The entire reason for government is to protect the rights of the people. Portland politicians apparently think otherwise:
Portland throws out hundreds of criminal cases due to public defender shortage
A shortage of public defenders in Portland, Oregon, has led courts to dismiss hundreds of criminal cases and delayed justice for scores of other victims whose cases have languished in a backlog for months.
Between February and December of this year, Multnomah County dismissed 300 cases because no public defender was available to represent the defendants, according to the Multnomah district attorney.
…
In all, the district attorney’s office said, nearly 2,500 felony cases were affected this year by a lack of public defenders.
“The courts are put in the position of releasing defendants without prosecutors having so much as an opportunity to request bail or release conditions. And it’s not getting any better,” District Attorney Mike Schmidt said in a statement last month.
“This sends a message to crime victims in our community that justice is unavailable and their harm will go unaddressed,” Schmidt said. “It also sends a message to individuals who have committed a crime that there is no accountability while burning through scarce police and prosecutor resources. Every day that this crisis persists presents an urgent and continuing threat to public safety.”
Oregon, primarily due to the influence of Portland, has passed laws that would have halted all gun sales if the courts had not stopped the enforcement of those laws. There are very few hypothesis consistent with the evidence. Nearly all of them lead one to conclude politicians need to be prosecuted or removed from office via other means.
This will not end well.
Not only will it not end well, there’s no way to vote your way out of it.
This is a feature, not a bug. High crime rates because of non-prosecution allows them to only selectively target enemies of the state (that would be you and I) while they demand ever more money for “fighting crime” (because they already wasted the money taken with Drag Queen Story time, teachers unions pushing Marxism, and making sure you don’t get to pray outside an abortion clinic). The people they are not prosecuting, and releasing, are their foot-soldiers to terrorize the populace.
They read Gulag Archipelago as a script, not a warning.
“I am not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.”
As Professor Reynolds has pointed out numerous times, one of the many primary functions of police is to protect the criminal from the citizen to ensure legal processes are followed.
Oregon, and Portland in particular, appears to be in the early stages of conducting a social experiment in Citizen Involvement in Maintaining Order. It will be quite interesting to watch, as it may serve as a learning model for other similarly disadvantaged geographic domains.
And, along those lines, I suspect government-paid law enforcement will find it wise to very carefully regulate its participation in the process lest it also finds itself in a position of potentially severe disadvantage.
In other news, the Chicago Mercantille Exchange appears to be favorably positioning pork futures.
On the contrary, I believe it could end very well, if the decent people take up arms and kill all those who need killing.
I would consider that a less desirable outcome than some others. I believe dead martyrs for the cause, killed by vigilantes, are more of an inspiration than pathetic, incoherent, old prisoners prosecuted and sentenced through the legal system. It may be a more difficult accomplishment, but I think that in the long term it is more advantageous.
I see Oregon/Portland going the way some other states/cities. In some states/cities, if you are a licensed to practice criminal law you are randomly assigned a certain amount of public defender cases (at a set rate). In these places, you end up having even fewer lawyers practicing criminal law. This raises the cost for legal representation even higher.
I would expect an exodus of those able to leave; it will start slowly, and probably already has, at a minimal level (a parallel to the “early adopter” mindset at work), and will increase over time.
Some will be unable to successfully evacuate, others will believe there is no need to, until the situation becomes uniformly untenable at whiich point no evacuation will be possible. How much before much of the rest of the United States finds itself in similar circumstances is unknown, but the harbinger will be regions where it has become obvious; think “Mad Max” conditions that begin locally and metastasize regionally. Sort of what Portland, and Oregon, and a few other locations, seems committed to actually doing.
Why some people believe substantial disorder is better than moderately regulated order, especially moderately regulated order under the control of the citizens, is a conundrum, but perhaps civilization, or some reasonable facsimile thereof, must cyclically re-learn some things over certain periods.
Again, it will be a very interesting social experiment to watch. In the meantime, as our host has said repeatedly, “prepare accordingly.”
As Glenn Reynolds is fond of pointing out: something that can’t go on forever, won’t.
This is an obvious positive feedback loop. Criminals are not prosecuted for their crimes, due to a lack of personnel in the justice system. This will embolden criminals, exacerbating the problem. And what legal system remains seems determined to disempower citizens from protecting themselves, further emboldening criminals, further exacerbating the problem.
You have not mentioned Portland’s efforts to defund police forces, but that is part of the mix too, and will likewise only make matters worse.
If you live in Portland, get out… and move someplace where you can defend yourself, and are less likely to need to do so.
That’s BS. As Oregon has no speedy trial statue. They can leave cases hanging for years if they want to. And they have.
Much crime there is catch and release, low-bail-no bail anyway. And that’s just for the crime the police still take serious. (Gary Harrington sat in Jackson County jail for an illegal pond full of rainwater. While the same Jackson County jail let an illegal alien cartel member, they had busted with 11 lbs. of meth out on his own OR. No need for a public defender on that case anymore.)
This is just another part of the Cloward-Piven, (Read Clown-world- Piven.) overwhelm the system commie scam.
And when you do something about it, you’ll be a dangerous right-wing vigilante.
And the stats for right wing extremism will go up.
Truth be known. Politicians have always been worthless, and now the police and the rest of the system are following suit.