Filling Portland’s policing gap

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, January 8th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: safety and security in Portland, Oregon.

The city of Portland has seen massive increases in rates of crime, homelessness, and drug overdoses in recent years. Their police department is one of the most understaffed in America. As a result, some citizens are hiring private security.

MAST: But the situation in Portland is so complicated, some private security firms are having to rethink how they do business.

WORLD senior writer Emma Freire spent a day with one of them to see how they operate.

BOCK: There’s foil here and here. What are we Gordon Ramsay?

EMMA FREIRE: Alex Stone and Michael Bock are walking the streets of downtown Portland. They point out the tell-tale signs of drug use scattered on the sidewalks.

Stone is the owner and CEO of Echelon Protective Services. Bock works for him.

Their job is to deter criminal activity. But they do that in unexpected ways - by building relationships. As they walk, they greet everyone they meet. And in this neighborhood, that means a lot of homeless people. Stone and Bock ask them if they need help.

BOCK: Are you safe right now?

WOMAN: Yeah.

BOCK: Good.

WOMAN: I’m sorry my head hurts. I got a pretty bad headache. I’m shaky.

BOCK: It’s a little cold out

WOMAN: A little cold?

BOCK: For some. Not for me though. I’m not that cold. You’re doing ok with clothing and all that?

WOMAN: For the most part, yeah.

Stone and Bock act more like social workers than security guards.

STONE: We meet people. And we say to them, basically, when you're in second grade, and the teacher asks you what you wanted to be when you grow up, did you really think that you would say: I want to be homeless in Portland and addicted to fentanyl? And usually they say no. And then we say, tell me your story. How did you get here? And then we say, what would it take to get you back on track?

Stone co-founded Echelon in 2019 and it has 100 employees in Portland who work with over 400 clients. Demand for private policing is on the rise. In early 2019, the state of Oregon had around 1,600 security guards licensed to carry a gun. Five years later, that number had increased to more than 2-thousand.

And Oregon is representative of a national trend.

HOGAN: You’ve got some clear reasons private security is growing.

That’s Tom Hogan. He’s a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston.

HOGAN: One, we obviously have a problem with recruitment of police officers, so they are substituting in areas where the police forces are running low. Two, there are some areas where, even though the police are fully staffed, other political forces have decided to sideline the police, and in that case, private security gets called in and hired by private companies to do things that the police may not be able to do. And three, there are just some people who can afford private security.

Portland is a particularly extreme example of those trends.

HOGAN: Portland has a sort of a perfect storm going on. They underfunded the police, they demonized the police. Not surprisingly, police officers left in waves from Portland. So the people in Portland had to hire private security in order to establish some order.

Bock and Stone do generally call the police when they encounter dangerous activity.

STONE: Bock had a call one day and it was a female African American, scantily clad. 42 degrees outside and raining. She had a stick and she was beating the stick on the ground. This lady definitely would die of hypothermia. We see it all the time. Bock calls law enforcement. What happens?

BOCK: She took the stick. Swung it at the police officer. Knocked his Monster Drink or something out of his hand. He backed up, drew a taser and then left.

Stone and Bock say they know this police officer and they believe he does his best. But he and the rest of the Portland police bureau are overwhelmed by the scale of the problems they face every day.

One of the most effective tools Bock and Stone use for building relationships with people on the streets is handing out free cigarettes. We approach a tent and they try to talk to the occupants who are not interested in coming out but are interested in cigarettes. One person unzips the tent opening a few inches, sticks out a hand, and Bock gives him two cigarettes.

BOCK: How many are in there? Two of ya? Here’s a couple. There’s one. Hold your hand still. There’s one.

Despite their friendly demeanor, Echelon’s guards usually wear protective vests and body cameras and they carry handcuffs, pepper spray, and guns.

BOCK: This is not an agricultural community. There's nobody out here growing grain. There's nobody out here right now, chopping down trees, and yet the number of machetes and hatchets are all over the place. Like, I've got pictures of guys walking around, they're dripping with weapons.

Portland seems to be changing course. Voters recently elected a district attorney who vows to be tough on crime, and the state legislature reversed drug decriminalization. Hogan is optimistic:

HOGAN: The interesting thing about Portland is it's fixable. You get a good DA, a good mayor and a good Chief of Police. Portland is small enough that, within about 18 months, you could return it to the wonderful city it once was.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Emma Freire in Portland, Oregon.

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