The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) has consistently been a strong partner to the Jewish community. This care was evident last week during a community meeting with Sgt. Matt Jacobsen, of PPB’s Bias Crime Unit. When approached about coordinating a meeting between law enforcement entities and the Multnomah County District Attorney’s office, Jacobsen was quick to counter with a request for a community meeting. The goal was to share PPB efforts at community policing, how they are keeping Portlanders safe, and answer questions. Jacobsen also shared bias incident statistics and provided a long-term view of incident trends.

Jacobsen’s data was pulled from the PPB bias database. This public resource tracks all reported incidents and crimes. You can find it online and explore the different categories. Anti-Black incidents are far and away the most prevalent bias. Jacobsen has spearheaded local reporting and feels that Portland is finally getting an accurate picture of incidents. Incident numbers have been increasing each year, and Jacobsen sees this as a reflection of improved reporting and hopes to see it level off.  https://www.portland.gov/police/open-data/reported-bias-crime-statistics

Jacobsen talked about the importance of reporting (sound familiar?! wink, wink) and took some questions from the audience on the topic. I know it’s common to feel that reporting doesn’t really do anything. And, indeed, it might not do anything for that particular incident. But aggregated, incident data lets us know when bias-activity is increasing or decreasing. Within PPB, it supports funding requests and focuses police attention. FEMA uses it when making decisions about what communities are most in need of Non-Profit Security Grants funds. Jewish communities have received millions upon millions of dollars because the data of reported incidents shows they are the highest targeted religious group. So yes, reporting matters.  (You can report incidents to me by email or via the JFGP website under Security and relevant ones are shared with PPB.)

He also clarified what constitutes a threat and how to prioritize your safety. For example, threats generally have to have an immediacy to them, and the person speaking has to have the ability to follow-through with the words. This is why a phrase like “Death to the IDF” can be uttered. If the person isn’t planning to do harm to an IDF-affiliated person and doesn’t have the capacity to do so, it would not be assessed to be a criminal threat. A phrase like “From the River to the Sea” is viewed in the context of how and where it’s used. Generally, this would be considered an anti-Nationalist statement and therefore protected speech. However, if it were accompanied by criminal activity towards Jews, it would require an additional assessment of whether the speaker has a hatred of Israel or a hatred of Jews. 

The audience was comprised of organizational leaders and community members who have demonstrated to me a strong interest in topics around safety and security issues through the years. Some of you may be thinking, hey – I’d like to have been at that meeting! If this is something you’d like to be a part of in the future, drop me a line and let me know - I’d like to make this a recurring event, and it’s important to me that people who care about this topic are engaged and can directly communicate with PPB. Hope to see you there next year!

 

A Random Note on Portland’s 911 Response

I regularly get questions about the city’s ability to respond to 911 calls. In response, I tend to cite a couple of instances I’m aware of when people called 911 and were quickly connected.  The other day, I was in a coffee shop on East Burnside when a patron had a medical emergency. I called 911, and I’m happy to report I was speaking with a dispatcher within 10 seconds, and the ambulance arrived about five minutes later. I think that’s a great data point, and I’m happy to spread a positive narrative about this critical city function.