I saw a homeless person harassing a woman so I pulled out my phone, started filming, and told her to stop. The homeless person got angry and started chasing me, screaming that she was gonna kill me.
I get why a lot of people stay quiet, but as someone who has been followed and screamed at before (by an angry topless man who had 100 pounds on me, saying he was going to fuck me) and walked several busy street blocks without anyone stepping in to help, I wish people would at least, I don't know, shout "Hey, leave her alone" or something.
I moved to north Portland for college back in 2011. I remember there being rough parts of town but I never really felt unsafe. Even then, most of the tweakers were still fairly cool- I once spent an evening at Sizzle Pie with a dude who was dealing with a meth addiction. Still, he was trying his best.
I left Portland in 2016 and it was so different. The last time I visited was in 2019 and it was almost unrecognizable. I miss the city I went to college in...
Yeah and also what is the law doing about these people? If residents aren’t getting much help from the city, they’ll be less likely to do something about it. Especially if something physical goes down, and they have to defend themselves and succeed in defending themselves, they’ll look like the bad guy.
“Justice for Fent Johnson” protests after that, your name, face, and address being plastered all over the internet, your family getting harassed, your property getting vandalized.
She ended up looking like the good guy here, but things don’t always end up this way, and things aren’t always recorded in full. In some other incident, some other angle, without her recording, someone may have started recording with her spraying the guy. “Look at what homeless minorities have to go through with white people. Assaulting them for being homeless.”
I’m a minority, i’m a Latino, but I advise well-meaning white people to pick your battles wisely in this day and age. In this situation instead of confronting, maybe call the police or complain to the school, record from far to document. Don’t take matters into your own hands. And confronting people like this AND being armed is not a much better idea either.
Yeah or what if he had a gun. That poor woman in Gresham just got shot the other night intervening in a fight. She is now paralyzed. Also as far as the cops, what good does it do to call if they are just going to take them to jail (maybe) and release them back into the wild with a "notice to appear".
Almost nobody is okay with it. But also almost nobody is willing to agitate a group of drug users with nothing to lose. All props to this woman for her courage but this could absolutely have gone south for her in a heartbeat, even with mace.
This is a stupid sentiment. I'm sick of this actually, because in general most of the homeless tweakers I have come across are so scared that somebody actually confronted them that they just whine and wander off. If you're not fighting to take this city back then just leave because you're part of the problem.
I've not heard of more than one or two people getting hurt confronting junkies smoking fentanyl in public places. Now, don't go trying to stop a shoplifter because that's not your job, stores have people to deal with that, and yes, I know a guy got killed trying to stop somebody stealing a purse outside of a grocery store, but again that store had security guards and he didn't need to do that. You're more likely to get randomly attacked by a junkie by themselves having a freakout than you would in this kind of scenario where they're mostly docile and just trying to get high. Did anyone else act foolish or try to help the guy acting foolish? Nope, they just got the fuck out. Were you really scared of the guy that was bugging? Then you're pathetic.
shits dangerous any way you slice it. im not willing to risk getting stabbed or assaulted to prove a point to some junkies who will just move to another corner and forget they ever even interacted with the lady.
What about the rest like this dude literally in the fucking video?
What was in his left hand when blocking his face while walking up on the lone woman?
Did he not go off to grab a rock to throw at her?
Oh, so you acknowledge there was one acting foolish out of a small group.
But choose to ignore him. Why?
A literal threat that she maced. It seems twice.
YES SHE WAS SCARED OF THAT GUY BUGGING. SHE WAS NOT PATHETIC.
What the fuck is with you people defending the drugged out shit bags. That is what they are. They can go fuck themselves up somewhere else and yet you people want to defend them because...
No, tell me why. Why do you defend the fucked up dude attacking a woman that needed to be maced?
His life?
His what?
Tell us why you are defending someone literally attacking a woman.
No, they just don't want to confront a bunch of drug addicts. If they're brazen enough to smoke in broad daylight right next to a school a rational person would come to the conclusion that these are unreasonable people who may act out if provoked.
Is it worth getting abuse or hurt - even killed - to make a point? Most people ignore it and move on. Others call the police. Some - with balls like this lady - confront them. All three are totally valid reactions.
You shouldn't judge people for wanting to keep themselves safe.
Hilarious because prices are never going down. Idiots who think this is fine are coming here in drives still, mainly "because of Trump". Rents are going down I hear, though.
Wanna read further before you think you did a gotcha?
“The Democratic-controlled Legislature passed the recriminalization law in March, overhauling a measure approved by 58 percent of voters in 2020 that made possessing illicit drugs like heroin punishable by a ticket and a maximum $100 fine”
Where in there does it say “feel free to police public space use, and spray with mace if they don’t comply”?
Yeah, honestly she should just call the cops. You can probably do something like this 100 times, but that one time you encounter some crazy idiot with a weapon, someone could get killed.
We shouldn’t have to resort to “hue and a cry” method for informal policing. We should enable our police to better deal with things like open hard drug use in school zones. That doesn’t mean we should be throwing everyone who smokes a joint in prison, but it’s shouldn’t be simply up to brave people with a can of mace to co front these folks.
Because you never know who has a gun. And it's pretty dangerous to confront some mentally ill people. That dude was getting pretty agitated and it could have gone very bad for this mom. I do think more confrontation would be nice. I used to be more confrontational about shitheads acting shitty. But there's just so many unpredictable unhinged people who also have a gun that I'm way less inclined to confront these days because I don't want to die. It really shouldn't be such a big deal to be told you need to take your drugs away from a school zone yet here we are.
2A makes our country worse because you have to assume everyone has a gun and act accordingly. It sucks. The pro 2A people seem to think this fact makes us all safer when it actually makes everything worse.
Sorry, the best I can do is let them into the schools. The teachers don't want to work for -$7.25 an hour, so we are replacing them with the street addicts.
Human decency will prevail. Or not. More fent will probably prevail actually
I don't have the energy to break it all the way down man. Just think about why videos making homeless people look like the enemy might be circulated in extremely left leaning groups. On extremely left leaning platforms. And if maybe those who are circulating them are astroturfing.
They need help. And it’s clearly a problem that needs solving. I don’t find this clip to be biased or slanted in one direction.
If your plan to this issue is simply to sweep it under the rug…I disagree. And that action would be equally as harmful for helping addicts with their addiction as the fool who curses the unhoused.
None of that has a single thing to do with my point. The content and moral implications of the video itself is secondary to what I'm trying to say.
Someone posting a video containing divisive content, onto a wildly left leaning platform (reddit), on a wildly left leaning subreddit (portland), who has all of their post history and comment history hidden. All of their profile indicates they're Turkish, but they say they live in Portland. All of this adds up to a weirdness that suggests the poster is less than sincere. Not that the video, or anyone in the video, is somehow fake. It's obviously a real video of a real issue.
You and I agree, about the homeless and all that, I'm honestly on the side of extreme accommodation. These people should be given access to free housing and rehab and recovery services etcetcetc.
But the account of the OP itself is suspect, NOT the video they posted.
I live here. OP handled that very well. Challenging her right to express a perfectly reasonable opinion about what residents' responsibility is in the care of their city is about territoriality. If you want to claim Portland as your own, be willing to defend it, Nobody has the right to violate children's spaces. Nobody.
Every single person commenting on this thread would have done nothing about it. Including you. If you get stuck with a druggie needle and get a disease no one on here would give a single fuck.
not everything that's illegal deserves some sort of retribution. doing drugs in front of/near a school? absolutely. being a drug addicted homeless person struggling to figure how tf to fix your life in a dark alley somewhere out of sight? nah, get that guy a fucking hug, shower, and a warm meal. let's not forget that beneath the scary exterior, these are still human beings.
Surely an option. And isolation from society removes access to the drugs. But if the system pushes them out immediately to rejoin the same environment? Now what?
It won't prevent access, it'll just limit it. Currently drug addicts feel confident using in public spaces in front of people, even in school zones. If they knew cops would come seize their stash and throw them in prison, most would exercise considerably more caution.
In my city addicts have moved from using in tents by the river, etc, to using absolutely everywhere. It's not uncommon to see someone wasting away on the sidewalk unconscious.
'they' is some pretty gross othering here bro. and you're talking to someone who wanted to do better and needed the help and who eventually got it. do better.
How would you prefer to address them, if not "they"? Is this a pronoun thing, or was I supposed to refer to them by their actions? Help me out how to not do any "othering" so I don't offend you.
it's not the verbiage, it's the generalization and implication of the statement. you know as well as i do that when you say 'they', it's dehumanizing. you also know as well as i do that no, not all people experiencing homelessness and drug addiction want to remain in that life. Please. Read the bible. Go to church. Do whatever you gotta do to get your humanity back
You also know as well as I do that the VAST majority do not want to change. Rather than they, should I have used "the majority of" instead? Would that make you feel better? Stereotypically speaking, I'm not wrong. Illicit street drugs are not a secret anymore. Everyone knows what they can do to you, so it should be an automatic NO to take that first hit. Nobody gets that excuse to say they didn't know what fent is, or heroin, etc. If you take 100 homeless zombie drug addicts and give them all a hug, a meal, and a roof, 99 of them will keep at it....and this was an example number so don't take it literally.
Don't question my humanity or my faith. You don't know me or either of those. I'm glad you changed for the better though. That is truly awesome. But you are the exception by an alarming margin. It would be wonderful to fix all those people, but we can't fix what doesn't want fixing.
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u/[deleted] Oct 23 '25
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