The Haunting of Downtown Portland
Content warning: This email references police violence, gun violence, and death.
For a Portland August, it’s a little too hot. The sun downtown is a little too bright, so you linger on a shady sidewalk. Through the haze of the heat, a figure approaches. Could it be a Portland Police officer? No, that's not the right uniform. Anyway, you’re not doing anything wrong, just trying to catch a moment’s rest. As the figure draws closer, you can make out a badge and a gun. The armed guard demands you move off the sidewalk. Your heart races as you watch the hand stretch menacingly toward the holster. If this isn’t the police, who could it be?
Last month, we lamented a loss of life in Delta Park. A man named Freddy Nelson, Jr., fell at the hand of a private armed security guard — not licensed to carry a weapon, but commissioned by a wealthy developer to police a BottleDrop.
Not long after, Old Town property owners copped to signing contracts with a hodgepodge of private security firms, turning the Entertainment District into a Wild West town. As late night revelers swarm, armed vigilantes prowl our streets with assault rifles. "We’re kind of running an underground government," a hotel owner boasted, "to keep things safe."
It's almost more than you can believe. Almost.
Peer through the doors of any shopping mall or grocery store and you find them there, too: private security guards endowed with the power to turn lives upside down. We’ve taken consolation in the notion that their authority meets an abrupt end at the property line.
But what happens when property owners no longer observe the line between their private holdings and the public way? What if they set their goons loose into our streets?
By now you’ve heard about Downtown Clean & Safe, the Enhanced Services District (ESD) controlling 213 blocks of downtown Portland. Each year, Clean & Safe extracts more than $5 million in special fees from the homes and businesses within its borders, whether they like it or not. An eye-popping 80% of Clean & Safe’s multi-million dollar budget is managed by the Portland Business Alliance (PBA), a lobbying group that represents some of the city’s largest businesses 一 and, in turn, the interests of Portland’s wealthiest crooks.
In 2012, the PBA inked a deal with the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) to fund, and have a hand in choosing, four of the six officers assigned to patrol the Clean & Safe district. But the racket doesn’t end there. PBA is also in league with Portland Patrol Inc (PPI), a private security firm that deploys its minions across the city, including the transit mall, Smart Park garages, and even the Apple Store.
You read that right — the Apple Store. For PPI, there’s no clear boundary between its public and private clientele. In a 2020 meeting with the City Auditor’s office, PPI’s owner, John Hren, boasted about offering “umbrella services,” which empower his employees to cross property lines however they see fit.
But the PPI umbrella stretches even wider yet. Hren told the Auditor that, in a private security scene that he called “incestuous,” his officers will lend a hand when other firms call in a favor. (Adding to the incest, Hren himself is a retired PPB commander.)
What does all this mean? When a Clean & Safe officer responds to a call, we don’t know who’s going to show up. It might be a PPI guard assigned to a Smart Park garage, or one of the six officers on loan from PPB, or a lackey from another private firm. Without access to PPI records, it’s hard to say. Hren told the City Auditor that, as a private contractor, he “doesn’t have to provide data or any information.”
As PBA and PPI blur the lines between private and public space and obscure crucial reporting data, we lose control over our own city. Meanwhile, the goons who haunt our streets answer only to the whims of a shady syndicate of wealthy business owners. You might begin to wonder if that whole 213-block zone of public sidewalks, streets, and parks hasn't been carved right out of the city and given over to private hands. You wouldn’t be far from the truth.
While Clean & Safe operates, there really is an “underground government” at work — a secret city within the city.
Who exactly are Clean & Safe guards accountable to? Without access to their incident reports, how do we monitor their activities? Do Portland officials have any power to rein them in? Who’s calling the shots, and whose voices are being ignored?
Find out in next week’s installment...