Portland police officer Eli Arnold, who is vying for a seat in District 4, posted a video on Instagram where he said he would like an invitation from a homeless shelter to spend the night.
“We had a saying in the army, ‘I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I wasn’t willing to do myself,’” said Arnold, an Army veteran who served in Afghanistan. “I don’t think you can have too much first-hand experience. If there’s a way, without displacing somebody and without using a needed bed, I would love to have the experience of actually checking in, entering the shelter and staying overnight,” he said.
Arnold, campaigning on a platform to end street camping, said his comments came in response to another city council candidate’s recent video claiming that shelters are often unsafe for those living on the street. While Arnold did not mention the other candidate by name, such a video was recently released by District 3 candidate Angelita Morillo, an anti-hunger advocate, who said some shelters are poorly run, but that houseless clients fear reporting violations due to fear of repercussions from staff.
Morillo, who opposes Portland’s current public cmaping ban, added that most houseless people do not feel safe reporting to any authority about what is going on inside shelter systems because they are afraid of losing what little support is being offered there. She also expressed concerns about the plan to arrest those repeatedly refusing shelter, citing a number of deaths reported in recent years, which she attributed to inmates not receiving adequate medical care.
