PPB: Uptick In Calls Suggests Portland Isn't Following Stay-home Order Closely

By Rebecca Ellis (OPB)
Portland, Ore. April 17, 2020 9:51 p.m.

The Portland Police Bureau says residents may not be adhering to the state’s stay-at-home order as diligently as they were last month.

According to the bureau’s April 15 trend analysis, calls for service are trending back up after a three-week lull coinciding with the state’s school closure order.

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Related: As Sunshine Lures Oregonians Outside, Officials Remind People To Stay Home

Following the governor’s order, the bureau was receiving an average of 900 calls each day. For the week of April 5, that number was a little over 1,000, in line with the bureau’s pre-pandemic call load.

Specifically, police are seeing an uptick in disturbance calls. The bureau’s getting, on average, 12 more of these kinds of calls each day compared with the weeks prior. And, after a brief dip, calls asking for a welfare check or reporting a suspicious person are back up to the levels they were at before the emergency, according to the trend report.

There's also more shootings. Portland enjoyed a short decrease in shots fired reports after schools closed, but police say calls reporting gunshots have now spiked back up. In fact, the bureau said the number of shootings they've seen so far this April is what they saw in all of April of last year.

One other notable trend with most people sheltering at home, residential burglaries are on the decline compared with the weeks before schools closed  (Feb. 6-March 11). But commercial burglaries have increased by 80%. This translates to about three more calls per day compared with the weeks prior.

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