Just to add some colour to this:

    This. I moved outside of Portland a few months ago
    after three serious incidents on my property involving
    violent vagrants. In all three cases the police took
    over an hour to show up and did absolutely nothing.

    I had a man trying to break in to my backdoor. When
    I confronted him and demanded that he leave, he began
    swinging punches and pulled out a knife. I managed to
    restrain him and the 13 year old girl next door called
    911 (in hysterics). After keeping this guy pinned
    for 30 mins while waiting for the cops, I gave up and
    released him. He then attempted to assault me again. So
    I pinned him for another 15 mins, the neighbors called
    911 again. Still no cops. So I let him go and kept
    kicking the guy in the ass (literally) until he left
    my property.

    The cops show up about 75 minutes after the first
    call and said "Our hands are tied. We can't do
    anything." They didn't even bother to look for the
    guy. They just wanted to leave.

    I've seen this happen first hand in developing
    countries. You know what happens when law enforcement
    doesn't do its job? Violence escalates due to rise of
    vigilantism - as communities are left with no choice
    other than to employ street justice.

    After three incidents (none as bad as the first) I found
    myself concluding "The next time one of these guys tries
    to break into my property or threaten my family I am
    simply going to kick the shit out of them... There is
    no point calling the police."

    I am a peaceful person that has never even been
    in a fight. That's when I knew it was time to leave
    Portland. Who wants to live like this? I don't want to
    assault anyone, but I also want to live in peace and
    feel assured my family is safe.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Portland/comments/krk5la/how_are_yo...

Next time, say there is a dead body and you heard gun fire. In the UK you'd get every cop for miles and the TV news.</s>

Don't be surprised if it backfires and puts you in legal hot water over making false statements to police.

This is the way to get the cops to come in New Zealand too.

Otherwise, it’s the old “can’t do anything until you’ve been assaulted” routine, and hours of waiting.

But mention you heard gunshots and the Armed Offender Squad boys roll around in no time.

How would that situation be improved if cops were required to spend time and energy pursuing cases where a kid stole a packet of gum from a convenience store?

The fact that cops aren’t responding to cases of violence has nothing to do with the shoplifting laws passed in SF, and frankly, that law should explicitly open up more resources for cops to be able to investigate such violent behavior.

What exactly in Portland prevents them from acting on violent vagrants. Depending on the timeline, this likely has more to do with the fact that police unions across the country deployed a deliberate don’t do police work policy because people decided to protest against the minority of police that were killing in percent civilians merely because of their skin color of the zip code they were arrested in.

Not pursuing "small" - quoted because up to $950 is rather big chewing gum really - crimes creates wrong incentives, and it skews general culture of (dis)respect to law, and property. Essentially normalizing bad behavior will inevitably affect bigger crimes happening. Taking into account that it especially influences youth (breaking rules is cool enough when you're teenager, if you can shoplift without punishment it starts to look like an invitation) we are witnessing a crime problem growing for a at least a generation ahead.

EDIT: "chewing gun" to "chewing gum". Guns are usually not chewy for certain.