Portland Mayor Charlie Hales said the Rose City is seeing a "huge resurgence" in gang violence, citing 38 reported incidents and more than 300 shots fired in neighborhoods in the first four months of 2015.
Hales' remarks came at the Portland Art Museum on Thursday during an annual fundraising luncheon to benefit the Architecture Construction and Engineering Mentoring program.
The mayor's keynote speech was billed as a discussion of the city's rapid growth and emergence from the economic downturn of 2009, and a sneak peek at his vision as city planners sketch the next 20 years of growth.
Related: The Oregonian's ongoing coverage of how the city hopes to shape the Central Eastside.
"We're growing," Hales said to the packed ballroom of developers, general contractors and engineering firms. "You all know this."
But Hales focused much of his 15-minute address on youth mentoring and income inequality.
"Every day in this community, there are kids that are making choices about joining gangs and going the wrong way," Hales said. He said citywide crime is down, but gang violence is up 50 percent from 2014.
Hales' figures are consistent with incident and bullet counts shared at Portland Police Bureau gang task force meetings each month.
Last month, Sgt. Don Livingston, gang enforcement team supervisor, told The Oregonian/OregonLive the increase could be related to the mild winter. "The weather always affects us, and it's been unusually nice,'' Livingston said.
The ACE Mentor Program in Portland provided 148 students this school year with connections to professionals and mentoring from 39 companies. Company donors provided $248,000 for college scholarships.
"What you offer to these kids is not just an internship, not just a job, but literally hope and the chance for a good life versus hopelessness and tragedy," Hales said.
He did touch on Portland's growth, citing economic studies showing the central city is driving economic gains, not the suburbs.
Portland, he said, has "prosperity, rising household incomes, this amazing tech sector" but also real poverty and concentrations of it."
-- Andrew Theen
atheen@oregonian.com
503-294-4026
@cityhallwatch
Maxine Bernstein contributed to this report