Police say the rise in car thefts is partly a symptom of Portland’s ongoing epidemic of intravenous drug use, which afflicts people for whom a warm, dry place is increasingly difficult to find.
Yes, a lot of cars appear to be stolen to provide temporary shelter. But prosecutors, cops and even defense lawyers say there is something else at work as well—a 2014 Oregon Court of Appeals ruling that, according to law enforcement, has made prosecuting car thieves more difficult in Portland than in most other places in the nation.
“A lot of clients know the right things to say or not say to avoid conviction,” says Kami White, who supervises the minor felonies unit at Metropolitan Public Defenders.
The revolving door for accused car thieves has frustrated police, flummoxed prosecutors and infuriated residents. It summons the helplessness and fury many Portlanders feel in a city with a booming economy but highly visible symptoms of addiction and poverty.
Yet the legal part of it has a simple fix: State lawmakers could close the loophole created by the appeals court. They’ve refused.
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The Oregon Court of Appeals judges ruled in Shipe’s favor. Chief Appellate Judge Erika Hadlock wrote in the July 23, 2014, decision that the state was asking the court “to accept too great an inferential leap” in determining that Shipe knew the truck was stolen when he took possession of it. (Hadlock declined comment to WW on her ruling.)
It set a precedent: Carrying tools associated with car break-ins or even operating a car with the wrong key was not enough evidence to prove that someone sitting in a stolen car knew that it was hot.
Portland’s last Republican mayor left office in 1980. Why are Democrat-monopoly cities such cesspits of crime, homelessness, and illegal drug use?