Portland police's newly resurrected gun violence team can't find officers to fill unit: report - Fox News

Portland Police Association Executive Director Daryl Turner argues one reason why members of the Rapid Response team resigned is that some elected officials did not support officers during the more than 150 days of riots in the city.

Portland police are struggling to find officers willing to serve on its newly resurrected gun violence unit, which was dismantled over a year ago at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. .

Homicides have surged since the unit was disbanded last summer after the Portland City Council voted last summer to slash the police bureau’s budget by $15 million.

"They’re demonizing and vilifying you, and then they want to put you in a unit where you’re under an even bigger microscope," Daryl Turner, leader of the Portland Police Association, a union representing rank-and-file officers, told the newspaper. 

But Jami Resch, assistant chief of the Portland Police Bureau’s investigations branch, argued to the Journal that the unit’s past work was beneficial in minority communities, as shootings have disproportionately impacted the 23% of Portland’s population that is non-White. 

From April 2020 through March 2021, Police Executive Research Forum, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., recorded an 18% increase in resignations and a 45% increase in retirements compared to the same time period a year prior