Oregon State Police assisting PPB bike squad missions amid fentanyl emergency

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The Portland Police Bureau’s Central Bike Squad is teaming up with Oregon State Police as part of an expanded effort to target drug suppliers and other criminals.

With the state troopers’ support, the PPB bike squad now has 25 officers running missions three times a month. All three neighborhood response teams are working together and they are expanding from Old Town into other parts of the city, like Southwest Portland, the Pearl District and Central Eastside.

Besides drug dealing, their focus is also on other criminal activities such as retrieving stolen vehicles, finding weapons, and people wanted on arrest warrants.

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“There’s other parts of the city that are impacted by the fentanyl crisis so, you know, today, when we have these extra resources, it makes sense to kind of spread out,” said Dave Baer, an officer with PPB’s bike squad. “Going into the Central Eastside industrial area, towards PSU, other places that are seeing an increase in fentanyl-related crime — we’ll hopefully be going to be able to address that today.”

Portland is in a 90-day fentanyl emergency declared by elected leaders. Police tell KOIN 6 News they will continue running these missions and making arrests. On Wednesday alone, police already made more than a dozen arrests by the afternoon.

The missions run from before dawn until 9 pm.

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