2 dead, 7 injured in Portland shootings

PORTLAND, Ore. — Two people died and multiple people were injured, some critically, in four different early morning shootings Saturday in Portland, Oregon, a city that has seen gun violence and associated homicide rates soar in the past six months.

Mayor Ted Wheeler called the rash of shootings a “pandemic” and said he would push hard for more officers and resources for the Portland Police Bureau, which has lost 125 sworn officers in the past year and faces news rounds of retiring officers in coming months.

The city was roiled by protests against police brutality and racial injustice for months following the murder of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis who died after a white officer held a knee to his neck. In the wake of sustained protests and calls to defund the police last summer, Portland’s City Commission cut some funding and disbanded the gun violence reduction unit.

Since then, Chief Chuck Lovell has assembled new teams aimed at curbing gun violence and solving a rash of shootings through both investigation and proactive intervention before shootings happen.

Some residents, however, question if that’s enough as the city marked its 50th and 51st homicides Saturday. There have been about 570 shooting incidents in Portland so far this year — more than twice the number recorded in the same time period last year. Police have said that about half of those shootings were gang-related.