The city of Portland is not a great place to be unless you’re a radical left-wing activist these days. That or a violent criminal.

While protest after protest has left many shaking their head at the very idea of setting foot in Portland–not a great advertisement for tourism, that’s for sure–the city has also bowed to the will of many of these activists and continued to treat their police department with scorn. In fact, the department was one of the first in the nation to be defunded.

Now, this defunded department needs help with the increase in violent crime in the city.

The Portland Police Bureau is asking for the community’s help in ending a spike in violence across the city.

What’s a brief history here?

According to Fox News, at least 850 shootings have been reported in Portland as of Dec. 24. The outlet noted that there were at least 59 reported shootings in December alone.

“As of Christmas Eve, this year’s shootings had surpassed last year’s by more than 116%, with 393 shootings reported in all of 2019, statistics show,” Fox pointed out. “At least 53 murders have been reported in Portland as of Dec. 24 — the highest yearly total the city has seen in nearly 30 years.”

What’s happening now?

Portland Police Bureau Chief Chuck Lovell in a Dec. 16 video appealed to the public and insisted that the public needed to lock arms and “do everything we can together to break the cycle of violence.”

“Gun violence has plagued our city at twice the rate of last year,” he said. “On average, someone is shot in Portland roughly every two days.”

“We’ve come together to mask up, to stay home to keep others safe. We have come together to do our best to stop the spread of a deadly disease,” he continued. “Violence is also a disease that kills and our community is suffering the consequences.”

“We cannot lose sight of the fact these are human beings who have died,” Lovell added.

While it’s the police asking for help, the truth is that there’s not much chance of this plea doing much beyond falling on deaf ears. After all, the people who know who is doing what were notorious for not talking to the police even before the Portland Police Department was decimated by the defund fairy known as the city council.

Meanwhile, earlier today, Cam noted that the city of Green Bay took a completely different approach, and guess what? It actually worked! It’s like, if you have police out on the streets trying to address the problem, they actually can address the problem. It’s a Christmas miracle!

Honestly, as I’ve said repeatedly, the idea of using funds to try and address some of the causes of violence is a worthy goal, but those efforts take years to start to really make a difference. If you defund the police at the start of the effort, though, you’re going to simply see more problems. You need a two-prong approach and right now, they’re using the wrong prong.