Last October, I was riding my bike home past the east side of the Moda Center when a man walked out of the brush near a homeless encampment on the right side of the road abutting Interstate 5.

I saw him moving in my peripheral vision, and when I looked up into the spitting rain as I pedaled uphill, he was standing in the bike lane and had a handgun trained at my face from mere feet away.

I screamed and tried to turn left.

He pulled the trigger.

I still don’t know whether it was a BB gun or an Airsoft model or what. I was not physically injured, aside from a welt on my neck. I tweeted about the experience but decided against writing about it. It was a one-off random incident, a scary one, but there are so many more terrible things that happen to people who live outside on a daily basis, or to other Portlanders.

The police responded and checked it out. I couldn’t properly identify the guy.

Since then, I’ve become hyper-aware of what’s going on around me when I bike to and from work. And I’ve seen it all: men masturbating in public; people driving while smoking pot, and people embroiled in all manners of distress.

Is it any wonder I’ve memorized Portland’s non-emergency hotline phone number?

I’m conflicted by the whole development. Most of my calls, I assume but cannot definitely confirm, are related to people experiencing homelessness.

During the past year, I’ve often wondered if I should be calling 911, the non-emergency number, a social service agency, 211, or if I should do nothing at all and just go about my day. Every time I see something on my commute that rings the proverbial alarm bell, for myself or what I assume is a person living on the streets, I do a quick mental calculus: Is this worth a call? And to whom?

I often don’t know what to do.

In conversations with friends, colleagues, emergency officials, police representatives and social service advocates, it’s clear I’m not alone. A peek at the dispatch records make that clear, too. So far this year, 365,721 calls were made to 911. Another 285,687 calls were placed to the non-emergency line. In 2018, there were 376,673 such calls, 11% more than the previous year.

As Willamette Week reported this February, calls to 911 involving “unwanted persons” have jumped more than 60% since 2013. The city’s formal definition of an unwanted person is where “the subject is refusing to leave or is impeding access to a location," but officials confirmed a large number of those calls involve people experiencing homelessness.

“We have this huge gap in our response system that we have to really fight,” said Kaia Sand, executive director of Street Roots.

It’s why Sand, Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, Mayor Ted Wheeler and other public and private leaders hope a new effort to help divert calls about homelessness from police to a new Street Response Team will pay big dividends. More on that in a bit.

But I’ve wondered why it is I keep calling. Is this just part and parcel of being a father of two young children who has a newfound concern about basically everything around him?

Is this a byproduct of my privileged relationship with law enforcement as a white man, where I assume officers will respond to my calls in the first place and I’m more trusting of the potential ramifications for whomever is involved if and when they do show up?

Is it because of our dueling housing and homelessness crisis, our degraded mental health system, a lack of focus on traffic enforcement or my decision to ride a bike that I’ve suddenly been in a position where calling the authorities is a common thing?

Or am I this guy now just because I keep unwillingly witnessing men masturbating in Waterfront Park?

I’ve had many reasons in the past year to take out my phone and call. Most of these situations have toed the line, in my internal estimation, on being an emergent situation.

So, I’ve opted, largely for the non-emergency line (503-823-3333).

On at least two occasions in the past year, I’ve called 911 on my way home. I’ve struggled with whether that was the right decision, too. I don’t want to make things worse for anyone. According to my paper’s own reporting, 52% of Portland police arrests in 2017 were of homeless folks. The vast majority (86%) were for nonviolent crimes and most were for property, drug or low-level crimes.

Then there was the day, a few months later, when I saw a dude smoking a joint and driving erratically on North Interstate Avenue while on his phone. I called 911 this time and described the vehicle and the location. I soon got a call back, thanking me that the car was reported stolen. I don’t know what happened with that call.

During the past several months I’ve repeatedly seen men openly masturbating on Waterfront Park near the Steel Bridge. It’s sad on so many levels. Change your route, you say? I saw another man on the esplanade doing the same thing a few weeks later. I called the non-emergency line twice in those instances.

Then last Wednesday, again in Waterfront Park as I rode north, I saw a woman sitting with no pants or underwear against a wall, sprawled out with legs into the multi-use path.

I called the non-emergency line again, one of the more than quarter-million calls to that 10-digit number this year.

I asked Lt. Brad Yakots, a Portland Police spokesman, whether I was doing the right thing. “Yes, those would be a non-emergency type of call,” he said. “We don’t have any resources, regarding trying to abate that type of activity, as of now.”

I asked Yakots if I made the right call by dialing 911 after the gun scare. “Lord, yes you did.”

“There are many reasons to call 911,” he said. “The common theme is a situation involving a serious threat to life or property AND it is occurring now. We understand that the situation is an emergency to you, but we must prioritize our call load to help those with life threatening situations first.”

The city’s Bureau of Emergency Communications has a slightly different viewpoint.

“We don’t want anyone to ever hesitate to call 911 if they’re ever concerned about something,” said Dan Douthit, an agency spokesman.

But he also said there’s always been an issue with people calling 911 when they shouldn’t. “We’ve had a need to refer people to non-emergency,” he said. “Quantifying the exact number of 911 calls that should have started at non-emergency is difficult. And ultimately we always want people to call if they perceive an emergency.”

So, what else can people do?

Denis Theriault, a Multnomah County spokesman, said depending on the situation, people could also call the county’s mental health crisis number, at 503-988-4888. But those responses may not be quick enough.

But Theriault said calling 911 could be an option in many instances, but people should be deliberate in how they approach the call. They can say, “I’m worried about this person,” Theriault said. “I’m worried that they’re in imminent harm.”

Douthit agrees that calling 911, especially if someone is naked, makes sense.

“If someone is naked and it’s December, they are in danger,” he said.

There’s also hope that a new option is on the way, one modeled off of a similar program in Eugene.

One that could address my concern about sending uniformed officers alone to every non-medical call. Something that overly burdens the officers and doesn’t always make sense for anyone involved.

“We know with some of these calls a uniformed response is not the right approach,” Douthit said.

A pilot program for the Portland Street Response team will head to City Council next month for approval. Portland is budgeting $500,000 for that program.

“That’s exactly the kind of thing that the Portland street response should be able to respond to,” Sand said, when I described my waterfront incidents.

But she said that’s just a start, and Portland needs to throw its weight behind the nascent Street Response Team program – so cops aren’t responding to every call and a crisis counselor, mental health worker or peer support person can be there to help.

“What it’s really going to take is everyone advocating that this happen,” she said.

I asked Sand what she meant by everyone.

“Everyone,” she said.

Because people like me keep calling.

**

Does anyone have similar stories from their commutes? Feel free to share them in the comments.

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen

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