IAman reports from the eastside of Portland. A neighbor pushes a lightweight, two drawer Craftsman tool chest out in the hall. He snags it and advertises it on Facebook:
June 27,2024
Amazingly it received 235 clicks & 10 messages, within a couple hours.
Guy came right over, his wife wants it as a base for a flower planter
The guy retired after 25 years driving city bus.
So I asked him about this neighborhood.
He said it is getting better. It is certainly better than the "nums" street slang for the streets 122nd through 188th (or thereabouts), that area houses poor people displaced by gentrification. More crime there.
My building super says all of Portland was so nice, back 1992. He attributes the shitty streets to the homeless (bums) drawn in by $1000 a month they get & lack of cops.
Speaking of Cops, Joe, tonight's security guard has an app for his work with a magic-cop button, pressed, guarantees a cruiser within minutes. Only used once in 2 years for some recalcitrant homeless female that refused to leave a property. Joe trained as a boxer for a couple years and has an electric zapper on his flashlight. His company is going to upgrade their defense weapons soon.
I went to mail a letter tonight, riding on the KPX.
No lobby, no mail slots, drive-up boxes removed. WTF! Angry as I pull out of the USPS parking lot I am faced with one of those littered nasty looking homeless sites, a couple of greaseballs standing around. I pull up & call out "Heh, you know why the post office removed the mail boxes?" "Yeah" the head tweaker reponds "because of people like you!" Whoa... Haha he beat me to the punch.
Greaseballs 2 IAman 0
I watched a bum rifle through our dumpster without leaving a mess, then he pulled his two wagons next door and cleaned up & picked up trash before looking for cans. Takes all kinds I suppose.
Later the same day:
Worried about my KPX250cc security, from face book I buy:
- Heavy chain & lock
- Brake rotor lock
- Cover (perimeter) alarm
The nice fella I bought them from said the cover alarm served him well alerting 3 times to thieves. Says he lives in Vancouver because “yeah where you live is a jungle of crime”
Driving back to PDX I stopped by the scene of the crime (ebike theft) at Winco. Couple greaseballs scoping out the parking lot. I take their pictures and they leave. I go to the front desk and tell the head clerk my tale of whoa, she responds “crime is bad here, that's why I moved”, I tell her that Winco has been offering platitudes but otherwise is unresponsive, she takes my info and promises to give it to the manager. Outside I talk to the security guard and he says they typically have 10-12 thefts per day in the parking lot while they are on patrol.
I did everything corporate Winco told me to do, just to ignore me. Winco had 3 nice emails to me says their 3rd party was CSC and they would help me. They ignore me is what they do. (Using AI to write emails of empty platitudes to customer inquiries)
I ask the apartment manager if I was robbed could I see their video. “No.” Is there any circumstance I can see it. “No, cops only.”
So this video surveillance is a crock of poop…..until someone with $money$ or a gun needs to see it. And then the video has looped or the camera lens was on, or other horse hockey.
Returning back to the Apartment, I see the building construction manager, a no nonsense sort of guy, Bill. I said I am getting spooked about the neighborhood, he conveys “good”. Talking he relates a couple anecdotes.
The construction site were losing tools and materials to greaseballs. Then a greaseball tent compound is built next to their parking lot. Cops don't do anything. Once the greaseballs were out of their tents, Bill had his boys throw the entire compound into a 20 ton trash bin and covered it with broken concrete. Greaseballs haven't been back since. Yay!
Several of his crew were mugged. A couple at knife point. A couple beat the shit out of one set of greaseballs. And then 3 teens held up a crew at gunpoint and tried to steal their tool trailer. The victims call the cops, the teens scatter. Cops leave, teens come back immediately, guns drawn. Victims call the cops bus. card number cops come back immediately and at gunpoint detain the teens and haul them off.
Then there was that evening, cops serving a warrant across the street, the respondent came out guns blazing, the cops shot him dead.
Bill’s solution? Move to a small town in idaho. “This is not going to get any better here.”
Once the construction security leaves, there will be a feeding frenzy of the greaseballs on every aspect of the apartment securities weak points.
BTW don't feed the street people. Bleeding hearts here drop boxes of food or feed them out of the car trunk. After they leave, piles of trash is thrown to the wind.
I'm called to the lobby, Fedex has a delivery for me and the property managers are not allowed to accept packages. The little black gap toothed driver responds to my question “how is the neighborhood here?” “not as bad as east of 122nd, there they follow my truck around waiting for an opening.”
I cannot depend on the cops, stores, nor my apartment management. My neighbors look helpless.
Life has gotten very interesting, like how war is interesting.
My Bike is “secure”. I am less enthusiastic about tracking down greaseballs who thieve from me. I’ll need to find another use for my Appletags.
Maybe a quick draw handgun is in my future. I may just stay castled up here, only leave by Tundra for destinations deemed safe.
PS As I finished this I called my cousin, while talking I spy out the window a greaseball walking to a neighboring dumpster, thinking the worst that he will dump trash everywhere, just looking for bottles/cans…….but wait he holds up in a corner of the lot , a buddy comes over they exchange packets, light up something in foil, puffs of smoke, the bottle boy doubles overs for a few minutes, a “fentanyl pose” me thinks, while his buddy walks in circles. After 5 minutes the bottle boy straightens up, then leaves while leaving trash behind him. I yell “Pickup your trash” he does so without complaint. His buddy tries to backtalk, I ask him to just wait there, I have somebody he wants to meet. He leaves. It's funny they cannot see me, just a big Borg like structure talking to them.
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