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.