Portland police made their pitch Thursday to maintain their Gun Violence Reduction Team in the next budget, saying it’s needed to zero in on the “serial trigger-pullers’’ responsible for shootings across the city.

“If there wasn’t a specialized unit that was focused on responding to all of these shootings, we know the amount of shootings and injuries and deaths would increase in the city of Portland,’’ Assistant Chief Andy Shearer told City Council members at a work session.

Last year, police received reports on 426 shootings, with 110 people hit by bullets. Of those wounded, 88 survived and 22 died, not including five people killed by police.

This year, as of Monday, police have received reports of 61 shootings, compared to 36 at this time last year. These include shots fired, assaults, accidental shootings, suicides and evidence of gunfire with no damage or injuries.

So far this year, there’s been a reported shooting every 13 hours, and a person hit by gunfire about every two days, Shearer said.

As of Feb. 3, 2020, there have been 61 reported shootings in Portland and these are the locations, according to the Portland Police Bureau.

While police supervisors said they’re not seeking additional money for the specialized police team, Shearer urged the city to boost funding for outreach workers and social services to support victims of shootings and young people at-risk of getting pulled into violence.

“The other people who are at risk, who have not committed a crime yet, should be diverted to wraparound services,’’ he said.

The Police Bureau’s requested budget for fiscal 2020-2021 starting July 1 includes $6 million for the team in an overall budget request of $248 million. The total represents a 3 percent increase from the current budget, according to bureau reports.

In October 2018, the bureau revamped its Gang Enforcement Team and started the Gun Violence Reduction Team, which is sent to every shooting call in the city. Four officers on the team also are trained to analyze bullet shell casings recovered from scenes, entering their images into a national database.

It’s modeled after an Oakland police practice of working to identify people or groups at highest risk of being involved in a shooting, coordinating with outreach workers to offer them help and arresting those who are committing the shootings.

The city’s Office of Youth Violence Prevention now provides about $800,000 a year in grants to outside agencies for support and outreach services. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon also is looking for additional funding for such community-based services through the multi-agency Project Safe Neighborhoods program.

Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty said she still wants to see demographic data about the people stopped by the Gun Violence Reduction Team’s five sergeants, 21 officers and 10 detectives.

She questioned why the bureau has a unit dedicated to about 100 people who are shot in a city of nearly 600,000 people.

Shearer responded that the shootings are no longer concentrated in one part of the city but occurring on both sides of the Willamette River and spread out geographically in every section of the city, affecting hundreds of people a year.

An innocent woman was shot last weekend in the drive-through of a Taco Bell in the Lloyd District in Northeast Portland and bullets have penetrated homes that aren’t intended targets, he said.

The trauma doesn’t just affect those wounded but their friends and families, Shearer said. If police aren’t able to intervene and identify a shooter immediately, the violence often leads to retaliatory shootings, he said.

In one case alone – the 2013 gang-related killing of 30-year-old Durieul Joseph Harris outside the Fontaine Bleau nightclub on Northeast Broadway -- police have identified 114 shootings, including homicides, that sprang from resulting “bad blood’’ between feuding gangs over the original shooting, police said.

Shearer referred to “distinct groups involved’’ in many of the city’s shootings, avoiding use of the word “gang” before the council members.

Hardesty asked him to “unpack that so we know exactly who we’re talking about.’’

Shearer said the average age of a person affected by a homicide in Portland, either the victim or suspect, is 35. The average age of a victim or a suspect involved in a shooting that results in an injury but not death is 31.

While blacks make up about 6 percent of the city’s population, 51 percent of shootings that cause an injury involve black men as either the victim or suspect, he said.

The vast majority of those affected by shootings have had prior arrests, according to police.

“There is no group more directly and disproportionately impacted by gun violence in Portland than African American men,’’ Shearer told commissioners.

This shows the location of shootings in the city in 2019. That year, police received reports on 426 shootings, with 110 people hit by bullets. Of those wounded, 88 survived and 22 died, not including five people killed by police.

Part of the problem, Hardesty said, is the lack of resources and support for men getting out of prison after serving mandatory minimum sentences. They often can’t find jobs or housing, she said.

Hardesty said it’s not enough that two outreach workers respond to the city’s trauma hospital to talk to victims of shootings and their families as part of a program called “Healing Hurt People.’’

The city is paying $185,000 to the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform to conduct a cost study of violence in Portland.

In an email to the City Council, David Muhammad, the institute’s executive director, voiced support for the city’s Gun Violence Reduction Team and wrote that “the enormous disparity in rates of gun violence victimization for black males in Portland is alarming,’’

“Although Portland’s gun violence rate is low compared to other big cities, far too many, mostly young black men, are being killed on the city’s streets,’’ he wrote. “Despite understandable concerns that specialized police units can produce over policing in communities of color, well organized and focused law enforcement efforts can actually result in less emphasis on enforcement of low-level offenses and better focus on protecting human life.’’

Multnomah County District Attorney Rod Underhill and Oregon’s U.S. Attorney Billy J. Williams also wrote to the council in support of the Police Bureau’s specialized team that responds to shootings in the city. While there’s been a recent spike in shootings, Underhill and Williams wrote that they believe the number of shooters is small and the Gun Violence Reduction Team’s experience and knowledge of those involved is necessary to try to interrupt the violence.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

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