Where I spent my years when I was in my twenties was a pretty rough place at times. Boston to be specific and you could always count on a beat cop being around. The style of policing has declined significantly to say the least. Or shall I say police management has declined.

Scary thing is I was in that block on Sat. night earlier in the evening...

We need to train those guys to shoot better or buy them shotguns. The problem will rectify itself shortly thereafter.

Damn! Twenty to forty shots fired? You rarely get that many unless the cops are doing the shooting.

I think Sam and his staff sat with the Portland media at a recent seminar conducted by Pollyanna.

I don't live in Portland, but when I visit I usually head downtown. However, after two shots fired in a month, I'll definitely be re-thinking that strategy.

I don't understand why the police can't have several cops patrolling that SW/NW square mile of downtown Portland which has the highest concentration of bars and clubs. Just get 10 cops traveling in pairs walking around that area. I suspect a strong police presence would clamp down on the violence significantly.

I currently live in DC, and the Gallery Place/Chinatown area has had a lot of recent gang activity. It's a fun part of town, but there are quite a few youths who like to act tough. After one the most recent incident, with literally a hundred kids fighting in the streets, the police stepped up their presence. Now you'll see several pairs of cops just walking up and down the Gallery Place basically daring the kids to make a move. It's made the area significantly safer and it's not that hard to implement.

I blame the Burnside-Couch couplet ...

Justin -

The dirty little "secret" about the lack of saturation foot patrols in the are on gunfight nights is tht Portland Police Bureau does not have the cops with which to do it on a regular basis, nor the budget to pay for enough overtine to call in officers who would otherwise be off shift.

But, we are constantly told, it really doesn't have any impact of general fund budgets (like PPB's) to continue welfare for politicians, aka "Voter Screwed Elections".

I don't live in Portland, but when I visit I usually head downtown. However, after two shots fired in a month, I'll definitely be re-thinking that strategy.

Really? Because thousands of people go downtown without incident every day.

I do think it's bizarre that the Portland cops can manage to have a clutch of officers on hand to beat to death some guy who may have peed on the street but that they're not out in force at night in the club district.

I've heard this song before, and I know how it'll go. You won't get anything but regrets until some rich twit's hipster child gets shot, and then Sam will demand saturation nuclear strikes and 6:00 p.m. curfews.

Does anybody remember the $$$ dollar amount of the 2010 marketing campaign to entice folks into shopping downtown (vs online or neighborhood shops or suburban malls)?

Shop downtown or shot downtown?