A protester lights an American flag on fire during a demonstration Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Portland, OR — For all the left’s talking about love and tolerance, it turns out that a city full of leftists wasn’t a very lovely or tolerant place to be in 2020! Fox news reported yesterday that the Rose City has seen a 116% rise in shootings in 2020 compared to 2019.
According to Fox, the police are asking the community to ‘stop the cycle of violence.’
At least 850 shootings have been reported in Portland as of Dec. 24, with 59 reported so far this month, Portland Police Bureau (PPB) statistics show. There were 33 shootings reported in December of last year.
As of Christmas Eve, this year’s shootings had surpassed last year’s by more than 116%, with 393 shootings reported in all of 2019, statistics show.
At least 53 murders have been reported in Portland as of Dec. 24 – the highest yearly total the city has seen in nearly 30 years, local news station KGW8 reported.
What could be behind this rise in crime?
Oregon Public Broadcasting observed that the flashpoint for contention was Portland’s Gun Violence Reduction Team (GVRT), which was disbanded in early July after leftist activists claimed that it “disproportionately targeted people of color.”
This idea of defunding the GVRT was led by Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty.
We reported just months later when Hardesty called 911 over a dispute with her Lyft driver who refused to close the windows of his car. We reported that Hardesty later blamed “white supremacists” even as the driver pointed out that Lyft’s official policy during the Corona Scare was to leave the car’s windows open while transporting passengers.
Such is the hypocrisy of the left! They have all the gun control, Democrat leadership, and defunded police that the left wants for the rest of America.
In a result that is surprising only to themselves, their policies made their city into a violent, dangerous dump.