FILE - Portland Police Chief Bob Day at a January 2026 press conference.
Eli Imadali / OPB
Although no sworn officers are expected to be laid off, a roughly $20 million cut to the Portland Police Bureau’s budget could have a “detrimental impact” on city policing, Chief Bob Day said Thursday.
Though the chief was vague on specifics in a 20-minute news conference with reporters, he suggested that 911 response times could creep up and overtime budgets could fluctuate under the budget proposed by Mayor Keith Wilson on Monday.
“Some of it’s very speculative because it’s fluid and I don’t want to get too far out in front,” Day said when asked to detail how the new budget proposals will impact public safety in the city. “When you make cuts, oftentimes you don’t see the results of that on July 1 or July 2.”
Wilson is proposing citywide cuts this year to balance an annual budget that is reportedly $172 million short. Portland City Council will ultimately amend and approve the annual budget by the end of May.
Related: Portland Mayor Keith Wilson proposes cutting jobs and city programs to balance budget deficit
Sworn officers — the officers and investigators who the public typically imagines when they call 911 or see a patrol car on the street — are unaffected by the proposal. But administrative staff and non-sworn officers do face layoffs.
Particularly, Wilson’s proposal suggests chopping 34 Public Safety Support Specialists — also known as PS3s. That would be an 80% reduction of non-sworn, unarmed staff who respond to low-priority calls, like retrieving abandoned stolen vehicles. They responded to more than 21,000 calls last year, according to the Portland Police Association.
“This scale back is obviously going to translate into them taking less calls for service, which means those lower-priority calls will go unanswered for an extended period of time,” Day said. “I anticipate there to be longer wait times.”
The proposal also attempts to find savings by cutting training and reducing some supplies. One proposal highlighted in the mayor’s budget asks more patrol officers to share vehicles, which would decrease gas consumption and other costs associated with the fleet.
Related: ‘OPB Politics Now’: Major budget cuts loom over Portland area
Day acknowledged the seesawing relationship between staff size and overtime costs. While he did not say overtime costs will increase in the wake of the proposed changes, he noted that “this organization cannot operate without overtime.”
“There’s always a level of overtime needed by the police bureau,” Day said. “At some point you’ve got to have overtime to do that work. So a reduction in overtime or a reduction in sworn staff are really the only things on the table.”
Day added that the bureau’s overtime expenses have dropped the past two years.
The police bureau had 822 sworn officers as of April 22, according to the latest data.
