BY REBECCA WOOLINGTON AND MELISSA LEWIS

One in every two arrests made by the Portland Police Bureau last year was of a homeless person, an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive has found.

The number of arrests is dramatically disproportionate to Portland's homeless population. People experiencing homelessness represent a tiny fraction of the city's overall population -- well below 3 percent even using the biggest estimates.

Yet in 2017, they accounted for 52 percent of arrests.

The arrests affect a staggering percentage of the city's homeless population. A federal survey last year found 4,177 people living outside, in shelters or transitional housing in all of Multnomah County. That survey likely undercounts the true number of people who are homeless, which could be as much as three times higher.

The newsroom found that 4,437 homeless people -- 260 more than the survey counted -- were arrested by Portland police last year.

Most often, police arrested homeless people on property, drug or low-level crimes. The vast majority of the arrests, 86 percent, were for non-violent crimes, the analysis found. And more than 1,200 arrests were solely for offenses that are typically procedural -- missing court or violating probation or parole.

In the first three months of 2018, the disparity continued to grow. The percentage of arrests of homeless people outpaced last year's.

Police Chief Danielle Outlaw and Mayor Ted Wheeler, who serves as police commissioner, have both said that being homeless is not a crime.

But the disparity in arrests has grown amid calls from Portland business and neighborhood leaders for police to stop street-level crime, such as disorderly conduct and drug use, outside their front doors. Police also increased searches for wanted people at homeless encampments last year.

The arrests are a symptom of Portland and the federal government's failure to end homelessness.

They aren't stopping people from falling into a cycle -- 440 homeless people arrested last year were arrested more than 20 times since 1996. Together, they represent an astonishing 20,000 arrests over time.

And they aren't helping to keep people from reoffending. Eighty percent of the homeless people arrested last year had been arrested at least once before in the past two decades.

Advocates say arresting so many homeless people only adds to the city's homeless crisis, making it harder for people with long criminal histories to find housing. They can be targeted by police and unhappy residents, advocates say, simply because they are living in public view. Police can easily criminalize behaviors, like trespassing, that are byproducts of being mentally ill or addicted while living on the streets.

Often, advocates say, Portland's complaint-fueled arrests only push homeless people from one spot in the city to another.

"It's not a response that achieves anything," said Tristia Bauman, a senior attorney for the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that works to end and prevent homelessness. "It's wholly ineffective."

Last year, Portland officers arrested Brian Lankford seven times. In the past decade, they've arrested the 49-year-old 219 times. (Rebecca Woolington/Staff)

Handcuffs haven't helped Brian Lankford. The 49-year-old has been arrested so many times that he said officers often greet him by name. Last year, police arrested Lankford seven times. In the past decade, they've arrested him 219 times.

Lankford said sometimes he cares about getting arrested and sometimes he doesn't.

"You're so tired of being on the streets," Lankford said, "you don't really care about going to jail."

Dozens of his arrests were for missing court, trespassing, stealing and disorderly conduct. Dozens more were for public drinking until he stopped drinking in 2013. But he said he has since started shooting meth.

Lankford said it's easy to feel hopeless. He said he hasn't been able to find stability, housing or steady work. He said his arrests haven't helped.

After The Oregonian/OregonLive shared its findings with Wheeler's office, the mayor announced a June 27 forum to examine how police interact with vulnerable populations including people who are homeless.

Wheeler declined repeated interview requests for this story. His chief of staff, Michael Cox, would not say whether the newsroom's findings were concerning or surprising.

"From the mayor's perspective, the question really is how can we help folks who are vulnerable before they -- before it comes down to criminal activity," Cox said.

He said the arrests of homeless people are "a sign that we, as a society, have already dropped the ball, perhaps a couple times, before that police interaction."

Portland police say they are responding to a spike in calls to 911 and their non-emergency line.

Presented with the newsroom's analysis, Portland Police Deputy Chief Bob Day said he could not think of a police or city policy that would contribute to the arrest disparity.

Portland Police Deputy Chief Bob Day

"I don't see a criminalizing of that population," Day said. "But there is an increased amount of exposure and interaction with the police."

Day said homelessness will not be solved through arrests and that he'd rather see officers spend their time on serious crimes, not quality-of-life offenses involving homeless people.

Police provided the newsroom an analysis of calls to which officers were dispatched between January 1, 2017 and May 15, 2018.

The numbers show that calls involving homeless people have increased since last year. In a year-over-year comparison from January to May, the bureau found calls had risen by 12 percent in 2018.

Still, calls involving homeless people remained a fraction of the bureau's total workload, accounting for 8 percent of the 351,220 calls to which police were dispatched.

Police say their numbers likely undercounted calls about homeless people. Data analysts searched for calls that included variations of the terms "tent," "camping," "living in vehicle," "transient," "squatting," and "homeless."

The increase in calls is noticeable, four officers said. They say neighborhoods and businesses are relying on them to act when crimes are being committed. They say a lack of housing, mental health and addiction treatment also drive the arrests up.

Officers could arrest more people experiencing homelessness than they do, said Central Precinct Commander Kelli Sheffer. The precinct covers downtown and inner Southeast Portland, places where businesses and people living on the street have clashed.

"Arrest is one way to interrupt the cycle of whatever it is they have going on in their life," Sheffer said.

People who are arrested, Sheffer said, have an opportunity to seek treatment or to choose another path. Even so, she said, connecting people to resources is often better than arresting them.

"Arrest is not our go to," she said. "It is our last resort."

Police have targeted areas with homeless encampments using ATV patrols to look for people with outstanding warrants. The checks started along the Springwater Corridor in Southeast Portland in 2016 and became weekly last August.

Police leaders at East Precinct, which covers the Springwater, decided to increase the patrols after the Joint Office of Homeless Services reported increasing assaults among campers and neighbors complained of crime, Capt. Dave Golliday said.

Golliday said police started tracking the number of arrests made during the enforcement missions in August, but he didn't say how many have happened. The bureau told The Oregonian/OregonLive to file a records request for the information, requiring the newsroom to first pay $30 to find the answer.

Police also would not say how much the missions cost, requiring the newsroom to file another records request. Both requests are pending.

Jesse Sadler, 58, said he spent months living on the Springwater Corridor and saw the warrant crackdowns up close.

Jesse Sadler, 58, said he spent months living on the Springwater Corridor and often saw police patrolling encampments looking for people with warrants. (Molly Harbarger/Staff)

Sadler, who has robbery, drug and theft convictions, was wanted. He said he absconded from his probation supervision, so he made himself scarce when police rolled through the camps. The officers, Sadler said, would ask campers for identification and fingerprint people with a mobile device when they didn't have any.

"The cops are coming," Sadler recalled thinking whenever he heard the officers. "It's time to go."

Sadler said he eventually turned himself in and served prison time. He remains homeless, living at an organized camp in North Portland.

Kimberly McCullough, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, said her organization questions whether such practices are permitted under the state's anti-profiling law.

"That is really targeting people," she said.

The results of the warrant sweeps appear to be piling up. Out of all the arrests police made of homeless people last year, 39 percent were solely for offenses that on their own are unlikely to elicit a 911 call -- missing court, violating probation or parole or having a warrant.

Second-degree criminal trespass was the next leading charge for homeless people. The crime is defined as someone unlawfully being on premises or in a vehicle. People identified as homeless accounted for 72 percent of all trespass arrests in Portland last year.

Portland is not the only city where police are arresting disproportionate numbers of homeless people.

In February, the Los Angeles Times analyzed jail booking data and found that arrests of homeless people were increasing, mostly for low-level offenses. In 2016, the Times' analysis found, one in six arrests involved someone listed as transient.

Wednesday's forum will be held from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at a Portland city office building, 1900 S.W. Fourth Ave. Room 2500B.

HOW WE DID IT

For this story, The Oregonian/OregonLive analyzed all of the 19,730 arrests police made in 2017. The newsroom found that police made 10,236 arrests of homeless people.

The newsroom counted people as homeless if they were listed in police records as either homeless or transient or listed a shelter or transitional housing as an address.

People can move in and out of homelessness, and not everyone in the police data lives outside. Police also say that when someone refuses to provide an address, some officers list the person as “transient,” but they could not quantify how often that happens.

Not everyone who was arrested went on to be convicted of a crime.

The police bureau ran a similar analysis after receiving our findings and identified the same disparity.

Molly Harbarger of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report.

-- Rebecca Woolington

503-294-4049; @rwoolington

-- Melissa Lewis

503-221-4316; @iff_or