Horrific Transit System Attacks Highlight Portland’s Persistent Violent Crime Problem

Portland, Ore., has had a 207 percent increase in homicides in the two-year period from 2019 to 2021. In this file photo a Multnomah County Sheriff's Office cruiser drives through the city in August, 2020. Nathan Howard/Getty Images

A 78-year-old man had part of his face chewed off in a grisly attack in a TriMet train station on Jan. 2, just days after an assailant shoved a toddler onto the tracks outside of Portland.

The 25-year-old accused, Koryn Kraemer, allegedly attacked the victim early on Jan. 3, biting the elderly man so severely that police reported seeing his skull.

First responders arrived to find the suspect on top of the victim “gnawing on the side of his face” and had to physically pull Kraemer off the victim.

A court document said the victim was rushed to the hospital. His entire right ear was also bitten off in the attack.

Outgoing Oregon Gov. Kate Brown has been accused of being soft of crime. She is pictured in this file photo taken on Nov. 10, 2020. Cathy Cheney/AP

Kraemer allegedly attacked the man because he believed the victim was a “robot” because of “how he smelled.”

He stated that the responding law enforcement officers had “saved his life by separating him from ‘the robot,’” according to the Multnomah County DA’s Office.

Kraemer had allegedly used fentanyl and marijuana before the attack and has been charged with second-degree assault.

“It’s upsetting to learn that someone was hurt by another person at the station,” TriMet said in a statement about the incident. The transit line was out of service at the time and it’s unclear if the people involved were using the system, the statement explained.

In another disturbing incident the previous week, surveillance footage captured the moment when a woman pushed a 3-year-old girl onto the tracks at a different TriMet Transit Center.

“The child landed face-first onto the metal rail and rocks before being quickly rescued from the train tracks,” the Multnomah County District Attorney said in a press release.

The 32-year-old suspect, Brianna Lace Workman is described in court records as a “homeless person living in Portland.”

Workman was indicted on charges of first-degree attempted assault, third-degree attempted assault, interfering with public transportation, second-degree disorderly conduct, and recklessly endangering another person.

Violence Soaring

These heinous attacks come as Portland is facing a crime crisis.

The city set a new record in 2022 of 100 homicides. That’s a 207 percent increase in the two-year period from 2019 to 2021, based on data from the Portland Police Bureau.

The increase eclipses those of San Francisco, Atlanta, and Minneapolis, which have also experienced crime surges in recent years.

Gun violence in the city is soaring.

Portland alone had 379 shootings in 2019, 831 in 2020, and 1,192 in 2021, according to the Portland Police Bureau.

It has already surpassed those numbers in 2022, with some data still outstanding.

As of Nov. 30, 2022, the city had witnessed 1,195 shootings.

‘Catastrophe of Homelessness’

The state is also experiencing what Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler describes as a “catastrophe of homelessness.”

Oregon has among the highest homeless populations per capita in the nation, with its associated crime and drug use.

In the Portland metropolitan area alone, an estimated 6,000 people are homelessness, according to Multnomah County’s 2022 Point in Time Count, an annual census of the unhoused.

Testifying before the Portland City Council, Lyndsey Crawford, Human Resources director for Stumptown Coffee, described “truly unbelievable” scenes of a “mental health and addiction crises” among the homeless population around her downtown business, “including people on the streets with machetes and others in an “altered state and in need of professional help.”

The state is also in the midst of a drug crisis.

More than a year after Oregon became the first state in the nation to decriminalize hard drugs—including methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine—overdoses in just one county soared by 700 percent.

Drug Seizures Skyrocket

According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, Oregon has the worst drug addiction rate in the country, with 9 percent of residents admitting they are addicts and 12 percent alcoholics.

Seizures of fentanyl, marijuana and opioids have skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, outgoing Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat, faces criticism for being “soft on crime.”

Brown has granted commutations or pardons to more than 1,150 people, more than all of the state’s governors from the past 50 years combined.

During the early months of the Covid pandemic, Brown joined 17 other governors in using clemency to quickly reduce prison populations in hopes of slowing the transmission of the virus. She approved the early release of 963 people who had committed nonviolent crimes.

In October, 2021, she granted clemency to 73 people who had committed crimes as juveniles.

The governor in December granted clemency to all 17 persons on death row in the state, sparking outrage from the victims’ families.