i just want to share a few uh remarks and comments about what the police bureau is doing this weekend and um i'm glad to have uh sac ramsey here from the fbi as well so this weekend the portland police fair is taking part in a larger coalition involving community groups city bureaus and law enforcement to address gun violence as we saw in gresham last month where seven people were shot at a vigil for a gun violence victim there are several vigils and funerals planned for portland in the upcoming days as well these vigils are credible targets for further violence and our goal is really to de-escalate and lower the tensions in the community that are fueling this uh latest spate of gun violence that we're having we've received some alarming information that's been shared with not only the city but some of our community partners as well that there are groups coming to portland to engage in gun violence from out of town and also that folks are being encouraged to do some retaliatory shootings in the next 30 days as a form of loyalty for some shootings that have happened before so we want to make sure that we the police bureau in conjunction with our partners are doing everything that we can to keep the community safe there's a cycle of violence here that we're trying to break there's um you know retaliation and things of that nature that we're really concerned about which is driving the uh the actions that we're gonna take this weekend so we're collaborating closely with the office of violence prevention the portland office of the fbi multnomah county district attorney several other community-based organizations an effort to really de-escalate and provide safety this weekend our community safety director mike myers is overseeing this effort and we're happy for his assistance and this is really just part of a larger effort that we're we're engaging in we're doing our part to reassure the community that we want people to feel safe to be able to go out and grieve and heal in a safe manner we'll be out out providing a high visibility presence and a deterrent to those who would come here and commit crimes and uh i want to make sure people know that our our goal is a message of safety we want people to know that we're going to be doing our part to keep the community safe we want people who would come here and engage in gun violence to know that we will be out we will be active and we'll be looking to hold people who who do shootings to account that's all i have thanks kevin okay thanks chief uh then uh i'll hand it over for a statement from the special agent in charge of oregon karen ramsey great thank you and thank you for having us today i'm certainly happy and proud to be here side by side at least virtually uh with chief lavelle our good friend and partner uh here's the bottom line this is beyond the public safety crisis now we said it was a public safety crisis three months ago and unfortunately this trend of gun violence in the metro area has continued we've tried some innovative things of forming this metro safe streets task force and really trying to enhance our investigative posture both in response to ongoing shootings or recent shootings but also to get ahead of them to prevent the next shooting unfortunately you know one shooting is too many and that would have started you know at the beginning of the year at this point so we are now in a crisis mode where we are trying to call upon all of our partners all of us in law enforcement certainly agree partnership has to be the way that we address this from our perspective but that partnership needs to go beyond law enforcement so we're essentially pleading with community groups with faith-based groups with elected leaders with anybody out there that can have a way to get in front of the person that may pick up that gun and either commit retaliatory violence or indiscriminate violence and get them to put it down we need to break this cycle of violence so what is the fbi doing in this regard through the metro safe streets task force i think as you've heard before we're going to be paired up with the enhanced community safety team we were last night we will be through the weekends so that we will coordinate with on-scene supervisors when there is a shooting incident to respond to gather as much information evidence witness statements as possible so that we can pursue those leads right then and there and have no delay in our investigation so that hopefully we can identify the people involved and hopefully put a stop from them committing another act of violence what we saw earlier in this week where it wasn't just one or two or three or four shootings but even more we can't have this area this city you know the metro area is not supposed to be this way we all agree that it's it's an obvious statement to make but now it's at the point that if we don't all step up together law enforcement does its role partnering together law enforcement partners with the community and the community does its role partnering together hopefully we can put a stop to that so again we will be out there with our partners with portland police bureau multnomah county sheriff's gresham pd whomever wherever we hear a shot or shot incident or shooting incidents to make sure that we can pursue that investigation immediately and again hopefully put a stop to this thanks all right thank you sir uh appreciate that uh and now is a chance for us to open it up to questions um and the first one i don't see your full name it's just kind of a username so um so i just had a quick question because earlier this morning there was a shooting up in um 119th and stark was the coalition involved in that investigation in that process so our our team of ecst and our fbi partners we're looking at all the shootings from this weekend together um our goal is to like sac ramsey said really get speed to lead so we can really look at these as they happen and get investigators on top of the information as quickly as possible so any any shootings this weekend we'll have our folks on top of it and uh we'll move forward kind of in this partnership to really jump start these investigations okay thanks and i'm checking to see if fbi was unseen for this morning's shooting i'm not 100 sure if they were there today uh i don't i know that we're tracking it i'm not sure if my uh if one of my agents was was with one of the officers there but i we're certainly aware of it i certainly got a report of it this morning okay yeah that one happened seven something in the morning this morning so it was a little outside of what we've seen uh with the evening events so uh moving on then the next questions comes from bridget chavez bridget go ahead with your question sure um so this is either for either for either of you um we did have that shooting this morning and then another one um then we know that this team is in place to help as a deterrent but we're still seeing these shootings can you be more specific about what you guys are doing to act as a deterrent because we still had two shootings this morning yeah that's a fair question and let's be honest we're not going to be able to deter every shooting or prevent every shooting or be on the scene of every shooting we're going to do our best to be visible be active um i think for us we want to be information and intelligence-led and we want to use that information and intelligence to try to prevent the next shooting um you know we're talking about eight officers i think three fbi agents and the ability to call in more should uh the situation dictate that but i think you know for for the amount of shootings that we've seen now we're just trying to use our resources to the you know their best use possible to try to keep these shootings from escalating even further i would i would add to that chief you know the high visibility presence obviously is is hopefully some measure of deterrent but as as he already said it's not always going to be effective because some people are just intense on committing some act of violence whether they've seen the police recently or they just saw them or they know that we're out there so that's where the secondary phase of this deterrent knowing that not only are we out there but immediately we're following up on these leads being intelligence driven and then hopefully circling back around to that person or persons that were either involved in the previous shooting or perhaps maybe you're involved in a planned retaliatory act of violence um that doesn't happen immediately though that effective deterrence of the investigation phase is going to take a day or two or three or four um so we're hoping both of those and again in effect though it's not just a visible deterrence that we want to have we want to actually have results we want to take shooters off the street we want to take the guns out of their hands all right thank you i see there's uh some folks uh with questions in the chat so i think what we'll do we'll do jim redden next megan allison and then we'll go to michael russell from the oregonian uh so jim redden your next up go ahead with your question sir thank you could you be a little more specific about who these groups are that are coming to town you're using the term groups are these gangs i would say these are gang-related shootings and gang-related retaliation i mean we've seen um you know throughout the course of the summer uh when shootings have risen and and i'll give you just some some context of the amount of shootings we've seen just in the past uh two weeks we were in homicides we're at 31 homicides for the year this time last year we were at four this time in 2019 we're at three so it gives you a sense of kind of the the scope and scale of what we're dealing with as far as shootings um just since may 1st we've had 40 shots fired calls [Music] 231 casings that have been flying through the streets of our community uh four homicides and 14 people injured in those shootings so you know i think when i look at it as um these gang-related shootings with retaliation that's what's so um so troubling because you have the potential for um one shooting becoming two becoming three um and that's really the worry for us and and perhaps i would add that you know this is where the fbi is going to try and provide that investigative support um as opposed to looking at these as singular incidents making sure we're exploring are these possibly connected and that's where it comes also to seeing if there's any appropriate nexus to federal violations of criminal law in fact if we see gang members traveling here from out of state certainly that automatically gives us a federal nexus but again even gang members that are involved locally in criminal activity let alone shootings certainly gives us that federal nexus as well and then we have a conversation after that between ourselves the multnomah county district attorney and the u.s attorney to find where the best venue is but all with the hope that we're identifying these people immediately or perhaps before that shooting occurs okay thanks for the question moving on to megan allison when you're ready unmute and go ahead hi there thank you um so you mentioned that this partnership exists as a short-term solution does your bureau feel equipped to handle the current level of violence in the weeks and months ahead you know the bureau is pretty lean just in general as you know we've moved a lot of our resources to address gun violence the art partnership with the mou with the fbi is uh one step in that effort um you know for us we've looked for ways to add to our gun violence response and um you know up until this point we've had to take um those resources that we have existing and shift them to to gun violence and i think for us if the if the gun violence continues at this um rate we're going to have to look really hard at what ways we're gonna um we're gonna address it as far as if it's more resources more officers uh more partnerships or things of that nature but i think right now really we're relying on our partnerships with community-based organizations local law enforcement and our federal partners okay uh next question is coming from michael russell at the oregonian go ahead michael when you're ready hi chief level this question is for you um i'm just wondering how the response this weekend um differs specifically in terms of numbers of officers or whether they're uniformed or not compared to a normal weekend because i know you guys already have existing partnerships with the fbi and other law enforcement yeah so this weekend we're going to have an additional um eight officers from our enhanced community safety team out uh we'll have the ability to call more on an on-call basis if needed and we'll have um fbi resources out with our folks which is something we haven't seen here um a lot in the past and we'll have the ability to call in extra folks um on the fbi side as well so that would give us a little bit more of a presence as far as numbers go and i think you know for us it's really in light of the information that we're receiving and in light of the concerns that we've been hearing from community um as well we want to just make sure we're doing everything in our power to uh to contribute to reducing gun violence and de-escalating over the weekend okay i don't see any other questions was there anything else we have a little bit more time um today megan allison looks like your hand is up again go ahead with your next question hi there i just was wondering how you plan to look at things from a long-term perspective addressing this is an ongoing issue yeah for us at ppp we look at it as you know what some of the most important work that we we do i've been in a lot of conversations with elected leaders community folks and i've always said that this you know keeping people in our community alive and safe from gun violence is important i will shift resources as needed to make sure we can address it as possible but um if it continues at this rate i think there has to be some real conversation about what is the appropriate resource what is the appropriate structure um to really keep people alive that's what we're talking about uh 231 bullets flying through the streets of portland in essentially a two-week period is just not acceptable and if it if it becomes an issue where we need more resources i'm happy to to go back and try to fight that fight but um to me you know we're coming into the summertime which is typically a busy time for gun violence and as we reopen too as a city um you have more gatherings where people are present and we've had a fair amount of shootings that result from those type of gatherings and events too so i don't know how that will play into the numbers but it's something we're currently looking at something we're always really looking at and concerned with and um you know right now it's really very high on our our list of priorities [Music] okay and scc ramsey of course feel free to hop in if you have anything to add these answers jim redden is has his hand up again go ahead jim there were a series of vigils playing for portland parks to mourn everyone who has died over the past year including covid victims ending up with a big one at pioneer courthouse square are these among the vigils that you think are potential targets my thought is that those are less concerning to us for this type of violence that we're um that we're speaking about i think a lot of the the ones we're really concerned with have more to do with the victims of previous uh gun violence incidents okay thank you for the question um we'll do uh last call for uh any more questions for our group uh michael russell uh you have another one go ahead yeah chief lavelle with with all these bullets flying around i'm just curious um you know how much the general public should be concerned for their own safety and also you know what they can do to keep themselves safe this weekend yeah i would say it's a concern because um you know these bullets are flying around with uh you know essentially no name on them and uh you know you're out and about in certain areas or you know just trying to do your normal day-to-day stuff and uh you know bullets are flying around there's definitely a concern i think for people it's just really being aware of where you're at your surroundings uh being careful it's a very difficult thing to predict uh where this gun violence is going to take place but i think just in in general people should just be aware and try to do everything they can to put themselves ourselves in safe situations and and maybe i would add to that um we want the community to be reaching out to law enforcement right um we know that there have been plenty of incidents that have happened where we've had any amount or a tremendous amount of reluctance on the part of people that saw something that don't want to share that with law enforcement and we know that there are people out in the community right now that know something about some of these shootings and perhaps know something about an individual's plan to commit another shooting beyond that we need people to reach out to law enforcement i know that's seemingly sometimes not a popular thing to say but look this is where this partnership aspect comes in law enforcement has to be part of the solution it's not the only solution here so we do want people to reach out to law enforcement if they have any information be it for a prior shooting or god forbid something that's being planned or some individual that is at risk for perhaps being involved in the next shooting certainly i don't care where people call if they want to call the portland police bureau or if they live in unincorporated multnomah county you call the sheriff's office or if they're in gresham call gresham pd or if you want to call the fbi with information certainly you can call us locally for our fbi office here at 503-224-4181 and we can always accept tips online at tips.fbi.gov but this is where this you know solicitation this plea with the community please reach out to law enforcement help us stop that next incident be part of the solution with us okay um i will uh wrap it up there and unless anybody else has a last minute question or statement they're welcome to join in okay with that thank you everyone for joining us on this saturday if you have any further questions you can direct them to me at ppbio at portlandoregon.gov and we'll seek out answers for you thanks again