‘Perfect storm’ of violence, vice overwhelmed NE Portland block. Then the city tried something new.
[Excerpt from OregonLive.]
“Sam Adams stood alone on Northeast Milton Street one day last July, trying to understand what he’d gotten himself into.
“It was immediately apparent how dangerous and disordered the situation was,” the former mayor recalled recently. “Milton Street was clearly a drug bazaar.”
And not just drugs.
One man sitting on the curb caught Adams’ eye and pointed to a woman. “Do you like this?” he asked the current mayor’s right-hand man.
Six months later, the area is almost unrecognizable.
The 8200 block of Northeast Milton, which The Oregonian/OregonLive had dubbed the deadliest in Portland shortly before Adams’ visit, is now quiet.
Drug dealers and prostitutes are no longer easy to spot. The camp of tents outside the First Orthodox Presbyterian Church is gone. The flock of broken-down cars and RVs have been towed away.”
The biggest change came at the Madison Suites Motel – the centerpiece of the block, and for months the launching pad for much of its violence.
Four people had died in shootings on just this one short block in the year before Adams stood on the street, surveying the scene.”
The Milton Street pilot project allowed Adams, Wheeler’s top advisor, and leaders in the city’s newly formed Community Safety Division to focus resources and attention, bringing together Portland city bureaus in an unprecedented way. The approach fast-tracked an integrated response, bypassing what has proved time and again to be a cumbersome and not-very-effective bureaucracy that has frustrated residents and city officials alike.