Gangs find new turf: downtown

Spike in gang activity plays up worries about safety of transit mall

By peter korn

The Portland Tribune, Feb 19, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (25 Reader comments)

REESE

Portland police officers this week began dealing with a new problem on the temporary downtown bus mall along Southwest Third and Fourth Avenues – gang activity.

“We’re seeing a gang presence in that area that we haven’t seen in the past,” said Mike Reese, commander of the Portland Police Bureau’s Central Precinct.

Two weeks ago, a police officer was assaulted on Southwest Fourth Avenue while patting down for weapons a man who was involved in a loud argument over drugs, according to Cory Roberts, Central Precinct street crimes unit sergeant. Police suspect the man was a gang member.

And last week, an officer talking to a man who had been riding his bike on Fourth Avenue saw the man throw a gun into a nearby garbage can, Reese said. The gun was recovered and the man arrested. Though the man is not a known gang member, Reese said, his presence with the gun on the bus mall raises his level of concern about just who is coming down to the transit mall.

“We’ve noticed a change in the last two months,” Reese said. “Part of it is a resurgence of gang activity in Portland and putting pressure on criminal gangs (in neighborhoods), and they see downtown Portland possibly as a place they can engage in gang activity and drug sales and blend into the environment and not be noticed.”

They may also feel less endangered, said the Central Precinct’s Roberts.

Roberts says that traditionally, gang activity in downtown Portland has been rare. But a spate of gang-related shootings on the Portland’s east side and in east Mutlnomah County may have motivated gang-connected crack cocaine dealers to move downtown.

“Maybe they feel a little bit safer downtown than they do on the east side,” Roberts said, noting there haven’t been gang shootings downtown.

The increased gang activity underlines a larger safety concern of downtown shop owners as final plans are being made to move the Portland transit mall back to Fifth and Sixth avenues, where it was a bus mall until two years ago.

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