[HOT AIR] Earlier this week Jazz wrote about an unusual request made by Nike directly to Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler. Nike’s store in Northeast Portland has been closed for months because of ongoing retail theft and the company wrote to ask if it could either pay to hire additional cops to patrol the area or pay off duty cops to do so. Today, Mayor Wheeler said no.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler has asked Nike to reopen its shuttered community store in Northeast Portland "on a limited basis," even though he says the city can’t meet the company’s request to detail off-duty police officers to provide security...
"PPB does not currently have the capacity to offer secondary employment to any private business in the city," he wrote.
"The Police Bureau currently relies heavily on overtime to reach even minimum staffing levels for regular shifts," Wheeler continued. "A significant personnel constraint persists, which is not driven by a shortage of funding."
That’s a roundabout way of saying the city still hasn’t nearly recovered from its brush with defunding the police, an exceptionally stupid idea that the city embraced in 2020. Defund resulted in experienced officers running for the exits. But the mayor’s response letter also suggested that Nike may be part of the problem by refusing to allow its own on site security to detain shoplifters. |