Portland police officer Eli Arnold sets sights on City Council

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) -- Eli Arnold is a Portland police officer working on the Central Bike Squad and running for City Council in District 4. That district includes the central city, Northwest Portland, all the way to Linnton, and Sellwood in Southeast Portland.

An army veteran, Arnold was a Blackhawk helicopter pilot, serving in Afghanistan and Germany.

Arnold is one of 30 candidates running for three City Council positions in District 4, an outcome which will be decided by ranked-choice voting.

On this week's Eye on Northwest Politics, Arnold said this overhaul of Portland's government is coming at a critical time for the city.

"It's time that we need to be really careful to show stability," he voiced. "There's going to be a lot of people paying attention to see if we stumble or if we put something good together here."

Arnold added his work as a police officer has given him an up-close experience with homelessness, addiction, mental health and public safety crises. He argued that, while the city has spent money to deal with long-term issues, they have not paid enough attention to the short-term.

"There are acute problems, like this week I've dealt with a woman who has been camped out in front of a school," said Arnold. "And there's an addiction and a mental health component going on and that needs managing. Even if we can't solve homelessness in this moment, we can manage the impacts and businesses, the school, the residents and person suffering. They all need help and some real urgency."

With Multnomah County scheduled to open a drug deflection center on Monday, Arnold said he hopes it can succeed at treating those in need. But he also has concerns.

"My worry is that we may not be willing to get uncomfortable and push hard enough and getting off of fentanyl's got to be terribly difficult," he said. "So I worry that we're not pushing hard enough to get people into treatment under this model. And I also worry about concentrating the problem in a particular neighborhood with this deflection center."

At the root of all of this is a missing cohesive relationship between the city of Portland, the Portland City Council, the mayor, Multnomah County and the Multnomah County Commission. Arnold is trying to get a head start on remedying that, by working alongside Vadim Mozyrsky, who is running for County Commissioner.

"There's an issue right now up near St. Mary's Academy where there's a drug addiction problem. There's a needle handout that's happening every week and it's caused a lot of conflict," he said. "Vadim and I went down there and spent a night watching and talking with neighbors. And I think it's going to be about that. Let's get together and go to the problem and just talk and figure out a way to move forward."

On the issue of public safety, the Portland Police Bureau is seriously understaffed compared to other cities of similar size. Arnold said ideally committing to a ratio of population to officers would be a way to start, as well as paying more attention to camping on the streets.

It's going to be slow work, it's going to take time. It took a long time from 1995 to now to get down to this staffing," he noted. "In the short run, the best thing we can actually do is manage the sort of chaos around street camping, because that is sucking up such a huge percentage of capacity and that's where we free something up in the short run."

Watch the full interview in the video above.