On Wednesday morning, the Portland police started their mission to clear out the Washington Center, a former mall in downtown Portland that had been seized by vagrants and turned into an open-air drug market.
The action was taken following a spate of overdoses reported in and around the building over the past few weeks, most of which were caused by fentanyl. Journalist Andy Ngo from The Post Millennial likened the scenes discovered during the police tour of the building to "scenes out of The Last of Us," a TV show set in a post-apocalyptic America.
The Portland Police Bureau's Central Bike Squad, who led the mission, kept the public updated throughout the day on its Instagram page. The squad informed its followers, around 8 am, that the officers were entering the graffiti-laden building and examining the filth and decay that had accumulated during the months it had existed as a haven for drug use. Officers, wearing N95 masks, scoured every part of the dilapidated structure and found trash, building materials scattered on the floor, mold, and other harmful substances growing on the walls, in addition to drug paraphernalia.
As the day progressed, Portland Fire and Rescue was called in to assist, and by lunchtime, the work had already begun to board up the doors and windows of the building, many of which were cracked, to bar access. Oregon Live reported that by evening, the Mayor Ted Wheeler's office confirmed that "the city is confident that the building site is empty of trespassers," and no immediate threats were found during the process. However, Officer David Baer observed during the procedure that "there's definitely been people in here."
According to a spokesperson for the PPB, in response to a series of overdoses, they had been "providing extra patrols around the building in response to an overwhelming amount of illegal drug dealing, overdoses, and in an effort to avoid future tragedies."
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