Street takeovers swept across North Portland late Sunday and early Monday, but police said they couldn’t intervene because most North Precinct officers were tied up responding to a report of a man armed with a gun and threatening to kill people.
The Portland Police Bureau said it got reports of street racing and illegal takeovers at multiple locations including at Marine Drive and Portland Road, Marine Drive and Interstate 5, Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Columbia Boulevard and near the Lloyd Center.
At the same time and in the same precinct, about a dozen police units responded to the call about an armed man, police spokesperson Mike Benner said in an email. That left only two units available for high priority calls in the precinct — not enough to safely tackle a street takeover event head on, Benner said…