You’d think a driver running over a sleeping “homeless” person would be a rarity, right? Not in Portland, Oregon. Reportedly, in recent months, drivers in the Rose City have run over three “homeless” Portlandians.

If nothing else demonstrates Portland’s ability to address “homelessness” is a disaster, this should bolster the argument. The other day, a man was driving out of the garage at his apartment complex when he struck a 47-year-old woman who was sleeping in the driveway.

The driver told the cops he felt an initial bump but didn’t hear or see anything to alert him he’d run over a person. Then, as he pulled further forward, he felt a second bump. Apparently, the woman had been sleeping directly in front of the apartment building’s garage door.

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Police have not charged the driver who called for medics immediately after learning he had run over a person. Initial reports said the woman did not have life-threatening injuries. However, police said she took a turn for the worse and later died.

I have written many articles about Portland’s leaders’ warped perspectives (especially anti-cop Mayor Ted Wheeler, America’s second worst mayor) when dealing with many public safety issues for which there are destructive consequences.

City leaders’ tolerance for so-called homeless crimes, including trespassing, which this woman was doing, is infamous. One has to wonder if the leniency with which the city treats “homeless” people, not holding them accountable for their law breaking, is exacerbating the crisis.

You see this poor woman is not the only “homeless” person struck by a vehicle in similar circumstances in Portland. There was the man sleeping under a tarp near a trash dumpster in early December 2019 when a garbage truck ran over his legs. The man was hospitalized with serious injuries but survived.

In November 2019, a driver struck a woman who was sleeping in a tent, illegally trespassing on a grassy area near a Portland freeway off-ramp. The driver, who police say was not impaired and was cooperative, said she’d “misjudged the curve” [and drove off the road and onto the grassy area]. The camper was hospitalized with significant leg injuries. She is expected to recover. Police cited the driver for Careless Driving, a traffic infraction.

It seemed lost on the woman camper that she’d contributed to the circumstances by sleeping in an area where camping is prohibited by the state—because of the danger. But with Portland city leaders refusing to enforce laws they don’t like, aren’t they tacitly, even overtly, encouraging people to endanger themselves?

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Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) spokesman Lou Torres “reiterated the agency’s longtime stance on keeping campers off highway-adjacent land. They’re extremely vulnerable, and they’re really putting themselves in harm’s way. It’s why ODOT has spent millions of dollars in recent years clearing camps, a job they turned over to the city this year [how’s that working out for ya?], and installing boulders on properties with histories of chronic camping.”

I keep thinking one day these leftist city leaders’ head-scratching policies will collapse under the weight of their ideological fantasies. But there are no signs of any change of direction. Leftist leaders in cities like Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Portland still support the lawless over the law-abiding and lawlessness over the rule of law.

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People continue to die at the hands of illegal alien criminals because these cities and counties will not cooperate with ICE. Street criminals go unpunished for a growing list of what “woke” people call “survival crimes.” Antifa repeatedly escapes responsibility for terrorizing the city’s residents. And Portland city officials will continue to look the other way when “homeless” folks put themselves in dangerous situations. Like sleeping in people’s driveways.

I’m afraid people will suffer a lot more before any sanity returns. After all, voters keep electing these same people while, apparently, expecting different results. What do they call that again?