What the hell is going on with car theft in Portland?
There was a state court ruling a few years ago that made it harder to prove theft - like, the fact you caught a strung-out dude driving a stolen car with a shaved-down key isn’t enough if you didn’t see him take it and he says “uh, some random guy gave it to me”, which such dudes know to say by now.
Most states have closed that loophole with a “Receiving Stolen Property” charge (looking it up, Oregon’s is called “Theft by Receiving”). The threshold for that is simply that a normal person would have a reasonable suspicion that the goods they have…ahem…acquired are stolen. Any competent district attorney would have the “random guy” or “my buddy” defense destroyed in a heartbeat.
I would say the culprit is more likely that the police don’t have the manpower to go after car thieves anymore, and they’ve said as much to local news.
The law thing is real. I’d heard of it before that article was published, even before my motorcycle was stolen out of my driveway this year.
NOW, it’s absolutely possible that those defenses could be “destroyed” with enough effort - more extensive interrogations, detectives beating the bushes of the homeless transient communities (where people do barter with others they just know as “this one guy”) to undermine the claim, court time with a good prosecutor to undermine the story on the stand – but that that consumes more resources per conviction than the DA’s office’s resources/priorities/culture can support, while the previous open-and-shut, show-the-judge-the-burglary-tools approach was sustainable.
It’s also totally possible that the PPD is under-resourced - I’ve heard suggestions to that effect, that they weren’t as fluffed out after the last budget crunch ended, that they haven’t kept track as the city boomed and the low cost of living that kept it livable for the poor came to an end, that the #resistance energy is pressing to divert more resources away from criminal justice.