In dozens of videos posted to the keepingitlittlike06 account on Instagram, a man who goes by “Mr. 06” can be seen driving a pick-up truck with his legs while hanging out of the drivers’ side window and filming himself with his phone. In other videos, he can be seen doing donuts in public parks. Many people are worried that his highly distracted and dangerous behaviors while operating a motor vehicle could lead to an innocent person being injured or killed.
A man who posted dozens of videos of himself driving dangerously on Portland streets has been arrested. The Portland Police Bureau say 33-year-old Oscar Burell Jr. called in a report of a hit-and-run on Southeast Hawthorne and 37th on Friday, April 18th. But the officer realized the caller was actually a suspect in a series of crimes the PPB had been investigating since March.
The officer called for backup and responded to SE Hawthorne, where he ultimately arrested Burell. “The officer’s investigation determined that Burell was involved in a confrontation with another driver on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard,” reads a PPB statement. “The other driver sideswiped Burell, who was standing in the roadway, as he drove away. Burell did not report any injuries. The other driver has not yet been located.”
According to PPB, they’d been tracking Burell since March. As we reported, he showed no shame in doing donuts in public parks and driving with complete disregard for other road users. Then he would post the videos to Instagram for all to see. PPB says they’ve been investigating him since late March, following tips from the public about Burell’s posts. They noted how videos showed him, “speeding, passing illegally, failing to maintain lanes, hanging out of the window of his moving truck, driving through parks, and other reckless conduct throughout the Portland metropolitan area that put the community and himself at risk.”
Burell’s posts spread not only to his followers online, but to officers throughout the bureau.
Burell’s blue, 1994 GMC Sierra pickup has been towed and he’s been booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center on charges of Reckless Driving (3 counts), Criminal Mischief in the First Degree, and Reckless Endangering Another Person.
The investigation is ongoing. PPB wants anyone with first-hand information about Burell’s crimes and behaviors to email crimetips@police.portlandoregon.gov and reference case number 25-89041. (“Please do not send social media posts, links to websites, or any secondhand information,” PPB says.)
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Remember, innocent until proven guilty by a jury of their peers, not by the opinion of vigilante forum posters.
BP is not a court of law…. The popo and the rest of the justice system should absolutely afford this dude all of his rights, but it’s OK to be glad he got busted. If it turns out he did not in fact do anything wrong, I would be happy to apologize for celebrating his arrest.
his offenses are pretty cut & dry. he did illegal stuff in his car; both he & witnesses recorded & shared videos of him doing so. not too sure what you’re waiting for a jury to tell you
What weird comment.
Dude posted his crimes for everyone to see. FAFO.
““Please do not send social media posts, links to websites, or any secondhand information,” PPB says”- well that is some bullshit. people post their entire existence on social media these days but the police consider this “second hand information”? That doesn’t make any sense. If some records themselves doing a crime and posts it for the world to see, how is that not viable evidence?
I personally want to report every influencer (gag) who records themselves while driving (focus on driving, not recording yourself on video please. the world doesn’t need your car rant that badly), but I’ve looked into it and you have to be prepared to show up in court, which isn’t always feasible.
Or they just mean, don’t send that stuff to them because they already have it. The recordings of himself doing crime are absolutely viable evidence. Additional evidence still helps.
Yeah, a hundred people sending the same videos they already have copies of can drown out the message from the one person who witnessed a crime firsthand and is willing to testify about it in court.
I have a feeling that they asked people not to send the social media stuff because they think they already have all of that.
You put that perfectly by saying THEY THINK they already have it. They may, but they may not.
I’m sensitive to agencies (not the police) that limit public input because they think they won’t get any valuable feedback. It wouldn’t be hard to make a list of several million dollars of public work in Portland over the past several years that’s been redone or torn out for reasons people tried to tell agencies before the work was done, but weren’t allowed to.
What if you followed the account of someone who’d posted something–say a video showing a road rage incident they’d undergone, and you recognized it was this guy who did it to them? The police would only find that by random chance. It’s clearly in the “do not send” list, but it also directly identifies someone who could give direct, personal information as a direct victim, with direct video evidence.
Here’s the deal: they don’t have the time or resources to investigate every TikTok forwarded to them. And considering the media exposure these incidents received (all over reddit, stories on every major local news outlet) they no doubt got dozens of duplicate reports.
Unless the suspect is later revealed to have done some other major crime that’s somehow gone unreported, don’t expect to see any additional charges. There’s a good chance that a judge wouldn’t care either– and a decent chance this guy would walk with a fine or community service either way.
Save some righteous indignation for the hundred of other reckless drivers out there.
That doesn’t have a lot to do with what I wrote.
Of course they don’t have time “to investigate every TikTok forwarded to them. Why do you think you need to tell me that? Or explain that they’ve no doubt already got lots of duplicate reports?
Why do you feel the need to tell me not to expect additional charges, that a judge won’t care, etc.?
What’s the “righteous indignation” you see in what I wrote?
Your comments are often critical of the extremism and lack of understanding in how the world works that you see in articles and comments here, but it looks like you’re seeing those where they don’t exist.
This is easy. Contact the account you follow and encourage them to to send their first-hand evidence, which is explicitly requested, to the police.
What the police don’t need is Reddit threads, reaction vids, and reposts of all the low-hanging fruit they’ve already archived.
Stlll not impressed with how PPB handled this situation. They knew about him since March yet gave him an extra month to kill someone? They should have arrested the guy and suspended his driver license the moment they saw the first video of him doing donuts in the park. Police are way too tolerant of dangerous driving. Driving is seen as an inalienable right and not the weighty responsibiity and precious privilege that it actually is.
Also one more suspended license helps to swell the ranks of Portland cyclists.
“Also one more suspended license helps to swell the ranks of Portland cyclists.”
Ha! No, it just means one more person driving with a suspended license and no insurance, who is more likely to run after hitting someone.
Agreed it was pretty typical of PPB response on everything they put his name on a list and waited for him to turn himself in.
It is possible that the police are short-staffed, and that this guy just isn’t a high enough priority to put in the planning required to arrest him at home. I don’t know what else they’re doing, so I it’s hard to tell if they were sitting on their hands, giving him an extra month to kill someone because they don’t care about dangerous driving, or if they were busy with other stuff.
I strongly suspect that suspending this guy’s license will have little impact on his behavior without other sanctions (or, more likely, medical/drug treatment).
The cops openly admitted that pretending to be short staffed was a tactic to get more revenue flowing their way with fewer checks on their power. They aren’t short staffed, they are just too busy putting out propaganda to do their jobs: https://bikeportland.org/2023/08/08/portland-police-bureau-officer-admits-no-traffic-enforcement-messaging-was-politically-motivated-377939
Sure, of course not. At least not compared to the two top-50 cities that have it even worse than us.
That’s not what your link says, at all. The staffing numbers are publicly available. Go look them up and compare Portland to other major cities.
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2024/10/portland-police-chief-pledges-to-bring-force-to-staffing-level-not-seen-in-over-2-decades.html
We’re still at the lowest staffing levels in decades, and that’s just the raw numbers. Since our population has grown, the staffing per capita is significantly down.
Regardless of their alleged crimes, the celebratory tone over a vulnerable road user being arrested by our thuggish police after being hit by one of Portland’s many, many violent drivers sticks in my craw.
“Alleged crimes”? He was posting videos of himself committing them. And the fact that you are siding w this dude is really interesting. He puts hundreds of lives at risk and showed zero shame or remorse for it.
Interesting how you want to focus on his “alleged” crimes, but you are willing to believe his story about being a hit and run victim.
The power of your confirmation bias is really something.
As a “journalist” you might understand that just because I used “alleged” does not mean that I (as someone who zero f***ing role in legal due process) do not personally believe the guy committed traffic violations — and likely worse. As for the the hit and run narrative, I’m simply basing it on the 911 call and police reports. Apparently, you would prefer that I believed this was “made up” (without evidence) because anything else is “confirmation bias”.
Rule of law for my friends, but not for my enemies is a very USAnian view of justice.
You just can’t help yourself sometimes.
It is true that a person who has published a lot of their own recent outrageous operation of a motor vehicle becomes physically vulnerable outside their vehicle, if that’s where the sideswipe occured. His choice to call 911 makes these episodes seem like an even more elaborate and prolonged cry for help. I wish he’d called a hotline instead of ‘making content’ for IG.
With the popo, it’s kind of a blind pig finds the nut situation. Maybe the hit-and-run driver has an internet situation and they can make a clean sweep. I personally support this particular police action if only because OB was so willful and prolific. Even for his own sake he shouldn’t be in charge of a motor vehicle.
I take your point about the many other violent drivers.
This wins the internet for Most Tortured Mental Gymnastics today. Thank you
This is such a fascinating take on this particular case
Fascinating or bizarre?
I guess it’s fascinating and bizarre to be uncomfortable that a person in crisis being allegedly violently threatened by a driver is being described as “hilarious” or somehow justified.
How do you know that he was/is in crisis?
Did you watch his videos?
Sorry but it seems your police hate is blinding you from rational thought on this issue mate.
It’s almost like a trigger for a behavioral pattern.
As long as you are trying to touch all the bases, don’t forget that the arrest was obviously racially motivated.
The spree of driving offenses was obvious. The choice to put himself in harm’s way was obvious. There’s plenty of information about the case that has nothing to do with Burell’s race.
I don’t think your mention of race is meant to be helpful to people who do suffer from over-policing.
It would be justice if the person who sideswiped Burell was also arrested, and if they can be found there’s a fair track record of such people being at least prosecuted. They may also have a bad driving record, and there’s probably some video evidence around the incident.
Given Burell’s state of mind, and with no injury and no reported damage to his vehicle, I’m somewhat skeptical he was actually hit.
I guess when someone we don’t like is allegedly threatened by a raging violent driver, it’s either fake news or “hilarious”. There is also a “they had it coming” because they were blocking traffic vibe in the comments section that reminds me of the “oh they were homeless” vibe when it comes to traffic violence in the comments section.
Yes, it is hilarious that this future astrophysicist has such an overinflated sense of entitlement that he can so quickly vacillate between being an aggressor and victim to call the cops effectively on himself. Add in the fatigue of seeing multiple iterations of this persona over the last few years and you can’t be surprised at all that literally nobody cares.
It’s good to know that those things, at least, appear to fall within the envelope of “Reckless Driving”. Three times, perhaps more? Allegedly of course.
Let’s be honest, folks: nothing the police ever do will be good enough for you. You’ll pick it apart and bend the truth and flat out lie to denigrate anyone who attempts to uphold the rule of law. And then you wonder why PPB has a hard time recruiting new officers…
This doesn’t make much sense in response to an article that’s reporting positively about the police action.
Not all comments are positive, but if anyone’s “bending the truth” or “flat out ly(ing)” it’s certainly a minority of commenters.
You responded to my comment above as if I’d written something much more extreme and here you are doing it again, but aimed at all the “folks” here instead of just me.
Ironically, several comments that criticized the police were critical of the fact that they didn’t make an arrest sooner–exactly the opposite of the “defund the police” view that the “BikePortland echo chamber” is often accused of.
Given the general positivity of the article towards the police work, and the almost total absence of comments that criticize the police for making the arrest, your nothing-will-be-good-enough-for-you comment sounds like it’s describing your view of BikePortland and its commenters.
Can the police stop beating citizens because they’re talking calmly to other officers about the teargas leaking into their house or hold the officer that did that responsible? How about they just say that was bad?
PPB has a hard time recruiting new officers because they let shitty abusive people work with them and don’t say a thing. They even protest and quit when an attorney dares to hold one of them accountable for their abuse.
This is a good thing, isn’t it? Thin out those who most resent oversight.
Well, at least this made the mainstream media as well. Check out the comments…some of the buffoonish Bike Portland entries were mentioned……:)
https://katu.com/news/local/driver-linked-to-viral-reckless-driving-clips-arrested-after-he-calls-911-to-report-crash-portland-oregon-oscar-burell-jr-hawthorne-blvd-sideswipe-video-evidence-ppb#
Just read every comment and didn’t see any mentioning BikePortland or its comments. It may have been removed, but I only saw one comment removal notice violating terms.
Look again….
They cherry-picked the most insane, extreme comment on here and attributed it to the Bike Portland hive mind. Amazing.
Yeah welcome to my world. It’s so frustrating when people do that.
While I really appreciate Jonathan’s demonstrated ability to introspect, during that crazy 2020 time, BikePortland’s editorial positions were radical by 2025 or 2015 standards.
Now it’s almost a meme, a strawman in certain people’s online arguments and they’re gonna look for anything to keep the strawman alive.
Yeah but why would they pick common sense pragmatic comment like yours? That wouldn’t be any fun would it? :). But seriously it does explain a bit why Portland is the way it is….
This is a hilarious way for him to finally get caught. I immediately thought of this when I saw the video of him dancing in the middle of the Vista Ridge Tunnel, creating a massive traffic jam. FAFO for this POS.