Portland’s first sanctioned homeless ‘park’ is less than 20 percent full a month after opening as shocking new images show drug abuse and illegal campsites continue to plague its streets.
Oregon’s largest city is in the midst of a devastating humanitarian crisis, with its homeless population up almost 50 percent since 2019 to more than 5,000.
The uber-woke local government is pinning its hopes of reversing the trend on a raft of costly new shelters.
Brazen bay-area burglars were filmed making a series of smash-and-grabs from a line of parked cars in broad daylight — with no sign of any police response.
San Francisco’s “Tyranny of the Minority”
San Francisco has its share of untouchable landmarks. Cable cars, the Golden Gate Bridge—and Gump’s. This iconic retailer has been through multiple transformations since its inception in 1861. It’s currently located in a smallish space on Post Street in Union Square, but its presence in the city looms much larger in terms of civic pride. The store epitomizes a uniquely San Franciscan version of elegance and style.
Hundreds of US government staff in San Francisco have been told to work from home because rampant crime has made it too unsafe to go to the office.
The Department of Health and Human Services told employees at the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building to “maximise the use of telework for the foreseeable future” due to “conditions” outside the building.
The office houses a variety of federal employees, plus staff working for Ms Pelosi, the former speaker of the House of Representatives.
California could make a major dent in its homelessness problem merely by reversing some of its most destructive policies.
Half of America’s so-called unsheltered homeless live in California. It’s not hard to understand why. Along with having the most hospitable weather on earth, California is a welcoming place for drug addicts, petty thieves, and anyone else attracted to beachside living, free government food, and no requirement to work.
Federal policy has played a part in California’s homelessness problem. The counterproductive “Housing First” rule, emanating from the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama era, favors programs that prioritize “supportive housing” over activities like drug counseling or job training.
Hollywood legend James Woods has warned the rest of America about the cold realities of living in a Democrat “utopia.”
Woods raised the alarm in response to mounting reports of soaring crimes in blue cities across the country.
Over the weekend, dozens of thieves looted a Nordstrom store in California, making headlines around the world.
Before and after pictures have laid bare the mass exodus of huge brands from the city of San Francisco.
The video, made up of Google Maps screen grabs, shows large chain stores like Target and CVS before and after they moved out of the city.
Hordes of brand names including the likes of Whole Food and Nordstrom have recently moved out of the California city amid widespread crime and plummeting footfall.
San Francisco's retail stores… before and after. pic.twitter.com/B7pdyY69cs
— Ben Kew 🏌️♂️ (@ben_kew) August 13, 2023
Urban progressives blast the unsafe cities that THEY created
The capital of the most powerful and prosperous country to ever grace Earth is an unpleasant — even unlivable — place to call home.
Over the past decade, Washington, DC, has transformed from a beautiful, bustling and vibrant metropolis into a city that often feels like a rip-off of Batman’s Gotham.
Between 2013 and 2019, DC recorded between 104 and 166 homicides per year.
Suffering years of misgovernance and growing squalor, San Franciscans give their city low marks. Are public officials listening?
A recent ranking by WalletHub shows that, out of 149 U.S. cities, San Francisco ranks at the bottom for management. We who live and work here are not surprised. San Francisco’s troubles are self-inflicted. In aggregate, Mayor London Breed and the majority of the city’s 11 district supervisors have made the decisions that got us here.
Last year, The Atlantic dubbed San Francisco a “failed city.”
Earlier this year, amid shuttering stores and a ballooning drug and homeless crisis, Elon Musk tweeted that the city feels “post-apocalyptic,” like a set piece for the zombie horror series, The Walking Dead. Writer Michael Shellenberger has dubbed the city “San Fran-sicko.”
A female Seattle cop has written a brutal exit letter upon retiring, where she blamed the police chief’s ‘failed leadership’ for letting criminals take over the city.
Lieutenant Jessica Taylor, who served in the Seattle Police Department for 23 years, handed in her notice – but instead of filling out a mandatory exit survey, she decided to write a long-winded letter addressed to the police chief.
In her own savage words, she told Chief Adrian Diaz why she made decision to retire in an ‘unfiltered, raw, and unapologetic’ 15-page rant.
Oregon’s decriminalization law has transformed large parts of Portland’s downtown into an open-air drug market.
Officer Daniel DiMatteo is a 24-year police veteran—ten years with the Chicago P.D., then 14 years and counting with the Portland Police Bureau. He’s worked on gang crime and gun violence. And now, he spends much of his time trying to deal with Portland’s drug crisis.
On the day I met him, in March 2023, DiMatteo was patrolling a stretch of downtown around Washington Center, a decommissioned shopping mall that has become a hot spot for drug use. Not long afterward, cops swept the area after it saw 11 overdoses in one night. But on this day, it was full of people, many of them homeless, most using drugs in broad daylight.
A San Francisco family-owned hardware store has lost a staggering $700,000 in a single year to ‘organized shoplifting’ as the city continues to battle rampant crime.
Dale Hardware’s owner Kyle Smith described the helpless situation in Fremont – and said his grandfather, who founded the shop in 1955, would ‘roll in his grave’ if he knew about the unbridled shoplifting.
The uncontrolled looting in San Francisco has occurred for a number of reasons – including the accelerating organized retail theft and increased homelessness.
I got my start in journalism writing for the scrappy local community newspapers in San Francisco (The North Mission News/New Mission News), so I have a soft spot for these papers, given their capacity to ask questions the big papers never ask, not take activists’ self-interested statements for answers, and report in minute detail what the mainstream papers never notice, or more likely, have too many conflicts of interest to “notice.”
The city has long grappled with street homelessness and a shortage of housing. Now fentanyl has turned a perennial problem into a deadly crisis and a challenge to the city’s progressive identity.
Come to Portland, his sister said. It’s green and beautiful, people are friendly and there are plenty of jobs.
In 2018, Anthony Saldana took his sister’s advice. He left Las Vegas, where he was working in a casino, and moved to a Portland suburb.
He rented an apartment and got a job at Home Depot. Mr. Saldana, though, never quite found his footing. By early 2021, he was living in a tent, under a tree on the edge of a highway in Portland.
Yoo Hoo NYTimes! Homelessness and fentanyl are what mark Portland as a progressive paradise.
Crime-ridden, dysfunctional Baltimore desperately needs new leadership—and more cops.
On July 2, a huge crowd gathered at Baltimore’s Brooklyn Homes public housing project for a block party. The “Brooklyn Day” celebration culminated in the worst mass shooting in Baltimore’s history, with 30 victims, including two fatalities; police recovered shell casings from as many as 16 guns. Before a single arrest had been made or weapon recovered, local officials were blaming guns for the incident, with Baltimore’s young Democratic mayor, Brandon Scott, condemning Congress for not banning “ghost guns.” But the Brooklyn Homes shooting was the inevitable result of policies that have engendered crime in Charm City for decades.
