PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The Portland Police Bureau says its Cold Case Homicide Unit was “temporarily shuttered” last week because the workload has reportedly been too much.
PPB said the workload is not sustainable with the number of homicide detectives on hand.
The bureau is reportedly assigning more people to solve homicide cases — upping the unit from 18 detectives split between two teams to 24 detectives split between three teams. A spokesperson with PPB told KOIN 6 News some shuffling was involved to create the third team.
According to PPB, there are about 300 cold cases from 1970 to 2019 that still fall under some homicide detectives’ scope.
Further, the homicide unit reportedly had 92 callouts and 120 total callouts in 2021.