In Portland, car theft is basically legal


All over Portland's east side, people are stealing cars and chopping them up for parts in parks and on city streets, in plain view and broad daylight. And the worthless police bureau is doing more or less nothing about it. 

The cops talk about how many stolen vehicles they "recover," but by the time they do, chances are the cars are a total loss.

Sophie Peel of the Weed has the lowdown here.

Just like clockwork, Wilkins says, an unmarked tow truck shows up two to three times a week near her business in outer Northeast Portland, dropping off another mystery vehicle at a homeless camp partially shrouded by clusters of tall trees.

“It’s basically one big chop shop,” says Wilkins, who runs Acme Storage on Northeast Simpson Street in the Sumner neighborhood. “You can see tow trucks bringing cars in and dropping them off. They just sit there on the street and chop them up,” adds Wilkins, who estimates she’s called police dozens of times about stolen cars in the past year. “The police don’t do anything.”

The cops' excuse? They're too busy reacting to all the shootings.

It's so out of control now. Living in a lawless city run by dummies is not fun.

Comments

  1. That was kinda always the case...it's just times are worse so there's more vehicle theft and kitty cat converter theft.

    Presumably they'll ban sales of kitty cats (tho they take ID and send a check which did initially cut down on it a lot) in oregon once upon Jan, juan, post 2021. Tho who knows if WA will follow suit or they'll just be carted up to vantucky much like buying sudafed up there when they banned it here to make really shitty meth, or the O-bungler admin deciding to make the pill cases for opiates super hard to crush so it's easier just to do heroin/really kill yourself with fent.

    & newer cars have immobilizer keys, though if they got an inside man at the dealer to VIN punch them or swap the computer to a key they have or can program them or can swipe them off someone's purse/pocket...

    Still, even in the 80s in Hawthorne or SE middle-upper felony-flats, if you had a jap car that was clean it was sort of a miracle if it didn't get stolen with the 6 cheezoid key codes and tinny locks. They might find your car if it racks up enough tickets at their new fancy meters. The rapid chop is a new treat.
    Then, it was more a quick joy ride/drug run or wreck it up at Larch mtn for fun sort of deal.

    I guess all I'm saying is I have doubts that the policing process for vehicle recovery or investigation for grand theft auto is measurably more or less useless in practical terms for vehicle theft...things are just worse...
    as said in The Big Lebowski 'leeds.' (raucous laughter / lulz)

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  2. They have cameras for license plates basically everywhere, but grand-theft-auto laws are written such (with good reason in some ways) that its very hard to catch someone in the act and meet the burden of proof in full.

    IDK how I feel about more surveillance / cameras / less presumption of innocence generally.

    That said, ~50% of cars using the carpool lane on I5 Northbound at the designated hours are violating the rule (single driver). I'd be OK if you got a 'stupid ticket' like a parking ticket that was like ~$50-100 that was photo or motorcycle...we didn't entrap you/aren't harassing you on your insurance/it's not a 'moving violation' exactly so I'd be OK with the roll the front windows down checkpoint and camera or camera tickets, especially if it was a divided off lane like seattle has...you had to ignore the sign/diamond and pre-meditate it or were so oblivious maybe you need a little wrist slap.

    & if I want to use the carpool lane (on the rare occasion I would...usually have heavy stuff, not people), I'd like it to move.

    It's sorta like if they put up a fence or boards and you climb over it or a gate & they tell you not to/you'll be arrested...
    ...don't harass or beat people up but if you get to spend a night in jail/fall over the fence onto the conveyor belt or trap door into the paddy wagon (we can only dream) with 1200 close friends coughing/farting covid jammed together for 24 hours, my heart doesn't exactly bleed for you...it's a choice...we warned you up front/didn't force you...

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  3. Criminal record / employers being more able to discriminate with more demerits shared around in a pan-opticon of surveillance and tax subsidized block chained carbon burning/electron consuming computer system that never forgets & accessible preferentially &/or most expediently by all the worst incentivized people or people with most power & noxious opinions...more of that isn't exactly the answer either, no?

    Justice Breyer, to his credit (don't think much of his abilities or views on labor), at least mentioned his concerns about this (doubtful he can do anything or leave any lasting footnote...whatever) problem.

    Putting people in jail so they for sure can't get a decent paying job instead of giving them tools to succeed is a good sized piece of how we got here.

    What do we do? All have cheap standard issue electric soviet scooters that have no fashionable consumption proprietary body panels or anything that valuable to part out/small enough to take with you on your back into the grocery store etc, nationalize freight and passenger rail and combine it with power line rights of way with preferential safe 'just in time' rapid point to point delivery of people and medical stuff and rebuild/reconfigure cities a lot also close to rubber tire vehicle rights of way as needed? LOL...good luck with that...& IDK that's even desirable who knows?

    Short of parking off street, better lines of sight, fewer cars, old cars with no cat/smog exempt that run on propane, wood pellets or diesel, metal bumpers that are socially acceptable if dented a little here and there & not painted, older cars where some minor rash is ok, only available in 3 finishes; pre-golfball dented/acid brushed stainless, appliance enamel white/same color code for all brands, or military hard/corrosion anodized aluminum that can really take some rash...

    That said, newer cars, each (of ~500,000 distinct) part is likely to have a chip assigned to that vin # (making swapping used parts much more difficult) and if that vin comes up stolen or able to be immobilized (unless they can interrupt the cell or satelite signal) from your cell phone & located, that's the more likely direction/shape of the outcome a little longer term, I suspect.

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  4. ^Final poast, then leave alone, promise...need a good editor.

    Of the 20 people who I knew who had cars stolen (Including my own dad 3 or 4x with japanese cars in the 80s in SE) the outcomes were basically 1 for 10 that the police find it before:
    -It gets a bunch of parking tickets & the city sends you a bunch of letters or calls to harass you
    -You find it yourself circling around
    -It's found smashed.
    -It's found in Vancouver.
    -Now for added flavor...they've chopped it outside in broad daylight in miserable conditions in the homeless blight we planted the seeds for & allowed to grow Charlie Hales style allowing gentrification in the first place...

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  5. Let's play a cute little photoshoot game....

    Bronx 1979-1981 or Portland 2020-20??

    Guess the city from the pictures of fires, homeless, open sewers, needles, burned out cars or buildings with no safety updates or infrastructure updates or green spaces, or public housing, deindustrialization w/ developer weasels chomping at the bit to get it cheaper right before a brutal police crackdown and a new sports stadium/entertainment being the 'desired' interviewee in the news.

    The early 1981? video-shots of that bewildered senile sneering nostalgic POS con-man Reagan that cut all funding for higher public education & medical research as governor of CA visiting The Bronx with his hair-doo trophy cutout post-abortion second wife Nancy sure were good with the media falling over themselves to suck the admin off with a new president next to a poor or non white person like he cared/was going to do anything to help existing residents at the federal level (they had to at least pretend in those days/setup the photoshoot nicely in the corporate media mono-culture or primitive local access cable no one watched 1973-1980 I guess?)...

    Guess we didn't heed the warnings (that figures in true anthropoligical 'refuse to adopt/consider another cultures experience as possibly relevant until it's too late/you're the frog in the slowly heating pot)...
    ...'affordable housing' or 'cheap seats' is a particularly hilarious phrase for Bronx or Brooklyn 40 years on...avg salary? $150k, $3-6K / month luxury loft or inhuman concrete or cardboard/shit board slap-dash construction bunkers with adjacent billboard storage units?
    What are you complaining about? It's affordable now for the new residents!
    $100 nosebleed football or yankee seats on a tax subsidized stadium for the community?
    What are you complaining about?/stop hitting yourself!
    It's affordable within 3 miles of the area!

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  6. Portland's a little more sprawling/little less built-up around water transport as early with a bit less public transit maybe too easy to recognize Bronx as distinct with all that old brick...
    .
    ..if you squint and blend the photos from Bronx 1979-1981 and Hell.A riots 1992-1993 with the 'falling down' movie effects and incoming agent provoceteurs/falls flags/new shiny FBI office & new shiny Federal court to better harass & jail 'environmental terrorists' Mueller style...
    ...ya got the picture-present-perfect Portland pot?

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  7. ^Gotta add a few cordless leaf blowers, tear gas balls, gleaming brand new radios at military defense waste spending for the police, PERS benefits/overtime & some surplus tanks/military junk we ramped up to make for the domestic front while blowing it all in the Iraq & Afghanistan little liberfarian public-private contractor money laundromat & client govt. with glowing propaganda science experament...

    ...gotta stay relevant. I'm sure if they touched up the Bronx & Hell.A photos in modern dress with a little more outside agitation and sped it up and intensified it to get worse a lot faster with more apathy and less ability to organize or resist it in a more white city overall (white-face dress-up 'prank'?), they could make it look like Portland,...for the most part...

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  8. Here's a really novel solution; Either enforce the fucking law, or get your neighbors together to run out the crackheads! Go to the homeless camps with baseball bats, rifles, and knives, and beat the shit out of/kill every bum you see. Burn their tents, destroy their shit, and beat them mercilessly. If you get your car stolen, use the GPS on the car to track it back to the camp it's at and go there with all your friends to take it back. Go with rifles and raze the place, medieval style. Make the bandits afraid and it will stop. This is how it's done in Brazil.

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