Halt Lead-Emitting Police Surveillance Flights Over Portland: Sign Petition

February 20, 2023

Public Records and Data Archives (PRADA PDX) is promoting a petition to ground Portland Police Bureau (PPB) surveillance flights over Portland. The petition further states, "PPB has asked the city for $1,500,000 to purchase a new plane. We ask Portland City Council to deny this funding, halting further pollution and harm."

According to PRADA, the PPB operates surveillance flights in the skies over Portland approximately 1200 hours each year. This averages out to around 3.5 hours per day. The posting also includes heat maps showing the census tracks most heavily surveilled by these aircraft.

Below are excerpts from the release:

P.R.A.D.A. obtained flight logs, GPS coordinates of the plane, and fuel purchases for a 6 month period. These documents confirm PPB's aviation unit uses AVGAS 100LL, a leaded gasoline harmful to people and the environment. Their flights repeatedly harm our city and as we will show, disproportionately impacting marginalized communities. This environmental racism and impact continues a pattern and practice of brutality. While not a direct hit from a baton, the lead's poisonous presence in bodies due to police harm is very real and needs to be addressed.

PPB does not only emit lead, but a review of flights paths shows that impact is focused on marginalized communities already living under years of disinvestment.

What is immediately obvious from all these comparisons is that PPB, through its planes and policies, put communities of color under its planes and emissions. Also in these neighborhoods are parks, streams, natural areas, hospitals, schools, and community centers. While the city claims to support community building, they passively harm us day after day.

Lead is not the only harm coming from these planes. In our time of climate change and growing fire seasons, the carbon impact of these planes also raises alarms. These planes spew CO2 into our air, over and over.

ACTION ITEMS

  • SHARE THIS INFO: Educating communities on issues of environmental racism and the impacts is critical. Many do not know the hum of the plane above them is a police plane surveilling their actions and emitting harmful toxins. Talk with your people and organize. Check out the dashboard and visuals of our communities being harmed. Review the data and flight logs.
  • SIGN OUR PETITION: We will share this with Mayor Wheeler, council, and PPB. Demand they ground these poison planes.
  • CONTACT YOUR ELECTEDS: Share your voice with them directly. Ask why this has been allowed and demand PPB repair their historic and current harms.
  • SUPPORT LOCAL ORGS: Verde have a long history of standing for marginalized communities against environmental impacts. Oregon Aviation Watch are a dedicated community deeply knowledgeable and to whom we owe a debt.

Click Ground PPB's Poison Planes to read the posting in its entirety.

To view additional screenshots of flight tracks produced by the Portland Police Bureau's surveillance flights, see the following Oregon Aviation Watch articles:

© Oregon Aviation Watch Contact Us Jump to Top