built environment, and a bigger effort to address the underlying social problems that contribute to our dangerous driving culture.
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
Thanks, police. I wish this was everyday. Why do we only enforce traffic laws a few times a year?
They are understaffed.
It seems like this level of enforcement takes too many resources to do everyday. Needs to be coupled with other interventions.
Other interventions….like fully restoring the PPB police traffic division which focuses on traffic enforcement and safety for all road users? That would be a good start.
Nothing is stopping the police from prioritizing traffic enforcement.
Which other crimes should we reduce enforcement on so we can spend more resources on traffic enforcement?
They could stop doing all the crimes that get the city sued and waste resources.
Yes, because police are absolutely the only public employees that ever get sued for doing miss-deeds.
We all know that private companies have perfect records and are the pillars of society that we all hope to reach for.
They can also stop intimidatingly standing around the public meetings of councilors who are in favor of police accountability.
This may not be true. With limited resources, prioritizing one thing means deprioritize another, and the police may be (should be) receiving direction from the mayor about what to focus on.
They finally decided to start doing the job they’ve been paid for for the past 5 years since Covid.
Can’t do the job when your boss (the previous mayor) told you not to.
So how many of these drivers were back, driving, on the streets of Portland? Maybe I missed it in the article, but looks like not one person lost their license.
Can you share with us where and when Mayor Wheeler told the cops not to do their jobs?
It was at a press conference, which was well reported on BikePortland and in every other news outlet in the city.
Which press conference? Got a link?
Here’s one. There are many others. Like I said, it was well reported on.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/portland-mayor-police-chief-news-conference-policing-changes/283-7c4e2427-d844-440e-acad-ed0e46e68a8d
By and large Portlanders told the police to go away. So they did. You can’t have it both ways.
Well, they didn’t go away, but go off I guess.
Urban legend that never happened.
I rarely see the police at all. That’s not legend, that’s reality.
I dont remember voting for or against the police going away.
The police did not go away. They simply stopped doing their jobs as a political cudgel, while continuing to collect paychecks. Accountability is apparently a bridge too far for local law enforcement.
That is an often asserted theory, with no evidence. An alternative theory is that we don’t have enough police for the number of calls for service we make.
You could compare the number of police we have for our population with comparable cities and see which theory better fits the known facts.
Or you could just make stuff up.
You’re the one who said there’s evidence that the Mayor told the cops to stop working without any sources, a rather dubious assertion. On the other hand, there are receipts for this work stoppage being politically motivated reported on this very website:
“So you’re puffing out a little bit, saying ‘Hey there’s a lot of us’ in order to make people afraid?” I said to Sgt. Engstrom, “Which is, you know, the opposite of what you did at that press conference when you said ‘There’s no traffic officers out there.’ That’s a very different thing.”
Then Engstrom interjected:
https://bikeportland.org/2023/08/08/portland-police-bureau-officer-admits-no-traffic-enforcement-messaging-was-politically-motivated-377939
See the link I posted in response to your other post on this topic. I didn’t supply a link because the event was well reported on (including here) and, I thought, part of the general knowledge of an informed reader.
Engrstrom’s comments were in reference to the disbanding of the traffic unit, which was done at the mayor’s direction, not to the oft made (but never supported) claim that the police are deliberately shirking their duty, which is what I was responding to.
I forget, are they allowed to pull someone over for using a phone while driving? Or is that just an add-on offense if they pull someone over for something else?
Every day I see dozens of people blatantly using their phones behind the wheel. It’s so infuriating because you can see the poor driving before you see the phone. Somehow people seem to think that they’re totally able to drive well while checking their latest likes.
I’d be down with AI cameras that ticket when they see someone using their phone.
The phones behind the wheel drive me crazy too. I don’t think a lot of folks understand just how much of your attention driving needs and how much is taken away by that little glowing rectangle. What is interesting is that I rarely, if ever, see drivers playing on their phones when they have a passenger. So on some level, we seem to understand that phone behind the wheel is bad.
I have a coworker who I constantly see playing on their phone and driving while I am walking and biking in the neighborhood around work. I am still struggling with how to approach them about it. Is it even my place to?
It reminds me of how we’ve turned a blind eye to cigarette butt littering.
One crosses the state line down toward CA & see a sign that littering is a 6,250 fine. Cell phone use? 1,000, 2,000, & 2,500 (at the THIRD time)…
Which I find bizarre, no one has likely died from someone littering…
ugh.
Yes the police can pull you over if they see the driver holding the phone while using it.
It’s a real shame we’ve understaffed our police force to the point where vigorous traffic enforcement only happens on rare occasions. Getting rid of our dedicated traffic officers and now only having a bare-bones crew is a serious disservice to our community. The sharp rise in traffic-related deaths and injuries clearly shows just how crucial it is to have consequences for dangerous and impaired driving.
I mean the police force currently has a bunch of headcount that is on their books, that they are unable to fill because:
Even at peak “we’ve been defunded and so we can have a traffic enforcement division” PPB had unfilled vacancies. I do think that it is very telling that although Portland had about the same number of murders and traffic deaths, PPB was quite excited to stand up a new version of the gang violence intervention unit (which had been disbanded because of a well-documented pattern of racial bias) and work with like a federal task force to work on gun violence, but it is only now that they are doing a short-term thing for traffic violence.
I do actually agree that Portland has an unusually low cop/population ratio, and that is probably to the detriment of Portland’s public safety, but I would prefer:
https://pdx.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=ba500ae0b9554fc68104a2ff016e25fc
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/portlandpolicebureau/viz/New_Monthly_Neighborhood/MonthlyOffenseTotals
Okay, sure, its the cops.
Hi there,
I mean I think the retirement cliff would have happen regardless of covid/george floyd protests, you are certainly right that something like “planning ahead and having a bunch of new officers on deck to offset very foreseeable retirements” does not actually seem like something the city of portland would realistically do.
But it also seems like PPB was having trouble filling vacancies even before that. For example, per the city’s website on police staffing, in 2019 they had 1001 authorized officers but 120 vacancies, so 881 actual officers. Currently they are authorized for about 880 officers and still have vacancies so obviously staffing is still much lower than it was in 2019, but if you read the KOIN article part of the problem then (and I am sure now) is just finding actually qualified applicants.
Some cursory googling also suggests that this is a nationwide problem, and I thought that article was pretty interesting since it seems to advocate for stuff like Portland Portland Street Response as a way to lighten some of the load for cops.
I also thought this point was interesting:
This seems pretty close to some of the rhetoric that was coming from the PPA and other pro-cop voices, but even when Mike Schmidt was the DA the biggest obstacle to people being arrested and staying in jail was the statewide shortage of public defenders, which has been quite widely publicized. So I do think it assigns blame to the wrong cause.
In terms of the ACAB stuff and the hostility of city council members:
This is more or less directly as result of actual police misconduct. Like, the example that I cited in my original comment “homeowner clubbed in the head while peacefully talking to a different cop” was an actual person who actually change his mind from being sympathetic to cops to thinking they needed to be reigned in as a result of actual police misconduct! The sooner police embrace meaningful mechanisms of accountability with actual punishment for misconduct, the sooner they will regain the public trust.
Do you actually think that it is easier to recruit Street Response people than regular police?
I want people who respond to incidents without force to be BETTER trained which costs more money and would seem to make it harder to find recruits.
The Street response supporters seem to be clueless or naive or both.
If we can’t find enough people who want to be police in this city, why do you think it’s easier to find people to perform a similar job with less protection and need far more training for the same pay which is the case?
It’s either magical thinking or gas lighting.
Honest question, are there any vacancies to work with Portland Street response?
Doesn’t matter, the fact that they spun up and staffed it with the limited funding they have, at the same time PPB has staffing shortages, indicates they can in fact find people to do that job. They should be opening more positions! Expand it!
Yes. Good luck to those that qualify!!
https://www.governmentjobs.com/careers/portlandor/jobs/4856618/portland-street-response-emt-medical-responder-community-health-med-responder?keywords=Street%20response&pagetype=jobOpportunitiesJobs
Position Summary:
The PSR EMT Medical Responder will operate on a two-person multi-disciplinary team to provide crisis intervention and first aid. A Medical Responder will be dispatched along with a Mental Health Crisis Responder to low acuity Police and Fire 911 calls that present no criminal intent, fire, or medical emergency. This position will also engage with a population that exhibits sub-acute crises, that may include behavioral health and substance use conditions.
Ideal Candidate Profile:
The ideal candidate for this position must be deeply committed to providing compassionate and effective crisis response services, particularly for individuals who have faced historical challenges and trauma. They will work within the existing emergency response system while emphasizing collaboration and trauma-informed care to better serve the Portland community. They recognize that individuals may have experienced adverse life events, including trauma within healthcare and carceral systems, which can create barriers to accessing necessary care and support. Candidates must have a commitment to working collectively to address community needs. A successful candidate will be able to meet or exceed established key performance indicator goals. Candidates for this position must have no criminal conviction that would prevent certification from the Oregon Health Authority.
Sign up!
The position is listed at $31-$36 an hour on the city website.
I am sure that people are just clamoring for those positions.
They are available right now.
I think they are, actually. But I don’t know what point you’re making trying to suggest I do it. I have a job and I don’t have a background in social work so I don’t qualify. But there are a lot of people who go into social work because people like helping people.
Yes, they like to help the ones that aren’t high on drugs or alcohol, and well behaved.
Once they experience the real world out there (I work in Chinatown so I see it every day) they sing a different tune.
Social workers rarely last very long.
Hi! So very quickly googling this, it looks like the job postings I can find for Portland Street Response are:
Particularly in the latter case this seems like obviously a much better sort of person to be interacting with someone having a mental health crisis than a cop, and also obviously social workers make less money than cops as well!
To this point:
More or less the basic value proposition of jobs like social work or being a teacher is: you need a masters degree and then you are going to be paid quite poorly for your work and the working circumstances will often be unpleasant and you will burn out doing it. Nevertheless people still are very willing to do those jobs because they want to help people. I do not think it is particularly clueless or naive to recognize that the pool of people who want to help the vulnerable is larger than the pool of people who want to maybe have to shoot someone.
Huh, the positions are open now and they are not filled. Apparently not a lot of people are willing to do those jobs that you speak of. It’s easy to talk about it in the abstract on the internet but finding people to go into Old Town at midnight to address drug addled violent people is a bit more than being a “social” worker.
Also just saying (sorry for the double post) but the keen eye observer might be able to read the dates on that posting and realize the job opened a whole 10 days ago. Nobody can post any job and do a good faith attempt at finding a candidate much faster than that.
And I’ll reiterate, they staffed up the entire program from zero in less time than the cops have been complaining about their inability to hire anyone. The cops have had their open positions problem for years. It’s pretty conclusive that it is easier to staff PSR despite your silly song and dance, and they are getting real work done.
Iron fisted law and order types like you should be happy to hire more people for PSR and deploy traffic cameras because it frees up cops to do the supposed work that only their license to kill would allow. But yet you blather on about how this very successful program is somehow not successful and make the wild logical leap to more cops somehow being an easier, better solution. Make it make sense!
Do you actually read before you post?
No one said the program is not effective. NO ONE.
I stated that it is just as hard to fill these positions as Police officers and that is the fact.
That was my point which apparently you just cannot, comprehend.
You argue with clouds here.
“it is just as hard to fill these positions as Police officers and that is the fact.”
It’s not the fact, which I illustrated clearly. You’re just wrong or lying. Everyone who has stooped to your level to point out your mistakes, unfortunately, has just been met with a wall of “Nuh uh”.
Hello again! This article about recent goings-on with PSR is probably worth a read, it sounds like they were able to pretty quickly hire 12 additional people, and are continuing to hire because the city is continuing to expand the sorts of things they can respond to. No midnight calls to Old Town because they are not yet staffed sufficiently for 24 hr response times.
It seems like perhaps you’ve never talked to someone who works for like a homeless services organization or something like that, but generally they are quite compassionate people who genuinely care quite a bit about the well being of homeless people, and are quite skillful at calming “drug addled violent people” down.
I know those people. Who are you arguing with?
I think it is a good program that is hard to staff and it is.
That was my only point here which you and others TRY to misconstrue for argument sake.
Seems like they have a lot of people asking how they can help street response, even!
https://www.portland.gov/streetresponse/psr-faq#toc-can-i-volunteer-or-help-out-in-some-way-
Salary range for Mental health Crisis Responder II is $59k to $109k. That is phenomenal pay for a LCSW with 2 years post grad experience, which likely reflects your comment about burnout and turnover.
My wife has worked for the same agency for 12 years as a LCSW supervising therapists and I’d never want her to take a job like that, the horror stories coming out of middle schools on the west side suburbs is awful enough.
Yeah social work is a tough one because I think any area that you’re working is going to have some incredibly difficult things to deal with emotionally, but definitely dealing with homeless people is an extra layer of difficulty. Like, someone I know worked for a while connecting homeless youths to services in SF and the baseline level of trauma with a lot of those kids was just incredibly high, which then obviously translates into sometimes quite severe behavioral problems that are in turn exacerbated by drug use.
I do also think that it is worth contrasting the the $59k-$109k pay with the pay for PPB, which:
So I think particularly from a financial perspective it makes a lot of sense to move as much public safety as possible from police officers to either automated systems or other sorts of responding agencies.
“..the new police accountability board to be demonstrably effective at disciplining police misconduct”
I’m all for police accountability but why in the world does this board need nearly $15 million/year?
Understaffed police = Police intentionally stopped enforcing traffic laws because their white-supremacist feelings were hurt
Wouldn’t be a good bike portland comment page without a little police hate would it? 🙂
Should I let my non-white PPB neighbor know that she’s a white supremacist?
White supremacist-adjacent!
Nothing like trying to re-write history. Thought only right wingers did that . . . oh but wait maybe you are . . . nah couldn’t be
They are fully funded for additional police officers, they choose not to or are unable to fill the roles.
Unable.
As Jonathan notes in the article, automated enforcement by camera for speeding and for running lights, while not entirely without drawbacks, would be more consistent, efficient, cost-effective, and come with less risks of bias and escalation than occasionally stationing armed police for sporadic enforcement (facts which many of the commenters responding to this article ignore).
But automated enforcement by camera cannot address impaired driving, which endangers lives every day. With Portland’s economy so heavily dependent on pushing alcohol and marijuana sales, we need to address the ease with which impaired driving has become a “new deadly normal” in our city. I’m not sure how to best approach this problem, but I’d welcome ideas that are being used well elsewhere or that truly innovate to be tested here.
The same holds true for driving while taking prescription medications that impair driving, an issue that is rarely addressed but given how many prescriptions are doled out to Americans is a serious issues. (Imagine if every time someone filled a prescription for a medication that impairs driving, their license was temporarily suspended for as long as the prescription lasted. So much less impaired driving! And I’m guessing we’d see a lot more investment in public transit as more people sought an alternative to driving! What a goofy idea, to emphasize both individual and public health rather than just assuming and abetting driving as a default no matter how impaired!)
COTW.
Enforcement and consequences, just the stuff we’ve been doing in civilization for the last couple thousand years. The fear of incarceration has to override the atrocious impulse control many people have.
It’s true that impairment, including from medications, can be a problem. But a lot of prescriptions for medications that can impair driving have use profiles that don’t involve being impaired all the time. Pain and sleeping medications can fall in this category. I’ve been prescribed pain medication following injuries or surgeries where the intention was that I’d use it in case of acute pain episodes or difficulty sleeping. Quite reasonably, the prescription was thus for a small enough amount that I would have run out in a couple days if I’d used it continually… but a couple days’ license suspension doesn’t quite cover it. It would technically prevent me from driving home from the pharmacy. But then… supposed a week later I fell at home, took a dose of pain medication for acute pain, then decided I needed to go to the ER. I definitely shouldn’t drive due to impairment from the medicine (and also due to being in acute pain)… and there isn’t really a hard-and-fast rule that covers that sort of thing, just my judgment.
Hey Lois. So, while there is some worry about ironing out locations and avoiding targeting specific groups of people, the success in DC and NYC of reducing speeding has been so overwhelming, that it’s crazy not to install speed cameras.
The crux here is that we don’t really need to catch everyone all the time for every infraction to efficiently fine the vast majority of people who speed consistently. People who drive recklessly, tend to speed. People who drink and drive, tend to speed. It’s a pretty convenient venn diagram.
Again, speed cameras aren’t a panacea, but they are an extremely effective tool. This both helps cops do the invaluable investigative work, moves some of the onus for street safety onto DOTs, as well as reduces the potential for a lot of the profiling stops we saw, for example, in NYC (found unconstitutional in 2013).
How is it that speed cameras reduce drunk driving? It seems like all they do is give drunks speeding tickets, and lets them continue on home, still drunk, still driving.
Lol for real. Best case scenario is they get a speeding ticket in the mail and just go the speed limit while driving drunk the next time.
Apologies if I wan’t clear dw. It might not be intuitive. Yes, there are a lot of reasons why traffic cameras have an effect on drunk driving. Traffic cameras act as evidence to support any conviction, so given a traffic stop by a cop, that cop already has solid evidence of erratic driving and/or a reason to suspend a license given a record. Given a recording of someone in a hit and run, for example, there is clear evidence.
Most importantly people are much less likely to engage in risky behavior given a predictable outcome (hundreds of dollars in fines at a minimum). That means preventing some people from making the choice to drink and drive in the first place. Deciding to drive impaired as a longterm behavioral pattern is a calculated decision. If someone knows they will be recorded consistently, they are much less likely to take that risk. Some AI cameras are even able to identify impaired drivers and relay to cops real time (it just really depends on the system and how it’s used). Overall dramatically reducing the number of people who make the decision to speed makes it a lot easier for cops to see the remaining outliers (reduces the overal workload for traffic enforcement).
Again, they are not a replacement for all methods of traffic enforcement/street safety, but are very effective tool when combined with other methods.
Comment of the week.
People get way too hung up on the edge cases they can think of as arguments against implementing changes that would solve 90% of a problem. It should be so inexpensive to automate enforcement in many places and it would be a massive improvement.
https://goldbergloren.com/portlands-statistics-alcohol-related-crashes/
43 deaths are ‘edge’ cases according to who?
Hey BB. Yes DWI is a serious problem. Clearly automated enforcement can’t directly solve that problem alone. It is one effective tool that augments others.
The point here is that we are missing that system of different methods to both predictably prevent and quickly enforce traffic crashes/violations. I don’t want to put words in John V’s mouth, but when I think of traffic enforcement–the day to day decisions people make–the vast majority of infractions are speeding. Having a quick and predictable means to capture that behavior and directly deal with it in an automated manner reduces crashes dramatically based on how NYC and DC (and other cities) have used them. Also, the challenge to most drunk driving convictions tends to be improper stops. That “reasonable suspicion” can be provided by traffic cameras (supporting conviction).
Again, this does not preclude other means of enforcement such as sobriety checkpoints. They are just one of many effective, and long needed tools for street safety.
How many times did they drive drunk, speeding, doing risky things, BEFORE hitting and killing someone or themselves? Most likely many times. People who do that don’t just do it once, it is a habit. Might a large fine every time they do it have been enough to convince them to do something different? Almost certainly.
This is leaving beside all the people speeding who aren’t even drunk, because they know 999 times out of a thousand they will get away with it.
But no, let’s not do the inexpensive and highly effective solution. For “reasons – I guess? None of you people have ever put forth a good faith argument why we shouldn’t do automated enforcement.
I want automated enforcement, most everyone who posts here does.
It does not stop Drunk driving.
‘Not one person on the thread is against it. Who are you arguing with?
There is no way to stop drunk drivers in the act except to pull them over and stop them.
They kill 50% of people in accidents.
What is your point?
90% of the problem with drunk drivers is that they don’t get speeding tickets? Really?
Leave it to watts, if he can contrive some convoluted way to misreprent what someone says, you can bet he’ll be right on that.
That is not what I said and you know it.
If that’s not what you meant, what did you mean? No one has been arguing against automated enforcement, we’ve just been saying it’s not effective against drunk drivers.
Drunk drivers create far more than 10% of the hazard on our streets, so… What did you mean?
He has no idea.
The point that you have never responded to is the fact that drunk drivers are driving drunk a lot more often than they hurt someone. So if they were being fined every time they drive dangerously, there would be a lot more push for them to do different things. They keep driving drunk because nothing ever happens until its fatal.
Think of it this way. What would a cop add to any of this? It’s not like they can stick a breathalyzer gun out a window and detect drunk drivers. They detect behavior. Like speeding and running lights. Which an automated system could do.
People are so hung up on their lust for vengeance and punitive measures, they can’t stand the thought that a person drunk drove and DIDN’T GET A DUI! When a simple speeding ticket over and over from a camera would be highly effective at actually changing the behavior. People complain about dangerous driving and speeding constantly on here and yet a direct automated enforcement solution suddenly brings out the what ifs, as if suddenly getting a ticket every time someone drives drunk wouldn’t be a huge deterrent. You might say what if they don’t speed or run red lights when they’re drunk, they just have bad reaction times and perception that eventually gets someone killed. Ok, maybe, but again, how is a cop going to help? If a person is not driving in a way that a camera could detect, how the hell would a cop ever get the idea to pull them over?
When I mentioned the (obviously number made up for illustration) solving 90% of the problem, this is clearly not saying what you in bad faith suggested. It’s a general statement about how solutions that would have a huge impact (and automated enforcement would have a huge impact on drunk driving) are poopooed by people who would rather eschew imperfect solutions in favor of an unreachable perfect solution. You can’t make drunk driving go away. Not going to happen while people drive cars. So how about we do the low hanging fruit that would solve most of the problem, have a bunch of side benefits, and virtually no downside?
Howling at the moon. Hilarious.
“The point that you have never responded to is the fact that drunk drivers are driving drunk a lot more often than they hurt someone. So if they were being fined every time they drive dangerously, there would be a lot more push for them to do different things. ”
There are a lot of assumptions baked into that view. That drunks always drive fast, that they won’t respond to things like knowing where speed cameras are the way other drivers would, that they would conclude that speeding tickets should be interpreted as a sign not to drink before driving. Drunk drivers are not usually blackout drunk; often they are just buzzed and can still respond to things like knowing where to stay at the speed limit, even if they are denying their level of impairment.
Let’s look at a real life situation. Do you think there has been a big reduction in drunk driving on Powell between 21st and 35th now that there are speed cameras there? Not just drunks going out of their way to avoid the area (requiring yet more driving), but that they’ve actually quit drunk driving?
If you want to convince me that speed cameras reduce drunk driving, show me some evidence. On its face the claim seems implausible.
There been lots of study about the efficacy of policing on drunk driving. Here’s some bedtime reading in the subject. There’s plenty more just a Google search away.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25240134/
Again with constantly missing the point. I would think you were just not very smart if I didn’t believe you are just avoiding responding to the things that prove you wrong.
1. How does a cop know they should pull someone over for drunk driving? Answer that. Someone had to do something, like speed or run a light, for a cop to even intervene.
2. The reason people can avoid speed cameras is we have a tiny handful of them.
Did you read the article above?
They arrested 58 people for Drunk driving in a few traffic sweeps.
Generally people swerve when they drink, not speed so it’s fairly easy to stop and arrest them IF we have police officers
doing their job.
It isn’t rocket science.
Drunk people kill 50 people a year in Portland, I have no idea why anyone is against pulling over drunk people and arresting them on the spot.
How do cops come to suspect a driver for driving drunk? Lots of ways: they pull out of a bar parking lot at closing time; driver isn’t keeping to their lane; driver does something dangerous or illegal; driver is driving too slow, has a significantly delayed reaction when a light turns green, or makes sudden stops at a red light; I’m sure there are more things that cops are trained to look for. And in many states (but not Oregon) police conduct sobriety checkpoints, which I think raise civil liberties issues, but are purported to be effective.
So… significantly fewer drunks on Powell these days? I think even you have a hard time really believing what you’re saying.
Police are too expensive to create safer streets beyond the occasional ticketing spree.
What we need are less streets, zero “stroads”, modern traffic calming street design throughout the city, and buses running every five minutes everywhere 24 hours a day.
Although that’d be great, in concept, are you ready for a huge increase in your taxes? You thought Portland wasn’t affordable now, just wait for something like that to hit your mortgage/rent/paycheck.
Of course, if Trimet got that kind of money they’d just end up wasting it on trains which have zero flexibility.
The average cost of driving a car in the U.S. is $1000/month. Creating a convenient and timely public transportation system of buses everywhere all the time will be an economic boon for Portland’s residents.
What depresses about the arguments presented here in BP is that as much as we might try to enforce this or that with various technologies, it’s really up to the courts to prosecute each case, and in general poorer people (which is usually another way of saying black, Latinx, and any other vulnerable minority) are more likely to be convicted than white middle class or rich people.
Those who are addicted to drugs, alcohol, and various medications are, well, addicts. And like a lot of addicts, they’ll do what they feel they need to do to get their legal or illegal drugs, including drive a car to get them. Any car will do, it doesn’t need to be their own, they are often happy to steal cars and money from spouses, their children, relatives, friends, strangers, and so on. I don’t know about Portland, but my community is suffering a huge increase in car theft, incidents and crashes by addicted drivers who don’t even own the cars they are using.
So we as pull the impaired drivers over be it police or the PBOT patrol, should the cars be impounded, depriving the original presumably sober owners access to their own cars? Should we lock up all the addicts we catch until they can go to trial, possibly years given our backlog of cases, depriving them of due process and a fair and speedy trial, not to mention our economy of productive (if inebriated) workers plus the high costs of incarceration?
Rebuilding our streets to make them safe for everyone 8 to 80 would be nice, but we can’t afford to, sorry. Police everywhere all at once doesn’t work if our courts are backlogged (see above).
The only workable solution I can see are wheel locks on cars that can only be released if the driver can prove they are sober, but I’m not sure how well that would work for stoned, high, and/or medicated drivers – and civil rights aside, it would be an open admission that our society as a whole has serious addiction issues, not just for a few drivers, but a very hefty portion of the overall population, including presumably many of us self-righteous BP commenters.
As a person who doesn’t do alcohol or drugs (legal or otherwise) it is quite disconcerting that we just accept that behavior. Have party? Can’t have fun unless you drink a few beers or smoke a joint. Of course those words come from those that are already addicted and want to feel better about themselves if they can get others to join them. And those proponents of legalizing MJ just wanted to feel better about their addiction. How Oregon has fallen in so many respects since MJ was legalized.
It boggles my mind how I see on popular media (TV/Movies) time and time again how stupid people behave when drunk and the stupid stuff they do or have done to them and yet society and those addicts keep doing it.
I think a person who is caught driving while impaired should have their driving privileges taken away regardless if their job requires it or not. Repeat offenders might have to do jail time too. Of course we’d have to figure out how to get our racists judges to quit being so racist with the punishments they give out and level the playing field.
To paraphrase the immortal red-rocker “there’s a million things to get you high, and human beings have tried them all”
If there is a plant, a fungus or chemical that alters the way you interact with the world, human beings use it. They not only use it they make it more potent. That’s not enough, they isolate a single compound in it and synthesize it.
This appears to me to be part of the human condition. This comes from someone who hasn’t used alcohol since the late 80’s and kicked caffeine in 2002.
I’m not holier than thou about it, I just don’t use them (any drug)
The funny thing is that you complain about pot, when there are multiple plants out there that aren’t even on anyone’s radar.
We had a talk with DOJ and they had to Google 7OH – that’s how under the radar it is.
When I said the word kanna thay were completely clueless.
The nicotine pouch manufacturers couldn’t make enough after someone on TikTok said you can lose weight with them.
Legalizing pot isn’t the issue. The issue is that life is apparently so crappy that people will consume just about anything to feel better.
“The issue is that life is apparently so crappy that people will consume just about anything to feel better.”
I don’t doubt that is an issue for some people, but certainly not for everyone. I think a good beer is one of life’s great pleasures, and not because I am unhappy with my circumstances.