At the last meeting of the KNA, Portland Police North Precinct Commander James Ferraris came to respond in person to the letter KNA had drafted and sent to the mayor and police chief. In that letter, KNA urged that King be staffed with a 24 hour police presence. Currently, the patrol distict that coincides with the King Neighborhood is not assigned an officer from 1:00 am to 7:00 am. Concerns about response times came after an incident at the end of the summer where a fight broke out, was quieted, flared back up again and shots were fired.
He presented statistics on police response times and numbers of police calls initiated by calls to dispatch as compared to calls that were officer initiated. The ratio of officer initiated calls was said to indicate that officers are adequately covering the area and are not having to be dispatched in for every incident. Since the North Precinct is in this patrol district, PPB relies on officers who transit in and out to provide some coverage. When a patrol district doesn’t have an officer assigned specifically, neighboring distict officers cover them. Crime stats drive where officer patrol and at what times. The average response times were from 3 to 4 minutes.
Read the whole story with the statistics attached in the meeting minutes by clicking here.
As I stated at the meeeting, and what I don’t see in the report of the non emergency calls is any mention of calls made about drug dealing activity. Others at the meeting claim to have made many many calls about on going drug dealing on their block(s). I have made lliterally hundreds of calls on drug activity ie; suspicious activity (that is what I was told how to report it)because if you report a likely drug deal or drug activiity going on in or at a likely drug house, you are told by dispatch to call the drug house hotline because the street patrol officers do not/will not investigate those calls. After several years of doing just that, an area patrol officer told me in so many words, I was wasting my time….. As for the numerous other calls I’ve made oover the past five years, more times than not.. its the same ole lip service or that no one returns my calls, no assurance that your calls are being taken serious or that someone is looking into the situation, ect ect…no matter who Ive called, be it non emergency, drug house hotline, our response officer, the crime prevention person, the mayors office, police chief….it all has been futile. In one instance the police commisioner was rude, replied “what do you want me to do about it” after I gave him the scenerio about this particular chronic,long time (20 yrs) drug house and was asking for his help. Also these drug houses/apt are located not two blocks from the n.e. precinct, but one block as in back yard back yard! A whole lot of agencies and persons doing a whole lot of nothing! I did say things have improved the past year or so but only because I have put my and my husbands life in danger, confronting, following, filming them in order to run the chronic drug activiity and dope fiens out of our imediate area. Most of my neighbors and the other people I’ve talked with in regards to the thefts, the break ins (6 out of 10 houses just on the backside of my street have been robbed), the drug deals, the street drinking, dope smoking and of course this historical “drug house”, have said time and time again they don’t or won’t call the police for the simple reason they never do anything when they do call? Others even business owners claim the police know what goes on out here, they just don’t want to deal with it/them? What ever the reasons,, I was hoping my display of show n tell drug paraphernelia will evoke some type of response/results from the powers to be….wait n see?
P.S. to the previous post, response time to non emergency is routinely 15 to 30 minutes except when an officer may bew returning from or finished with a previous call. Let it be noted that most of the weapon involved crimes are over nickel and dime drug deals, so called street crimes (also domestic) So why al these so called street crimes not taken more serious? The idea that there needs to be less emphasis on drug related crimes is absolutely rediculous, they are afterall the root to so much misery?