Portland Is Flummoxed by its Broken Windows Epidemic

Portland, Ore., is awash in broken windows, and what to do about the destruction now eludes the city’s top brass. Yes, really. You’d think that, after all this time, Portland might have caught a clue about how to stop the trashing of its city, even though there’s literally a theory of policing called THE BROKEN WINDOWS THEORY OF POLICING. But, to borrow a Barack Obama-ism referring to the Big Guy, never underestimate the ability of Portland to eff things up.

The broken windows theory holds that if police enforce the law against people who commit small crimes — the broken windows — it will prevent much bigger, corrosive crimes. New York City is proof that the theory works in practice. If small crimes are allowed to persist, bigger crimes are sure to follow.

If the Antifa and BLM riots of 2020 taught Portland residents and crackheads anything, it’s that criminals don’t pay for trashing other people’s property. And that which is rewarded is repeated. So voila! Now Portland is awash in record amounts of broken glass. A real stunner, that.

#Portland #PDX
Unbelievable.
The Antifa rioters smashed the windows of the St. Andre Bessette Church building in downtown Portland tonight; a church that focuses on helping the homeless community.

Photos: Jen Dowling / @MultCoSO https://t.co/F1VBufhDaq pic.twitter.com/esLYgq8fVn

— Shane B. Murphy (@shanermurph) November 5, 2020

A lax Soros district attorney, hands-off policing, and white-boy summer antics combined to inure Portlanders to violence and the corrosive effect of woke “justice.”

After years of Antifa and anarchists smashing windows and few people being held accountable, the news media finally looked up, shrugged their shoulders, and said, “Gee, Gomer, there shoooore are a lot of broken windows in this heah city.”

As if smashing the windows of the historical society only steps away from the newspaper offices wasn’t clue enough.

Windows smashed at Oregon Historical Society. pic.twitter.com/PXlXVQXtSo

— Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) April 17, 2021

KGW TV reported that “every 42 minutes there is a report of vandalism in Portland — often involving broken windows. Some storefronts have been hit repeatedly.” And the business owners who are blithely told to let the insurance company pick up the tab — again — are sick of it because insurance isn’t picking up the tab for Portland’s recalcitrance anymore.

KGW reported, “’We’ve seen a lot of it,’ said landlord Matt Kaplan, as a repair crew worked to replace the broken glass outside of his Old Town building. It was the fifth time in three years vandals smashed the windows.” Imagine that.

Mayor Ted Wheeler, who still has a job despite managing Portland down to third-world status, says the city, not the criminals, will pay for the broken windows. Put another way, this puts taxpayers on the hook to subsidize Wheeler’s crime spree while letting off the window smashers.

Local police, who are still underfunded and understaffed thanks to dumb BLM ideas and dumber vaccine mandates, have reported that vandalism has doubled since 2017. But that number is suspect. Portland’s anarchist and Antifa crime wave began in earnest in 2016 to attack Trump voters in service of the Hillary Clinton campaign. So no doubt, the vandalism rate before then was even lower.

The federal and county courthouses are still wrapped in plywood following the Antifa and BLM 2020 riots. Millions more dollars are being spent to come up with plans to protect the buildings. The plans, sans improvements, will take another 18 months to finish. They don’t call it the City That Works for nothing.

Portland has been shedding population since the Antifa riots destroyed the downtown core. Those who remain contend with sprawling tent cities filled with fentanyl and heroin addicts. Portland and the state of Oregon have done their utmost to keep people from defending themselves against attackers. It’s a Leftist Utopia.

A criminal justice professor at a nearby college told KGW that the crime wave festers because there are “fewer people living and working in downtown Portland [and] there aren’t as many eyes and ears around to help prevent crime.”

Now that’s a crime. Whoever’s responsible for that should be arrested and charged with ruining a once-fine city.