The president of Portland, Oregon’s police union said in a blistering new statement that the city is on the brink of war. “We need to talk about the elephant in the room: gun violence. We are on the precipice of a gang war,” said Daryl Turner, head of the Portland Police Association. Police in the state’s largest city had responded to 357 shootings as of May 9, an increase of over 100 percent from the same time period the year prior. Portland dealt with a jump in violence in 2020, with both shootings and murders skyrocketing, along with near-nightly riots that regularly diverted attention from 911 calls. Officials in the city have tried addressing both matters, escalating the response to rioting and approving $6 million to combat shootings. But the city has not brought back the Gun Violence Reduction Team (GVRT) and none of the new funding went to the …