Portland 2013 Homicides Lowest in Over 40 Years

Jan. 02--Homicides in Portland dipped in 2013 to 16, a level not seen in more than four decades.

The number of killings in the city fell 45 percent compared with 2012 and marked the lowest total since 1971's 15 homicides.

"We've seen a significant drop. It's been a good year," said Portland police Cmdr. George Burke, head of Portland's Detective Division.

Burke, who used to be paged to nearly every murder scene as a homicide sergeant from 2003 to 2007, said he doesn't remember a time when Portland had fewer than 20 homicides.

Across the metro area, Clackamas and Washington counties also experienced a downturn in homicides, mirroring national trends in major cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

Criminal justice experts cite a myriad of factors that may be contributing to the decline: the graying of the nation, improvements in medical care and more targeted policing of neighborhoods considered "hot spots" for violence.

Jack Levin, co-director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University, said so many variables are at play when examining homicides that it's "almost impossible to give a definitive explanation for the dramatic decline."

But he said the aging population definitely makes a difference. "There's a larger number of older people, the baby boomers are in their late 50s and 60s, and they simply don't commit the large number of violent street crimes that young people do," Levin said.

In Portland, more people have been shot this year in gang-related violence, yet there have been fewer deaths, leaving investigators scratching their heads.

"We've talked about this, and we can't put a finger on it," said Portland Gang Enforcement Sgt. Don Livingston.

He noted that some of the gang violence has migrated east into Gresham, which experienced a greater number of gang-involved homicides in 2013. In five of Gresham's six homicides, either the victim or suspects had gang ties, police said.

Multnomah County gang prosecutor Kirsten Snowden said gang members are still spraying bullets, but luckily often miss their targets.

Livingston also credited life-saving medical care. He's seen victims loaded into ambulances with significant injuries -- six close-up gunshots to the torso or head wounds -- and he's startled to learn they lived.

"It seems to me in years' past, they likely would have been a homicide. But then a check with the hospital, and we learn they're critical but stable," he said.

The physicians who oversee trauma care at Portland's two trauma-level hospitals said what they're doing isn't much different from a year ago, but emergency medicine has dramatically improved in the last decade, mostly tied to military practices.

"Much of that has come from what we learned from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq," said Martin Schreiber, chief of trauma at Oregon Health & Science University Hospital and an Army Reserve doctor who has his third deployment to Afghanistan in March.

Paramedics used to be taught, for example, not to use tourniquets in the field for fear they'd cause further injuries. But for the last 10 to 15 years, they've been trained to do the opposite to stem bleeding immediately -- thanks to the military approach to treating wounded soldiers.

"We now know it saves lives," Schreiber said.

Trauma surgeons also now use special dressings with active chemical ingredients to help stop bleeding -- one type known as combat gauze, he said. They don't try to fix all the problems they find during an initial surgery and instead do what they call "damage control," saving other procedures for follow-up surgeries. It's another method learned from military doctors, he said.

"We want to get in, stop the bleeding and do the minimum necessary to stabilize the patient and get out to let the person recover," Schreiber said.

Bill Long, Legacy Emanuel Medical Center's trauma medical director, said when he arrived at the hospital 31 years ago, 30 percent of trauma patients came in with either gunshot or stab wounds, mostly from drug feuds or domestic violence. Today, 8 percent of both Legacy Emanuel's and OHSU Hospital's trauma patients arrive with gunshot or stab wounds.

"It would be nice to lower it down to zero" Long said, "but unfortunately, we can't change human nature."

Portland police have assigned enhanced patrols to neighborhoods or intersections that historically have been known for heavy gang or drug-related violence. For example, Portland's North Precinct dedicated street-level officers to work with businesses, neighborhood groups and schools in the Albina-Killingsworth area over the past year and now have moved those officers to the Cully neighborhood.

"I think that's paying off," said Burke of the detective division, noting fewer shootings in the Albina-Killngsworth neighborhood.

Domestic violence accounted for about a third of the metro area's homicides, including Portland's.

In east Multnomah County, police said an estranged husband in Gresham shot his 27-year-old wife in the head and abducted their 2-year-old daughter. In Washington County, police said a 71-year-old woman was killed with a sledgehammer by her great-grandson and his cousin.

Of Portland's 16 killings, five resulted from alleged domestic disputes -- including two husbands accused of killing their wives, an older brother accused of shooting his younger brother on Christmas Eve and two others resulting from jealousies or love triangles.

One Portland man, police said, tried to kill himself after fatally shooting his wife and has argued in court that he was assisting in her suicide. Another husband is accused of strangling his wife hours after she called an attorney to initiate a divorce and less than a month after police had investigated an earlier threat by him against his wife.

"That's so typical. It's almost like you can see this coming. The end of an abusive relationship is a really dangerous time. It's really volatile," said Annie Neal, domestic violence coordinator for Multnomah County.

Domestic violence victims must take threats seriously, plan for their safety and prepare for all possibilities, Neal said.

Alcohol played a factor in at least two other Portland killings, which occurred outside a bar immediately after last call.

Multnomah County prosecutor William Prince told a judge last month that the fatal shooting of a 33-year-old man during a melee outside a Northeast Portland strip club "started like a lot of really bad nights start," pointing out that most people involved in the disturbance outside Club Skinn were drunk.

The decline in deaths is little consolation for grieving family members.

Royal Harris, 44, was home when the phone rang late Nov. 9. A friend told him his brother, Durieul Harris II, 30, had been shot outside Fontaine Bleau, a Northeast Portland nightclub.

"It's not the first time I got the call," he said. Several of his cousins have died in homicides in the past; a brother is serving a lengthy sentence in prison.

"What this all boils down to is two individuals without the skills or resources to resolve a conflict," said Harris, who has worked in gang outreach for years and now works as a case manager for Constructing Hope, an apprenticeship program to help adults who have been in the criminal justice system.

"The reality is nobody is immune. You don't understand the impact unless it happens to you," he said. "Each person killed -- those are lives, those aren't just filler for the story at the end of the year."

Harris knows there had been a fight inside the Fontaine Bleau nightclub between two men, possibly over money, before his brother was shot outside. Whether his brother tried to get in the middle of the fight or was initially involved, he doesn't know. No arrest has been made.

"It could have been over a penny or a million dollars. Either way, it's not worth a life," Harris said. "Whatever the reason, there's no rewind, no reset."

"It's a blessing more people aren't dying," he said. "But the fact that we lose anybody over senseless violence is a tragedy."

-- Maxine Bernstein

Copyright 2014 - The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.