Violent crime in Portland, Oregon, which saw mass protests over the death of George Floyd in 2020, has surged over the past three years, according to data compiled by researchers for the California Partnership for Safe Communities.
Researchers examined gun homicides in the city from January 2019 to June 2021, and non-fatal shootings from January 2019 to December 2021.
The report (pdf) found that there was a 144 percent increase in counts of homicides from January 2019 to June 2021, while non-fatal shooting counts increased by 241 percent from January 2019 to December 2021.
Researchers compared Portland to five “selected peer comparison cities”—Minneapolis, Atlanta, San Francisco, Denver, and Nashville.
Relative to those comparison cities, Portland experienced the largest increase in homicide rate from 2019 to 2021, according to the report, which found that the city had nearly double the increase in homicide rate of Minneapolis, where Floyd died while in police custody….