BUCK: On the crime issue, Clay — we keep coming back to this — we’re seeing stories that certainly indicate how violent, how dangerous a lot of cities have become, and it’s happened the last few years. But the numbers are staggering, what we see happening across the country is just horrific, the number of shootings that have happened. We have Philadelphia on track for, after last year, the most murders in the history of the city —
CLAY: — how crazy that is. For a city like Philadelphia to be setting all-time records right now.
BUCK: Yeah. It’s just unbelievable. And they’re gonna have an all-time record here for murders this year. Remember, very far left, progressive prosecutor. You have similar numbers in a lot of other cities. Portland, where we are on a great station, KEX in Portland, and we really appreciate all of you our Portland folks tuning in. A lot of them are, and we have them call in before, Portland-area residents, right? They live outside the city because the city’s been turned… The Pacific Northwest, I’ve said this before and I know you agree, Clay, it’s one of the most beautiful parts of the country, and Seattle and Portland should be —
CLAY: One of the most beautiful parts of the world.
BUCK: Yes.
CLAY: It is amazing.
BUCK: Seattle and Portland should be jewel cities — and San Francisco was. Look at this, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, huge problems. Portland could surpass last year’s shootings. And Clay, what was it? Murders in Portland, homicides in Portland are up.
CLAY: I’ve got it right here directly in front of me, Buck. Huge article in the Wall Street Journal. I was reading it over the weekend. They averaged in Portland, Buck, between 2000 and 2019, 21 murders a year. Virtually… I mean, look, it happened, but it was almost unheard of for the first 20 years of the twenty-first century. Last year, Buck, they had 88 murders in Portland. Over a quadrupling. First 19 years, almost unheard of for a murder to happen.
BUCK: So, you also had a thousand shoo shootings in Portland last year, which was a massive increase. There’s only 365 days in a year, everybody. Portland is not a large city. It’s a mid-sized city, 650,000 people in Portland. So, what is that? Puts it probably top 50, maybe top 40 cities in the country? I’d have to look at the specific numbers. But, Clay, by way of comparison, so, Portland had… What was the most recent number? I just did the math.
CLAY: Twenty-one for 20 years.
BUCK: Right. So, what’s the most recent. Last year it was —
CLAY: Eighty-eight last year.
BUCK: If you were to do the math on this one, if Portland were the size of New York City and you expanded out the murders per capita, you just did the math on this one, you’re getting pretty close to a thousand murders, right? That’s what it would be, if Portland were the size of New York. If you look at a city like Baltimore, for example, which has hundreds of murders a year and you expand that to the size of New York City you would also see a similar… You’re getting to like the worst days of the 1990s. New York has 2,200 murders in 1990, 1991.
We’re going back to the days when people didn’t feel safe at all in the streets. We’re moving in that direction. And now let’s get to the “why.” The answer is stupid ideas from Democrats. It’s very straightforward. This is not… They told us it was covid. That was a lie. They told us that it was just not even happening, it was a data blip, it will go away. That was like a lie. The fact of the matter is that Democrats have engaged in an all-out leftist assault on the criminal justice system from policing to prosecution to incarceration, at all levels.
And what we’re seeing is the criminal element in place after place, city after city, doesn’t feel like they’re going to suffer serious consequences. They commit more and more serious crimes as a result. And people are fleeing cities now because of this. It’s happening all over the country. And they should flee these cities. And there should be political consequences for the people that have made these insane decisions.
CLAY: And here’s what I would point out to everybody. The reason why Portland is such a fascinating window into failed Democrat policies is, Portland is probably the most left wing, major city in America today. And I’m define major city for everybody out there. Kind of city that could have a pro sports franchise, right? Trailblazers, Portland, they have.
BUCK: Portland’s about 25th, 26th, by population. I checked. I said top 40. It’s like 25th, 26th.
CLAY: Okay. Name a city that is more woke than Portland. I bet almost everybody out there listening right now… They made a show called Portlandia which is basically mocking the white, woke community that is the underlying foundation of Portland. Used to be, to Buck’s point, a jewel of the Pacific Northwest, one of the safest places in all the country. I bet there’s not one major city in America, Buck, that has quadrupled its murder rate in the last couple of years, in the entire United States, I bet you can’t find one.
Is it a coincidence that the wokest city in America, the one that we repudiated police the most aggressively and went in with left-wing, defund the police, Antifa protests constantly, is it a surprise that they quadrupled their murders, that that went up more than anywhere? I don’t think so. I think it’s a natural consequence. And if we’re not careful, every city becomes Portland.
BUCK: And let’s look at what they did. I mean, we talk about this in terms of the stats, the numbers. What are the decisions that they made — and when I say “they,” Democrats. Down the line. Not a single Republican. This isn’t a both sides issue. This isn’t a, “Oh, they do things, we do things left and right.” No, no. Democrats have total dominance of the city. They do things like they say, let’s let people live on the streets, meaning camp on the streets, set up campsites wherever they want — on the street, in the park, outside your home.
Well, that also brings down property values. That makes people feel less safe. And sure, most of the people camping out aren’t actually harming anybody. But it’s unsanitary. They’re harming themselves. They make drugs legal for people to do outdoors. They’ve had a huge increase in overdose deaths which they said they… Remember, they legalize drugs to make people safer from the drug use and actually more people are doing drugs and dying as a result.
Then they say, well, we don’t want to be too strict with people when it comes to not only public urination and defecation, which they decide is also legal, all quality-of-life crimes, then it’s, let’s not arrest people for shoplifting, let’s set a really high limit, say, I don’t know, $900, which is what they’ve had in California recently, before you’re gonna get arrested and charged with a felony or anything serious at all.
So, let’s effectively decriminalize stealing, open air drug use, living on the street, urinating in public, you know, indecent exposure, which is good guy all the time, essentially let’s bring as many criminal, deeply schizophrenic drug abusers possible, have them descend on our city, and then when beam do really bad stuff, let’s not lock them up for long periods because we don’t want mass incarceration, and let’s just see what happens. And we’re seeing what happens.
CLAY: And the small businesses that are trying to make a living, the small business owners all over Portland, people don’t feel comfortable on the streets; so, they’re not coming into downtown. They’re not traveling around like they ordinarily would. In fact, Buck, let’s hope — we do this every now and then. We have a large audience in Portland.
I’d like to hear from people who live in Portland, what the last couple of years have felt like as your murder rate has quadrupled. And we can talk about all different sorts crime, but one reason we like to talk about murders on this is, it’s hard to determine sometimes whether other crimes are going up ’cause people might not call the police as often over their scooters getting stolen like happened to Buck in New York City.
BUCK: Trauma.
CLAY: But for the most part if there is a dead body, there is an investigation, it’s a tally that’s somewhat reliable. Quadrupling murder rates. 1-800-282-2882. Only Portland people. What’s it like to live in your city right now and have all of these failures raining down upon you such that arguably Portland is the biggest failure of the post-George Floyd era in America?
BUCK: It is also really the home city of Antifa, it is the city more than any other. I mean, Seattle is probably right up there, but Portland has an Antifa presence that is — it’s consistent. Anytime there’s the any of right wing gathering, a conservative or Republican gathering, you know Antifa is gonna show up there. So, Antifa is really just a distillation of left-wing — they’re essentially the shock troops of left-wing — wokeism. And do you remember when the mayor there, Ted Wheeler, during the whole BLM summer of violence and destruction, Ted Wheeler, like, showed up, the mayor of Portland.
BUCK: “Guys, I’m here for you.” They’re like, “Shut up, you little nerd. Like, we hate you.” Yeah, exactly. It’s just destruction and anger and rage and stupidity all with Democrats blessing it, pushing it along.
CLAY: Almost all white, woke Democrats. I just want you to be thinking about this. The worst people in America, the people who are destroying America the most, white, woke Democrats, and Portland is a perfect approximation and epitomization of exactly what’s going on there. I want to take some of those calls. Portland, you’re on the clock.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
CLAY: Portland, a lot of people weighing in. We appreciate everybody listening on KEX there. We’ve got a monster audience. And this quadrupling of the murders, Colonel Miller, what’s going on from your perspective in Portland?
BUCK: He lives in Portland. What’s up, Colonel?
CALLER: Hey, Clay and Buck. Thanks for the opportunity. So, I’m a lifetime Portlander. My family’s been in the Portland area since the late 1800s. I’ve been there since the sixties. I followed it in 2019 — I’m retired Air Force — and then I followed it nightly after the George Floyd death and the protests. And what I saw was Black Lives Matter and Antifa became one violent organization, and that’s where the violence stemmed from.
You know, the first 45 days at the county courthouse, the next 45 at the federal courthouse, and then for the next year they would hit north, south, east, west, and central police precincts every night, and then the ICE detention center, and they would rotate how they hit those. And that’s where all the violence that came from and perpetrated primarily for a year.
CLAY: What’s it like to live in the city now compared to what it used to be like?
CALLER: Yeah. So, it used to be like in the nineties I think, you know, 450,000 population with 1,150 in the Portland Police Bureau. Fast-forward to today, 650,000 plus, we don’t have 700-plus in the Portland Police Bureau.
BUCK: Wow.
BUCK: You don’t have enough cops. I mean, that’s another part of this too. Just like, you know, Border Patrol’s overwhelmed. Cops in our cities are overwhelmed. Colonel Miller up in Portland, thank you, sir. Luke from the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. Luke, what do you got for us?
CALLER: Hey, guys. Thanks for the opportunity, and I’m glad you guys are highlighting what’s happened in Portland as what might happen elsewhere. I’m a small business owner. I have two small kids. Born and raised in Portland like the colonel. It was a wonderful place to live until about five or six years ago. And crime has skyrocketed.
Finally, my wife convinced us to move out of Northeast Portland neighborhood to a bedroom communities, and the week after that happened — it was a nice neighborhood — there was a shooting in the neighborhood. My neighbors’ houses got hit, 30 shots fired, two kids went to the hospital. And it’s just, you know, it was a sad deal. It’s really tragic. Because I was so proud of Portland forever and now, I’m almost embarrassed to live here.
BUCK: There is nothing that Democrats can’t ruin, folks. Always remember that.
CLAY: You live in a fantastic place. Mike in Portland, you went and got a gun. You didn’t have one before, but you’ve become so unsafe — this experience of living in Portland that you decided you had to protect yourself?
CALLER: Yeah. That’s right. Great show, guys. I echo what the other folks are saying. I went and got my concealed carry for Oregon and Washington. There’s plenty of buildings in town that say, “firearms not allowed,” which of course only protects the bad guys. And I’m happy to carry where I need to regardless of signs. People know what I’m talking about. But, yeah, it’s wild west out here. You’re scared to go downtown. And I grew up here. I live three miles from downtown up in the hills just above downtown.
You’re scared to go down there. And you’re always looking over your shoulder. It’s horrendous conditions. Everything you’ve heard is true, and it’s worse. And I have a few friends that are cops. Our police force is down by the hundreds. And they don’t — they’re not even honest about it. Mayor Ted Wheeler is an idiot, and he lies to the public constantly, and they won’t take responsibility for anything. It’s really a shame, because it’s a gorgeous city, it’s a gorgeous place to live. But people are emboldened by the lack of responsibility through the city council and the DA and so on.
BUCK: Thanks for calling in. Yeah. Elect Republicans, folks. The short answer to the complicated problem here.
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