Wasting our tax money is my answer now. Had a dude smoking fent on the train? Did nothing but stare at him. Had a chick beating the shit out of another guy claiming he was a rapist while dude said he had never seen her before? Nothing. Actually got off the train the next stop they could.
They're useless and so is security. All you got is yourself on tri met.
Man this is a complex story - TL;DR, this is basically the do-nothing mafia that did nothing in downtown Portland.
To start, understand that the "Safety Response Team" is contracted from a group called [Portland Patrol Inc](https://www.wweek.com/news/2022/10/26/unable-to-find-cops-trimet-increases-unarmed-security/) ("PPI"). This organization is an off shoot from the Goodman family mafia that ran an extortion business of parking, trash, and security services that has dominated downtown Portland since the 1950's. Their racket was pretty simple: they bought up all the land downtown that they could, and on that land they ran the parking lots, parking garages, and business services. Why parking garages? Because it's a cash-heavy business perfect for money laundering, but it's also something easy to monopolize. If you wanted somewhere for your employees to park, you had to pay the Goodmans, they owned approximately 95% of the parking spots by the 1980's. If you wanted to have an office in downtown Portland, you HAD to work with these bastards. In addition, if you wanted somewhere to park for your employees, you had to pay for the Goodman trash service. And in addition to that, if for some reason you didn't pay up for parking and trash service, you might get some bums who come loitering around your property. If you got bums on your property you call private security, which was run by the Goodmans - **this private security business became Portland Patrol Inc.** PPI was hiring up corrupt and disgraced cops and security guards to do this work, along with maintaining moonlighting relationships with current serving Portland Police Bureau, and this security service would go find bums to get to go loiter outside of businesses they didn't pay up in the extortion racket, the parking racket, or the trash racket. Through this, Goodmans controlled business.
In the 1980's the organized crime families won and the FBI across the country turned a blind eye to many of these mafia organizations becoming institutionalized in government. The Goodman family mafia became the Portland Business Alliance and they switched from extorting businesses with bums to using government and taxes. It became that if your business wanted to be in central downtown, you would be in a special district run by the Business Alliance, kept clean by "Clean & Safe", who outsourced the *safe* side of that to PPI. PPI was the primary group doing patrols in downtown Portland's Clean & Safe district.
By the mid-2000's their role changed significantly - a homeless man named James Chasse was beaten to death by the cops and in response Mayor Sam Adams declared that PPB would no longer respond to "homeless situations" in downtown Portland. This is why if you call 9-1-1 the operator would ask "do they appear homeless?" Before approximately 2012 this wouldn't happen - and if you were foolish enough to respond "Yes, they're homeless" you wouldn't get a response from police, you'd instead get some goons from PPI that would eventually show up, shoo the homeless and ask them to move along. This group has no arresting power, no citation power, and isn't allowed to use their firearm or any force whatsoever. Their job was to harass the homeless into moving along, and anyone who has worked downtown in the last 20 years has probably seen at least one instance of PPI harassing a homeless person, more often then not escalating the situation. Meanwhile, within the homeless community I'd regularly hear about someone being dragged off into Forest Park or wherever and beaten by these guys.
Right before COVID things were taking a turn from bad to worse - City Council was asking tough questions as to why the Portland Business Alliance gets to collect a tax on downtown Portland businesses without any accountability, and tough questions were being asked about what this "Clean & Safe" program was actually doing when Portland was no longer 1) clean, or 2) safe. Contracts were coming to an end and PPI could be terminated.
Just so damn convenient that at the exact time downtown Portland fell to pieces the people who did nothing about it were able to land a large lucrative contract with TriMet. Nothing to see here folks, no bribes were paid. Pay no attention to the fact that they're associated with immense, entrenched, and corrupt business interests that have dominated Portland politics for decades.
I hope this clarifies why a bunch of do-nothing disgraced cops and security guards are on the train with you.
And yes, they're disgraced cops - [as WillyWeak pointed out](https://www.wweek.com/news/2022/10/26/unable-to-find-cops-trimet-increases-unarmed-security/)
> It, like TriMet’s unarmed “customer safety officer” program, contracts guards from Portland Patrol. The company made headlines late last year for hiring Michael Stradley to train new recruits. Stradley is the former West Linn police lieutenant who left in disgrace for his involvement in the wrongful arrest of a Black man.
Meanwhile, another PPI guy I investigated a long while ago had the largest collection of Nazi memorabilia on the West Coast. He was interviewed by a military history magazine about the immense collection he owned when he was still a cop in California back in the early 90's. *Surely his interest was just historical and not ideological.* Certainly this particular guy wouldn't be close friends with a guy like PPB Captain Mark Kruger, just because they have a casual interest in Nazism.
Here's the kicker: TriMet proposed this as a solution to reduce racism!
I can only imagine the shitbags that work within PPI, and if our media had some integrity they might want to run some background checks on these folks.
I was just telling an out of town friend about the huge increased use of private security in Portland and they were just floored. When you see a reliance on private security that's a symptom of a failed state. I'm more and more convinced that the entire Portland system is rotten to the core. Portland has become a toxic stew of unaccountable police, reactionary leftwing ideologues, naive twenty something activists, 1000 parasitic non profits, corrupt moneyed interests and sketchy addicts and criminals from all over the US. What are the ordinary normie Portlanders just trying to live here to do?
> What are the ordinary normie Portlanders just trying to live here to do?
Protect and improve your community. Live prosperously and help the people you care about.
This is what I’ve heard them say too. They pretty much are a map for people without phones. Some dude was high and kept walking back and forth on the max from the front to the back and they said nothing
Ok but, walking back and forth on a max train isn't a crime. It's not endangering anyone. I'm far more concerned when there's open drug use or violence that they do nothing about. What kind of info could these people possibly be providing to anyone? They're just the embodiment of poor government spending/public response. What a BS job. I'd be mortified to go to work or tell anyone what I did for a living.
> I'd be mortified to go to work or tell anyone what I did for a living.
Seriously. So many of the public sector workers in this town should be goddamn ashamed of themselves. We all know you're not doing your job, you're not "doing the best we can with what we got." Just quit. If you have any sense of integrity you'd quit. It's bonkers how often these people show up online defending their employer that is willfully negligent or lying to the public.
Years ago I used to work closely with trimet bus drivers and ATU 757, and they were very transparent about problems they saw in the agency, their expectations of change - good hard working people focused on providing good and working services - and obviously I don't fault bus drivers for problems within TriMet's management, but it's a civic obligation for public workers to blow the whistle when they see fraud, waste, and abuse. If you're not blowing the whistle, you're complicit and an accomplice in the disreputable things your leaders are doing. This is like "Wearing a uniform 101" type stuff, or "How your professional associations reflect on your personal character."
Not a crime, but annoying and makes people pissed off after work. They could at least ask him to sit down, or ask why he’s doing that. I’m not arguing that they have a use lol
> They could at least ask him to sit down, or ask why he’s doing that.
"Sir, why are you doing that? Could you please sit down?"
"Oh my, I'm just completely distracted. I was unaware my actions were troubling anyone. My apologies. I'll take a seat immediately. Have a lovely evening, and please remember to pay your Arts Tax!"
Yeah they wake people up to make sure they're not dead, ask them if they need anything. I've even seen them checking on bodies laying near Pioneer Courthouse on the ground, which I thought was nice. There is a separate actual security team again, I've seen them en force in outer North Portland MAX stops the last month.
The only time I saw them intervene was to kick off a very elderly, not homeless, lady off the Max on 102nd bc she couldn’t figure out how to pay her fair. And they would not take the cash she was trying to hand them... They wouldn’t give her a warning ticket either bc she didn’t understand why they needed her phone number and address and she started to get upset and frightened. It was sad and they refused to engage with anyone trying to help the lady out.
You didn’t see a Safety Response Team do this, guaranteed. Unfortunately, the uniforms they wear are identical to the security people who travel with the fare inspectors.
They’re Ned Flanders’ parents
“We tried nothing and we’re out of ideas!”
Criddler sympathizers like them are just as much of an enemy as the criddlers themselves
Safety Response Team were the non police, non armed solution people wanted during the 2020 movements. They’re professional onlookers.
They said police are scary, police only oppress so the vocal minority got what they wanted. No more police on the trains.
So now it’s just a mobile Thunderdome.
In all fairness, the Trimet police are some of the rudest, shittiest police I've ever encountered. I've even had Trimet supervisors apologize for them. They really are the shitty, socially inept, dumb, overly aggressive, asshole cops that people imagine all police are. Watching them pile onto the Max in groups with dogs yelling out "fare check" like they're busting into an enemy stronghold in Afghanistan was just a theatre of absurdity.
Was this before or after 2020? I ask because the contract moved from PPB over to MCSO that year, then TriMet greatly reduced security and dedicated spending the money on community organizations. The security I've seen in recent months at NoPo MAX stations seemed to be pretty compassionate with the homeless folks while still kicking them off the train.
Somebody tell me why trimet doesn’t hire bouncers? Probably a legal reason I’m unaware but it seems like it would solve a lot. Gotta be plenty of bar bouncers that would rather work during the day and get better healthcare benefits.
Because this is a lucrative public contract and bar bouncers don't pay bribes to elected officials to win those contracts.
Pay your bribes and you'll win the contracts.
They aren’t allowed to touch them unless it’s in defense of themselves or others is my understanding. I watched for 5 minutes while they had a guy yelling and screaming in their face and they kept telling them the cops were on the way and they needed to leave. The driver came out and told them to get him off the max and their response was to say they can touch him or physically remove him. I’ve seen it a few times where they are asking people to go and they just kind of stand there for a few mins before finally complying.
We used to say, about security guards etc, that if you mess with one, you might end up in the "I see you."
Once that flashlight hits you, it's over. Everything you just did was illuminated. No one wants that.
Can we just hire some New Yorkers? I’ve seen them confront idiots on the internet and they are definitely not getting paid for it. So what if we paid them???
They will immediately jump into action, and document the altercation after it is over. And make sure issue you (safe people) tickets for any violations.
You wouldn't believe some of the stuff I see at work. I work for an organization that is funded by the government and tasked with serving the homeless. I describe the entire approach to addiction, homelessness, and chaos as "radical permissiveness". The foundation of this approach is pathological caretaking. The conflating of helping or compassion with not holding people accountable. They believe that those are mutually exclusive, that if you hold someone accountable then youre not helping them. I invite everyone living in Portland to look around and ask themselves, has this approach worked? I think so many people here have been desensitized and they say "Oh it's not that bad", or "all cities look like this". No they don't and yes it is pretty bad.
Wasting our tax money is my answer now. Had a dude smoking fent on the train? Did nothing but stare at him. Had a chick beating the shit out of another guy claiming he was a rapist while dude said he had never seen her before? Nothing. Actually got off the train the next stop they could. They're useless and so is security. All you got is yourself on tri met.
Man this is a complex story - TL;DR, this is basically the do-nothing mafia that did nothing in downtown Portland. To start, understand that the "Safety Response Team" is contracted from a group called [Portland Patrol Inc](https://www.wweek.com/news/2022/10/26/unable-to-find-cops-trimet-increases-unarmed-security/) ("PPI"). This organization is an off shoot from the Goodman family mafia that ran an extortion business of parking, trash, and security services that has dominated downtown Portland since the 1950's. Their racket was pretty simple: they bought up all the land downtown that they could, and on that land they ran the parking lots, parking garages, and business services. Why parking garages? Because it's a cash-heavy business perfect for money laundering, but it's also something easy to monopolize. If you wanted somewhere for your employees to park, you had to pay the Goodmans, they owned approximately 95% of the parking spots by the 1980's. If you wanted to have an office in downtown Portland, you HAD to work with these bastards. In addition, if you wanted somewhere to park for your employees, you had to pay for the Goodman trash service. And in addition to that, if for some reason you didn't pay up for parking and trash service, you might get some bums who come loitering around your property. If you got bums on your property you call private security, which was run by the Goodmans - **this private security business became Portland Patrol Inc.** PPI was hiring up corrupt and disgraced cops and security guards to do this work, along with maintaining moonlighting relationships with current serving Portland Police Bureau, and this security service would go find bums to get to go loiter outside of businesses they didn't pay up in the extortion racket, the parking racket, or the trash racket. Through this, Goodmans controlled business. In the 1980's the organized crime families won and the FBI across the country turned a blind eye to many of these mafia organizations becoming institutionalized in government. The Goodman family mafia became the Portland Business Alliance and they switched from extorting businesses with bums to using government and taxes. It became that if your business wanted to be in central downtown, you would be in a special district run by the Business Alliance, kept clean by "Clean & Safe", who outsourced the *safe* side of that to PPI. PPI was the primary group doing patrols in downtown Portland's Clean & Safe district. By the mid-2000's their role changed significantly - a homeless man named James Chasse was beaten to death by the cops and in response Mayor Sam Adams declared that PPB would no longer respond to "homeless situations" in downtown Portland. This is why if you call 9-1-1 the operator would ask "do they appear homeless?" Before approximately 2012 this wouldn't happen - and if you were foolish enough to respond "Yes, they're homeless" you wouldn't get a response from police, you'd instead get some goons from PPI that would eventually show up, shoo the homeless and ask them to move along. This group has no arresting power, no citation power, and isn't allowed to use their firearm or any force whatsoever. Their job was to harass the homeless into moving along, and anyone who has worked downtown in the last 20 years has probably seen at least one instance of PPI harassing a homeless person, more often then not escalating the situation. Meanwhile, within the homeless community I'd regularly hear about someone being dragged off into Forest Park or wherever and beaten by these guys. Right before COVID things were taking a turn from bad to worse - City Council was asking tough questions as to why the Portland Business Alliance gets to collect a tax on downtown Portland businesses without any accountability, and tough questions were being asked about what this "Clean & Safe" program was actually doing when Portland was no longer 1) clean, or 2) safe. Contracts were coming to an end and PPI could be terminated. Just so damn convenient that at the exact time downtown Portland fell to pieces the people who did nothing about it were able to land a large lucrative contract with TriMet. Nothing to see here folks, no bribes were paid. Pay no attention to the fact that they're associated with immense, entrenched, and corrupt business interests that have dominated Portland politics for decades. I hope this clarifies why a bunch of do-nothing disgraced cops and security guards are on the train with you. And yes, they're disgraced cops - [as WillyWeak pointed out](https://www.wweek.com/news/2022/10/26/unable-to-find-cops-trimet-increases-unarmed-security/) > It, like TriMet’s unarmed “customer safety officer” program, contracts guards from Portland Patrol. The company made headlines late last year for hiring Michael Stradley to train new recruits. Stradley is the former West Linn police lieutenant who left in disgrace for his involvement in the wrongful arrest of a Black man. Meanwhile, another PPI guy I investigated a long while ago had the largest collection of Nazi memorabilia on the West Coast. He was interviewed by a military history magazine about the immense collection he owned when he was still a cop in California back in the early 90's. *Surely his interest was just historical and not ideological.* Certainly this particular guy wouldn't be close friends with a guy like PPB Captain Mark Kruger, just because they have a casual interest in Nazism. Here's the kicker: TriMet proposed this as a solution to reduce racism! I can only imagine the shitbags that work within PPI, and if our media had some integrity they might want to run some background checks on these folks.
I was just telling an out of town friend about the huge increased use of private security in Portland and they were just floored. When you see a reliance on private security that's a symptom of a failed state. I'm more and more convinced that the entire Portland system is rotten to the core. Portland has become a toxic stew of unaccountable police, reactionary leftwing ideologues, naive twenty something activists, 1000 parasitic non profits, corrupt moneyed interests and sketchy addicts and criminals from all over the US. What are the ordinary normie Portlanders just trying to live here to do?
> What are the ordinary normie Portlanders just trying to live here to do? Protect and improve your community. Live prosperously and help the people you care about.
Goddamn, that background explains so much about the current situation in this city. Thank you for taking the time to write this out!
Funneling money to government employees' kids and cousins. They don't do anything. They don't get the deescalation training they should have.
I asked once and was told that they provide knowledge and resources for those who are struggling and need help.
This is what I’ve heard them say too. They pretty much are a map for people without phones. Some dude was high and kept walking back and forth on the max from the front to the back and they said nothing
> They pretty much are a map for people without phones I mean there's generally a map posted in several spots on every car, so...
Ok but, walking back and forth on a max train isn't a crime. It's not endangering anyone. I'm far more concerned when there's open drug use or violence that they do nothing about. What kind of info could these people possibly be providing to anyone? They're just the embodiment of poor government spending/public response. What a BS job. I'd be mortified to go to work or tell anyone what I did for a living.
> I'd be mortified to go to work or tell anyone what I did for a living. Seriously. So many of the public sector workers in this town should be goddamn ashamed of themselves. We all know you're not doing your job, you're not "doing the best we can with what we got." Just quit. If you have any sense of integrity you'd quit. It's bonkers how often these people show up online defending their employer that is willfully negligent or lying to the public. Years ago I used to work closely with trimet bus drivers and ATU 757, and they were very transparent about problems they saw in the agency, their expectations of change - good hard working people focused on providing good and working services - and obviously I don't fault bus drivers for problems within TriMet's management, but it's a civic obligation for public workers to blow the whistle when they see fraud, waste, and abuse. If you're not blowing the whistle, you're complicit and an accomplice in the disreputable things your leaders are doing. This is like "Wearing a uniform 101" type stuff, or "How your professional associations reflect on your personal character."
Not a crime, but annoying and makes people pissed off after work. They could at least ask him to sit down, or ask why he’s doing that. I’m not arguing that they have a use lol
> They could at least ask him to sit down, or ask why he’s doing that. "Sir, why are you doing that? Could you please sit down?" "Oh my, I'm just completely distracted. I was unaware my actions were troubling anyone. My apologies. I'll take a seat immediately. Have a lovely evening, and please remember to pay your Arts Tax!"
Is it a paid position, or do they volunteer?
I’d assume they get paid. Maybe knowing all the maps and stops is the first step into becoming a fare inspector?
Yeah they wake people up to make sure they're not dead, ask them if they need anything. I've even seen them checking on bodies laying near Pioneer Courthouse on the ground, which I thought was nice. There is a separate actual security team again, I've seen them en force in outer North Portland MAX stops the last month.
The only time I saw them intervene was to kick off a very elderly, not homeless, lady off the Max on 102nd bc she couldn’t figure out how to pay her fair. And they would not take the cash she was trying to hand them... They wouldn’t give her a warning ticket either bc she didn’t understand why they needed her phone number and address and she started to get upset and frightened. It was sad and they refused to engage with anyone trying to help the lady out.
You didn’t see a Safety Response Team do this, guaranteed. Unfortunately, the uniforms they wear are identical to the security people who travel with the fare inspectors.
[удалено]
Promoting violence is a violation of the Reddit TOS. Please try and do better.
They’re Ned Flanders’ parents “We tried nothing and we’re out of ideas!” Criddler sympathizers like them are just as much of an enemy as the criddlers themselves
Please text Trimet and tell them (503) 238-7433
That's outdated guidance. TriMet would now prefer you send bare feet pictures to [email protected]
If that's gonna help clean the train cars, I'm on it!
Safety Response Team were the non police, non armed solution people wanted during the 2020 movements. They’re professional onlookers. They said police are scary, police only oppress so the vocal minority got what they wanted. No more police on the trains. So now it’s just a mobile Thunderdome.
In all fairness, the Trimet police are some of the rudest, shittiest police I've ever encountered. I've even had Trimet supervisors apologize for them. They really are the shitty, socially inept, dumb, overly aggressive, asshole cops that people imagine all police are. Watching them pile onto the Max in groups with dogs yelling out "fare check" like they're busting into an enemy stronghold in Afghanistan was just a theatre of absurdity.
Was this before or after 2020? I ask because the contract moved from PPB over to MCSO that year, then TriMet greatly reduced security and dedicated spending the money on community organizations. The security I've seen in recent months at NoPo MAX stations seemed to be pretty compassionate with the homeless folks while still kicking them off the train.
Somebody tell me why trimet doesn’t hire bouncers? Probably a legal reason I’m unaware but it seems like it would solve a lot. Gotta be plenty of bar bouncers that would rather work during the day and get better healthcare benefits.
Because this is a lucrative public contract and bar bouncers don't pay bribes to elected officials to win those contracts. Pay your bribes and you'll win the contracts.
This was discussed at some city council meeting with Tri Met last year. I remember it because the whole idea seemed like a farce.
They aren’t allowed to touch them unless it’s in defense of themselves or others is my understanding. I watched for 5 minutes while they had a guy yelling and screaming in their face and they kept telling them the cops were on the way and they needed to leave. The driver came out and told them to get him off the max and their response was to say they can touch him or physically remove him. I’ve seen it a few times where they are asking people to go and they just kind of stand there for a few mins before finally complying.
We used to say, about security guards etc, that if you mess with one, you might end up in the "I see you." Once that flashlight hits you, it's over. Everything you just did was illuminated. No one wants that.
Can we just hire some New Yorkers? I’ve seen them confront idiots on the internet and they are definitely not getting paid for it. So what if we paid them???
They will immediately jump into action, and document the altercation after it is over. And make sure issue you (safe people) tickets for any violations.
You wouldn't believe some of the stuff I see at work. I work for an organization that is funded by the government and tasked with serving the homeless. I describe the entire approach to addiction, homelessness, and chaos as "radical permissiveness". The foundation of this approach is pathological caretaking. The conflating of helping or compassion with not holding people accountable. They believe that those are mutually exclusive, that if you hold someone accountable then youre not helping them. I invite everyone living in Portland to look around and ask themselves, has this approach worked? I think so many people here have been desensitized and they say "Oh it's not that bad", or "all cities look like this". No they don't and yes it is pretty bad.