Dr. Mary Costantino and a friend were walking in downtown Portland when a homeless man, unprovoked, threw a metal water bottle at her. Her eye, nose, and mouth were bloodied, and she was briefly knocked out. Her friend scared the attacker away, and when Costantino came to, she called 911.
"No policemen came," she reported. "I do not hold the police accountable for this at all. I hold our city accountable for defunding the police."
Her situation is not unusual. The average wait time for a high-priority call was 23.7 minutes in July, according to PPB data. That is the longest wait in more than a decade.
"Our goal is always to help as much as we can, as quickly as we can," Lt. Nathan Sheppard told Fox News in an email. "But with our staffing being at historic lows, this has become a challenge for us."
Randy Sutton of The Wounded Blue agrees that the Portland Police are not to blame for their slow response.
"Portland was on the cutting edge of the woke mob defunding the police," he recalls. "They simply don't have the manpower to respond quickly anymore."
And he says the Oregon town is not the only one suffering a shortage of police officers.
"I'm watching this play out across the nation. As the ranks diminish, as people retire or just resign, we are inevitably facing a critical shortage of trained, competent police officers," Lt. Sutton laments. "This is going to get worse before it gets better."
Until then, as Dr. Costantino puts it, "We're all on our own."
