Portland Shopping Mall Turned Into Dystopian Style Open Air Drug Market Cleared Out By Armed Cops

Police in Portland spent this past week clearing out a vacant shopping center in the city’s deserted downtown in what was described as a scene from the dystopian HBO show The Last of Us.

The building had been turned into an open-air drug market.

Dozens of local police moved in on the vacant retail development Wednesday at around 7:30 a.m. by blocking the surrounding area and stretching out crime scene tape well down the block. 

An officer said that while they didn’t find squatters, there had been people holing up in there in the days before. Police have been running round-the-clock patrols at the building since last Friday.

Dozens of local police moved in on the vacant retail development Wednesday at around 7:30 a.m. by blocking the surrounding area and stretching out crime scene tape well down the block

The city’s Central Bike Squad demonstrated officers using battering rams to break down doors and get in to locked rooms in the building, which city officials called ‘in crisis mode.’

Mayor Ted Wheeler said later that evening: ‘The city is confident that the building site is empty of trespassers. There were no immediate threats during this process.’ 

Building owner Barry Menashe is working with contractors and the police to totally board it up and try eliminate The Oregonian called ‘rampant drug trafficking.’

The city has been in the process of working on a plan to safeguard the building with Menashe and his daughter Lauren, his real estate company’s principal.

Menashe has, in the past, offered to simply let the city use it as a homeless shelter but they’ve yet to determine an official purpose. Wheeler said that ‘would likely require substantial retooling prior to future use.’

Eric Zimmerman, the city’s central policy advisor, would rather the property be boarded up than continue to act as a drug house.

‘We’ve given them the go-ahead and said, ‘If you want to line up 90-degree corners and box the whole thing out, we would be very supportive of that,‘ Zimmerman said. ‘Even it required that we’d give up the sidewalks — whatever it takes to secure it.’

People walking by the property simply told Zimmerman ‘good’ and finally!’ in response to learning of the news. Many presumed there’d been a murder.

Conservative journalist Andy Ngo openly suggested the building looked like a scene from the HBO video game adaptation The Last of Us.

It is not clear where the building will be put to use in the future because people are waiting to see what happens after the police fully secure it.

An officer said that while they didn’t find squatters, there had been people holing up in there in the days before

‘The appetite to be visionary or try out new ideas is a little bit subdued until we can stop the bleeding,’ Zimmerman said of potential owners for the building in the future. ‘We’re just trying to be measured, to not put too many carts before the horse.’ 

The Democratic city has one of the most deserted downtowns in the United States, with elevating crime rates and homelessness frightening away both locals and tourists.

In 2021, there were 90 homicides amid an upswing in gun violence, which smashed the city’s previous record high of 66 set more than three decades ago.

There were 101 murders recorded in 2022 – a new record for the city.

Portland presently has more than 700 homeless encampments across the city within less than 150 square miles.

Some of the most attractive, stylish and pricey neighborhoods of the Pacific Northwest city are now overrun with tent cities crowding residential sidewalks and muddled with trash.

Portland City Council rushed to give back funds to the police in November 2021 after defunding them by more than $15 million in 2020. Officials instead voted to add $5.4 million to the force’s budget.

When the police was defunded in 2020, the Portland Police Bureau endured a rush of retirements and resignations.

Portland saw a startling surge in shootings and murders after George Floyd’s Minneapolis death.

The city saw a 250 percent increase in murders within the first six months of Floyd’s death and shootings climbed almost 175 per cent.