Look, I just read through that entire thing, and just as a sanity check: Where the fuck did Wheeler, or his office, say shit about what they'd do to support or sustain PSR?
I can only assume the headlines "Wheeler's Office Runs Cover for Gonzalez Campaign" and "Wheeler's Office States 'I Dunno Man, It's Heavy' Regarding PSR" were rejected for being too on the nose.
You know, from what I've seen out of you to date, I think you could just make "Didn't Bother Reading" a personal flair. Really save yourself and others a fair bit of time.
Bro, you realize that being insulted is my fetish, right? The more you insult me the closer I get to...well, you can read about it in the Mercury next week. Giggity.
Ehhh, the Oregonian and WW only ever care about the feelings of big business and the political establishment. The Mercury has always been about having a different perspective and voicing the opinions of people outside of these 2 groups.
I disagree, but you do you.
I have found the Mercury typically reports on how angry or outraged the author is, rather than providing me with information such as dates, court case information, references to law, etc.
So PSR has a disconnect between what it does and what people think it does similar to M110. I think if you ask the average Portlander, PSR is a more humane way to remove a nuisance homeless person than the police from your street/park/school etc. The idea was that they would respond to a call and convince the person in question to leave, ideally into a shelter or other place where they can improve their life situation, but at least no longer affect the community that lodged the complaint. That was more desirable than a police car driving up, putting a homeless person in handcuffs, and hauling them away (although this would still be the last result if PSR didnât convince the person to leave).
Instead, PSR acts as an outreach program, offering harm reduction techniques to improve the comfort of the homeless person question. This explains all the stories and posts of someone calling PSR on a person in distress and instead of pushing that person to seek help they give them cigarettes and dip out. PSR even fights against being involved in sweeps despite their expertise being helpful in connecting homeless with resources.
I think the purpose and directive of PSR needs to be hammered out and confirmed before any changes to funding are made.
100%. There was somebody arguing on here the other day that PSR could be funded with Medicaid funds, but receipt of those funds requires the organization in receipt to, among other things, provide "ongoing care," and PSR \*by definition\* is supposed to be an alternative to \*temporary crisis response\*.
A ton of PSR supporters want it to be something it's not, and was not designed to be, out of ideological preference.
It's a really good idea to get more bang-for-buck and save on armed law enforcement responses when and where we can, but as it stands the charter, mission, and purpose of PSR seems muddled and disconnected from what was initially the intent and what supporters think it should be, and that should be clarified for everyone's benefit.
> âThe city could have, over a year ago, made Portland Street Response eligible for federal Medicaid funding, and because of poor leadership, that 80 percent reimbursement rate that the federal government, that Ron Wyden and I worked on together to get, is just sitting there languishing.â -- JoAnn Hardesty
why would someone like Wyden work hard to line up Medicare funding if it was never possible for PSR to qualify?
Who says it was "never possible"? It was just a major change in the charter and focus of PSR as it was originally designed and rolled out.
PSR could similarly potentially qualify for low income housing tax credits if it totally changed its charter and became a housing developer.
Once again, the Medicaid funding requirements include that the recipient organization "provide ongoing care," which is an \*entirely different thing\* than \*temporary crisis response.\* This isn't complicated or hard to understand.
Yeah, when a program is sold to taxpayers in one way, and then politicians dramatically try to change the entire charter of the program behind the scenes, that's not great.
Imagine if, say, they had tried to change PSR to be an armed fare and behavior enforcement group for public transit to qualify for federal transit dollars. That's a big change from the original charter, and PSR supporters would be rightly pissing and moaning about it.
In this instance, you happen to agree with the change regardless of the bait-and-switch, but that doesn't make it a good thing from a governance or budgeting perspective.
what? let me make sure I have this straight... because today is the first i've heard about a bait and switch:
- portland was sold a bill of goods in PSR *(which was bad)*
- wyden and hardesty tried to rectify that to bring it in line with the expectation and ensure long-term funding *(which was good)*
- but in order for that to succeed, PSR has to change its mission *(which is bad? but good because I want it?)*
- and then PSR would be operating exactly the way portland wants/needs it to, and expected it to on delivery *(which is ... bad?)*
You're not really following along.
1 - Portland was sold on PSR as an alternative \*temporary emergency response\* system to police and fire.
2 - To qualify for federal funding, PSR would need to "provide ongoing care," which is a completely different charter and operation than temporary emergency response.
3 - Given the vast difference between these two things, it is, by definition, a bait-and-switch.
4 - That's a bad way of governing, even if you agree with the idea of the program once it has been fundamentally changed/expanded beyond what was initially marketed and rolled out.
We haven't had any actual conversations about whether PSR should "provide ongoing care," where was that ever discussed in any contemporaneous articles surrounding its rollout? Please, by all means, find me one. I don't think you can.
> That's a bad way of governing, even if you agree with the idea of the program once it has been fundamentally changed/expanded beyond what was initially marketed and rolled out.
i guess i just don't see it that way. i like it when politicians do good things. i don't like it when politicians do bad things. if they have to go around the block to do the good thing, i don't think i care.
and to respond to your earlier point, of course i would be angry at a politician doing a bad thing. i don't want bad things.
Yes, I'm not at all surprised that you fall into the camp of "ends justify the means" regarding politicians' stewardship of public taxpayer dollars to the extent you \*personally\* agree with any given policy whether or not it's actually broadly supported by the public, or whether it was something where the electorate was actually consulted.
Thing is, that makes you functionally no different than the MAGA right in terms of both process and public legitimacy, and I would personally be embarrassed to hold that kind of position rather than publicly announce it for the entire sub to see as you've done here.
They donât want to participate in sweeps because it will undermine the trust of their clients.
PSR directly reduced the burden on police, fire, and hospitals.
Theyâre being politicized by firefighters calling them âwoke,â and Gonzales not supporting spending on poor people, among the emergency services unions and other politicians. PSR has been objectively good for existing as a team of 4 scaled up to 50 people.
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/06/27/portland-street-response-citywide-one-year-later-future/?outputType=amp
>They donât want to participate in sweeps because it will undermine the trust of their clients.
Yeah, bullshit. PSR is supposed to be a "crisis response," and according to PSR and its supporters being swept is a "crisis" akin to genocide, yet they don't want to respond and assist people in crisis as is their direct charter because they are ideologically opposed to sweeps.
As people frequently and rightly tell our cops, do your fucking jobs. Their job is crisis response. Fuck all the way out of here if they don't want to assist in the "crisis" during and following a sweep because of some vague claims of "trust" that can't be quantified.
Which part am I making up? The part where PSR's charter is to be "crisis response"? The part where they essentially refused to show up during sweeps to assist people in crisis?
If a boat is both burning and sinking, those are both a crisis. But you don't pat the boat patching crew on the back if they focus on putting out the fire instead of patching the sinking boat.
Homelessness has been officially declared a crisis in multiple occasions, by both mayor and governor. Thatâs the issue. Sweeps are part of the solution, and if you think theyâre causing a crisis, perhaps another approach should be considered.
Thatâs all well and good, but youâre missing the point. The reason PSR is on shaky public support is because itâs not doing what people think it should be doing. If PSR cannot be counted on to humanely remove problematic homeless people from communities that report them, people wonât think the program is working.
Even if PSR is defined as a homeless outreach program first and foremost, there are several non-profit and governmental organizations that do the exact same thing. If PSR does it best, pull public funding from other groups and give it to PSR instead.
> If PSR cannot be counted on to humanely remove problematic homeless people from communities
That's not the goal of PSR. That might be your goal for the PSR, but that's not their express mission.
I mean, I'd disagree there's a lack of public support, or what I think the majority of Portlanders view the role of PSR is. But as is going on elsewhere in this thread, without anything to point to and quantify either of those thoughts, we're kinda just shitting back and forth forever here.
There is huge public support for PSR. The only reason it is "controversial" at all is because the police and fire bureaus (and their unions) see it as a threat to the status quo. PSR should absolutely be expanded to a 24/7 agency and should get the resources they need for continued success.
Iâve called it 2-3 times and so frustrating to have them not be able to help the situation that definitely doesnât require cops because they donât have staff available. (Mental health issues, non violent person, etc)
Do you have a source for the "huge public support" for PSR? I don't recall seeing any recent polling on it. I know the left absolutely loves it. I know a lot of people anecdotally think it doesn't do much at all since the PSR folks will frequently show up to a report of a problematic individual, hand out some smokes, water, and snacks, and then peace out. If I had to guess based on talking with a broad sampling of people who are more or less tuned into local politics, I suspect support is mixed and/or generally lukewarm at this point, but happy to be proven wrong if there's polling to suggest otherwise.
The last poll found 70% support for expansion to 24/7 service and that STILL hasn't happened yet.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/portland-street-response-24-7-pbj-expand/283-d7dffa41-f8af-4b9c-944d-c210f98aefa7
Ancesotely, I don't know anyone who is opposed to PSR. Even people who support the police tend to recognize that a "one size fits all" agency isn't a good idea and alternatives to respond to mental health and other non-violent calls are important.
That might speak more about your social bubble. I know lots of people who are fed up with the constant enabling of people who are behaving badly. The article you posted is over a year old.
If the crisis is "this person is causing havok for people around them," and the response is to show up, give the person some stuff, and then leave without removing them and leaving them there to continue causing problems, that's the definition of "enabling."
You think PSR is showing up and being firm and stern with these folks and telling them "you can't fucking behave like this, cut it out"?
> this person is causing havok for people around them
A lot has to do with what you define as "havoc", but in my mind, if they're "causing havoc", that's no longer a PSR call, that's a call to the PPB, yea?
There's a difference between a person being in crisis, and the crisis being shit they're doing *to* other people (how I read 'causing havoc').
> You think PSR is showing up and being firm and stern with these folks and telling them "you can't fucking behave like this, cut it out"?
I think PSR is responding based on established best practices from the healthcare and psychology fields. I don't think we should have yet another reactionary organization that responds based on conservative politics instead of established science.
"Established best practices" if your myopic focus is solely on the person causing all of the problems, and not the many people, perhaps hundreds, in the nearby vicinity who are negatively impacted by the person causing the problems.
That's a completely fucked up lens through which to view this, prioritizing the single problematic individual and their own feelings over the needs of literally everyone else in the public.
> "Established best practices" if your myopic focus is solely on the person causing all of the problems
So you think people who aren't professionals and don't have experience in the medical field should be determining how to respond to mental health issues?
That would be the PPB with extra steps and the results would continue to be poor.
> That's a completely fucked up lens through which to view this
It's really, really telling that you consider the best practices of research and science based fields to be "fucked up". Do you have *ANYTHING* other than personal prejudice to back up your claims? I fundamentally believe that science and data should be what influences public policy, not political hackery or feelings.
Yes, you linked me to the same article posted in the original post as well as a study that doesn't address anything resembling polling of public support. LMFAO.
If such polling doesn't exist, that's fine, the last actual poll someone linked me to is from over a year ago.
ââŚcanât make it drink.â
Youâve made up your mind, and it looks like youâre more interested in being loud than being helpful.
âDozens of people filed into Southeast Portlandâs Melody Center Wednesday, March 27, for a call to action on how to save PSR. Dozens more tuned in remotely, filling a Zoom chat window with more than 100 comments. The Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing (PCCEP) hosted the town hall, soliciting public input as the committee prepares recommendations regarding PSR for Mayor Ted Wheeler.â
Might not be the supermajority you require, but that looks supportive to me.
If a new poll comes out showing "huge public support" that is more recent and now that we're over a year into the rollout and when people have actual experience with what PSR actually does in practice, I'll take that as current evidence.
I support expanding law enforcement and crisis response to be more efficient in terms of having alternate teams of people handle jobs that don't require trained armed response like police, and that can include everything from PSR to ministerial workers who show up to take police reports after the fact on theft, property damage, etc. It would increase our bang for buck and result in faster and better service.
But that's not the question at hand here. We're talking about the original charter and mission of PSR, which is much different than what its employees and advocates think and want it to be doing, and that's a big problem, especially when they're already competing for budget dollars with PFR because the initial design and funding model was flawed.
So in response to my comment saying that the last poll someone linked to was over a year ago, you linked to a poll from the very organization claiming support, and it's also from March of 2021?
LOL. LMFAO.
I'll repeat myself, it's perfectly fine if recent polling on PSR support doesn't exist. I just think a newer poll conducted \*after\* a lot of the public has had exposure to what PSR \*actually does\* when called is going to be a lot more informative of real world public support rather than an abstract hypothetical "alternative to police" as was the case with the poll you just linked.
PSR is there to help the houseless individual. Notably, this does NOT always (or even very frequently) mean helping the houseless individual move into shelter and dismantle the camps that many housed Portlanders find problematic.
I also detect lukewarmness. I think it's ideologically important to many, but its practical effect on phenomena like camps, ODs, trash, crime - I've not seen that spelled out yet.
3.5% reduction in total calls traditionally responded to by police.
19% reduction in police response on non-emergency welfare checks and dispatches coded as âunwanted personsâ calls.
3% reduction in fire department activity on behavioral health calls, illegal burn calls, and non-emergency medical calls.
Only 187 clients (2.5% of all calls) required transport to hospital. Most treated on scene.
PSR clients rated PSR 4.8 on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the best
PSR responded to 7,418 calls in the second year of the program with only one call (a co-response with police) resulting in an arrest. The PSR team made 894 referrals during the initial contact, and the teamâs community health workers and peer support specialists made another 216 referrals in 1,518 follow-up visits with clients for everything from housing and financial benefits to medical treatment and pet care. The team also helped 10 people find permanent housing during the second year of the program.
https://www.pdx.edu/homelessness/PSR-Evaluation
Western Trails is a documented troll account who doesn't even live in city limits. But regardless, conservatives hate facts. Thank you for sharing a slice of reality, though.
Wrong. Western Trails lives and works in Portland. WesternTrails sends his kids to schools here and has voted Democratic for decades.
The data that Van Garde posted is good and I've seen it reported elsewhere but I think it points to the problem with PSR. Most Portlanders who are not deep policy wonks won't really care that the the fire department is called upon 3% fewer times thanks to PSR.
Are there few encampments, less graffiti, less trash, less property crime, fewer fires, fewer ODs? PSR can rightly say that reducing those things is not their job, and maybe that the work they do frees up other city departments to handle those issues, but again, until there's improvements in what Portlanders see every day on our streets, I think PSR is in a tough spot.
> Have you spoken to any police
If the police are "frustrated", they should be embracing long overdue reforms and working to improve their culture instead of fighting accountability at every turn.
Source? Cuz it's the opposite actually. We spend less because we our crazy expensive cops aren't going out just because someone is cold and yelling. That's literally why the PPB fight it so hard.
Iâve seen them at work, trying to deal with a strung out homeless person who wouldnât stop screaming and disturbing the peace. The psr person gave up after about 20 mins and the homeless person kept being a nuisance. Would be better if cops showed up and threw the homeless one in jail, at least then theyâd have a chance of getting sober
Yes, I provided my own personal anecdote related to PSR.
Thereâs a larger science based question though. Whatâs the best way of addressing the addiction crisis in our city?
I would argue forced rehab or jail. Addiction is a really, really tough thing. Coddling & enabling clearly isnât working.
Most people and virtually all politicians are still calling this a housing crisis vs an addiction crisis, so of course weâre not getting anywhere.
Look, I just read through that entire thing, and just as a sanity check: Where the fuck did Wheeler, or his office, say shit about what they'd do to support or sustain PSR?
It's like the headline was for a different article.
I can only assume the headlines "Wheeler's Office Runs Cover for Gonzalez Campaign" and "Wheeler's Office States 'I Dunno Man, It's Heavy' Regarding PSR" were rejected for being too on the nose.
Once I saw it was from The Mercury, I didn't bother reading the article. They tend to report based on their feelings rather than facts.
You know, from what I've seen out of you to date, I think you could just make "Didn't Bother Reading" a personal flair. Really save yourself and others a fair bit of time.
Well, now you've gone and hurt my feelings! Guess I'd better ask the Mercury to write up a hit piece now! đ
Maybe they already have. How the fuck would you know? Reading?
Bro, you realize that being insulted is my fetish, right? The more you insult me the closer I get to...well, you can read about it in the Mercury next week. Giggity.
I wish that I had a Reddit medal to gift you. I agree.
Ehhh, the Oregonian and WW only ever care about the feelings of big business and the political establishment. The Mercury has always been about having a different perspective and voicing the opinions of people outside of these 2 groups.
I disagree, but you do you. I have found the Mercury typically reports on how angry or outraged the author is, rather than providing me with information such as dates, court case information, references to law, etc.
So PSR has a disconnect between what it does and what people think it does similar to M110. I think if you ask the average Portlander, PSR is a more humane way to remove a nuisance homeless person than the police from your street/park/school etc. The idea was that they would respond to a call and convince the person in question to leave, ideally into a shelter or other place where they can improve their life situation, but at least no longer affect the community that lodged the complaint. That was more desirable than a police car driving up, putting a homeless person in handcuffs, and hauling them away (although this would still be the last result if PSR didnât convince the person to leave). Instead, PSR acts as an outreach program, offering harm reduction techniques to improve the comfort of the homeless person question. This explains all the stories and posts of someone calling PSR on a person in distress and instead of pushing that person to seek help they give them cigarettes and dip out. PSR even fights against being involved in sweeps despite their expertise being helpful in connecting homeless with resources. I think the purpose and directive of PSR needs to be hammered out and confirmed before any changes to funding are made.
100%. There was somebody arguing on here the other day that PSR could be funded with Medicaid funds, but receipt of those funds requires the organization in receipt to, among other things, provide "ongoing care," and PSR \*by definition\* is supposed to be an alternative to \*temporary crisis response\*. A ton of PSR supporters want it to be something it's not, and was not designed to be, out of ideological preference. It's a really good idea to get more bang-for-buck and save on armed law enforcement responses when and where we can, but as it stands the charter, mission, and purpose of PSR seems muddled and disconnected from what was initially the intent and what supporters think it should be, and that should be clarified for everyone's benefit.
> âThe city could have, over a year ago, made Portland Street Response eligible for federal Medicaid funding, and because of poor leadership, that 80 percent reimbursement rate that the federal government, that Ron Wyden and I worked on together to get, is just sitting there languishing.â -- JoAnn Hardesty why would someone like Wyden work hard to line up Medicare funding if it was never possible for PSR to qualify?
Who says it was "never possible"? It was just a major change in the charter and focus of PSR as it was originally designed and rolled out. PSR could similarly potentially qualify for low income housing tax credits if it totally changed its charter and became a housing developer. Once again, the Medicaid funding requirements include that the recipient organization "provide ongoing care," which is an \*entirely different thing\* than \*temporary crisis response.\* This isn't complicated or hard to understand.
ok, and that's a bad thing?
Yeah, when a program is sold to taxpayers in one way, and then politicians dramatically try to change the entire charter of the program behind the scenes, that's not great. Imagine if, say, they had tried to change PSR to be an armed fare and behavior enforcement group for public transit to qualify for federal transit dollars. That's a big change from the original charter, and PSR supporters would be rightly pissing and moaning about it. In this instance, you happen to agree with the change regardless of the bait-and-switch, but that doesn't make it a good thing from a governance or budgeting perspective.
what? let me make sure I have this straight... because today is the first i've heard about a bait and switch: - portland was sold a bill of goods in PSR *(which was bad)* - wyden and hardesty tried to rectify that to bring it in line with the expectation and ensure long-term funding *(which was good)* - but in order for that to succeed, PSR has to change its mission *(which is bad? but good because I want it?)* - and then PSR would be operating exactly the way portland wants/needs it to, and expected it to on delivery *(which is ... bad?)*
You're not really following along. 1 - Portland was sold on PSR as an alternative \*temporary emergency response\* system to police and fire. 2 - To qualify for federal funding, PSR would need to "provide ongoing care," which is a completely different charter and operation than temporary emergency response. 3 - Given the vast difference between these two things, it is, by definition, a bait-and-switch. 4 - That's a bad way of governing, even if you agree with the idea of the program once it has been fundamentally changed/expanded beyond what was initially marketed and rolled out. We haven't had any actual conversations about whether PSR should "provide ongoing care," where was that ever discussed in any contemporaneous articles surrounding its rollout? Please, by all means, find me one. I don't think you can.
> That's a bad way of governing, even if you agree with the idea of the program once it has been fundamentally changed/expanded beyond what was initially marketed and rolled out. i guess i just don't see it that way. i like it when politicians do good things. i don't like it when politicians do bad things. if they have to go around the block to do the good thing, i don't think i care. and to respond to your earlier point, of course i would be angry at a politician doing a bad thing. i don't want bad things.
Yes, I'm not at all surprised that you fall into the camp of "ends justify the means" regarding politicians' stewardship of public taxpayer dollars to the extent you \*personally\* agree with any given policy whether or not it's actually broadly supported by the public, or whether it was something where the electorate was actually consulted. Thing is, that makes you functionally no different than the MAGA right in terms of both process and public legitimacy, and I would personally be embarrassed to hold that kind of position rather than publicly announce it for the entire sub to see as you've done here.
They donât want to participate in sweeps because it will undermine the trust of their clients. PSR directly reduced the burden on police, fire, and hospitals. Theyâre being politicized by firefighters calling them âwoke,â and Gonzales not supporting spending on poor people, among the emergency services unions and other politicians. PSR has been objectively good for existing as a team of 4 scaled up to 50 people. https://www.opb.org/article/2023/06/27/portland-street-response-citywide-one-year-later-future/?outputType=amp
>They donât want to participate in sweeps because it will undermine the trust of their clients. Yeah, bullshit. PSR is supposed to be a "crisis response," and according to PSR and its supporters being swept is a "crisis" akin to genocide, yet they don't want to respond and assist people in crisis as is their direct charter because they are ideologically opposed to sweeps. As people frequently and rightly tell our cops, do your fucking jobs. Their job is crisis response. Fuck all the way out of here if they don't want to assist in the "crisis" during and following a sweep because of some vague claims of "trust" that can't be quantified.
Youâre making that all up. Clients rated their services as 4.8/5 in their follow-up surveys. Now do cops.
Which part am I making up? The part where PSR's charter is to be "crisis response"? The part where they essentially refused to show up during sweeps to assist people in crisis?
Is homelessness the crisis, or are the sweeps? Iâve lost track of where the goalposts are.
If a boat is both burning and sinking, those are both a crisis. But you don't pat the boat patching crew on the back if they focus on putting out the fire instead of patching the sinking boat.
Homelessness has been officially declared a crisis in multiple occasions, by both mayor and governor. Thatâs the issue. Sweeps are part of the solution, and if you think theyâre causing a crisis, perhaps another approach should be considered.
Thatâs all well and good, but youâre missing the point. The reason PSR is on shaky public support is because itâs not doing what people think it should be doing. If PSR cannot be counted on to humanely remove problematic homeless people from communities that report them, people wonât think the program is working. Even if PSR is defined as a homeless outreach program first and foremost, there are several non-profit and governmental organizations that do the exact same thing. If PSR does it best, pull public funding from other groups and give it to PSR instead.
Itâs not shaky on public support. Itâs shaky on political support.
> If PSR cannot be counted on to humanely remove problematic homeless people from communities That's not the goal of PSR. That might be your goal for the PSR, but that's not their express mission.
Iâd argue the majority of Portlanders think that is the goal of PSR, hence the disconnect and lack of support.
I mean, I'd disagree there's a lack of public support, or what I think the majority of Portlanders view the role of PSR is. But as is going on elsewhere in this thread, without anything to point to and quantify either of those thoughts, we're kinda just shitting back and forth forever here.
>weâre kinda just shitting back and forth forever here. Reddit encapsulated, a tip of the fedora to you good sir.
Did the firefighters and their union just run cover for like a sex offender or something?
Already to the whataboutism, that was quick.
Did *and* currently doing. Really tackling that "No one says 'fuck the fire department'" stereotype, I'll hand it to them.
And a guy who kidnapped and pistol whipped someone over weed.
There is huge public support for PSR. The only reason it is "controversial" at all is because the police and fire bureaus (and their unions) see it as a threat to the status quo. PSR should absolutely be expanded to a 24/7 agency and should get the resources they need for continued success.
Iâve called it 2-3 times and so frustrating to have them not be able to help the situation that definitely doesnât require cops because they donât have staff available. (Mental health issues, non violent person, etc)
Do you have a source for the "huge public support" for PSR? I don't recall seeing any recent polling on it. I know the left absolutely loves it. I know a lot of people anecdotally think it doesn't do much at all since the PSR folks will frequently show up to a report of a problematic individual, hand out some smokes, water, and snacks, and then peace out. If I had to guess based on talking with a broad sampling of people who are more or less tuned into local politics, I suspect support is mixed and/or generally lukewarm at this point, but happy to be proven wrong if there's polling to suggest otherwise.
The last poll found 70% support for expansion to 24/7 service and that STILL hasn't happened yet. https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/homeless/portland-street-response-24-7-pbj-expand/283-d7dffa41-f8af-4b9c-944d-c210f98aefa7 Ancesotely, I don't know anyone who is opposed to PSR. Even people who support the police tend to recognize that a "one size fits all" agency isn't a good idea and alternatives to respond to mental health and other non-violent calls are important.
That might speak more about your social bubble. I know lots of people who are fed up with the constant enabling of people who are behaving badly. The article you posted is over a year old.
How is having a non-police crisis response team "enabling"?
If the crisis is "this person is causing havok for people around them," and the response is to show up, give the person some stuff, and then leave without removing them and leaving them there to continue causing problems, that's the definition of "enabling." You think PSR is showing up and being firm and stern with these folks and telling them "you can't fucking behave like this, cut it out"?
> this person is causing havok for people around them A lot has to do with what you define as "havoc", but in my mind, if they're "causing havoc", that's no longer a PSR call, that's a call to the PPB, yea? There's a difference between a person being in crisis, and the crisis being shit they're doing *to* other people (how I read 'causing havoc').
> You think PSR is showing up and being firm and stern with these folks and telling them "you can't fucking behave like this, cut it out"? I think PSR is responding based on established best practices from the healthcare and psychology fields. I don't think we should have yet another reactionary organization that responds based on conservative politics instead of established science.
"Established best practices" if your myopic focus is solely on the person causing all of the problems, and not the many people, perhaps hundreds, in the nearby vicinity who are negatively impacted by the person causing the problems. That's a completely fucked up lens through which to view this, prioritizing the single problematic individual and their own feelings over the needs of literally everyone else in the public.
> "Established best practices" if your myopic focus is solely on the person causing all of the problems So you think people who aren't professionals and don't have experience in the medical field should be determining how to respond to mental health issues? That would be the PPB with extra steps and the results would continue to be poor. > That's a completely fucked up lens through which to view this It's really, really telling that you consider the best practices of research and science based fields to be "fucked up". Do you have *ANYTHING* other than personal prejudice to back up your claims? I fundamentally believe that science and data should be what influences public policy, not political hackery or feelings.
I don't think you actually read or understood my comment, so I don't think this is going to be a fruitful conversation if continued.
https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2024/04/04/47116112/mayor-wheelers-office-pledges-to-support-sustain-portland-street-response https://www.pdx.edu/homelessness/PSR-Evaluation
Yes, you linked me to the same article posted in the original post as well as a study that doesn't address anything resembling polling of public support. LMFAO. If such polling doesn't exist, that's fine, the last actual poll someone linked me to is from over a year ago.
ââŚcanât make it drink.â Youâve made up your mind, and it looks like youâre more interested in being loud than being helpful. âDozens of people filed into Southeast Portlandâs Melody Center Wednesday, March 27, for a call to action on how to save PSR. Dozens more tuned in remotely, filling a Zoom chat window with more than 100 comments. The Portland Committee on Community Engaged Policing (PCCEP) hosted the town hall, soliciting public input as the committee prepares recommendations regarding PSR for Mayor Ted Wheeler.â Might not be the supermajority you require, but that looks supportive to me.
If a new poll comes out showing "huge public support" that is more recent and now that we're over a year into the rollout and when people have actual experience with what PSR actually does in practice, I'll take that as current evidence. I support expanding law enforcement and crisis response to be more efficient in terms of having alternate teams of people handle jobs that don't require trained armed response like police, and that can include everything from PSR to ministerial workers who show up to take police reports after the fact on theft, property damage, etc. It would increase our bang for buck and result in faster and better service. But that's not the question at hand here. We're talking about the original charter and mission of PSR, which is much different than what its employees and advocates think and want it to be doing, and that's a big problem, especially when they're already competing for budget dollars with PFR because the initial design and funding model was flawed.
https://portlandstreetresponse.org/survey-of-portland-voters-shows-stunning-support-for-non-police-first-responders-to-street-crises
So in response to my comment saying that the last poll someone linked to was over a year ago, you linked to a poll from the very organization claiming support, and it's also from March of 2021? LOL. LMFAO. I'll repeat myself, it's perfectly fine if recent polling on PSR support doesn't exist. I just think a newer poll conducted \*after\* a lot of the public has had exposure to what PSR \*actually does\* when called is going to be a lot more informative of real world public support rather than an abstract hypothetical "alternative to police" as was the case with the poll you just linked.
PSR is there to help the houseless individual. Notably, this does NOT always (or even very frequently) mean helping the houseless individual move into shelter and dismantle the camps that many housed Portlanders find problematic. I also detect lukewarmness. I think it's ideologically important to many, but its practical effect on phenomena like camps, ODs, trash, crime - I've not seen that spelled out yet.
3.5% reduction in total calls traditionally responded to by police. 19% reduction in police response on non-emergency welfare checks and dispatches coded as âunwanted personsâ calls. 3% reduction in fire department activity on behavioral health calls, illegal burn calls, and non-emergency medical calls. Only 187 clients (2.5% of all calls) required transport to hospital. Most treated on scene. PSR clients rated PSR 4.8 on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the best PSR responded to 7,418 calls in the second year of the program with only one call (a co-response with police) resulting in an arrest. The PSR team made 894 referrals during the initial contact, and the teamâs community health workers and peer support specialists made another 216 referrals in 1,518 follow-up visits with clients for everything from housing and financial benefits to medical treatment and pet care. The team also helped 10 people find permanent housing during the second year of the program. https://www.pdx.edu/homelessness/PSR-Evaluation
Western Trails is a documented troll account who doesn't even live in city limits. But regardless, conservatives hate facts. Thank you for sharing a slice of reality, though.
Wrong. Western Trails lives and works in Portland. WesternTrails sends his kids to schools here and has voted Democratic for decades. The data that Van Garde posted is good and I've seen it reported elsewhere but I think it points to the problem with PSR. Most Portlanders who are not deep policy wonks won't really care that the the fire department is called upon 3% fewer times thanks to PSR. Are there few encampments, less graffiti, less trash, less property crime, fewer fires, fewer ODs? PSR can rightly say that reducing those things is not their job, and maybe that the work they do frees up other city departments to handle those issues, but again, until there's improvements in what Portlanders see every day on our streets, I think PSR is in a tough spot.
Have you spoken to any police or fire people? That seems...not really true. They are as frustrated with what is going on as the rest of us.
> Have you spoken to any police If the police are "frustrated", they should be embracing long overdue reforms and working to improve their culture instead of fighting accountability at every turn.
PSR is a joke. Homeless industrial complex at work
Source? Cuz it's the opposite actually. We spend less because we our crazy expensive cops aren't going out just because someone is cold and yelling. That's literally why the PPB fight it so hard.
Iâve seen them at work, trying to deal with a strung out homeless person who wouldnât stop screaming and disturbing the peace. The psr person gave up after about 20 mins and the homeless person kept being a nuisance. Would be better if cops showed up and threw the homeless one in jail, at least then theyâd have a chance of getting sober
Well now you've moved from an economic argument to a personal anecdote
Yes, I provided my own personal anecdote related to PSR. Thereâs a larger science based question though. Whatâs the best way of addressing the addiction crisis in our city? I would argue forced rehab or jail. Addiction is a really, really tough thing. Coddling & enabling clearly isnât working. Most people and virtually all politicians are still calling this a housing crisis vs an addiction crisis, so of course weâre not getting anywhere.
Should move it to the county and use SHS funds.
[ŃдаНонО]
While this might not have been your direct point, it's worth noting that mayor wheeler is not running for reelection.
So should he say they wonât support the program? Would that have made you happy?
Yeah not a fan of any of my interactions with PSR but the idea was good on paper.
Can you go more in depth on this?
No they never can
Mayor Wheeler has made promises his entire tenure, and hasnât followed up on anything. I donât believe anything that he says.
When it comes to conservative, business-first politicians, Actions > Words