Back in 2020, Portland, Oregon’s city council cut millions of dollars from its police force in response to the peaceful BLM riots that rocked the city for months.

Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, even joined the BLM protestors in a show of support as they took to the streets, and got himself gassed by police, as the protestors tried to set fire to a city building.

Portland mayor Ted Wheeler withstands two rounds of tear gassing by federal law enforcement agents before being whisked off by his team to the city's municipal services building. #PortlandProtests pic.twitter.com/c9FmuVVhtU

— Deborah Bloom (@deborahebloom) July 23, 2020

At the same time, Portland politicians were also publicly devaluing their police force.

Even though the city would later restore the police funding, all this had a predictable result.

Emboldened by these actions, criminals went on a crime wave. Homelessness and the rampant drug abuse associated with it took over the streets.

The result: A recent poll of the citizens of Portland found that 56% would leave the city if they were given an opportunity and stated crime was the primary reason for it, the Daily Mail reports.

The poll commissioned by the Portland Police Union also found:

• A whopping 87% stated they were ‘dissatisfied with the state of public safety” in the city;
• 74% said they worry about the safety of family members; and
• 71% said that the city needs more, not fewer, police officers.

And there are legitimate reasons for concern as the city reported 71,216 incidents of crime between Oct. 2022 and Oct. 2023 up from 66,038 reported incidents between Oct. 2019 and Oct. 2022.

Over this same period, the number of homicides almost doubled, rising from 54 to 96 while the number of robberies increased by about 30%, from 1,055 to 1,352 reported incidents.