Here is the classical misdirection: "The push was led by Jo Ann Hardesty, the first Black woman elected to the City Council. She cited a 2018 audit showing nea

Here is the classical misdirection: "The push was led by Jo Ann Hardesty, the first Black woman elected to the City Council. She cited a 2018 audit showing nearly 60% of people stopped by the gun violence team were Black — though they make up less than 6% of the city’s population. Nearly half of the 55 total homicide victims in 2020 were people of color, many of them from Portland’s historically Black neighborhoods, according to city statistics." They generally never tell us the ratio of perpetrators by race, for some reason, always the victims. Saying 55% of victims were 'of colour' sounds really bad, but since we know that almost all crime is intra-racial ... we know that probably about 55% of the perpetrators are 'of colour'. Notably, the city official is adamant that the police were 'racist' because 60% of those pulled over were 'of colour' ... except that correlates almost perfectly with the ratio of people of colour who seem to be involved in gun crime. The City Councillor (and many 'SJW' types - this kind misrepresentation is in the press, daily) has difficulty with her own data: if 60% of the violent crime is committed by a group, then it's at least crudely reasonable that they're going to get stopped at that ratio. That would be 'not racist'. Anything else ironically, including stopping people of colour at rates considerably below their participation in violent crime would literally be racist, ironically. Obviously, it's really not good that there's so much crime within the African American community, and although overly aggressive policing no doubt exists, it's obviously not the problem. 'The Solution' of 'Less Policing' which is to say literally ignoring the problem is radically ignorant, if anything, more police presence is likely necessary, especially by 'Police of Colour' who have respect in the community. (FYI one thing never noted in the coverage this summer is that police forces, unlike up until the 1990's, now quite strongly reflect their constituents in terms of race. It's rare that they don't). Jobs, social programs, getting fathers out of jail for petty crimes like weed, getting people to finish school - all of those 'society building things' are probably the only path where we can see light at the end of the tunnel. Any and all policing measures are more or less a band aid. It's far too easy (and usually irrational) to blame the police.